Okay. THIS is gonna be a little long. Bear with me, if you will.
We all love our comic book movies. But, honestly, the original masters of the comic books grew up listening to old Victrola 78s of the Great Masters, and the music inspired their imaginations to give us the heroes, villains, and the stories that make us all tremble with delight and anticipation this very day.
In this article, I introduce you to an incredible composer of the mid-1800s, a man who crafted "the comic book without the comic book", in music.
You can put all of your modern musicians up there, but when you want to talk musicianship, you talk CLASSICAL. You look at the musicianship of modern "music artists", and just about every one will be put through their paces by MOST really good Classical performers.
And if you want "a movie soundtrack without a movie", a "comic book without a comic book", you need look no further than Hector Berlioz' 1845 "Symphonie Phantastique" [Fantastic Symphony].
The symphony is in five movements, and here is one of my all-time favorite recordings of the piece, directed by Leonard Bernstein:
The five movements are named, as follows:
1st movement - "Day Dreams -- Passions" 00:00
2nd movement - "A Ball" 13:40
3rd movement - "Scene in the Countryside" 20:30
4th movement - "March to the Scaffold" [Marche au Supplice] 37:30
5th movement - "Dream of a Witches' Sabbath" [Hexensabbat] 42:30
And here is where it gets INTERESTING. Hector Berlioz' original descriptive program, from 1845, is a bit long, so I condense it here:
First Movement: "Daydreams, Passions."
A young artist falls in love with a beautiful, yet to him, unapproachable young woman. His love for her is told in tempestuous and sedate tones, as young love may so often be. But in this piece, there are recurrent themes, known in music as the "idee fixe", the recurring motif. [LISTEN for the recurring motif, like Luke's theme or Darth Vader's theme in the Star Wars symphonic score, THIS is one of the origins of John Williams' ideas! ~bro.] He simply lies around, thinking of his beautiful lady.
Second Movement: "A Ball"
[From Berlioz' original notes] The artist finds himself in the most diverse situations in life, in the tumult of a festive party, in the peaceful contemplation of the beautiful sights of nature, yet everywhere, whether in town or in the countryside, the beloved image keeps haunting him and throws his spirit into confusion. [Again, note the idee fixee. This comes back to HAUNT.]
Third Movement: "Scene in the Countryside"
The young man now is in the French countryside. He imagines the hedgerows, the smell of lavender and other scents of Provence. He sees his love, dancing in the meadows. He is filled with love, and longing to dance with her. He hears two shepherds, piping to each other in a traditional French song, one that helps keep track of the herds. Eventually, he sees his love dance off into a hedgerow with one of the shepherds. A lone shepherd's pipe is heard, calling to his brother, but no answering tone is heard. The young man is stricken with jealousy, with longing to be in the hedge with her, and begins to resent her attentions to the young shepherd, whose mouth and hands are too busy to return his brother's call. A sense of foreboding settles over the meadows, and dark clouds begin to descend... "At the end one of the shepherds resumes his 'ranz des vaches'; the other one no longer answers. Distant sound of thunder... solitude... silence..."
Fourth Movement: "March to the Scaffold [Guillotine]"
[From Berlioz' original notes] Convinced that his love is spurned, the artist poisons himself with opium. The dose of narcotic, while too weak to cause his death, plunges him into a heavy sleep accompanied by the strangest of visions. He dreams that he has killed his beloved, that he is condemned, led to the scaffold and is witnessing his own execution. The procession advances to the sound of a march that is sometimes sombre and wild, and sometimes brilliant and solemn, in which a dull sound of heavy footsteps follows without transition the loudest outbursts. At the end of the march, the first four bars of the idée fixe reappear like a final thought of love interrupted by the fatal blow.
Fifth Movement: "Dream of a Witches' Sabbath [Hexensabbat]"
[From Berlioz' original notes] He [the young artist] sees himself at a witches' sabbath, in the midst of a hideous gathering of shades, sorcerers and monsters of every kind who have come together for his funeral. Strange sounds, groans, outbursts of laughter; distant shouts which seem to be answered by more shouts. The beloved melody [idee fixee] appears once more, but has now lost its noble and shy character; it is now no more than a vulgar dance tune, trivial and grotesque: it is she who is coming to the sabbath... Roar of delight at her arrival... She joins the diabolical orgy... The funeral knell tolls, burlesque parody of the Dies Irae [the Song od Death, one of the OLDEST recorded songs in Western history, a hymn sung in funeral ceremonies of the Old Roman Catholic Church], and then comes The Dance of the Witches. The dance of the witches combined with the Dies irae. The Deis Irae combines witth he Dance of The Witches in a final, cataclysmic, climactic musical battle for the young man's soul, which he loses. He tunbles down into the eternal Pit of darkness, misery, and despair.
Whaddaythink? Dark enough for you Dark Knight fans???
SOME of you will give this a chance. SOME of you will be little mewling quims about it. Some will learn. Some will reject. But for those who cannot grasp the connection here, or for whom classical music and its influence on the comic book geniuses who gave us the heroes and villains we love to love or hate is too intense to wrap your tiny pointed little heads around, I give you...
'Nuff Said!
Excelsior!