Page 210 - ESSENTIAL LISTENING TO MUSIC

Figure 12.3
Hector Berlioz at the age of twenty-nine
Program Music
The Romantic love of literature stimulated interest not only in the art song (see Chapter 11) but also in program music. Indeed, the nineteenth century can fairly be called the “century of program music.” True, there had been earlier isolated examples of program music—in Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons, for example (see Chapter 5). But Romantic composers believed that music could be more than pure, abstract sound—that musical sounds alone (without a text) could tell a story. Most important, they now had the power and color of the newly enlarged orchestra to help tell the tale.
Program music is instrumental music, usually written for symphony or- chestra, that seeks to re-create in sound the events and emotions portrayed in some extramusical source: a story, legend, play, novel, or even historical event. The theory of program music rests on the fact that specific musical gestures can evoke particular feelings and associations. A lyrical melody may spur memories of love, harshly dissonant chords might imply conflict, or a sudden trumpet call may suggest the arrival of the hero, for example. By stringing together such mu- sical gestures in a convincing sequence, a composer might tell a story through music. Program music is fully harmonious with the strongly literary spirit of the nineteenth century, when not only was poetry written in volumes, but the novel and the daily newspaper also became commonplace.
Some Romantic composers, notably Johannes Brahms (1833–1897), resist- ed the allure of program music and continued to write what came to be called absolute music—symphonies, sonatas, quartets, and other instrumental mu- sic without extramusical or programmatic references (see Chapter 14). The absolute composer left it to the listener to infer whatever “meaning” he or she wished. The program composer, however, told the listener what to experience, by crafting a sequence of sounds that implied a narrative. In 1850, composer Franz Liszt got to the heart of the matter when he observed that a program “pro- vided a means by which to protect the listener against a wrong poetical interpre- tation and to direct his attention to the poetical idea of the whole.”
Hector Berlioz (1803–1869) and the Program Symphony
Hector Berlioz was one of the most original figures in the history of music (Figure 12.3). He was born in 1803 near the mountain city of Grenoble, France, the son of a local doctor. As a youth, Berlioz studied mainly the sci- ences and ancient Roman literature. Although local tutors taught him to play the flute and guitar, he had no systematic training in music theory or composi- tion and little exposure to the music of the great masters. Among the major composers of the nineteenth century, he was the only one without fluency at the keyboard. He never studied piano and could do no more than bang
out a few chords.
188 chapter twelve romantic orchestral music
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