The Kennedy Center describes the story this way:[1] On a Sunday morning, as church bells summon the faithful to worship and sacred chants fill the air, the Count sets off on a hunt.
Pious elders plead with him to call off his expedition, but he responds contemptuously and rides roughshod through the village farms, trampling crops and applying the whip to the peasants in his way.
Eventually he finds himself lost in the woods, where a stern voice from unseen heights pronounces his sentence: "Accursed hunter, be thou eternally pursued by Hell!"
Even when horse and rider fall into an abyss there is no respite; they are borne through the air to ride on and on in unremitting punishment for blaspheming the Lord's Day.Franck's orchestration evokes the dark, fantastic atmosphere of the infernal chase.
Franck completed Le Chasseur maudit on 31 October 1882, and had the work premiered on 31 March 1883, at the Salle Érard, in a concert of the Société Nationale de Musique conducted by Édouard Colonne.