Introduction
La Fuite en Égypte
L’Enfance du Christ
Performance history
The orchestral excerpts
This page is also available in French
IntroductionAmong Berlioz’s major works l’Enfance du Christ occupies a special position: unlike for example the Symphonie fantastique, the Requiem or les Troyens, the work was not conceived from the start as a whole, but started life almost by accident in October 1850. It then grew piecemeal from the original La Fuite en Égypte (The Flight to Egypt) of 1850 to include two additional parts, L’Arrivée à Saïs (The Arrival in Saïs) in 1853 and then Le Songe d’Hérode (Herod’s Dream) in 1854, and become a new enlarged work, l’Enfance du Christ (The Childhood of Christ). What is more, the enlargement of the original smaller work was not Berlioz’s own idea but was prompted, for both of the new parts, by the suggestions of friends, though Berlioz readily accepted their ideas and set to work on the enlarged design with enthusiasm. The subject allowed Berlioz to give musical expression to feelings which went back to his childhood years: he relates in the opening chapter of his Memoirs what he calls his ‘first musical impression’, which he experienced at church while taking his first communion. The work also reflected influences of his early student years when he heard with delight many of the biblical oratorios of his teacher Lesueur, a story which he also relates in his Memoirs (chapter 6).
La Fuite en ÉgypteNot only did the work start life almost accidentally, but it was used by Berlioz to practise a deliberate hoax at the expense of the Paris public. The story is told at length in the Grotesques de la musique, in the section entitled Philosophical Correspondence. Letter addressed to M. Ella, director of the Musical Union of London, concerning The Flight to Egypt, fragments of a mystery in antique style. The Grotesques were only published in 1859, but Berlioz had already come clean years earlier, in May 1852, in a letter addressed to his friend John Ella which was clearly intended to alert the general public to the truth (CG no. 1485, dated 15 May 1852): it was soon after published in London in the Musical World on 20 May, and in Paris in Le Ménestrel of 30 May (p. 3).
According to Berlioz’s account the work originated in October 1850, at an evening in Paris which Berlioz spent with his friend the architect Pierre Duc, where he improvised by the fireside a piece for organ in antique style; it quickly became a chorus entitled Adieu des bergers à la Sainte-Famille (Farewell of the shepherds to the Holy Family) for which Berlioz added a suitable text. He mischievously attributed the work to a fictitious composer, Pierre Ducré, master of music at the Sainte-Chapelle in Paris in the seventeenth century, a name invented by Berlioz based on that of his friend Pierre Duc. Within a few days Berlioz added two more pieces, one entitled Le Repos de la Sainte Famille (The Holy Family at rest) for tenor solo and orchestra (for which he also wrote the words), and an orchestral overture to precede the chorus of shepherds, all three in a similar antique style and written for a small orchestra. The whole work was given the title of La Fuite en Égypte and formed the kernel of what became later the enlarged Enfance du Christ, in which it eventually formed Part II. A month later, on 12 November 1850, Berlioz performed the Shepherd’s chorus at one of the concerts of his Société philharmonique, maintaining the fiction that it was the work of the seventeenth-century master Pierre Ducré and formed part of a biblical work of his called La Fuite en Égypte. It was announced as such in the Paris press, evidently at Berlioz’s prompting (see the Revue et gazette musicale of 3 November and the Ménestrel of 10 November 1850). The critics were taken in: Edmond Viel in the Ménestrel of 17 November noted that the work ‘breathed a fragrance of archaic style and naïvety which was not devoid of charm’, while Léon Kreutzer in the Revue et gazette musicale of 24 November, though taking Berlioz’s hoax at face value, commented more cautiously that ‘the piece seemed to me quite pretty and modulated rather felicitously for a period when composers did not modulate’.
