Secondary General Music Lesson Ideas
Program Music
A Little History
Program music is a type of instrumental classical music that attempts to tell a story, describe a scene, or evoke a specific emotion. The narrative itself might be offered to the audience in the form of program notes, or through the music, which should spark the audience's imagination.
The term was coined by composer Franz Liszt, who understood it to involve a 'program' external to the music that set the parameters and the form of how the music would unfold. Though Liszt created the term 'Program Music', such compositions had already been made before Liszt’s birth in 1811.
Perhaps the most famous Program Music of the Baroque Period is the group of four violin concertos written by the composer Antonio Vivaldi. His pieces, called The Four Seasons, convey the sounds, events, and feelings of winter, spring, summer, and autumn.
Program music was less often used in compositions in the Classic Period; however, it particularly flourished during the Romantic Period. As this art form can invoke in the listener a specific experience other than sitting in front of a musician or musicians, it related quite well to the purely Romantic idea of 'total artwork'. While instrumental Program Music relies solely on musical aspects to illustrate a multi-faceted artistic concept such as a poem, painting, myth, or story with no text or lyrics, composers believed the dynamics of sound that were newly possible in the Romantic Period orchestra allowed them to translate emotions and other intangible aspects of life into their compositions.
Program music is the exact opposite of 'pure' or 'absolute' music, which has no reference in the real world and no story component. While composers of absolute music do not provide a 'program', all music is a language that can tell a story. The special beauty of music itself often inspires our imaginations and conveys a story we may not be able to put in words. The purpose of Program Music, then, is to help direct our imaginations to the composer's intent.
Scholars actually separate Program Music into two sub-categories: music that is in one long movement (no breaks), and music that has more than one movement (includes breaks). For music that has one long movement, the correct musical term is Symphonic Poem, while music that has more than one movement, the correct musical term in Program Music. While many people just use the term Program Music to describe any music that has a 'program', we are going to study compositions of each type (The Four Seasons and Scheherazade - Program Music; Vltava - Symphonic Poem).