Like many of his shorter works and overtures, Berlioz draws the main thematic material in the Reverie and Caprice for Violin from his dubiously successful opera, Benvenuto Cellini. His only real contribution to the concerto repertoire (with the slightly possible exception of 1834's Harold in Italy), the reverie, an ever-broadening cavatina very identifiable as once having been a vocal melody, opens with a broad melodic gesture in F-sharp minor and is then divided into two verse-like sections in A minor, both of which are begun and dominated by the adagio "reverie" tempo. To segue into the nimbler "caprice" section of the work, Berlioz adeptly modulates to nearby C major by way of distant G-sharp minor before passing through a disorienting array of tempo changes and a Weberesque recitative on his way to an A minor cadence, returning the work to the "reverie" material. The only time throughout the work in which the faster tempo is allowed to establish itself comes in the heavily punctuated coda, where reckless cross-rhythms bring the piece crashing to a brilliant conclusion.

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