Grand Overture to Waverley

Louis-Hector Berlioz was born at La Côte-St. André, France, on December 11, 1803, and died in Paris on March 8, 1869. He composed the Grand Overture to Waverley in 1827 and was ultimately published as Opus 1, though it was the second Berlioz work to receive that designation, since he had already assigned the number to his Eight Scenes from Goethe’s “Faust,” a composition he withdrew, granting numerical primacy to Waverley. Berlioz himself conducted the first performance on May 26, 1828, in Paris. 

The overture is scored for 2 flutes (2nd doubling piccolo), 3 oboes, 3 clarinets, 3 bassoons (with optional doubling to 4), 4 horns, valve trumpet in D, 2 trumpets in A, 3 trombones, tuba, timpani, and strings (first and second violins, violas, cellos, and double basses).

It was characteristically bold of the 25-year-old Berlioz to give a concert entirely of his own music at a time when he was still regarded as a student by his teachers at the conservatory (though, as events would show soon enough, he had already surpassed them in originality and daring). The concert was conceived largely as a means of attracting the attention of the young Irish actress Harriet Smithson, who had just made a sensation in Paris playing the role of Ophelia in Kemble’s production of Hamlet, which opened in Paris on September 11, 1827. Berlioz was bowled over by Shakespeare in this production, but he was also personally bowled over by the Ophelia. Perhaps a performance of his music would attract her attention? Yet an orchestral concert entirely devoted to the works of a conservatory student was unheard of! Not least of Berlioz’s problems was getting around old Cherubini, the director of the institution, a crabbed and embittered man, utterly devoted to artistic conservatism and to maintaining “rules” regardless of whether they had any point. (The director’s first encounter with young Berlioz a few years earlier had occurred when Cherubini had called him virtually a criminal for entering the conservatory by the ladies’ entrance—though the rule that made it so had only just been promulgated by Cherubini and not made known to the public at large!) Berlioz used all his skill and some political connections to go around the director and obtain permission for the use of the conservatory’s concert hall. It was important for Berlioz that news of his concert come to the ears of Harriet Smithson, so he was careful to arrange for announcements in the press, emphasizing the unusual nature of the occasion. But if she was at all aware of Berlioz, she certainly did not come to his concert. (Some years later his constant pursuit finally succeeded; they married—and were soon utterly miserable with one another.)

But in every respect except the personal one of Harriet Smithson, the concert was a complete success. The players were enthusiastic from the first rehearsal. The critics were generous—even those who later became violently opposed to Berlioz’s music. One of these, F.J. Fetis, who was soon to attack the Symphonie fantastique , wrote: “M. Berlioz has genius. His style is energetic and sinewy. His inspirations are often graceful. But still more often he spends himself in combinations of an original and passionate cast, which border on the wild and bizarre and are only saved by the fact that they come off.” Two of the works on the program were the Waverley Overture and the overture to his opera Les Francs-juges. The critics generally preferred the former. Today the view is reversed. Waverley is a fine achievement for a young composer, but the Francs-juges overture reveals more of what we now recognize as the true Berlioz.

Walter Scott’s historical novels of Scotland (and later of England and still more exotic places) excited enormous enthusiasm all over Europe from the anonymous publication of the first in the series, Waverley, in 1814. Eventually Scott’s novels were read all over Europe and America and became the sources for any number of romantic operas, including Lucia di Lammermoor and versions of Ivanhoe by Marschner, Nicolai, and Arthur Sullivan. Berlioz no doubt had read Waverley, but his overture reveals little specific musical detail to tie it to this particular book. On his original manuscript Berlioz copied out a text made up of sentences from the novel, but he finally replaced it with this much simpler epigraph, drawn from the fifth chapter, which now stands at the head of the score:

Dreams of love and Lady’s charms 
Give place to honour and to arms.

The first line of this couplet is no doubt meant to refer to the slow introduction, which, after an inchoate idea in the lower strings, turns into a calm lyric melody in the cellos; at its continuation the woodwinds hint at imitations. The Allegro vivace is vigorous and spirited. It may remind us more of the spirit of Italian opera than of historical adventure in Scotland, but it remains a remarkable accomplishment among a young composer’s early outings.

Steven Ledbetter

Steven Ledbetter, a freelance writer and lecturer on music, was program annotator of the Boston Symphony Orchestra from 1979 to 1998. 

The first American performance of the Waverley Overture took place in Boston in a concert given by the Germania Musical Society under the direction of Carl Bergmann on December 13, 1851. 

The first Boston Symphony performances of the Waverley Overture were given by Colin Davis in Boston and New York in January 1975.