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Overture

Henry Purcell

A piece of orchestral music which introduces a large-scale work such as an opera, an oratorio, or a musical.

In the Baroque period overtures were written at the start of operas as an introduction to the story that followed. There were two styles, French and Italian, which reflected the two most important styles of opera at the time. Both had three sections but were slightly different, the French overture’s sections being slow, fast, slow, while the Italian sections were fast, slow, fast. This Italian style was reflected in other music of the period, particularly in the early concertos and later, along with the influence of the Trio Sonata, in the development of the symphony.

Henry Purcell in England wrote an overture for his Opera ‘Dido and Aeneas’ which was neither of the above: it had just two sections, slow and then fast before the opening of the first scene. Listen to the entire short overture played by a string orchestra.

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W A Mozart
Mozart wrote overtures for all his operas which were designed to set the mood of the plot. However, they generally did not use thematic material used later in the work. Listen to part of the overture to the ‘Marriage of Figaro’, a most testing overture for orchestras to play.

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A painting of Beethoven

Beethoven was a perfectionist and wrote several versions of the overture to his one opera ‘Fidelio’. The opera was originally called ‘Leonora’ and there are now three versions of the ‘Leonora’ overture which are played as concert overtures by present-day symphony orchestras. Beethoven also wrote overtures for other works and most famous among these is the overture to the play ‘Egmont’ by Goethe. Listen to an excerpt from that overture from the early romantic period.

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  As opera developed in the 19th century the overture took on a new dimension as the German composer Weber included musical themes from his opera in the overture as a foretaste of what was to come in the opera. These themes were used to identify characters in the operas. Later in the century Wagner continued this style with the use of his leitmotifs during the overtures to his great operatic musical dramas.

Felix Mendelssohn

During the 19th century public subscription concerts became common practice and ‘classical’ music was no longer just music for the nobility and rich. As a result ‘concert overtures’ were written for the purpose of starting concerts. An excellent example of this is the ‘Hebrides overture’ written by Mendelssohn in 1830 after a visit to the island of Staffa in the 1820s. Listen to this example and notice the string playing and how it tries to portray the movement of waves.

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This practice of using melodic material in overtures continued with the emergence of the musical in the 20th century and as new works were composed it was common practice to use some of the best music in the overture. Listen to an excerpt from the overture to ‘Strike up the band’, a musical show by George Gershwin. If you listen closely you will hear a version of ‘I got rhythm’, one of the composer’s most famous melodies from that show.

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The idea of the overture took a further twist in the 20th century with the development of the cinema, when the overture became title music for films, often with a modern extension of the leitmotif where musical themes represented characters in the film.