Symphony [Hardcover]

Jude Morgan (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: July 3, 2006

An audacious, brilliant and haunting novel about the composer Hector Belioz, by the author of PASSION. In 1827 Harriet Smithson, a beautiful and talented young Irish actress joins an English company taking Shakespeare to Paris. With the ferment of revolution in the air, the new generation is longing for a kind of passionate, spontaneous art. To Harriet's astonishment, it is embodied in her -- La Belle Irlandaise. She finds herself pursued by an intense young composer named Hector Berlioz. So begins a painful and profound love affair. She is his muse; his idee fixe; his obsession. And Berlioz's Symphonie Fantastique, directly inspired by Harriet, will change music forever. In the course of their marriage, their lives are transfigured and destroyed by genius, inspiration, and ultimately madness. SYMPHONY is set against a background of nineteenth-century theatre, Romantic art and music, revolutionary Europe, inspiration and madness and features Liszt, Delacroix, Dumas, Hugo and Chopin. But at its heart lies the story of a woman who found, almost against her will, that she was a maker of magic.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

The real-life marriage of Irish actress Harriet Smithson (1800–1854) to composer Hector Berlioz (1803–1869) is the ostensible subject of Morgan's latest (following Indiscretion), but the two don't meet until two thirds of the way into this thickly embellished historical romance. After initial reluctance, the young Harriet, her passion for theatre inflamed by Shakespeare, joins her family's traveling theater company. As drink dissipates her father, weight softens her mother and minimal talent limits her brother Joseph, Harriet takes charge of the family business and appears with theatrical stars of the time. But it's her magnificent interpretation of Ophelia in Paris that brings her a public, including Hector, the son of a successful doctor and a pious mother. Young Hector's path to a musical education is told in parallel to Harriet's youth. After her Ophelia, Harriet turns away Hector's ardent pursuit, but as her theater begins to fail and his musical star begins to rise, she attends a performance of his Symphonie Fantastique, inspired by her. Morgan's modernist style, with frequent shifts in tense and POV, won't be for everyone, but it lets Morgan nicely capture the multiple levels of consciousness a performer juggles on stage (the three minds) and gives the novel real texture. (Dec.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Review

'Symphony is a lush and haunting romance about passion, madness and genius' -- Daily Mail 20060707 'The brilliant historical novelist Jude Morgan!a deeply empathic exploration of obsession and art, genius and madness!stunning!Deliciously romantic yet elegantly restrained!thrilling' -- Washington Post 20060707

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 384 pages
• Publisher: Review (July 3, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0755327713
• ISBN-13: 978-0755327713
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.4 x 1.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.5 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #9,627,179 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A fine historical novel fizzles out towards the end, February 15, 2007

By 

Ralph Blumenau (London United Kingdom) - See all my reviews
(TOP 500 REVIEWER)   

This review is from: Symphony (Paperback)

This is a novel about the French composer Hector Berlioz and the Irish actress Harriet Smithson. Harriet came with a group of actors to perform Shakespeare in Paris in 1827, and as soon as Berlioz saw her performances, he became obsessed with her, worshipping her from afar: they did not actually meet for another five years, and then they married.

A great deal of research has gone into the book, but it is lightly worn. Berlioz first sees her perform about half way through the book; but in the early part we have a superb account of their lives before that time. Not only the principal characters, but the other members of their families are splendidly realized in the round, as is the social and political background of the time. Morgan also beautifully captures Berlioz' overheated Romantic sensibilities and Harriet's insecurities. His passionate wooing of her and her response are touchingly described, as is the brief period of happiness which follows.

Both had been warned that it was an unsuitable marriage; but who could have told just how it would turn out? The torture that afflicted both their lives makes painful reading.

The style is a little idiosyncratic. Sometimes events are narrated in the historic present, sometimes in the past tense; there are very many short fragments of sentences without a main verb; and I don't think I care for the intrusion at one stage of a libretto Morgan has invented, nor for the few pages of mock-Shakespearean drama that presumably presents itself to an opium-drugged Berlioz near the end. In the last 100 pages or so the power of the book slackens considerably, tragic though its material is. It is almost as if Morgan has himself lost interest. The chronology becomes too loose, and there is an unnecessary section on Mendelssohn. Personally I also think it would have been better to have put the material of the Prologue into the end of the book instead: coming at the beginning, it gives too much away. But the choice of vocabulary is always imaginative without being forced, and from a purely literary point of view, too, about three-quarters of the book is a real pleasure to read.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Somewhat Discordant, July 7, 2008

By 

Michael Gunther (Maryland, USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Symphony (Hardcover)

The central matter of Jude Morgan's "Symphony" is a romantic, but eventually failed, marriage between Hector Berlioz and actress Harriet Smithson, who was Berlioz' muse and the inspiration for his "Symphonie Fantastique." The tricks that Morgan uses to tell this story include shifts in tone, chronology, point of view, and style - some, although by no means all, of the modern literary arsenal. Unfortunately, in this writer's hands, the various narrative devices that he uses seem rather complicated and "precious." This is one book that would have benefited from less cleverness on the part of its author.

Readers who are interested in the lives of the Romantic composers may also want to check out the fine biography (it reads better than most novels) titled "Chopin's Funeral," by Benita Eisler.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars an excellent story hampered by an overly elaborate style, January 4, 2010

By 

Margaret Johnston (Seabeck, WA USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Symphony (Paperback)

Harriet Smithson is an Irish actress; she is from a theatrical family, yet she spent her childhood resisting their calling. Hector Berlioz is meant to follow in his father's footsteps as a doctor, yet he cannot resist the music within him. When Harriet comes to Paris with an English company to act Shakespeare, Berlioz sees her as Ophelia and instantly adores her. After years of an obsession which produces _Symphonie Fantastique_ (probably Berlioz's best-known work), they eventually meet and begin a powerful, painful love affair.

I have to say first that I did not care for the book's style. Morgan switches between past tense and present tense, often with different styles of punctuation; he interpolates first-person bits in which it seems Harriet is addressing the author directly, and there are even odder bits in which the author is essentially interviewing other composers (Chopin, Mendelssohn) about Hector and Harriet. I've read books where the author's tense changes seemed to mean something (Jo Walton's Lifelode or Rumer Godden's _China Court_, for example), but here, I just found them and the other style variations confusing and self-consciously clever. Every time the style changed, I was bounced out of the narrative and had to work to re-immerse myself.

But dislike of the style aside, I always was able to dive back into the book and keep reading with enjoyment. Morgan does beautifully with the period, with the characters, and most of all, with the portrayal of life as an artist (whether actor or composer). The novel does slow in the last hundred pages or so, because once Harriet and Hector are together, the tension of wondering when that would happen is gone and replaced by a drearier anxiety over how long their relationship will actually last. On balance, though, it's an excellent story, though hampered by an overly elaborate style.