Marche Hongroise (from "La Damnation de Faust")
In the spring of 1846, Hector Berlioz undertook a conducting tour of central Europe. He met with real success in Vienna, but on the night before his departure for Pesth (modern Budapest) a local well-wisher came to his hotel with a word of advice. "If you want the Hungarians to like you, write a piece on one of their national tunes. They’ll be delighted, and when you come back you can tell me what you thought of their applause. Just choose something from this collection". He left Berlioz with an anthology of Hungarian folk-tunes. Despite his artistic idealism, Berlioz could never resist the chance of a commercial success – straightaway, he chose an 18th century rebel song, the "Rákóczy March", and within 24 hours had run it up into a flamboyant orchestral work.
Rumours of a new piece of patriotic music started to circulate as soon as Berlioz arrived in Hungary, and public curiosity was high. One journalist even infiltrated the printers’ where the orchestral parts were being prepared. The premiere was on 15 February, and Berlioz describes the occasion in his Memoirs: "I felt a tightening of the throat when the moment came for this devil of a piece to be performed. After a trumpet fanfare based on the rhythm of its opening bars, the theme is announced piano by the flutes and clarinets accompanied by pizzicato strings. The audience remained calm and judicious during this unexpected exposition. But when a long crescendo ensued, with fragments of the theme introduced fugally, broken by the dull strokes of the bass drum, like the thud of distant cannon, the whole place began to stir and hum with excitement; and when the orchestra unleashed its full fury and the long-delayed fortissimo burst forth, a tumult of shouting and stamping shook the theatre; all that seething mass of emotion exploded. I felt as though my hair were standing on end".
No question, the piece was a "hit", and for the rest of his stay in Hungary Berlioz was a popular hero, rounding off every one of his remaining concerts there with the "Hungarian March". The piece was well received outside Hungary, too, and so Berlioz – never one to waste a good idea – incorporated it in his cantata "La Damnation de Faust", completed that October. Never mind that he had to relocate Goethe’s story to Hungary purely to incorporate the March; it’s a crowd-pleasing, roof-raising showpiece and he knew it. He described with delight the reaction of one audience member after that first performance: "He fell on my neck and embraced me passionately, his eyes filling with tears…He wept and gnashed his teeth. It was sublime". Berlioz felt that, in all his long and difficult career, it was the one composition of his to have received from the outset the acclaim it deserved!
R. G. Bratby 2002
Copyright Classical Notes.co.uk 2000
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