Program Music

Program music 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. A well-known 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.

Strauss: Also sprach Zarathustra

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 programmatic pieces 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. Single-movement orchestral pieces of program music are called symphonic poems.

Absolute music, in contrast, is to be appreciated without any particular reference to anything outside the music itself.

Program Symphony

Any instrumental genre could be composed in such a way as to tell a story or paint a picture in the mind’s eye of the listener. A program symphony is the result of a composer applying the principle of program music to the genre of the symphony. A program symphony, like any other work of that genre, would consist of multiple movements, usually four or five, and would likely follow to some extent the standard characteristics of symphonic construction. For example, the second movement would likely be slower than the first, and the third movement would be based on a dance. The fifth movement would serve as a kind of grand finale. Traditional forms would be of less concern to a composer of programmatic music, as the form of a movement would likely be influenced by the subject matter being depicted. Hector Berlioz’s Symphony fantastique is one of the best-known examples of a program symphony.

Hector Berlioz (1803-1869)

Louis-Hector Berlioz was a French Romantic composer and conductor. His output includes orchestral works such as the Symphonie fantastique and Harold in Italy, choral pieces including the Requiem and L’Enfance du Christ, his three operas Benvenuto Cellini, Les Troyens, and Béatrice et Bénédict, and works of hybrid genres such as the “dramatic symphony” Roméo et Juliette and the “dramatic legend” La Damnation de Faust.

The elder son of a provincial doctor, Berlioz was expected to follow his father into medicine, and he attended a Parisian medical college before defying his family by taking up music as a profession. His independence of mind and refusal to follow traditional rules and formulas put him at odds with the conservative musical establishment of Paris. He briefly moderated his style sufficiently to win France’s premier music prize – the Prix de Rome – in 1830, but he learned little from the academics of the Paris Conservatoire. Opinion was divided for many years between those who thought him an original genius and those who viewed his music as lacking in form and coherence.

Meeting only occasional success in France as a composer, Berlioz increasingly turned to conducting, in which he gained an international reputation. He was highly regarded in Germany, Britain, and Russia both as a composer and as a conductor. To supplement his earnings, he wrote musical journalism throughout much of his career; some of it has been preserved in book form, including his Treatise on Instrumentation (1844), which was influential in the 19th and 20th centuries. He is still studied today as a master orchestrator. Berlioz died in Paris at the age of 65.

Symphonie fantastique

Symphonie fantastique: Épisode de la vie d’un artiste . . . en cinq parties (Fantastical Symphony: An Episode in the Life of an Artist, in Five Parts) Op. 14 is a program symphony written by Hector Berlioz in 1830. It is an important piece of the early Romantic period and is still popular with concert audiences worldwide. The first performance was at the Paris Conservatoire in December 1830. The work was repeatedly revived after 1831 and subsequently became a favorite in Paris.

Berlioz’s Symphonie fantastique is important for several reasons: it is a program symphony, it incorporates an idée fixe (a recurring theme representing an ideology or person that provides continuity through a musical work), and it contains five movements rather than the four of most symphonies.

Leonard Bernstein described the symphony as the first musical expedition into psychedelia because of its hallucinatory and dream-like nature, and because history suggests Berlioz composed at least a portion of it under the influence of opium. According to Bernstein, “Berlioz tells it like it is. You take a trip, you wind up screaming at your own funeral.”

The symphony is a piece of program music that tells the story of an artist gifted with a lively imagination who has poisoned himself with opium in the depths of despair because of hopeless love. Berlioz provided his own program notes for each movement of the work (see below). He prefaces his notes with the following instructions:

The composer’s intention has been to develop various episodes in the life of an artist, in so far as they lend themselves to musical treatment. As the work cannot rely on the assistance of speech, the plan of the instrumental drama needs to be set out in advance. The following programme must therefore be considered as the spoken text of an opera, which serves to introduce musical movements and to motivate their character and expression.

