Programme music facts for kids

Programme music is a type of music that tells a story or describes something specific. It's made for instruments, like an orchestra or a piano. Think of it as music with a secret message or a picture it wants to paint in your mind!

This is different from "absolute music," which is just about the sounds themselves, without trying to describe anything. Programme music became super popular in the 19th century, but some composers wrote it even earlier.

Music That Tells a Story

Even long ago, during the Renaissance and Baroque times, some composers wrote music that described things. For example, they might write music about battles.

A famous example is Antonio Vivaldi's The Four Seasons. This is a set of four concertos for violin and strings. Each concerto describes one of the year's seasons. You can almost hear the birds singing in the spring or imagine snowy winter days just by listening!

Romantic Composers and Their Tales

In the early 1800s, Beethoven wrote his Symphony No. 6 "Pastorale". This symphony describes the peaceful life in the countryside. It was a big hit and made this way of telling stories with music very popular with Romantic composers.

Mendelssohn wrote "concert overtures." These weren't for an opera but were short orchestral pieces that told a story. His Hebrides Overture, for instance, makes you feel like you're by the sea, listening to the waves in Fingal's Cave in the Scottish Inner Hebrides.

Musical Ideas and Themes

Franz Liszt made programme music even more popular with his symphonic poems. These are single-movement orchestral pieces that tell a story or describe a scene.

Hector Berlioz's Symphonie Fantastique is another great example. It tells a story he made up about a man dreaming of a woman he loves. The woman is represented by a special tune, or melody, that you hear in different ways throughout the symphony. This special tune is called an idée fixe (which is French for "fixed idea").

This idea of linking a tune to a person or idea was also used by Wagner. He used something called a leitmotif in his operas. A leitmotif is a short musical phrase that is linked to a specific person, place, object, or idea.

Later, in the early 19th century, Richard Strauss wrote several symphonic poems. He often used leitmotifs to describe the characters in his music. Some of his famous works include Don Juan, Don Quixote, and Ein Heldenleben (which means A hero's life).

See also

In Spanish: Música programática para niños