Who’s Afraid of Berlioz?

Abstract

This article argues that there is one issue that can be useful in expounding the “Berlioz problem”, namely our obliviousness to how the musical work is not only constituted by, but also continuously caught in, a meander of acts. We might call this the “acticity” of the musical work. The acticity of Berlioz’s music is defined by his use of the guitar as a composing tool. The article follows how acts of playing and composing on the guitar are inscribed in the score and how the physicality of these acts is still present and creates the specificity of the orchestral writing, and further, how this “impure” materiality demands new modes of development. The acts do not simply condition the orchestral writing, they are present in, and constitute the particularity of, the score; but more importantly, they may even illuminate an ontological character of every musical work, its acticity.