Program music
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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"A dictionary of music has never been achieved, nor even begun. It is only by chance that you find the phrase for: "I am angry" or "I love you," and the subtler feelings involved therein. The composer finds them only when passion, present in his heart or memory, dictates them to him. Well! that is why people, who spend the fire of youth studying instead of feeling, cannot be artists--the way _that_ works is perfectly simple." --On Love by Stendhal "But similarly, nothing can prevent our falling back on mental pictures, fantasies, memories, or having a Sphärenerlebnis of some sort, when we cannot directly make subjective sense out of music in playing or hearing it. A program is simply a crutch. It is a resort to the crude but familiar method of holding feelings in the imagination by envisaging their attendant circumstances. It does not mean that the listener is unmusical, but merely that he is not musical enough to think in entirely musical terms. He is like a person who understands a foreign language, but thinks in his mother tongue the minute an intellectual difficulty confronts him. "--Philosophy in a New Key |
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Program music or programme music is a type of art music that attempts to musically render an extra-musical narrative. The narrative itself might be offered to the audience in the form of program notes, inviting imaginative correlations with the music. The paradigmatic example is Hector Berlioz's Symphonie fantastique, which relates a drug-induced series of morbid fantasies concerning the unrequited love of a sensitive poet involving murder, execution, and the torments of Hell. The genre culminates in the symphonic works of Richard Strauss that include narrations of the adventures of Don Quixote, Till Eulenspiegel, the composer's domestic life, and an interpretation of Nietzsche's philosophy of the Superman. Following Strauss, the genre declined and new works with explicitly narrative content are rare. Nevertheless the genre continues to exert an influence on film music, especially where this draws upon the techniques of late romantic music.
Absolute music, in contrast, is intended to be appreciated without any particular reference to the outside world. The term is almost exclusively applied to works in the European classical music tradition, particularly those from the Romantic music period of the 19th century, during which the concept was popular, but pieces which fit the description have long been a part of music. The term is usually reserved for purely instrumental works (pieces without singers and lyrics), and not used, for example for Opera or Lieder.
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Renaissance period
Composers of the Renaissance wrote a fair amount of program music, especially for the harpsichord, including works such as Martin Peerson's The Fall of the Leafe and William Byrd's The Battell. For the latter work, the composer provided this written description of the sections: "Souldiers sommons, marche of footemen, marche of horsmen, trumpetts, Irishe marche, bagpipe and the drone, flute and the droome, marche to the fighte, the battels be joyned, retreat, galliarde for the victorie."
Classical era
Program music was perhaps less often composed in the Classical era. At that 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 Joseph Haydn's earlier symphonies may be program music; for example, the composer once said that one of his earlier symphonies represents "a dialogue between God and the Sinner". It is not known which of his symphonies Haydn was referring to. A minor Classical-era composer, Karl Ditters von Dittersdorf, wrote a series of symphonies based on Ovid's Metamorphoses (not to be confused with Twentieth-Century composer Benjamin Britten's Six Metamorphoses after Ovid).
Romantic period
Program music during the Romantic Music Period was purely instrumental and the composer wrote this type of piece based on non-musical ideas, images ,or events. Program music particularly flourished in Romantic era. As it can invoke in the listener a specific experience other than sitting in front of a musician or musicians, it is related to the purely Romantic idea of the Gesamtkunstwerk describing Wagner's Operas as a fusion of many arts (set design, choreography, poetry and so on), although it relies solely on musical aspects to illustrate a multi-faceted artistic concept such as a poem or a painting. 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.
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"[1]. Yet the work clearly contains depictions of bird calls, a babbling brook, a storm, and so on. Beethoven later returned to program music with his Piano Sonata Op. 81a, Les Adieux, which depicts the departure and return of his close friend the Archduke Rudolph.
