Marche au Supplice - DH991575 | Partitions

Hector Berlioz (1803-1869) once remarked: "My life is a novel that greatly interests me." Experiences in his personal life had a great influence on his compositions. Symphonie Fantastique, written in 1830, is also autobiographical: he sub-tided the work Episode in the Life of an Artist. The symphony echoes his feelings for Irish actress Harriet Smithson, who starred in productions of Shakespeare's plays in Paris. His attempts to meet her failed continually, and his love letters remained unanswered. In desperation he decided to transmute his feelings for her into a symphony.

Important in Symphonie Fantastique was the use of the so-called "idee fixe" obsession - a dominant theme, symbolizing his beloved, which returns repeatedly throughout the symphony in multiple variations. Like Beethoven with his Pastorale symphony, Berlioz himself wrote an accompanying program to go with the Symphonic Fantastique. He describes the fourth part, Marche au Supplice (March into Torture), as follows: "The artist dreams he has killed his beloved, that he has been sentenced to death and is being led to the scaffold. The procession moves to the notes of a march that is now sombre and turbulent, now radiant and stately, and in which boisterous outbursts suddenly dissolve into the heavy sound of marching feet. Finally, as a last thought on love, the "idee fixe" momentarily appears, broken off by the falling of the axe."