Le Corsaire, by Hector Berlioz (1803 - 1869)

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Le Corsaire, by Hector Berlioz.
Scottish National Orchestra, conducted by Sir Alexander Gibson.
From the Chandos CD, "Berlioz: Overtures"

"For many folk the word 'Corsair' - meaning either a pirate or a seagoing mercenary - conjures lurid images of swashbuckling adventures on the high seas though, I’ll warrant, nothing quite so lurid as the story behind the composition of this overture.

While in Rome in 1831, Berlioz received word that his latest paramour, Camille Marie Moke, was imminently to become Madame Pleyel. Understandably a mite miffed, Berlioz set off, hell-bent on murdering her. However, at Genoa his resolve dissipated, so instead he tried to kill himself. Having been rescued from the clutches of the Mediterranean, and feeling somewhat chastened by the experience, he took a holiday in Nice (well, you would, wouldn't you?).

There, it seems, relaxing beneath a ruined coastal tower, he read a pirate romance. Back then, these were very popular, and James Fennemore Cooper, author of The Red Rover, was a particular favourite of Berlioz’s. The upshot was that he started sketching possible stage works. Thirteen years later, under doctor’s orders to rest, he rediscovered that tower and worked these sketches into an overture, The Tower of Nice. By the mid-1850s it had been refined, through Le Corsaire Rouge, to a nice, neat and tidy Le Corsaire.

In as much as it’s possible with the eruptive Berlioz in full sail, the overture itself is also neat and tidy, because virtually everything in it derives from a single basic idea. This idea is less obviously announced by the introductory sword-slashing strings and woodwind than by the succeeding, breathtakingly extended slow melody, whose surface calm is increasingly disturbed by uneasy undercurrents. Any implied fear of attack is, of course, fully justified: further sword-slashing heralds the insurgence of the buccaneers, epitomised by the bravado of a bristling, brazen allegro.