Hector Berlioz's Symphonie fantastique was a musical narration of a hyperbolically emotional love story he wrote himself. Franz Liszt did provide explicit programs for many of his piano pieces but he is also the inventor of the term symphonic poem . In 1874, Modest Mussorgsky composed using only the dynamic range of one piano a series of pieces describing seeing a gallery of ten of his friend's paintings and drawings in his Pictures at an Exhibition, later orchestrated by Maurice Ravel. The French composer Camille Saint-Saëns wrote many short pieces of program music which he called Tone Poems. His most famous are probably the Danse Macabre and several movements from the Carnival of the Animals. The composer Paul Dukas is perhaps best known for his tone poem The Sorcerer's Apprentice, based on a tale from Goethe.
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 Quijote (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). Strauss is reported to have said that music can describe anything, even a teaspoon!
Another composer of programmatic music is Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, whose colorful "musical pictures" include "Sadko" op.5, after the Russian Bylina, about the minstral who sings to the Tsar of the Sea, the very famous "Scheherazade" op 35, after the Arabian Nights entertainments (where the heroine is depicted by a violin and whose stories include Sinbad the Sailor) and any number of orchestral suites from his operas, including "The Tale of Tsar Saltan" (which also contains "The Flight of the Bumble-Bee"), "The Golden Cockeral", "Christmas Eve", "The Snow Maiden", and "The Legend of The Invisible City of Kitezh".
In Scandinavia, Sibelius explored the Kalevala legend in several tone poems, most famously in "The Swan of Tuonela".
One of the most famous programs, because it has never been definitively discovered, is the secret non-musical idea or theme - the "Enigma" - which underlies Edward Elgar's Variations on an Original Theme (Enigma) of 1899. The composer disclosed it to certain friends, but at his request they never made it public.
Twentieth century
In the twentieth century, Alban Berg's Lyric Suite was thought for years to be abstract music, but in 1977 it was discovered that it was in fact dedicated to Hanna Fuchs-Robettin. Important leitmotifs are based on the melodic series A–B–H–F, which is their combined initials. The last movement also contains a setting of a poem by Baudelaire, suppressed by the composer for publication [2].
The wind ensemble piece Winds of Nagual, by Michael Colgrass, is an important late-20th Century work of program music.
And not to forget Gustav Holst's "The Planets".
Popular music as program music
The term "program music" is not generally used with regard to popular music, although some popular music does have aspects in common with program music. The tradition of purely orchestral program music is continued in pieces for jazz orchestra, most notably several pieces by Duke Ellington. Instrumental pieces in popular music often have a descriptive title which suggests that they could be categorized as program music, and several instrumental albums are completely devoted to some programmatic idea (for example, China by Vangelis or The Songs of Distant Earth by Mike Oldfield). Some of the genres of popular music are more likely than others to involve programmatic elements; these include ambient, New Age, space music, surf rock, jazz fusion, progressive rock, art rock and various genres of techno music.
Progressive rock groups and musicians during the 1970s in particular experimented with program music, among which was Rush's "Jacob's Ladder" (1980), which shows clear influences of Smetana's Má vlast ("My Homeland") (1874-1879). Rush's "Xanadu" also shows their experimentalism with program music, as do parts of "2112", particularly the discovery scene.
Definition
Some people and theories argue that there is indeed no such thing as true "absolute (ars gratia artis) music" and that music always at least conveys or evokes emotions. While non-professional listeners often claim that music has meaning (to them), "new" musicologists, such as Susan McClary (1999), argue that so called "abstract" techniques and structures are actually highly politically and socially charged, specifically, even gendered. This may be linked to a more general argument against abstraction, such as Mark Johnson's argument that it is, "necessary...for abstract meaning...to have a bodily basis." (McClary, 1991) However, a more loosely specific definition of absolute music as music which was not composed with a programmatic intent or plan in mind may be adopted.
More traditional listeners often reject these views sharply, asserting that music can be meaningful, as well as deeply emotional, while being essentially about itself (notes, themes, keys, and so on), and without any connection to the political and societal conflicts of our own day, but consciously associated with non-muscial ideas, images, or events (poems, art works, etc.)