There are five movements, instead of the four movements that were conventional for symphonies at the time:

• Rêveries—Passions (Reveries—Passions)
• Un bal (A Ball)
• Scène aux champs (Scene in the Fields)
• Marche au supplice (March to the Scaffold)
• Songe d’une nuit du sabbat (Dream of the Night of the Sabbath)

Movement 1: Rêveries—Passions (Reveries—Passions)

In Berlioz’s own program notes from 1845, he writes:

The author imagines that a young musician, afflicted by the sickness of spirit which a famous writer has called the vagueness of passions [le vague des passions], sees for the first time a woman who unites all the charms of the ideal person his imagination was dreaming of, and falls desperately in love with her. By a strange anomaly, the beloved image never presents itself to the artist’s mind without being associated with a musical idea, in which he recognizes a certain quality of passion, but endowed with the nobility and shyness which he credits to the object of his love.

This melodic image and its model keep haunting him ceaselessly like a double idée fixe. This explains the constant recurrence in all the movements of the symphony of the melody which launches the first allegro. The transitions from this state of dreamy melancholy, interrupted by occasional upsurges of aimless joy, to delirious passion, with its outbursts of fury and jealousy, its returns of tenderness, its tears, its religious consolations—all this forms the subject of the first movement.

It is here that the listener is introduced to the theme of the artist’s beloved, or the idée fixe.

Movement 2: Un bal (A Ball)

Again, quoting from Berlioz’s program notes:

The artist finds himself in the most diverse situations in life, in the tumult of a festive party, in the peaceful contemplation of the beautiful sights of nature, yet everywhere, whether in town or in the countryside, the beloved image keeps haunting him and throws his spirit into confusion.

The second movement has a mysterious-sounding introduction that creates an atmosphere of impending excitement, followed by a passage dominated by two harps; then the flowing waltz theme appears, derived from the idée fixe at first, then transforming it. More formal statements of the idée fixe twice interrupt the waltz.

The movement is the only one to feature the two harps, providing the glamour and sensual richness of the ball, and may also symbolize the object of the young man’s affection.

Movement 3: Scène aux champs (Scene in the Fields)

From Berlioz’s program notes:

One evening in the countryside he hears two shepherds in the distance dialoguing with their “ranz des vaches”; this pastoral duet, the setting, the gentle rustling of the trees in the wind, some causes for hope that he has recently conceived, all conspire to restore to his heart an unaccustomed feeling of calm and to give to his thoughts a happier coloring. He broods on his loneliness and hopes that soon he will no longer be on his own . . . But what if she betrayed him! . . . This mingled hope and fear, these ideas of happiness, disturbed by dark premonitions, form the subject of the adagio. At the end, one of the shepherds resumes his ‘ranz des vaches’; the other one no longer answers. Distant sound of thunder . . . solitude . . . silence.

The two “shepherds” Berlioz mentions in the notes are depicted with a cor anglais(English horn) and an offstage oboe tossing an evocative melody back and forth. After the cor anglais–oboe conversation, the principal theme of the movement appears on solo flute and violins. The idée fixe returns in the middle of the movement, played by oboe and flute. The sound of distant thunder at the end of the movement is a striking passage for four timpani.

Movement 4: Marche au supplice (March to the Scaffold)

From Berlioz’s program notes:

Convinced that his love is unappreciated, the artist poisons himself with opium. The dose of narcotic, while too weak to cause his death, plunges him into a heavy sleep accompanied by the strangest of visions. He dreams that he has killed his beloved, that he is condemned, led to the scaffold and is witnessing his own execution. As he cries for forgiveness, the effects of the narcotic set in. He wants to hide, but he cannot, so he watches as an onlooker as he dies. The procession advances to the sound of a march that is sometimes sombre and wild, and sometimes brilliant and solemn, in which a dull sound of heavy footsteps follows without transition the loudest outbursts. At the end of the march, the first four bars of the idée fixe reappear like a final thought of love interrupted by the fatal blow when his head bounced down the steps.

Berlioz claimed to have written the fourth movement in a single night. The movement begins with timpani sextuplets in thirds and the movement proceeds as a march filled with blaring horns and rushing passages, and scurrying figures that later show up in the last movement. Before the musical depiction of his execution, there is a brief, nostalgic recollection of the idée fixe in a solo clarinet, as though representing the last conscious thought of the soon-to-be-executed man. Immediately following this is a single, short fortissimo G minor chord—the fatal blow of the guillotine blade, followed by a series of pizzicato notes representing the rolling of the severed head into the basket. After his death, the final nine bars of the movement contain a victorious series of G major brass chords, along with rolls of the snare drums within the entire orchestra, seemingly intended to convey the cheering of the onlooking throng.

