This composer, or rather, the fictional "artist" who is the protagonist, reflects upon love, losing, and murdering of a "beloved" who is depicted by a recurring musical theme. After a tempestuous first movement depicting the artist's passionate dreams, the theme keeps resurfacing in a number of scenes, ranging from the delicate to the grotesque and blending reality and reverie. In this movement, the artist has taken opium and, in his drug-induced dream, has killed the object of his affection. He is then a witness to his own execution as he marches up the scaffold steps to be beheaded.