“What is the most important thing in this piece?”
Mike, our music teacher, suddenly paused the player and asked.
Berlioz’s symphony Fantastique, even abruptly halted at the very beginning, divulged its potential of complexity. The underlying tremolo of bass and cello are thunders of a impending orchestral outburst.
I savor the uncertainty and richness there every time. Though being the hardest of our coursework, Fantastique is my favorite for it reminds me of myself. Berlioz’s imagination rampage from a ball to a meadows and eventually a witch’s marching like an unleashed horse, in which there are infinite possibilities. I see myself as limitless—I can be a physician, an anthropologists, and an artist at the same time; I cannot restrain myself and I wished not to—My volatility would always take me to explore a new-found continent.
I was so into the excitement of adventure everyday, that I was grazing every land I’ve found to reach the ambiguity of my boundaries. I went straight into the hypothesis of higher dimensions because it hints on a brand-new interpretation of my world. Socrates’s debate of piety would engage my mind all day, as I imagined arguing with him to reconstruct my own rationale. And I would love music for music was a kaleidoscope of endless possibilities— I was attracted by the concept of “Holy city”—a geometric graph from which equal temperaments were calculated—and was held captive in mathematics for some months. Half way through the realm of impressionism, I was lured by the Debussy’s magical lullaby and lost my way in the symbolism of Edgar Allen Poe.
Though sometimes in a late night, I felt confused—In the giant turbulence of knowledge, I was ever collided to random directions. But in the morning I pack my sentiments and hasten on to the road again.
“Simple and obvious!” Mike encouraged us, but the class was silent. “Ivy, can you try? Ivy!”
Startled, I was drew back from my day dreaming. I’ve been through every bar and every chord, but searching again into the score with too many highlights, I can hardly tell what matters the most.
“…There is this one motif,” In my silence, Mike circled a short phrase on the board and clicked on the player as he said, “which symbolizes the moment when Berlioz saw Harriet and fell in love with her. It’s called idee fixe, as it stays within the whole symphony.”
Berlioz’s Fantastique continued. The lower strings churn and heave, soon leading to the opulent Waltz theme. Big orchestration and ever-changing tonality still attracts me, but this time I looked for it — a simple yet beautiful melody. Berlioz unfolds it, sequences it, elaborates it, but it’s there, lingering in the strings till the very end.
“The idee fixe,” Mike stared at me as he stressed the word in French, “is the key motif that leads to every development. Do research into it in your next essay.”
I was stunned. A strange feeling arouse in my heart and I was somehow touched—behind all of the exhausting variations of an hour long, a small yet powerful idea is rooted deep from the very beginning. The whole symphony is a love letter—suddenly every uncertainty was certain, and any possibility was eliminated by fidelity. But for the first time I feel inside my heart every note and every modulation. All of it made sense.
In the world of Fantastique, all I wanted was more. I may have passed by my”Harriet” somewhere in my past, but my eyes were fixed on the uncharted realm. Not for once in the hurry did I l stopped and asked “What am I looking for?”, but what’s the point if, in the end, all I have is everything other than my love? Only when I find its motif can I truly understand the symphony. Only when I find my idee fixe can I truly start my journey.
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