Movement 5: Songe d’une nuit du sabbat (Dream of the Night of the Sabbath)

From Berlioz’s program notes:

He sees himself at a witches’ sabbath, in the midst of a hideous gathering of shades, sorcerers, and monsters of every kind who have come together for his funeral. Strange sounds, groans, outbursts of laughter; distant shouts which seem to be answered by more shouts. The beloved melody appears once more, but has now lost its noble and shy character; it is now no more than a vulgar dance tune, trivial and grotesque: it is she who is coming to the sabbath. . . . Roar of delight at her arrival. . . . She joins the diabolical orgy . . . The funeral knell tolls, burlesque parody of the Dies irae, the dance of the witches. The dance of the witches combined with the Dies irae.

This movement can be divided into sections according to tempo changes:

The introduction is Largo, creating an ominous quality through dynamic variations and instrumental effects, particularly in the strings (tremolos, pizz, sf).

At bar 21 the tempo changes to Allegro. The return of the idée fixe as a “vulgar dance tune” is depicted by the clarinet. This is interrupted by an Allegro Assai section at bar 29.

The idée fixe then returns as a prominent E-flat clarinet solo at bar 40.

At bar 80, there is one bar of alla breve, with a descending line in unison through the entire orchestra. This section sees the introduction of tubular bells and fragments of the “witches’ round dance”.

The “Dies irae” begins at bar 127, the motif derived from the 13th-century Latin sequence. It is initially stated in unison between the unusual combination of four bassoons and two tubas.

At bar 222, the “witches’ round dance” motif is repeatedly stated in the strings, to be interrupted by three syncopated notes in the brass. This leads into the Ronde du Sabbat (Sabbath Round) at bar 241, where the motif is finally expressed in full.

The Dies irae et Ronde du Sabbat Ensemble section is at bar 414.

There are a host of effects, including the eerie col legno in the strings (an instruction to strike the string with the stick of the bow across the strings)—the bubbling of the witches’ cauldron to the blasts of wind. The climactic finale combines the somber Dies Irae melody with the wild fugue of the Ronde du Sabbat.

The continual interruption of the Dies irae motif by the strings symbolizes this continual fight of death until the movement and piece eventually, as we all do give in to the Dies irae theme and our eventual but necessary deaths.

Symphonic Poem (Tone Poem)

By Jennifer Bill

A symphonic poem, also known as a tone poem, is a type of orchestral composition that tells a story, depicts a scene, or conveys a specific mood or emotion. Unlike traditional symphonies with multiple movements, a symphonic poem is typically a single-movement work. It was pioneered by the composer Franz Liszt in the 19th century and became popular during the Romantic era.

Symphonic poems are characterized by their freedom of form and use of rich orchestration to paint vivid musical pictures. They often incorporate elements of programmatic music, where the composer provides a narrative or description to guide the listener’s interpretation. Through various musical techniques, such as thematic transformation, mood shifts, and contrasting sections, symphonic poems create a dynamic and evocative listening experience.

Prominent examples of symphonic poems include Richard Strauss’s “Also sprach Zarathustra,” based on Nietzsche’s philosophical work, and Bedřich Smetana’s “Má vlast,” a set of six pieces celebrating Czech history and landscapes. These compositions offer a unique and expressive approach to orchestral music, allowing composers to explore a wide range of subjects and emotions in a single cohesive piece.

Smetana “The Moldau” with explanations

“Nineteenth-Century Music and Romanticism” from Understanding Music Past and Present by Jeff Kluball and Elizabeth Kramer.

Understanding Music: Past and Present is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

Edited with additional material by Jennifer Bill

Franz Liszt (1811-1886)

Franz Liszt was born in Doborján, Hungary (now Raiding, Austria). His father, employed as a steward for a wealthy family, was an amateur musician who recognized his son’s talent. A group of Hungarian noblemen sponsored him with a stipend that enabled Franz to pursue his musical interest in Paris. There, he became the friend of Mendelssohn, Hugo, Chopin, Delacroix, George Sand, and Berlioz; these friends influenced him to become part of the French Romanticism movement.

