What is program music? Examples and definition of program music

A musical work whose content is revealed by a certain verbal program put into it by the composer, very often poetic, is what program music is. This phenomenon gives it specific features that distinguish it from non-programmatic, which reflect the moods, feelings, and emotional experiences of a person. The program can be a reflection of any phenomena of reality.

Specificity and synthesis

In theory, all music is more or less programmed, except that it is almost impossible to identify exactly the objects or concepts that cause feelings for the listener. Such abilities are possessed only by speech, oral or written. Therefore, composers often supply their works with a program, thus forcing a verbal or literary premise to work in synthesis with all the musical means used by them.

The unity of literature and music is helped by the fact that both these kinds of art are capable of showing the development and growth of the image in time. Various kinds of creative actions have been combined since antiquity, since art was born and developed in a syncretic form, associated with rituals and labor activity. In funds, it was very limited, therefore, individually and without applied tasks, simply could not exist.

Shifting

Gradually the everyday way of mankind was improved, the art became more sophisticated, and a tendency appeared to disengage its main genera and species. Reality was enriched, and the display of this was already achieved in all diversity, although the syncretic art was forever left in ritual, spiritual, vocal-instrumental, dramatic aspects. Joint actions of music and words, however, which determine the program, also never left the music far away.

These may be titles that include program music. Examples - in the collection of piano plays by PI Tchaikovsky's "Children's Album", where each play has not only a "talking" but also a "telling" title: "Morning Prayer", "Nanny's Tale", "Doll's Disease" and all Other small works. This is his own collection for older children, "The Seasons", where Pyotr Ilyich added a bright poetic epigraph to the title. The composer took care of the specific content of the music, the topics and explaining what program music is and how to perform this work.

Music Plus Literature

Program music for children is especially understandable if the work has both a name and an accompanying word that composes the composer himself or the writer who inspired him, as did Rimsky-Korsakov in the symphonic suite "Antar" in the fairy tale of Senkovsky or Sviridov in music to Pushkin's story " Snowstorm ".

Nevertheless, the program only complements the music, not being an accurate explanation. Just an object of inspiration is the same for a writer and composer, but the means are still different.

Music minus literature

If the play is called "Sad song" (for example, Kalinnikov, Sviridov and many other composers have it), this determines only the character of the performance, but not the specific content, the different program and non-program music. The specifics are "The dog is lost", "Clowns", "Grandfather Clock" (which pokeyayut-indulge, and then certainly will be beat). This is practically all program music for children, it is deeper and faster understood and better absorbed.

The musical language itself most often specifies the software content through its representativeness: the sound can mimic the singing of birds ("Fagot", "Cuckoo"), the build-up of tension, the fun of folk festivals, fairgrounds ("Extraordinary incident", "Pancake week" and others. Called sound recording, which also clarifies what software music is.

Definition

Any product endowed with a verbal characteristic necessarily contains program elements, which has many kinds. And what is program music, you can understand, even listening or learning sketches. They themselves are designed to develop the technical capabilities of the musician in the role of deployed exercises and can not only not contain the programs, but also music as such, but still often have the features of programming and even are absolutely software. But if in the instrumental work there is a plot, and the content is consistently disclosed, it is necessarily program music. Examples can be found in national folk, and in classical works.

"Three whales" and national features in the program

Also help to understand what program music is, certain features of applied genres: songs ("Polushko", for example), a march in all genre diversity ("March of Chernomor" and "March of Wooden Soldiers"), as well as dance - folk, classical, fantastic . This, with an easy hand, D.B. Kabalevsky, in music - "three whales", which determine genre identity.

The characteristic features of national music also usually serve as the program of the musical composition, setting the overall concept, pace, rhythm of the composition ("Dance with sabers" by Khachaturian, for example, "Two Jews ..." and "Hopak" by Mussorgsky).

Landscape and subject program

The display of one or a series of images, which throughout the composition does not undergo any changes, is also program music. Examples of works can be found everywhere: "In the fields" of Gliere, "On the rocks and fjords" of Grieg and so on. Here you can include pictures of holidays and battles, musical images, landscape and portrait.

Even composers embody the same literary scenes in music in different ways: for example, Shakespeare's "Romeo and Juliet" by Tchaikovsky resulted in an overture, where the programming is generalized, and Berlioz has a consistent one. Both, of course, software music. The name most often can be considered as a plot program, for example, "The Battle of the Huns" Liszt on the same fresco of Kaulbach or his etudes "The Dance of the Dwarves" and "The Noise of the Forest". Sometimes works of sculpture, architecture, painting help to understand what program music is, because they participate in the choice of visual means for a musical picture.

Conclusion

Programmatically enriches music with new expressive means, helps in the search for new forms of work, differentiates genres. If the composer addresses the program in his composition, it brings his listener closer to reality, spiritualizes life, promotes the comprehension of deep spiritual principles. However, if programming is more important than other tasks, then the perception of music is noticeably reduced, that is, the listener needs a space for his own creative perception.

That's why many composers tried to refuse from programming (including Mahler, Tchaikovsky, Shtruaus and others), but despite this, none of them failed to completely non-program music. The unity of music and the specifics of its content is never inextricable and absolute. And the more generalized the content is, the better for the listener. What is program music will become clear by the slightest strokes of the development of musical thought: having ears, so to speak, will hear, despite the fact that a single definition and even the same understanding of this phenomenon in music among music theoreticians has not yet appeared.