©2009, The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All Rights Reserved. 1 Romantic Program Music

©2009, The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All Rights Reserved. 2 Depicts or portrays nonmusical ideas: incidents, images, objects, nature Romantic composers planned the music around the program Story told through recording insert or concert program Hector Berlioz: early Romantic program music composer

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4 “An Episode in the Life of an Artist” Program Symphony in 5 movements Based on personal experience of meeting and falling in love with Harriet Smithson Young musician poisons himself with opium in lovesick despair Narcotic too weak to kill him, plunges into deep slumber with strange visions Sensations, emotions, and memories are transformed into musical thoughts and images Loved one becomes a melody, an idée fixe (fixed idea) The idée fixe occurs in each movement similar to the motive that unifies Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony Berlioz changes the idée fixe in each movement, a technique known as t hematic transformation Berlioz wrote for a larger orchestra than normal to portray multiple images and emotions Harriet Smithson

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6 Roméo et Juliette (dramatic symphony) (1839) King Lear Overture (1831) Waverly Overture (ca. 1827) Rob Roy Overture (1831) Harold en Italie (1834)

©2009, The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All Rights Reserved. 7 Listening excerpt from CD 1, tracks 38-40, p. 188 Program symphony Larghetto-allegro No major sections repeat Orchestra Sextuple meter The artist and his love are dead in this movement Listen to the eerie opening with dissonance: Listen to the transformed idée fixe and bells tolling for the dead: Listen to the “Dies irae” (“Day of Wrath”) chant used in this movement:

©2009, The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All Rights Reserved. 8 Franz Liszt Richard Strauss Developed symphonic poem, or tone poem Ignored tradition of organizing symphonies in movements Avoided sonata form in first movements Unified works with single theme or melody Les Préludes (1853) single movement work based on poem Composed twelve symphonic poems Bulk of work written in nineteenth century Also sprach Zarathustra – philosophic program Till Eulenspiegels lustig Streiche (Till Eulenspiegel’s Merry Pranks) – comic program Don Quixote – comic program