program music

program music, instrumental music that carries some extramusical meaning, some “program” of literary idea, legend, scenic description, or personal drama. It is contrasted with so-called absolute, or abstract, music, in which artistic interest is supposedly confined to abstract constructions in sound. It has been stated that the concept of program music does not represent a genre in itself but rather is present in varying degrees in different works of music. 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.”

In a sense, it is impossible to speak of purely abstract music; any work of art must have some “content,” some series of images, states of mind, or moods that the artist is trying to project or communicate—if only the sense of pure abstractness. For example, a siciliana (a composition using an Italian dance rhythm) bears in its rhythm associations of tranquillity for many listeners. Most music works on such a symbolic and evocative but not directly descriptive level. Thus, Beethoven considered his Symphony No. 6 (Pastoral) “more an expression of feeling than painting.” A few examples of literal “tone painting” aside (such as the bird calls in the second movement), the Pastoral depicts the emotions one might feel in the surroundings of nature or perhaps some other human situation.

There is a descriptive element in the music of many cultures, from the stylized sounds of falling rain and snow in Japanese samisen music to the vividly evoked plagues in George Frideric Handel’s oratorio Israel in Egypt (1739) and the bird calls, battle sounds, and so forth appearing in European music (instrumental and vocal) for several centuries. But the development of music with a pervasive program, like the term program music itself, is a uniquely 19th-century phenomenon, beginning precisely with Beethoven, for he unified the movements of a symphony or sonata into a psychological whole. Not only the Pastoral but the Symphony No. 3 (Eroica) and many later works exhibit this feature, in which contrasting states of mind are brought into immediate contact, and, occasionally, the process of transition between them is explored.

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This interest in the unification of contrary tendencies found expression in two characteristically 19th-century forms: the suite of short pieces (as Robert Schumann’s Carnaval) and the symphonic poem, starting with expanded overtures such as Beethoven’s Leonore No. 3 and Felix Mendelssohn’s The Hebrides. These works are often unified by a basic theme (cyclic form), but just as frequently they exhibit a looseness of form that stands in vivid contrast to the structural rigour of music by J.S. Bach, Joseph Haydn, and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.

The development of program music quickly reached maturity with the works of Carl Maria von Weber (Konzertstück, 1821) and Hector Berlioz (Symphonie fantastique, 1830), both of whom distributed at concerts a printed synopsis of the “plots” behind their works. Schumann, on the other hand, left unstated the connection between movements of his Kreisleriana, yet his music differs from Weber’s not so much in its lack of programmatic intent as in its lack of written program. The lines are blurred more thoroughly in the music of Franz Liszt, possibly the best-known composer of program music, whose specifically programmatic works—such as the Faust Symphony and some of his symphonic poems—are not often performed. In Liszt’s works without written program, notably the Piano Sonata in B Minor and his two piano concerti, similar types of moods are expressed in a style resembling that of the symphonic poems.

The era after Liszt saw the quick demise of program music, even though there are important exceptions. Detailed programs to some orchestral works of Richard Strauss, for example, exercise considerable control over the music. Strauss’s imitation of bleating sheep in Don Quixote (1897) is a celebrated example; because it is an episode conjured up by the story, it may be missed unless a plot summary is provided. This cannot be said of earlier programmatic works (including Strauss’s own Don Juan and Till Eulenspiegel), in which the music is internally sufficient to a listener who may not know the program.

Other composers of the time began to have doubts about the value of a written program; Anton Bruckner and Gustav Mahler, for example, withdrew their own published descriptions of their symphonies. Although certain works since 1900 reflect a programmatic attitude—e.g., Arnold Schoenberg’s Verklärte Nacht (Transfigured Night; first performed in 1903) and many Soviet works, such as Dmitry Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 7 (Leningrad; 1941)—the movement of the 20th century was generally away from the descriptive.

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