Also in Paris in 1831, Liszt attended a performance of virtuoso violinist Paganini, who was touring. Paganini’s style and success helped make Liszt aware of the demand for a solo artist who performed with showmanship. The ever-growing mass public audience desired gifted virtuoso soloists performers at the time. Liszt, one of the best pianists of his time, became a great showman who knew how to energize an audience. Up until Liszt, the standard practice of performing piano solos was with the solo artist’s back to the audience. This limited—and actually blocked—the audience from viewing the artist’s hands, facial expressions, and musical nuance. Liszt changed the entire presentation by turning the piano sideways so the audience could view his facial expressions and the manner in which his fingers interacted with the keys, from playing loud and thunderously to gracefully light and legato.

Liszts’s Hungarian Rhapsody No2

While at the height of his performance career, Liszt retreated from his piano soloist career to devote all his energy to composition. He moved to Weimer in 1948 and assumed the post of court musician for the Grand Duke, remaining in Weimer until 1861. There, he produced his greatest orchestral works. His position in Weimer included the responsibility as director to the Grand Duke’s opera house. In this position, Liszt could influence the public’s taste in music and construct musical expectations for future compositions. And he used his influential position to program what Wagner called “Music of the Future.” Liszt and Wagner both advocated and promoted highly dramatic music in Weimer, with Liszt conducting the first performances of Wagner’s Lohengrin, Belioz’s Benevenuto Cellini, as well as many other contemporary compositions.

Still active at the age of seventy-five, he earned respect from England as a composer and was awarded an honor in person by Queen Victoria. Returning from this celebration, he met Claude Debussy in Paris then journeyed to visit his widowed daughter Cosima in Bayreuth and attended a Wagnerian Festival. He died during that festival, and even on his death bed, dying of pneumonia, Liszt named one of the “Music of the Future” masterpieces: Wagner’s Tristan.

Liszt’s primary goal in music composition was pure expression through the idiom of tone. His freedom of expression necessitated his creation of the symphonic poem, sometimes called a tone poem–a one-movement program piece written for orchestra that portrays images of a place, story, novel, landscape, or non-musical source or image. This form utilizes transformations of a few themes throughout the entire work for continuity. The themes are varied by adjusting the rhythm, harmony, dynamics, tempos, instrumental registers, instrumentation in the orchestra, timbre, and melodic outline, or shape. By making these slight-to-major adjustments, Liszt found it possible to convey the extremes of emotion—from love to hate, war to peace, triumph to defeat—within a thematic piece. His thirteen symphonic poems greatly influenced the nineteenth century, an influence that continues today. Liszt’s most famous piece for orchestra is the three portrait work Symphony after Goethe’s Faust (the portraits include Faust, Gretchen, and Mephistopheles). A similar work, his Symphony of Dante’s Divine Comedy, has three movements: Inferno, Purgatory, and Vision of Paradise. His most famous symphonic poem is Les Preludes (The Preludes) written in 1854.

With the first performance of the work in February 1854, a new genre was introduced. Les préludes is the earliest example of an orchestral work that was performed as a “symphonic poem”.

The 1856 published score includes a text preface

What else is our life but a series of preludes to that unknown Hymn, the first and solemn note of which is intoned by Death?—Love is the glowing dawn of all existence; but what is the fate where the first delights of happiness are not interrupted by some storm, the mortal blast of which dissipates its fine illusions, the fatal lightning of which consumes its altar; and where is the cruelly wounded soul which, on issuing from one of these tempests, does not endeavor to rest his recollection in the calm serenity of life in the fields? Nevertheless, man hardly gives himself up for long to the enjoyment of the beneficent stillness which at first he has shared in Nature’s bosom, and when “the trumpet sounds the alarm”, he hastens, to the dangerous post, whatever the war may be, which calls him to its ranks, in order, at last, to recover in the combat full consciousness of himself and entire possession of his energy.

Les Préludes is divided into five episodes within one movement.

1. Dawn of Existence
2. Love
3. Storms of Life
4. Refuge and consolation of nature
5. Strife and conquest

Licensing & Attributions

Authored by: Elliott Jones. Provided by: Santa Ana College.

Located at: http://www.sac.edu

License: CC BY: Attribution

Adapted from “Early Romantic Era” from Music 101 by Elliott Jones

Edited and additional material by Jennifer Bill