In 1840 Berlioz received a commission from Remusat, then the French interior minister, to compose a work for a the tenth anniversary of the July revolution. A column to the memory of the victims of the revolution was erected in the Bastille square, and the fallen heroes were laid to rest in a ceremonial tomb. Grande Symphonie Funčbre et Triomphale was prepared for a funeral ceremony, and Berlioz conducted an orchestra of 200 military musicians at its premiere on July 27th. The composition was performed on subsequent occasions, and Wagner reported on one such while domicile in Paris: “From the first note to the last, it was immense, it will survive and embolden for as long as this nation, known as the French, shall live.” Berlioz summarised his entire symphonic programme in the following words: “Primarily I wanted to evoke the three famous days of battle in the framework of a mournful sounds of a march that is terrifying but at the same time, despairing (…) Then I wanted to present the funeral orations to the memory of the fallen (…) and finally to sing the hymn of glory and transfiguration, so when they are placing the head stone in the wall, and in the people's eye there is nothing but the column extending to the heights, crowned by the symbol of liberty with stretched wings, pointing to the sky, like the souls of those who died for it.”