In the Western canon
Baroque and Classical eras
Part of the music from the Baroque and Classical eras is absolute, as is suggested by titles which often consist simply of the type of composition, a numerical designation within the composer's oeuvre, and its key. Bach's Concerto for Two Harpsichords in C Minor, BWV 1060; Mozart's Piano Sonata in C Major, K. 545, and Beethoven's Symphony No. 7 in A major (Opus 92) are all examples of absolute music.
Contrarywise, some composers of the Baroque era used to design titles for their music in a fashion resemblant to that of Romantic program music, called the rappresentativo (representative) style. Some of the most notable examples were composed by Antonio Vivaldi – some of his violin, flute or recorder concertos bear titles inspired by human affects (Il piacere – the pleasure), occupations (La caccia – the hunting, La pastorella – the shepherdess) or, most notably, aspects of nature and meteors (The Four Seasons, La notte – the night, La tempesta di mare – the sea storm). Another well-known example is Heinrich Ignaz Biber's Sonata representativa (for violin and continuo), which depicts various animals (the nightingale, the cuckoo, the cat) in a humoristic manner.
Romantic era
Program music was quite popular during the Romantic era. Many mainstream "classical" works are unequivocally program music, such as Richard Strauss's An Alpine Symphony, which is a musical description of ascending and descending a mountain, with 22 section titles such as "Night," "Sunrise," "By the Waterfall," "In Thicket and Underbrush on the Wrong Path," "Summit," "Mists Rise," and "Storm and Descent." Beethoven's Symphony No. 6 is clearly program music, too, with titled movements and instrumental depictions of bird calls, country dances, and a storm. Some might criticize Disney's animators for providing a pictorial interpretation of Bach's Toccata and Fugue in D Minor, but nobody can deny an extramusical association for Dukas's The Sorcerer's Apprentice.
Modern era
During the twentieth century, the increased influence of modernism and other anti-Romantic trends contributed to a decline in esteem for program music, but audiences continued to enjoy such pieces as Arthur Honegger's depiction of a steam locomotive in Pacific 231. Indeed, Percy Grainger's incomplete orchestral fragment Train Music employs the same function. This music for large orchestra depicts a train moving in the mountains of Italy.
Opera and ballet
Music that is composed to accompany opera and ballet is, of course, program music, even when presented separately as a concert piece. Aaron Copland was amused when a listener said that when she listened to Appalachian Spring she "could see the Appalachians and feel Spring," the title having been a last-minute thought, but it is certainly program music. Film Scores are always program music, and some of them, such as Prokofiev's music for Alexander Nevsky, have found a place in the classical concert repertoire.
Programmatic music and abstract imagery
A good deal of program music falls in between the realm of purely programmatic and purely absolute, with titles that clearly suggest an extramusical association, but no detailed story that can be followed and no musical passages that can be unequivocally identified with specific images. Examples would include Dvořák's Symphony No. 9, From the New World or Beethoven's Symphony No. 3, Eroica.
Popular music
Because the overwhelming majority of Western popular music is in song form, it would seem that most popular music is programmatic by nature: it has lyrics, therefore it is about something other than the music itself. The strong stylistic constraints of many popular forms, however, constrict the ability of the music itself to portray extramusical ideas, specific or abstract, and the music is arguably non-programmatic.
A common term for non-vocal popular music, and thus for practical purposes a term for absolute music in a popular context, is "instrumental" or "instrumental section".
While the debate is of interest to many, for practical purposes most scholars use the term "program music" in the narrower sense described above.
Motion picture soundtrack
Influenced by the late Romantic work of Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, Ottorino Respighi, Richard Strauss, and others, motion picture soundtrack took up the banner of programmatic music following the advent of "talkies." Many film composers, including Paul Smith, Morricone, and John Williams (whose soundtrack to Star Wars in 1977 redefined the symphonic movie score) have followed the programmatic model and solidified motion picture soundtrack as its own programmatic genre.
Symphonic poems
Single movement orchestral pieces of program music are often called symphonic poems.
See also
