Named after Ovid's Tristia (Elegies), this collection pulls together three pieces inspired by English literature. The first item, "Méditation religieuse," is a setting for chorus and orchestra of a poem by Thomas Moore. The verse takes a religious approach to the theme of the falseness of worldly desires. The musical setting is nostalgic and weary, with the orchestra making very brief, sighing interjections during pauses in the text. The next movement of Tristia is "La Mort d'Ophélie" (Ophelia's Death), a tender setting of a French paraphrase of the Queen's speech in Act IV of Shakespeare's Hamlet. Berlioz wrote this piece in 1842 for solo voice and piano, then made this arrangement for two-part women's chorus and chamber orchestra six years later. The music has a gentle, flowing quality that evokes Ophelia's watery death. Berlioz concludes the suite with the "Marche funèbre pour la dernière scène d'Hamlet" (Funeral March for the last Scene of Hamlet. This time the chorus sings a wordless melody which is well integrated into the instrumental fabric. Berlioz remarked that this music was his response to the play's sense of "the nothingness of life, the vanity of human projects, the tyranny of chance, the indifference of fate or God to what we call virtue, vice, beauty, ugliness, love, hate, genius, stupidity." The music is essentially a monothematic dirge (although the theme does break into slightly contrasting segments). Builds steadily from a quiet beginning to a crashing, desolate climax, the march then gradually falls away. Coincidentally, one small recurring rhythmic figure in the march resembles the Czech hymn "Ye Who Are God's Warriors," which appears in Dvorák's Hussite Overture and in the last two movements of Smetana's Má Vlast.

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