Against Melody: Neology, Revolution, and Berliozian Fantasy

Complaints levied against Hector Berlioz’s music during his lifetime were many: deafening, terrifying, too literary, too imitative. I redirect attention to the symphony’s syntax, arguing that melodic-linguistic deformation was at the heart of the work’s radicalism. I link Berlioz’s notions of natural grammar to notions of natural sound, and the natural rights of man. I examine relationships among grammar, revolution & 19th-century fantasy, between musical neology & the Berliozian imaginary.