Witches' Sabbath

The last movement of the Symphonie fantastique is not only, as the composer calls it, a “Dream of a Witches’ Sabbath” but also the beheaded hero’s funeral. The first to arrive, after the eerie introduction with its lewd sliding gestures on woodwind and horn, is the beloved herself, represented by a vulgar dance tune on a shrill clarinet. Funeral bells toll and, in a witches’ mockery of church ritual, the ancient Dies Irae chant is solemnly introduced by two tubas and parodied by the rest of the orchestra. At the climax of the wickedly scored “Sabbath Round” that follows the Dies Irae is superimposed by woodwind and brass on the dance rhythms on the strings and, finally, its parody version is mixed in too. Not even Berlioz could do anything more shocking than that. The audience at the first performance at the Paris Conservatoire in 1830 was duly horrified.