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- Some composers in the Romantic period used their music to try to describe a specific place, item, person or idea. A composition written in this descriptive way is called programme music. Programme music is instrumental – there are no lyrics.
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Why is a music program so important in the Romantic era?
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Only in the so-called Romantic era, from Beethoven to Richard Strauss, is the program an essential concept, and even there it leaves its mark on much music commonly considered “pure” or “absolute.”
- Early Examples of Program Music
- Programmatic Content During The Baroque Period
- The Classical Period and The Emergence of Beethoven
- The Romantic Period
- The Twentieth Century and Jazz
- Film, Television and Video Games
- Summary
There is a long history within the classical tradition of music for music’s sake: pieces where the melody, harmony, rhythm and structure provide enough interest, without the audience needing any extra-musical elements to consider. Lots of pieces have titles that simply tell us what kind of piece we are listening to: Symphony No. 1, for example, or ...
In the Baroque era, the French composer Francois Couperin wrote a book of keyboard works, many of which have titles that clearly demonstrate that they were written about something. His “Les Petits Moulins a vent” literally means “The Little Windmill,” and “Le Tic-Toc-Choc, ou Les Maillotins” has been interpreted as representing the relentless ticki...
With a strong focus upon musical form and the creation of drama through internal forces, little programmatic content was written during the Classical period. However, Joseph Haydn appears to have had extra-musical ideas in mind whilst composing some of his symphonic works. For example, his Symphony No. 8 features a movement called “La Tempesta,” wh...
Program music really took off during the Romantic period, as it became common for music to take inspiration from literature, folk tales, visual art, nature and more. Tchaikovsky, for example, was deeply inspired by the plays of William Shakespeare and wrote orchestral pieces based upon Romeo and Juliet, The Tempest and Hamlet. Jean Sibelius, meanwh...
Composers continued to write programmatic content into the 20th Century. Claude Debussy’s impressionist La Mer is about the sea, while The Planets, by Gustav Holst, is an orchestral suite in which each movement represents one of the planets of the solar system. There are plenty of other examples, although the modernist movement largely saw a return...
The soundtracks to lots of film and television programmes take influence from the program music of the 19th Century, with composers using sound to create atmosphere and tension and to help advance the plot. Disney’s Fantasiafamously puts animations to seven pieces of classical music. John Williams’ score to Star Wars uses leitmotifs, a technique th...
We hope that you’ve enjoyed this guide to program music. We’ve learned that, while the idea of classical music composed about a poem, a place or a story really exploded during the Romantic period, there have nearly always been pieces written with external, non-musical stimuli in mind. And the concept has continued into the 20th and 21st Centuries, ...
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.
- Four Sea Interludes by Benjamin Britten. Year: 1944. Britten’s Four Sea Interludes are the result of Britten’s opera Peter Grimes. The interludes condense the opera plot and use only instrumentation to tell the devastating story of how a village turns on one of its occupants.
- Rodeo by Aaron Copland. Year: 1942. Aaron Copeland is one of the most recognizable American composers of program music, and Rodeo is one of his most immediately identifiable pieces.
- Symphony No. 9 From the New World by Antonin Dvorak. Year: 1893. Dvorak's New World Symphony owes its nickname to the fact Dvorak composed it while employed by the National Conservatory of Music in America.
- L'Après Midi D’un Faune by Claude Debussy. Year: 1894. Claude Debussy almost always wrote program music, and the result is that he significantly shaped our understanding of it.
- 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.
- 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.
- Classical era. 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.
- 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.
Jan 25, 2024 · Romantic Period: The Romantic era saw a significant rise in questioning what is program music. Composers sought to express emotions and vivid imagery, embracing the idea of composing explicitly narrative-driven works.
Jul 16, 2023 · Program music or programme music (British English) is music that attempts to depict in music an extra-musical scene or narrative. The narrative itself might be offered to the audience in the form of program notes inviting imaginative correlations with the music.
