JUNIOR TRINITY
​MUSICAL CONNECTIONS
Topic 1: Character and Mood in Music
Part 2: Programme Music
Programme music is descriptive, suggesting visual images or 'telling a story'. The descriptive idea or story-line is known as the programme.  
  
Instrumental music that is free of a programme and exists purely for its own sake is known as absolute music.  
  
Although descriptive music had always existed, orchestral programme music became very popular during the Romantic period (roughly the 19th century) when music developed close links with literature and painting. ​
Musical devices used to express the story or inspiration include:  
  • musical motifs (or motives) - short melodic or rhythmic ideas used to represent characters or images  
  • transformation of themes where a basic theme undergoes changes to mirror a situation  
  • orchestral colour - use of instruments to represent characters or images  
  • direct imitation of sounds eg birdsong or thunder  
  • harmony, dynamics, tempo and key  ​
Sometimes the programme was suggested by the title alone eg the Scottish and Italian symphonies by Mendelssohn where the title provides the source of inspiration rather than a storyline. At other times composers set out the programme in great detail, eg the Symphonie Fantastique by Berlioz.  
FOUR PRE-ROMANTIC EXAMPLES
Heinrich Biber is a Baroque composer from Salzburg, Austria. As well as large-scale choral works, he also wrote a great deal of innovative music for violin, including this Sonata which represents different birds and animals.
Antonio Vivaldi was based at La Pieta in Venice, a girls' orphanage with an exceptional musical reputation. As a priest and in charge of music, he composed works for them including many concerti, including this depiction of a storm at sea.
Vivaldi is most famous for a group of four concerti, where each one depicts a different season. Each movement of each concerto corresponds to a particular scene, set in a poem.
Beethoven's Sixth Symphony, composed in 1808, depicts (although not always explicitly) life and scenes in the countryside. This particular movement is a storm.
TONE POEMS
The tone poem or symphonic poem is a long single movement piece for orchestra.  
  
Tone poems often use a large orchestra and are quite free in their structure. The composer Liszt wrote thirteen tone poems including 'Hamlet' which depicts the Shakespearean character. Richard Strauss wrote many descriptive tone poems. One of these is Til Eulenspiegel which tells of a mischievous character of German legend. Strauss uses a short musical theme to represent Til, this is heard at the beginning and then appears in different with different instruments and rhythms throughout the work.  
 
Well-known tone poems include Vltava by Smetana which portrays the journey of the river Moldau. The flowing theme of the river appears in different forms. Hunting horns are heard in the forests, before the river flows past a rustic wedding celebration where the guests are dancing a polka. The bubbling brooks at the river’s source are represented by two gently murmuring flutes in a minor key.  
OVERTURES
An overture is the name usually given to the orchestral piece played at the beginning of an opera, but during the 19th century composers began to write concert overtures. These were pieces of orchestral music with one movement. The concert overtures:  
  • existed purely in their own right  
  • were for concert performance  
  • were not connected with an opera  
 
Well-known concert overtures include the 1812 Overture by Tchaikovsky which commemorates Napoleon’s retreat from Moscow in 1812. It incorporates French and Russian national anthems. The original score includes a large orchestra, military band, cathedral bells and cannon fire.  ​
PROGRAMME SYMPHONIES
A programme  symphony is in several movements, following roughly the same plan as a symphony and drawing inspiration from an extra-musical element.  

Well-known programme symphonies include Berlioz's Symphonie Fantastique which depicts the obsessive love of a young artist through his opium-induced dreams. It has descriptive titles for each movement, eg A Ball, Scene in the Countryside and March to the Scaffold. A short melodic idea (which Berlioz called an idee fixe) represents the artist's love and keeps reappearing in different forms to haunt him.