Program Music

I

Introduction

Program Music, music that describes a nonmusical subject, such as a story, object, or scene, through the use of musical effects. Attempts to use music for descriptive purposes are probably as old as music itself. The question of whether music alone is capable of describing anything is an old one that has never really been answered. It is questionable whether listeners would recognize what is being described in music without the aid of titles, synopses or program notes, literary quotations, or quotations of well-known melodies that have special associations, such as military marches, hymns, traditional love songs, hunting songs, or patriotic songs.

Obvious imitations of actual sounds, such as thunder effects on the kettledrums or approximations of birdsong on the flute, are possible and have been used by composers for centuries. Listeners probably recognized without being told the meaning of the keyboard piece La poule (The Hen, 1706) by French composer Jean Philippe Rameau. The virtuoso Italian violinist Nicolò Paganini could reproduce on his instrument sounds that his listeners immediately recognized as those of a barnyard or the ringing of church bells. Except for such literal or stuntlike possibilities of musical description, however, the element of imagination is essential to the listener, even if the composer has provided extramusical explanations. In some cases, such as the so-called fate theme that begins the Fifth Symphony of German composer Ludwig van Beethoven, the public has provided meanings for music that the composer did not announce, at least in words.

II

Preromantic Works

Early composers for keyboard and string instruments often created descriptive pieces such as, in the 16th century, Mr. Byrd's Battell, a keyboard piece depicting a battle, by English composer William Byrd. Such depictions continued to be written throughout the 17th and 18th centuries. Some notable examples are Musical Representations of Various Biblical Stories, a set of six harpsichord sonatas by German organist and composer Johann Kuhnau, and The Four Seasons, a set of four concerti grossi by Italian composer Antonio Vivaldi.

During the classical era in music (about 1750 to about 1820) the aesthetic goals of music did not encourage the description of extramusical subjects; instead, these goals stressed the coordination of musical elements according to purely musical laws. If instrumental works of the time contained descriptions, the nonmusical elements were usually made to fit within a purely musical scheme of relationships. An example of this approach is the Pastoral Symphony (1808) by Beethoven. True program music followed later in the 19th century, when composers allowed the program to determine the overall form of a composition as well as its internal relationships.

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III

19th Century

Early in the 19th century, music was greatly influenced by the literary movement known as romanticism. French composer Hector Berlioz and Hungarian composer Franz Liszt were leaders in the development of program music, as it then became known. They created works based on or inspired by literary, pictorial, and other subjects, as, for example, Berlioz’s Symphonie fantastique (Fantastic Symphony, 1830), in which a recurring melodic idea represents the woman who haunts a musician’s dreams. Berlioz composed some of his finest works on subjects taken from William Shakespeare and Virgil. The cult of the romantic hero, prevalent in these times, inspired highly charged symphonic works full of atmosphere, such as Berlioz’s symphony Harold in Italy (1834), based on an epic poem by British poet George Gordon, Lord Byron. Franz Liszt based his Faust Symphony (1857) and the Dante Symphony (1857) on great works of literature. In these symphonies and in works such as Les préludes (1854), for which he devised the term symphonic poem, Liszt employed the leitmotiv, using specific melodic phrases to identify characters, actions, or symbols, an innovation developed by Liszt’s son-in-law, German composer Richard Wagner, in his music dramas.

During the course of the 19th century, the rise of nationalism was reflected in such works as Má vlast (My Country, 1874-1879), a cycle of symphonic poems describing aspects of his native country, by Czech composer Bedřich Smetana, and Finlandia (1900), a passionate symphonic poem in praise of his country, by Finnish composer Jean Sibelius. Program music probably reached its most complex form in the symphonic poems of German composer Richard Strauss, who employed all the resources of the modern orchestra for the depiction of romantic heroes and events, as in his Don Quixote (1898) based on the novel by Spanish writer Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra. In this work a solo cello is used to represent the hero and a solo viola represents the hero’s faithful servant, while the full orchestra comments on and illustrates their adventures.

IV

Other Developments

Other kinds of program music are exemplified by La danse macabre (1874), a study in the grotesque, by French composer Camille Saint-Saëns; the Enigma Variations (1899), which paint tonal portraits of a group of friends, by British composer Sir Edward Elgar; The Afternoon of a Faun (1894), a musical evocation of the poem of the same name by French poet Stéphane Mallarmé, composed by Claude Debussy; and Music for a Great City (1964), an orchestral work describing the life of New York City, by American composer Aaron Copland.

Program music also has been used as political propaganda, as in the Third (May Day) Symphony (1931) by Soviet composer Dmitry Shostakovich.

More recent composers, particularly those employing the twelve-tone system, have tended to emphasize the abstract nature of music and, if they used titles at all, to choose them for their general rather than specific connotations, as in Differences (1959) by Italian composer Luciano Berio and Moments (1965) by German composer Karlheinz Stockhausen. Music produced by synthesizer or electronic tape can be said to reverse the traditional procedure in musical description, because it works with recognizable extramusical sounds from many sources and, by blending, mixing, and distorting them, takes what was specific into the realm of the abstract. Much music of this kind has been used to describe the fantastic or antic aspects of life, as in Silver Apples of the Moon (1967) by Morton Subotnick. American composer John Adams has introduced programmatic elements into his compositions, such as the orchestral work My Father Knew Charles Ives (2003), which he describes as “a piece of musical autobiography.”