Symphonie Fantastique - Movement Five

Title: " Symphonie fantastique"
Fifth movement: "Songe d'une nuit du sabbat"
or (Dream of the Night of the Sabbath)
Composer: Hector Berlioz (1830)
Derived from a MIDI sequence by Dario Galimberti (2004)
Instrument: Hauptwerk Player Organ
from: My own CODM organ
(CODM stands for Custom Organ Design Module)
plus Chimes, and Timpani from East/West

Here is my contribution to the upcoming Halloween 'celebration'. This is a wonderful composition by Berlioz that translates well to the big Player Organ (IMHO).

When the Dies Irae theme comes in at about 3:12 it gives me chills! I used a really BIG pedal with a couple 32' ranks and plenty of power. Lots of variety of sounds in this piece.

From Wikipedia:
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Symphonie fantastique: Épisode de la vie d'un artiste ... en cinq parties (Fantastical Symphony: An Episode in the Life of an Artist, in Five Parts) Op. 14 is a program symphony written by the French composer Hector Berlioz in 1830. It is an important piece of the early Romantic period, and is popular with concert audiences worldwide. The first performance was at the Paris Conservatoire in December 1830. The work was repeatedly revived after 1831 and subsequently became a favorite in Paris.

Leonard Bernstein described the symphony as the first musical expedition into psychedelia because of its hallucinatory and dream-like nature, and because history suggests Berlioz composed at least a portion of it under the influence of opium. According to Bernstein, 'Berlioz tells it like it is. You take a trip, you wind up screaming at your own funeral

From Berlioz's program notes about movoment 5:

He sees himself at a witches’ sabbath, in the midst of a hideous gathering of shades, sorcerers and monsters of every kind who have come together for his funeral. Strange sounds, groans, outbursts of laughter; distant shouts which seem to be answered by more shouts. The beloved melody appears once more, but has now lost its noble and shy character; it is now no more than a vulgar dance tune, trivial and grotesque: it is she who is coming to the sabbath ... Roar of delight at her arrival ... She joins the diabolical orgy ... The funeral knell tolls, burlesque parody of the Dies irae, the dance of the witches. The dance of the witches combined with the Dies irae.

"Dies Irae" (Day of Wrath) is a Latin hymn attributed to either Thomas of Celano of the Franciscan Order (1200 – c. 1265) or to Latino Malabranca Orsini (1294), lector at the Dominican studium at Santa Sabina, the forerunner of the Pontifical University of Saint Thomas Aquinas, Angelicum in Rome. The hymn dates from at least the thirteenth century, though it is possible that it is much older, with some sources ascribing its origin to St. Gregory the Great (d. 604), St. Bernard of Clairvaux (1090-1153), or St. Bonaventure (1221-1274).

It is a medieval Latin poem characterized by its accentual stress and its rhymed lines. The metre is trochaic. The poem describes the day of judgment, the last trumpet summoning souls before the throne of God, where the saved will be delivered and the unsaved cast into eternal flames.

The hymn is best known from its use as a sequence in the Roman Catholic Requiem Mass (Mass for the Dead or Funeral Mass). An English version is found in various Anglican Communion service books.

The melody is one of the most-quoted in musical literature, appearing in the works of many diverse composers.
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(Headphones will give the best listening results.)