Symphony: A Novel

by Jude Morgan

Overview

"A deeply empathic exploration of obsession and art, genius and madness. . . . Morgan's ability to bring each character to life is virtuosic." —The Washington Post Book World

In 1827 Harriet Smithson, a beautiful young Irish actress, determined to avoid the traditional route to stardom via the manager's bed, joins an English company in the bold experiment of taking Shakespeare to Paris.

With the ferment of revolution in the air, the new generation is longing for passionate, spontaneous art. And to Harriet's astonishment, it is embodied in her—La Belle Irlandaise. In the midst of this frenzy she finds herself pursued by a strange, intense young composer named Hector Berlioz. So begins a painful and profound love affair. She is his muse; his idée fixe; his obsession. And Berlioz's Symphonie Fantastique, directly inspired by Harriet, will change music forever.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780312384784
Publisher:	St. Martin's Publishing Group
Publication date:	12/09/2008
Edition description:	First Edition
Pages:	384
Sales rank:	322,975
Product dimensions:	5.12(w) x 7.86(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

Jude Morgan, who studied writing with Malcolm Bradbury and Angela Carter, lives in Peterborough, England.

Reading Group Guide

"A deeply empathic exploration of obsession and art, genius and madness. . . . Morgan's ability to bring each character to life is virtuosic." —The Washington Post Book World

In 1827 Harriet Smithson, a beautiful young Irish actress, determined to avoid the traditional route to stardom via the manager's bed, joins an English company in the bold experiment of taking Shakespeare to Paris.

With the ferment of revolution in the air, the new generation is longing for passionate, spontaneous art. And to Harriet's astonishment, it is embodied in her—La Belle Irlandaise. In the midst of this frenzy she finds herself pursued by a strange, intense young composer named Hector Berlioz. So begins a painful and profound love affair. She is his muse; his idée fixe; his obsession. And Berlioz's Symphonie Fantastique, directly inspired by Harriet, will change music forever.

1. This novel is highly stylized to reflect the symphony that is at its core, as well as its structure, with chapters marked "Prelude" through five "Movements" to its "Coda". What does this style suggest in the way of life imitating art, or art imitating life—which do you believe to be most true to this story?

2. Why do you think the story opens with a visit to a lunatic asylum? How does this scene influence your interpretation of the rest of the story?

3. Beautiful, regal, passionate...many adjectives were used to describe La Belle Irlandaise, Harriet Smithson, in her day. But what words would you use to describe her character? How was she different from other women of her time? How was she similar?

4. The belief that fate dictates one's future, often to disastrous ends, pervades the narrative, as expressed by Harriet's father's recitation of Venice Preserved on page 44: "Tell me why, good Heaven, Thou mad'st me what I am?" To what extent do Harriet and Hector let fate dictate their actions?

5. "We spend so much time lying and dissembling: actors, who do it for a living, know that best. Professional liars. Harriet thought: I want to tell the truth, nevertheless. I want to scale the walls." Do you believe that to act is the greatest lie, or the greatest truth? Can an actor, or a musician, ever truly capture a person's essence through their art? Did Berlioz's Symphonie Fantastique capture Harriet?

6. Hector and Harriet do not meet until half-way through the novel—why do you think Jude Morgan chose to keep them apart for so long? Do you believe that the primary relationship in this novel is between Harriet and Hector, or does it lie elsewhere?

7. Mr. Kean says of the public and the theater, "You know why they love us, and hate us? Because we dare on their behalf. They let us take them so far, into the dark woods of their selves, and they like it—into their passion, and their lies and greed, their beauty and mortality: so far, but no further…" How does Harriet's passion and daring, her exploration of "the dark woods", ultimately beget her ruin?

8. Harriet's crowning achievement on the stage was of Ophelia in Hamlet. Of the three Shakespearian heroines whom Harriet portrayed—Desdemona, Ophelia, and Juliet—which do you think Harriet related to most? Why? Which character do you relate to most? Why?

9. In Symphony, Jude Morgan seems to suggest that art and desire are intertwined. How does he do this? Do you agree?

10. On page 134, Harriet interrupts the narrator to tell her own version of the story, saying "You are not telling it right." If this book were narrated by Harriet, how would it be different? What about if it were narrated by Hector?

Editorial Reviews

[Jude Morgan] deserves to be widely acknowledged as a writer to be read.” —The Washington Post Book World

“Morgan's modernist style . . . nicely captures the multiple levels of consciousness a performer juggles on stage and gives the novel real texture.” —Publishers Weekly

“With empathy and formidable imagination, [Passion brings] the Romantic era to full, resplendent life.” —Entertainment Weekly, Grade: A

From the Publisher

[This] tale could make for a torrid romance novel, but the brilliant historical novelist Jude Morgan has turned it into a deeply empathic exploration of obsession and art, genius and madness. The author's narrative flows musically. The text is scored for many voices, the operatic cast is large, and Morgan's ability to bring each character to life is virtuosic…Morgan's historical novel is deliciously romantic yet elegantly restrained. It resembles the musical work that is at its core, not only in its structure—chapters marked "Prelude" through five "Movements" to its "Coda"—but also in its complexity, its wit and insight, its rangy themes and its thrilling momentum.
—The Washington Post

Eugenia Zukerman

The real-life marriage of Irish actress Harriet Smithson (1800-1854) to composer Hector Berlioz (1803-1869) is the ostensible subject of Morgan's latest (following Indiscretion), but the two don't meet until two thirds of the way into this thickly embellished historical romance. After initial reluctance, the young Harriet, her passion for theatre inflamed by Shakespeare, joins her family's traveling theater company. As drink dissipates her father, weight softens her mother and minimal talent limits her brother Joseph, Harriet takes charge of the family business and appears with theatrical stars of the time. But it's her magnificent interpretation of Ophelia in Paris that brings her a public, including Hector, the son of a successful doctor and a pious mother. Young Hector's path to a musical education is told in parallel to Harriet's youth. After her Ophelia, Harriet turns away Hector's ardent pursuit, but as her theater begins to fail and his musical star begins to rise, she attends a performance of his Symphonie Fantastique, inspired by her. Morgan's modernist style, with frequent shifts in tense and POV, won't be for everyone, but it lets Morgan nicely capture the multiple levels of consciousness a performer juggles on stage ("the three minds") and gives the novel real texture. (Dec.)

Copyright 2007 Reed Business Information

Publishers Weekly

Scenes from the lives of French Romantic composer Hector Berlioz and Irish actress Harriet Smithson. Morgan's latest (Indiscretion, 2006, etc.) is an impressionistic patchwork employing every narrative device from stream of consciousness to interior monologue, complete with an opera libretto and faux-Shakespearean blank verse. The protagonists's alternating stories could be separate novels, so scant is their interaction-Hector and Harriet will not meet until the final third of the book. Hector's sections take him from childhood to life in Paris, where, to the dismay of his physician father and pious provincial mother, he abandons medical studies to pursue his fanciful musical dreams. Harriet progresses from ingenue in her father's theater company to music-hall melodrama in London, then takes roles in Shakespearean plays. Unable to dislodge Covent Garden's venerable leading ladies, she heads for Paris, where, performing as Ophelia at the Odeon, she's an overnight sensation. Her triumph is marred only by that eccentric young composer who pesters her with pleading missives, all of which she rebuffs. Years later, back in Paris for an ill-starred comeback, Harriet hears Hector's Symphonie Fantastique, inspired by her. The twain meet and the attraction is finally mutual. Hector's family disowns him for marrying an actress. Nevertheless, all is bliss-there's a child, Louis, and an impoverished but loving menage in Montmartre. Abruptly, even for a novel as circuitous as this, Harriet turns to partaking liberally of the brandy hidden in her bureau. Her irrational frenzies and tantrums tax Hector and drive him to Germany, where he's well received by more musically astute audiences. Harriet's direprophecies of Hector's betrayal are fulfilled: Hector falls prey to the shrewd, refreshingly ungifted Marie. Harriet is sent to the country to dry out. After several strokes, she becomes an inarticulate and hence more accommodating basket case, and Hector nurses her in her decline. Cameo appearances by Liszt, Chopin, Mendelssohn, Dumas and Delacroix, and lush, period-appropriate, at times impenetrable prose make for an unwieldy but credible behind-the-music expose of the Romantic era.

Kirkus Reviews