Two years later, in 1852, Berlioz published the complete La Fuite en Égypte, although at that date only the chorus of shepherds had actually been performed. The title page cheekily described the work as ‘Fragments of a Mystery in antique style, attributed to Pierre Ducré, imaginary master of music at the Sainte-Chapelle, and composed by Hector Berlioz’. The work was dedicated to his friend John Ella, to whom the letter mentioned above was addressed. A revised edition of the work, now with a German translation by his friend Peter Cornelius, was published in Leipzig in 1854.
So far only the original Adieu des bergers had been performed, but the following year (1853) saw Berlioz trying out the rest of the work in steps. At first he only performed le Repos de la Sainte Famille, first in London where it was very successful (30 May; CG no. 1601), then in several concerts in Germany: Frankfurt (24 and 29 August), Brunswick (22 and 25 October; CG no. 1636), Hanover (8 and 15 November) and Bremen (22 November). The favourable reception the piece received everywhere encouraged Berlioz to put on the complete Fuite en Égypte in Leipzig (1 and 10 December; CG nos. 1657 and 1659); the success of the work prompted Berlioz’s admirers to urge him to develop it further (see below). Coincidentally, the work was also performed complete in Paris a week later, under the conductor Seghers (18 December); Berlioz was satisfied with the performance though upset at not having been consulted in advance (CG nos. 1669, 1670).
Even after Berlioz had enlarged the original work to become in 1854 the three-part Enfance du Christ, the original Fuite en Égypte continued to be performed on its own as a self-contained work, by Berlioz himself as well as by other conductors. Performances in Berlioz’s lifetime are known in Weimar (17 February 1856), Aix-la-Chapelle (June 1857, Liszt conducting; CG nos. 2219, 2232, 2233), Bordeaux (8 June 1859), and Paris (8 and 22 February 1863, Berlioz conducting; 3 and 10 April 1864 and 1 April 1866, at the Conservatoire, George Hainl conducting). After Berlioz’s death La Fuite en Égypte continued to figure quite often in the Conservatoire’s concerts, much more frequently than the complete Enfance. As well as requiring only modest forces, it formed a satisfying and self-contained whole, whereas the two parts that Berlioz added later did not lend themselves to the same free-standing treatment; they were never performed separately, but only as parts of the larger work.
L’Enfance du ChristAs mentioned above, it was the success of performances of the complete Fuite en Égypte in Leipzig in December 1853 that led admirers of Berlioz to urge him to develop the work further; Berlioz readily agreed to the suggestion, as he found the subject very congenial (CG no. 1657). By April 1854 l’Arrivée à Saïs, the sequel to la Fuite en Egypte, was nearing completion (CG nos. 1735 and 1738); these two letters also show that by then Berlioz was contemplating another additional part to precede the original Fuite en Égypte, and this new part eventually became Le Songe d’Hérode. They also show that, as with l’Arrivée à Saïs, it arose out of suggestions made to Berlioz by others, which he was once more happy to accept, in this case the London critic Henry Chorley, and the publisher Frederick Beale. The new part was completed on 27 July 1854, as emerges from a letter to Liszt the day after: ‘I finished yesterday Herod’s Dream, the first part of my Sacred Trilogy’ (CG no. 1776). As with the original Fuite en Égypte, Berlioz wrote the text for the two additional parts: unlike la Damnation de Faust, the entire libretto of l’Enfance du Christ was thus his own work, as was to be the case later with les Troyens and Béatrice et Bénédict. The complete work was first published in 1855, with editions appearing in Paris, Leipzig (with a German translation by Peter Cornelius) and London (with an English translation by Henry Chorley). Given the composite origin of the work it did not have a single dedicatee: the dedication to John Ella of Part II was maintained even after the completion of the enlarged Enfance du Christ, Part I was dedicated to Berlioz’s nieces Joséphine and Nancy Suat (CG no. 1830), while Part III was dedicated in the German edition to the Leipzig choral society which had given the first complete performance of La Fuite en Égypte. In the English edition the dedications of Parts I and III were reassigned to Edward Holmes and Frederick Beale respectively.
