| Programme Music |
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By Matt Boynick Music of a narrative or descriptive kind. The term was introduced by Liszt, who defined a programme as 'a preface added to a piece of instrumental music . . .Programme music, which has been contrasted with Absolute Music, is distinguished by its attempt to depict objects and events. The concept is much older than Liszt. Kuhnau's six Bible sonatas (1700) are each preceded by a summary of what the music is meant to convey, and the 'programmes' of Vivaldi's 'Four Seasons' concertos are contained in sonnets appended to the music. By Beethoven's time even the most abstract and classical of musical forms had become capable of bearing a programmatic meaning. The Pastoral Symphony and the 'Lebewohl' Sonata op.81a both have precedents, in the 18th-century depictions of Nature and in Bach's capriccio for his departing brother. The decisive step towards programme music of a subjective, Romantic kind was taken by Berlioz. By his use of the solo viola in Harold en ltalie and of the Idée fixe there and in the Symphonie fantastique, he was able to distinguish between the individual protagonist and the external circumstances of his experience. The idée fixe was a substantial step towards the Wagnerian Leitmotif by means of which Liszt and Strauss, in the Symphonic poem, were able to associate specific themes with a fixed representational meaning. The 'programme' as a basic determining idea in symphonic music gave rise to many of the great works of Czech and Russian nationalism, to Mahler's symphonies and to the French school of orchestral writing, and survived info the 20th century, receiving no serious intellectual setback until the reaction led by Schönberg, Bartók and Stravinsky. Composers then tended to turn their backs on programme music and find their way to expression through more abstract musical means; but in the 1960s and 1970s some revival of programmatic devices could be noted in works by younger composers. |
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