Marche au Supplice

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 subtitled the work Episode in the Life of an Artist. The symphony echoes his feelings for an actress. The Marche au Supplice (march into torture) he described as: “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 intothe heavy sound of marching feet.”