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March To The Scaffold is the fourth movement of the Symphonie Fantastique composed by the French Romantic composer Hector Berlioz in 1830. The symphony describes the love of a young musician for a charming woman who he relates to a musical idea known as the idée fixe – a musical melody that constantly repeats throughout the symphony. His memory of his love for the woman is so strong that he continuously thinks about her, just like the repeating melody in the song. In the fourth movement the young musician, when convinced that his love was spurned, poisons himself with opium and succumbs into a horrifying nightmare. He dreams that he is marched to the scaffold for the murder of his lover and witnesses his own execution.
(For the program notes of the Symponie Fantastique by Hector Berlioz, go to http://ada.evergreen.edu/~arunc/texts/music/berlioz/berlioz.pdf)
In this piece, Berlioz expertly merged the somberness, fierceness, and magnificence of the musician’s relentless march to the scaffold with the vile nature of his narcotics-induced nightmare. The movement starts with a slow and menacing progression of the lower winds and strings, symbolizing the malevolent drug taking control over the musician’s mind. A triumphant melody is often present during the march, depicting the gloriousness of the march, while heavy drums beat a steady, footstep-like rhyme in the background, representing the solemn and unstoppable progression of the march. The mood of the music regularly alters, shifting from triumphant to majestic to threatening. This regular shift of mood portrays the instable mental state of the drugged musician. Towards the climax, the music build up to thundering chaos as the musician arrives at the scaffold. A few bars of the idée fixe – representing the musician’s memory of his beloved – quietly reappears and is then abruptly interrupted by the blasting decapitation of the musician, followed by two dull thumps of his head falling to the ground. The dynamic music vividly portrays the story described on Berlioz’s program.
The music narrates the nightmare of a musician; hence it connects to the theme “Dark Dreams”. This nightmare is caused by the musician’s memories of a beautiful lady with whom he fell in love. However, since the musician’s love was in vain, the memories of his beloved troubled and pained him; hence it relates to the theme “Painful Memories”.
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