Program Music
• Program music is music that is based on a
specific narrative. It is intended to evoke
extra-musical ideas or images in the mind
of the listener, by musically depicting a
scene, theme, events, or literary text.
• Program music refers almost
exclusively to works in the European
classical music tradition, particularly
those from the Romantic period of
the nineteenth century, when the
concept was popular. The "tone
poem" of the Romantic era is an
example of a form of program
music.
- The term is usually reserved for
purely instrumental works, and not for
opera or songs. In contemporary
music, the tradition of program music
remains very much alive, for example,
in movie soundtracks, in which
composers strive to evoke a specific
emotional response from listeners in
keeping with the program of the film.
History of Program Music
A. Renaissance period
• Composers of the Renaissance wrote a fair amount of
program music, especially for the harpischord,
including works such as Martin Peerson's The Fall of
the Leafe and William Byrd's The Battell.
History of Program Music
B. Baroque period
• Probably the most famous work of the Baroque era is
Antonio Vivaldi's The Four Seasons, a set of four
concertos for violin and string orchestra that illustrates
the seasons of the year with rain, buzzing flies, chilly
winds, treading on ice, dancing peasants, and so on.
The program of the work is made explicit in a sequence
of four sonnets written by the composer.
History of Program Music
• Another well-known Baroque program work is Johann
Sebastian Bach's Capriccio on the Departure of a Beloved
Brother, BWV 992, whose sections have charming
descriptive titles such as: "Friends gather and try to
dissuade him from departing," "They picture the dangers
which may befall him," "The Friends' Lament," "Since he
cannot be dissuaded, they say farewell," "Aria of the
Postilion," and "Fugue in Imitation of the Postilion's horn."
History of Program Music
• Program music was less often composed in the
Classical era. At this time, perhaps more than any
other, music achieved drama from its own
internal resources, notably in works written in
sonata form. It is thought, however, that a
number of Josef Haydn's earlier symphonies may
be program music.
History of Program Music
• Ludwig van Beethoven felt a certain reluctance in
writing program music, and said of his 1808 Symphony
No. 6 (Pastoral) that the "whole work can be perceived
without description—it is more an expression of feelings
rather than tone painting." Yet the work clearly contains
depictions of bird calls, a babbling brook, a storm, and
so on.
History of Program Music
D. Romantic period
- Program music particularly flourished in the Romantic era. A
significant reason for this was the influence of literature and
folklore on composers in the nineteenth century. The
symphonic poem (also known an tone poem), usually a single-
movement orchestral form that develops a poetic idea, tells a
story, suggests a scene or creates a mood, became the most
prominent vehicle for program music in the Romantic era.
History of Program Music
• As it can invoke in the listener a specific experience beyond that of
sitting and listening of musicians, program music is related to the
purely Romantic idea of the Gesamtkunstwerk, a performance
encompassing music, theater, and the visual arts. Composers
believed that the dynamics of sound that were newly possible in the
Romantic orchestra of the era allowed them to focus on emotions
and other intangible aspects of life much more than during the
Baroque or Classical eras.
- Hector Berlioz's Symphonie Fantastique was a musical narration of a
History of Program Music
• Franz Liszt provided explicit programs for many of his piano
pieces, and he is also the inventor of the symphonic poem.
• In 1874, Modest Mussorgsky used only the dynamic range
of one piano to compose a series of pieces describing
seeing a gallery of ten of his friend's paintings and
drawings.
• Entitled Pictures at an Exhibition, this piece was later fully
orchestrated by Maurice Ravel.
History of Program Music
• The French composer Camille Saint-Saéns wrote many
short pieces of program music which he called Tone
Poems.
• The composer Paul Dukas is known for his tone poem
The Sorcerer's Apprentice, based on a tale from Goethe.
• Smetana used a richness and sensuality of sound to
obtain a variety of atmospheres and moods in his
program music.
• Possibly the most adept at musical
depiction in his program music was the
German composer Richard Strauss, whose
symphonic poems include: Tod und
Verklärung (portraying a dying man and
his entry into heaven), Don Juan (based
on the ancient legend of Don Juan), Till
Eulenspiegels lustige Streiche (based on
episodes in the career of the legendary
German figure Till Eulenspiegel),
• Don Quixote (portraying episodes in
the life of Cervantes' character, Don
Quixote), Ein Heldenleben (which
depicts episodes in the life of an
unnamed hero often taken to be
Strauss himself), and Sinfonia
Domestica (which portrays episodes
in the composer(s own married life,
including putting the baby to bed).
