Berlioz - Symphonie fantastique, IV. Marche au supplice

Hector Berlioz's Symphonie fantastique is perhaps his most well-known work, of which the fourth movement, IV. Marche au supplice ("March to the Scaffold") is the most popular. Written as a response to unrequited love, Berlioz wrote this programmatic symphony in five movements to express his distress. The following program for the music, written by Berlioz (taken from The Hector Berlioz Website, © Monir Tayeb and Michel Austin), begins to make clear the magnitude of his emotions.

Convinced that his love is spurned, the artist poisons himself with opium. The dose of narcotic, while too weak to cause his death, plunges him into a heavy sleep accompanied by the strangest of visions. He dreams that he has killed his beloved, that he is condemned, led to the scaffold and is witnessing his own execution. The procession advances to the sound of a march that is sometimes sombre and wild, and sometimes brilliant and solemn, in which a dull sound of heavy footsteps follows without transition the loudest outbursts. At the end of the march, the first four bars of the idée fixe [motif depicting the woman Berlioz loved] reappear like a final thought of love interrupted by the fatal blow.

As psychotic as the piece is, its compelling musical language and emotional intensity draws many listeners -- the piece remains a classic and is widely considered the first Romantic symphony, ushering in an age of deeply powerful and emotional writing that represented a fundamental transformation in music history.