Page "Manfred Symphony" Paragraph 49

Musicologist John Warrack suggests that, of all Tchaikovsky's major neglected works, Manfred may be the one which least deserves this fate.

While Tchaikovsky had his doubts about program music, he was actually better able to handle large forms when there was the impulse of an emotional idea behind the music.

He apparently felt such an impulse — if not from Byron's poem, then from the program Balakirev gave him — and that impulse brought forth a work of great originality and power.

While he did not follow Berlioz in how he might have handled the program, Tchaikovsky did make use of an idée fixe recurring in all four movements.

He also followed a Berliozian design of a lengthy, reflective, melancholy opening movement, two colorful interludes as inner movements, and a finale in which Berlioz ' Brigands ' Orgy becomes ( without any hint from the poem ) a bacchanal.