Incidental music

The 19th Century

It had been common practice in the Renaissance period and later to have musical interludes during scene changes in plays. This practice was taken to greater heights during the 19th century as important composers were engaged to provide interlude music for major performances. Mendelssohn’s incidental music for Shakespeare's ‘A Midsummer's Night’s Dream’ is one of the earliest and most important.

The Norwegian composer Edvard Grieg wrote music of a ‘nationalist’ style as incidental music to Ibsen’s play ‘Peer Gynt’. Listen to one of the best known movements, ‘Morning’, and notice the modulation to a new key as the full orchestra enters.

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Compare this with the minor key and rather forbidding sound as the incidental music prepares the audience for ‘The hall of the mountain king’.

In France, Bizet wrote incidental music for Daudet’s play ‘L’Arlesienne’. Listen to an excerpt from ‘Farandole’ and notice the main theme being played in canon after its introduction, the long crescendo which follows and the unison playing in the orchestra at the end of the excerpt.

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20th Century

In the 20th century perhaps the most outstanding examples are from Benjamin Britten’s opera ‘Peter Grimes’. Based on a story of a fishing village, its characters and the sea, the composer wrote ‘interludes’ to be played between the scenes of the opera which depict different states of the sea. Listen to this first example, ‘Dawn’, and notice the effect and feeling of calm created in the music.

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Now compare this with ‘Storm’, where the violent movement of the wind and waves is depicted by loud and quite violent sounds from the orchestra.

Shostakovich frequently wrote incidental music and here is an example used between scenes two and three in a play entitled ‘Katerina Ismailova’.

With the advent of sophisticated sound systems and as plays are performed in theatres throughout the country, all kinds of music are now used to enhance the overall effect of stage performances, during scene changes, scenery changes and intervals.