The new enlarged work was first performed in Paris at Salle Herz on 10 December 1854 and was an instant success; numerous performances followed, in Paris and abroad (see below). The success of the work was gratifying to Berlioz, but also a source of some irritation: in his view l’Enfance du Christ did not mark a change of style on his part, as some pretended, but only a change of subject, and the work did not deserve greater success than earlier scores of his (notably la Damnation de Faust, the failure of which in 1846 had hurt Berlioz deeply). On Berlioz’s reaction see for example CG nos. 1847, 1882 and Memoirs, chapter 54 and Postscriptum. Nevertheless the success of l’Enfance had important consequences. It encouraged him later to undertake the composition of Les Troyens: a work on a subject related to antiquity had a chance of success. It enhanced his reputation as a composer and helped Berlioz secure at long last his election to the Institut in June 1856.
Performance historySee above for the performance history of la Fuite en Égypte. All performances conducted by Berlioz unless otherwise specified.
1854: 10 December & 24 December (Paris, Salle Herz; see the poster of the first performance)
1855: 28 January (Paris, Salle Herz); 21 February (Weimar); 17, 22 & 27 March (Brussels); 7 April (Paris, Salle Favart)
1856: 25 January (Paris, Salle Herz); 6 February (Gotha; CG nos. 2090, 2100, 2104); 17 February (Weimar, Adieu & Repos only); 14 August (Baden, excerpts only)
1859: 23 April (Paris, Opéra Comique)
1863: 22 June (Strasbourg, a special occasion, with unusually large forces and an audience of 8000)
1867: April (Lausanne, conductor not known; CG no. 3241); 10 May (Copenhagen, conductor not known; CG no. 3241)
The orchestral excerptsAs with all Berlioz’s major works L’Enfance du Christ has a style and atmosphere all of its own. Much of the music is quiet and understated (even in the sombre sections in Part I) and the scoring is extremely economical. Parts II and III are for the most part scored only for strings and a feew wind instruments (no horns); the brass only appears in Part I and its use is very restrained, except briefly in the outburst of the massacre of the innocents (Herod’s second aria with chorus). The trombone writing in Herod’s first aria and the subsequent scene with the sooth-sayers is particularly striking and original. The timpani are limited to a quiet but distinctive contribution to the Nocturnal March in Part I, and to Scene I of Part III where they have a tiny part to play.
Berlioz has also sought to give thematic unity to the 3 parts of the work, even though they were originally conceived separately. The five note phrase which opens the Overture in Part II is re-used by Berlioz at the start of Part III, though in a different key (G sharp minor instead of F sharp minor) and time-signature (duple time instead of 3/4). It forms also an integral part of the Nocturnal March in Part I, and serves to introduce, though in a faster figuration, Herod’s first aria which follows.
At the same time each of the three parts has its own character, and Berlioz sought to provide variety and contrast between them. Part I starts not with an overture, but with a recitative of the narrator. Part II on the other hand begins with a purely orchestral Overture, and the narrator appears only in the 3rd and last section (the Holy Family at rest). Part III combines these elements from the two previous parts: it starts with a modified and broader version of the music of the Overture to Part II, but this time the narrator enters after a few bars and shares the music with the orchestra.
It will be noted also that each of the 3 parts has a purely instrumental component, though each one has a different character. In Part I it is unexpectedly a Nocturnal March (with in its middle section a brief dialogue between two Roman soldiers). In Part II it is a small-scale Overture, while in Part III Berlioz surprises the listener by introducing a piece of chamber music, the trio for two flutes and harp (the harp is not used anywhere else in the work).
