Program music
“Program music: (noun) music that is intended to evoke images or convey the impression of
events.”
-Oxford English Dictionary
Dictionaries are surprisingly accurate, aren’t they?
Program music, is essentially music that tells a narrative. Music, for the most part, was and is
still created for the purpose of creating music. A mostly abstract medium to please the ear or to
simply demonstrate musicality within the composer. However, music, like all other art forms, fell
to the result of interpretation and analysis. When that is taken to the next level, when
interpretation and analysis is an essential part of the music itself, that is what program music lies
in. Program music began as reflecting imitating the sounds of realistic phenomena. Using pitch
and musical forms to elicit the thought of things like rain, laughter, or misery. The earliest
notable example of such would most likely be Vivaldi’s Four Seasons which comprises of four
concerti with respective themes that imitated the natural phenomena and emotions of, not
surprisingly, the four seasons.
Over time, program music has evolved alongside absolute music. Taking a look at a few famous
examples, there is Berlioz’s Symphonie Fantastique, Strauss’s Don Juan Symphony, Also Sprach
Zarathustra, and Alpensinfonie Smetana’s Die Moldau, Debussy’s La Mer, and finally, the
infamous Flight of the Bumblebee, by Rimsky-Korsakov.
Symphonie Fantastique is most likely the most well fleshed-out piece of program music. It
follows the life of a man who is excessively drawn to a woman he sees. The symphony follows
five movements each telling the path of the lone man. His mind is swung by episodes of delirium
as the theme of the woman arises repeatedly. He goes to a ball, only to have his mind thrown into
lunacy with the near-haunting thought of the woman. He takes a walk in the peaceful
countryside, but his spirit is drawn even deeper into the pit of manic control. The man then takes
some narcotics to ease his lunacy only to fall into a psychotic state as he experiences strange and
wild reveries. He is executed under the guillotine and one can hear the plucks of string as his
head falls into the basket. He finally sees a scene where the woman of his lunatic dreams turns
into a witch. The musical theme for her now becomes dark and shifted. He is finally silenced
with a “dies irae” as his love of his life, now a witch, gathers with many other witches in a
gathering of the dead.
Aside from that complicated mess of words, Richard Strauss also composed many works of
program music, although he mainly based them off of literature. Don Juan tells the heroic life of
the namesake Spanish hero which ultimately ends with the plaintive and quiet end of both him
and the symphony. Also Sprach Zarathustra, the introduction which is the theme in 2001: A
Space Odyssey, begins with the famous trump call that signifies the grand sunrise of which
Zarathustra, a Persian prophet and main character of the namesake book by Friedrich Nietzsche,
watches from atop a hill. Like the book, the symphony is also long and overly complicated to
describe.
The Last four pieces will be summarized each in one sentence in the respective order given.
Alpensinfonie (Alpine Symphony): A story of an interesting hike up and down a mountain. Die
Moldau: the personification, then musical rendition, of a river in Czechia. La Mer: iNtErEsTiNg
ocean adventures. Flight of the Bumblebee: a vEry iNtErEsTiNg story of a son-turned-bee who
meets back up with his dad.
