•Listen to the 4th movement ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QwCuFaq2L3U )of Berlioz’s Symphonie Fantastique, which depicts the following scene.
•“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 somber and wild, and sometimes brilliant and solemn, in which a dull sound of heavy footsteps follows without transition the loudest outbursts.”
•Use your newfound tools of sonic archaeology to describe the musical gestures you hear in this movement. For extra credit, see if you can connect specific musical ideas to details in the above description.
Sample Solution
