Knowing the day or year when a work was composed is the dream of many biographers. Antonín Dvořák was so magnanimous as to record for posterity on the score of his Cello Concerto in B minor not only the date, but also the time (11.30 a.m.) of the work’s completion. Alongside this rather original dating (from the composer’s time in America), there is also an acknowledgement to the Creator. Enthusiasm and gratitude deserted Dvořák, however, when he learned of the death of Josefína Čermáková – his former unrequited love and later sister-in-law. On that occasion, he decided to completely change the ending of the work, adding a coda in the form of a musical epitaph for the deceased actress. In the second movement, written during Josefína’s illness, he quoted his song ‘Kéž duch můj sám’ (‘Leave me alone’), which she particularly loved.

As if in keeping with the spirit of the age, unrequited affection lay at the heart of one of the most famous programme symphonies of the Romantic era. The unfulfilled, obsessive passion held by Hector Berlioz towards the English-Irish actress Harriet Smithson permeates the literary and musical content of his Symphonie fantastique. One of the most representative works of the first half of the nineteenth century, it constituted not only an explosion of feelings and fantasies from the author of the Treatise on Instrumentation, but also an explosion of hitherto unknown orchestral colours and motifs harnessed to the service of narrative.