Celestial Visions: Symphonie Fantastique SoNA
September 20, 2025
Walton Arts Center
Lawrence Loh, Guest Conductor
Sinfonia (for Orbiting Spheres) (2014)
Missy Mazzoli
b October 27, 1980 in Pennsylvania, USA
We tend to think of a composer’s career as proceeding along a fairly straight line. Composer studies at school X with teacher Y; composer builds reputation slowly piece by piece; composer becomes established, maybe winds up teaching composition in a major school of music. But that’s not the case with many of today’s composers, who in a fragmented and rapidly evolving profession must virtually invent their own careers from the ground up.
Missy Mazzoli’s career has been no line but an intricate webbing that originates from her encompassing interests in, well, just about everything. Some of that is intrinsic to her own nature, some of it is due to the requirements of today’s profession, and some of it relates to the challenge of being a female composer in a field that even after all this time remains mostly male. She is a composer, keyboardist, educator, advocate, and more, including having trained as a death doula in order to help people through that most critical of life’s transitions.
Mazzoli tells us that her Sinfonia (for Orbiting Spheres), commissioned by the Los Angeles Philarmonic, is “music in the shape of a solar system, a collection of rococo loops that twist around each other within
a larger orbit. The word ‘sinfonia’ refers to baroque works for chamber orchestra but also to the old Italian term for a hurdy-gurdy, a medieval stringed instrument with constant, wheezing drones that are cranked out under melodies played on an attached keyboard. It’s a piece that churns and roils, that inches close to the listener only to leap away at breakneck speed, in the process transforming the ensemble turns into a makeshift hurdy-gurdy, flung recklessly into space.”
Variations on a Theme by Haydn, Op. 56a (1873)
Johannes Brahms b May 7, 1833 in Hamburg, Germany d April 3, 1897 in Vienna, Austria
choral works such as the German Requiem and Rinaldo. But it wasn’t until 1873 that he committed fully to an independent work for large orchestra, the Variations on a Theme by Haydn, Op. 56a, which he also provided in a musicallyidentical version for two pianos.
Critical commentary has long perpetuated the notion that Brahms was an indifferent orchestrator. A look through the scores — better yet, judicious listening — reveals the charge as uninformed. Brahms took enormous pains with his wind and brass writing in particular, creating magical sounds with a striking economy of means. Brahms’s orchestra is his own, and it sounds like nobody else’s.
That said, Brahms needed a good long time to become fully comfortable writing for orchestra. His two early serenades were a good start, as were the orchestrations of the concertos and
Commentators — including this one — can’t resist pointing out that the theme isn’t actually by Joseph Haydn, but is a melody identified as the “St. Anthony Chorale” in an 18th century suite for wind band that was once attributed to Haydn. To this day the authorship remains uncertain, whether of the suite or the chorale melody. (Scholarly guesses range from plausible to outlandish.) The clearlystructured and clean-lined tune is absolutely perfect for use in a set of variations, capable of any amount of elaboration without losing its essential outline. Throughout the work’s eight variations the chorale is never altogether obscured, although Brahms might retain the underlying harmony rather than the melody, such as in the Vivace fifth variation.
The finale begins with the St. Anthony melody stated in the bass and repeating cyclically while everything above changes. It culminates in a grand statement of the chorale melody in the full orchestra, given a special sparkle via roulades in the high winds and bright gleams from the triangle, a ‘blingy’ instrument that is an exceedingly rare visitor to the Brahms orchestra.
Symphonie Fantastique, Op. 14 (1830)
Hector Berlioz
b December 11, 1803 in La Côte-Saint-André, France
d March 8, 1869 in Paris, France
Hector Berlioz was the kind of kid that every parent worries will never amount to much of anything. Dreamy and imaginative, he was prone to hyperbole and treated himself as the hero of a grand opera. So Hector’s parents, determined to squelch their dingbat son’s fantasies of a career in music, packed him off to a medical school in Paris.
He wasn’t much of a medical student, and by age 24 he had overcome the necessary obstacles to study music full-time at the Paris Conservatoire. It was then that he fell madly in love with Irish actress Harriet Smithson, or at least with his idealized image of her and her onstage roles. The real Harriet found him off-putting — there’s something wrong about his eyes, she said — and kept her distance, leaving his torrent of passionate letters unanswered.
In 1830 Hector poured his yearning and frustration into the programmatic Symphonie Fantastique, telling of a morbidly
amorous young man’s fatal attraction to an unattainable young lady. To make the audacious piece work, Berlioz represented his inamorata by a luxuriant melody he dubbed the idée fixe, aka ‘fixed idea.’ The tune shows up repeatedly, each time modified by what’s going on – their initial meeting in the first movement, a masked ball in the second, and the tumult in his heart during a scene in the country.
It’s in the two final movements that the feathers really start to fly. Having taken opium in a fit of despair, he hallucinates that he has murdered her and is subsequently executed on the guillotine. For the finale, Berlioz cooks up a witches’ brew out of the Requiem Mass plainchant Dies irae, cool orchestral effects including church bells, and a wild-and-wooly fugue. The mistress of ceremonies is none other than his beloved, now become an obscene, cackling witch via a wild transformation of the idée fixe. Hector didn’t mess around when it came to revenge.
It is said that Harriet not only heard the Symphonie Fantastique but was aware that it was all about her, payback included. And yet she married Hector a few years later. That places her amongst the most forbearing women of all time. Anyone else would have punched his lights out.
Concert sponsored by the Starr Foundation and Billie’s Friends in memory of Billie Jo Starr and
Don Deweese
Billie Jo Starr was a tireless advocate and staunch supporter of the arts in Northwest Arkansas. From serving as the Executive Director of the North Arkansas Symphony Orchestra (now SoNA), to her steadfast work to develop the Walton Arts Center,
Don Deweese left an indelible mark on Northwest Arkansas having served as the Director of Libraries and Media Services for the Fayetteville Public School District for 34 years. In addition to his passion for placing libraries at the center of education, Don
she left a towering legacy that will benefit our community for years to come. After her passing in 2023, a group called Billie’s Friends was formed to raise funds to produce a series of orchestra concerts in her memory. With the help of Billie’s Friends and the Starr Foundation, SoNA is grateful and proud to honor the legacy and enduring contributions of Billie Jo Starr.
was also a gifted pianist and an ardent supporter of the Symphony of Northwest Arkansas. When his lifelong friend Billie Jo Starr passed away in 2023, Don helped to form ‘Billie’s Friends’ to honor her memory and support of the arts in our community. We are deeply thankful for his contributions to education and the arts in Northwest Arkansas and we are proud to honor the legacy of our friend, Don Deweese.