Programme music

It is a frequent mistake in the twenty-first century for the inexperienced musician to think that programme music is music for a programme on television, radio or some other form of mass communication. It is in fact music which tries to tell a story in sound. If you consider the difficulty the artist has of painting or drawing a scene on paper or canvas then perhaps you come a little way to understanding the difficulty a composer has in trying to describe a scene or story just using sound.

One of the earliest and best examples is the collection of concertos, ‘The Seasons’, by the Baroque composer Vivaldi, who wrote four three-movement concertos which tried to depict in sound the lines of four poems or sonnets. Listen to this movement, the first of three from ‘Spring’, with the lines of the poem cued in to the appropriate place in the music where the composer wrote the words in the score. The excerpt is quite simple in a harmonic way and uses many of the features associated with Vivaldi’s music: repetition, sequence, ornaments, some dynamic contrast, simple harmony and simple modulation.

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Beethoven’s Symphony No.6 was regarded as having a new outlook. For the first time in a symphony, music was written to try to describe a scene. In particular, the fourth movement describes a storm and is called ‘Thunderstorm’. Listen to this example and compare this storm with the harmonically simple one in the previous excerpt. In this example many of the same concepts used in the previous example are present, such as repetition, sequence and ornaments, but added to this are more dramatic dynamics: use of timpani for drama, tremolando strings for suspense and the threat of the coming storm, and forte (loud) chords, perhaps to describe lightning flashes. Listen to the start of the movement.

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In 1828 the French composer Berlioz wrote his ‘Symphonie Fantastique’ in five movements, subtitled ‘Episodes in the life of an artist’. Each movement describes a different scene, for instance the second a scene at a ball, the third a scene in the country and the fourth the ’March to the scaffold’. In this excerpt from that movement you can clearly hear the footsteps as the condemned man approaches the scaffold, the roll of the snare drums just before the execution, the one last thought of his loved one played by clarinet, the fall of the guillotine and finally the bounce of the severed head falling into the basket.

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Symphonic Poem or Tone Poem

Invented by Liszt and sometimes called a tone poem, this, like a concert overture, was a one-movement work of some considerable length which told a story or tried to depict a poem or scene. Liszt composed 13 of these works including ‘Hamlet’, based on the Shakespeare play and ‘Orpheus’, based on the Greek legend. There are many other famous examples, for example ‘The Sorcerer’s Apprentice’ by Dukas, ‘Dance Macabre’ by Saint-Saëns, both often used with junior classes in schools, and ‘Vltava’ by Smetana. This last example tells the story of the progress of a river from two little streams until it becomes a large and wide river. This particular piece also comes under the umbrella of nationalist music, music which reflects the traditions, folk music and atmosphere of the nation of the composer. First of all listen to the beginning of the music as the cold trickling stream from the hills (listen for the flutes and pizzicato strings) meets another stream of warmer water from the valley (a pedal note on low strings which becomes a trill) and then together they join the main river (a flowing theme on strings).

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The river, having got much larger now, has to plunge through the narrow gorge of St George. Listen for the dramatic use of brass instruments and the excellent example of diminuendo as the river leaves the narrows.

Now listen to a short excerpt of the nationalist influence as the river flows past a village where people are enjoying a peasant dance.

Finally listen to climax of the piece as the now large river flows off into the distance with a final diminuendo, rallentando and a forte final perfect cadence.