I. Nocturnal March. Berlioz’s works include numerous marches, but among them the Nocturnal March, which forms Scene I of the work, is among the most original (one may compare also the Pilgrim’s March in the symphony Harold in Italy). Delicately scored for a small orchestra, it starts and ends ppp, and like the rest of l’Enfance du Christ works by suggestion and understatement. The setting is a street in Jerusalem at night; the march depicts the approach and departure of a patrol of Roman soldiers, whose brief conversation anticipates the duet of the two soldiers in Act V of les Troyens (this is one of several pre-echoes of les Troyens in l’Enfance). The music somehow conveys many different levels of meaning simultaneously: a march, a night scene in the Mediterranean, a setting in time many centuries ago, and the suggestion of a great but undefined event about to happen, which evokes both hope and apprehension. It thus forms a perfect setting for the scenes which follow, Herod’s aria, his meeting with the sooth-sayers, and his decision to carry out the massacre of all newly born children.
Note: the parts of Polydorus and the centurion have been
deliberately silenced, since the words cannot be reproduced in playback. Normal
playback of the piece resumes when the orchestra enters again at the close of
the passage of recitative.
II. Dance of the Sooth-Sayers. This short piece, which does not have a title in Berlioz’s score, is taken from the scene between Herod and the Jewish sooth-sayers in Part I of the work (Herod’s Dream). In answer to Herod’s enquiry about a dream that has been troubling him, the sooth-sayers ‘execute cabalistic movements and carry out the exorcism’. Among Berlioz’s compositions of a ‘satanic’ character this is one of his most original. The tonality fluctuates constantly with disquieting effect, and the metre alternates between triple and quadruple time without ever being able to make up its mind. This piece may conceivably carry echoes of the first Dance of Hate in Gluck’s Armide, as well as reminiscences from the scene in the Wolf’s Glen at the end of Act II of Weber’s Der Freischütz.
III. Overture to La Fuite en Égypte. The short overture to Part II is scored for a very modest orchestra, like most of the rest of the work, and is very subdued in tone. Despite being given the title of ‘Overture’ the piece was not intended by Berlioz to be treated as a separate concert piece, but only as an introduction to the chorus which follows; he was furious with George Hainl and later with Pasdeloup when they performed it on its own in concerts (CG nos. 1910, 1913, 1938 for George Hainl; nos. 3122, 3124 for Pasdeloup).
IV. Orchestral introduction to Le Repos de la Sainte Famille. This short orchestral passage introduces the narrator’s account of the Holy Family’s resting on their flight from Palestine to Egypt (tenor solo), which forms the 3rd movement of the central part of L’Enfance du Christ.
V. Trio for 2 flutes and harp. This piece comes from Part III Scene II of the work. The Ishmaelite father has welcomed Joseph and Mary into his house and asks his children to perform the piece to soothe his guests. Together with the three pieces for Alexandre’s melodium organ it is one of the very few examples of instrumental music written by Berlioz, and indeed probably the only piece of genuine chamber music he ever wrote (the symphony Harold en Italie contains a few passages of quasi-chamber music). It will be noted that Berlioz wrote the piece not for one but for two flutes – he had a marked aversion for flowery flute solos which were in great vogue at the time.
I.
Nocturnal March (duration 7'50")
— Score in large format
(file created on 24.11.2000)
— Score in pdf format
II. Dance
of the Sooth-Sayers (duration 1'22")
— Score in large format
(file created on 3.05.2000; revised 29.11.2001)
— Score in pdf format
III. Overture to La Fuite en Egypte (duration 5'14")
— Score in large format
(file created on 31.01.2000; revised 29.11.2001)
— Score in pdf format
IV. Orchestral
introduction to Le Repos de la Sainte Famille (duration
2'32")
— Score in large format
(file created on 31.01.2000; revised 29.11.2001)
— Score in pdf format
V. Trio for 2 flutes and harp (duration 6'18")
— Score in large format
(file created on 1.01.2000; revised 4.09.2001)
— Score in pdf format
© Michel Austin for all scores and text on this page.
This page revised and enlarged on 1 June 2022.
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