Answer: Program music during the Romantic Period told a specific story or painted a particular scene. Berlioz's “Symphonie Fantastique: An Episode in the life of an Artist in Five Parts”, tells an autobiographic story of unrequited love and obsession for a famous actress.
Program Synopsis
This epic symphony consists of five parts; passions, a ball, a scene in the fields, a march to the scaffold, and a dream of a night of the Sabbath. Through each of these different movements, the composer’s romantic idolization and emotional torment follow a path of self-destruction, fixated obsession, tenderness, despair, and angry bitterness. Haunted by his own imagination and driven by compulsive passion, Berlioz even entertains dreams of death and murder. The five different parts of the symphony are drawn together by a central theme, idee fixe (French for “fixed idea”), which embodies his love and obsession throughout the piece.
Step-by-step explanation: