List of program music

Program music is a term usually applied to orchestral music in the classical music tradition in which the piece is designed according to some preconceived narrative, or is designed to evoke a specific concrete idea. This is distinct from the more traditional absolute music, popular in the Baroque and Classical eras, in which the piece has no narrative program, but is simply music for music's sake.

Opera, Ballet, Lieder, and Incidental music could also trivially be considered program music since they are intended to accompany vocal or stage performances. They will be excluded from this list except where they have been extensively popularized and played without the original vocals and/or stage performance.

The orchestral program music tradition is also continued in some pieces for jazz orchestra. For narrative or evocative popular music, please see Concept Album.

Any discussion of program music brings to mind Walt Disney's animated features Fantasia (1940) and Fantasia 2000 (1999), in which the Disney animators provided explicit visualizations of a number of famous pieces of program music. It should be noted, however, that not all the pieces used in the films were particularly programmatic, and in most cases the narratives illustrated by the animators were different from whatever programmatic narrative might have existed originally.

Contents

1 List of program music by composer 1.1 Leroy Anderson 1.2 P. D. Q. Bach 1.3 J. S. Bach 1.4 Ludwig van Beethoven 1.5 Hector Berlioz 1.6 Anton Bruckner 1.7 Aaron Copland 1.8 Paul Dukas 1.9 Antonín Dvořák 1.10 Edvard Grieg 1.11 George Gershwin 1.12 Ferde Grofé 1.13 Augusta Holmès 1.14 Leoš Janáček 1.15 Gustav Mahler 1.16 Olivier Messiaen 1.17 Modest Mussorgsky 1.18 Ottorino Respighi 1.19 Terry Riley 1.20 Nicolai Rimsky-Korsakov 1.21 Camille Saint-Saëns 1.22 Bedrich Smetana 1.23 William Grant Still 1.24 Richard Strauss 1.25 Jean Sibelius 1.26 Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky 1.27 Antonio Vivaldi 1.28 Richard Wagner

List of program music by composer

Leroy Anderson

• Sleigh Ride featuring sleigh bells, whip cracks, and a horse noise (trumpet)
• The Typewriter a concerto for solo typewriter

P. D. Q. Bach

• 1712 Overture

J. S. Bach

• Capriccio for keyboard in Bb "On the departure of a beloved brother" BWV 992
• Many of Bach's cantatas contain elements that could be considered programmatic

Ludwig van Beethoven

• Coriolan Overture, Op. 62 (1807); based on the story of Coriolanus
• Symphony No. 6, Pastoral, Op. 68 (1808); features titled movements, country dances, bird calls, and a storm.
• Leonore No. 3 Overture, Op. 72b (1806); one of a series of overtures composed for the opera Leonore, later renamed Fidelio. Leonore No. 3 is well known for portraying some of the major events of the plot in a condensed, purely orchestral form, most notably the distant trumpet fanfares of the finale. Next to the actual, finalized Fidelio overture, this is the most commonly performed version, and still sometimes replaces the Fidelio overture in some productions.
• Piano Sonata in Ab Op. 26 (3rd movement subtitled "Death of an hero", 4th movement manifestly "Life goes on" in intent)
• Piano Sonata in D minor Op. 31 Nr. 2 ("Der Stuerm", inspired by Shakespeare's The Tempest)

Hector Berlioz

• Symphonie Fantastique, (1830)
• Harold in Italy, based on Childe Harold's Pilgrimage by Lord Byron, (1834)

Anton Bruckner

• Symphony No. 4 in E-flat major, "Romantic" - The program, involving medieval castles and dawn and royal hunts, appears to have been an afterthought like it was with the other Symphonies, but the validity of it in this case is supported by the subtitle given to the work, the only one of Bruckner's Symphonies to have been given a subtitle by the composer himself.

Aaron Copland

• Appalachian Spring
• Billy the Kid
• Lincoln Portrait
• Rodeo

Paul Dukas

• The Sorcerer's Apprentice

Antonín Dvořák

• Symphony No. 9, "From the New World," which is associated with The Song of Hiawatha
• The Water Goblin

Edvard Grieg

• Peer Gynt Suite, originally incidental music for the play Peer Gynt by Henrik Ibsen, but now is almost always played by itself.

George Gershwin

• An American in Paris, (1928) Taxi horns, a solicitation by a prostitute, homesickness lifting on meeting with a fellow American

Ferde Grofé

• Grand Canyon Suite, (1931). Named sections illustrate "Sunrise," "The Painted Desert," "On the Trail," "Sunset" and "Cloudburst." "On the Trail" is the familiar section with a mule's braying and hoofbeats. "Cloudburst," another musical storm, was described by Toscanini as "vivid and terrifying."

Augusta Holmès

• Irlande
• Pologne

Leoš Janáček

• Rhapsody for orchestra, Taras Bulba; based on the novella by Nikolai Gogol

Gustav Mahler

Much of Mahler's early work was designed programmatically. However, it should be noted that he made serious efforts to downplay the programmatic reputation of many of these pieces later in his life, including removing some of the programmatic titles from his symphonies.

• Symphony No. 1, Titan, (1888)
• Symphone No. 2, Resurrection, (1894)

Olivier Messiaen

• Des Canyons au Etoiles ("From the Canyons to the Stars"), on the natural beauty of the United States
• Catalogue d'Oiseaux ("Catalog of Birds")
• Oiseaux exotiques

Modest Mussorgsky

• Pictures at an Exhibition; movements represent a series of paintings and the promenade of a viewer around the gallery

Ottorino Respighi

• Pini di Roma (Pines of Rome)
• Gli Uccelli ("The Birds"), (1927)

Terry Riley

• Chanting the Light of Foresight, with Rova

Nicolai Rimsky-Korsakov

• Scheherazade, op. 35, (1888). Section titles such as "The Sea and Sinbad's Ship," "Festival in Baghdad."

Camille Saint-Saëns

• Phaéton, Op. 39
• Danse Macabre, Op. 40 (1874)
• The Carnival of the Animals, (1886)

Bedrich Smetana

• Ma Vlast, 1874-1879
• String Quartet No. 1, From my life

William Grant Still

• Symphony No. 1, "Afro-American"
• Symphony No. 2 in G minor, "Song of a New Race"

Richard Strauss

Major developer of the tone poem musical form, Strauss was skilled in musical description. He claimed that he was capable of "describing a knife and fork" in music. He also said that a sensitive listener to Don Juan could discern the hair color of Don Juan's amorous partners.

• Tod un Verklärung (Death and Transfiguration) op. 24, 1889
• Don Juan (1889)
• Also Sprach Zarathustra (Thus Spake Zarathustra) op. 30, 1896
• Don Quixote, op. 35, 1897
• Symphonia Domestica, op. 53 1903. Musical description of the composer's personal daily life, including a musically-unflattering picture of Frau Strauss
• An Alpine Symphony, op. 64 1915. Twenty-two named narrative sections describe the ascent of a mountain. Another program-music storm, with perhaps the best musical thunder-and-lightning ever orchestrated.

Jean Sibelius

• Kullervo, symphonic poem based on the story of Kullervo in Finnish mythology

Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky

• The 1812 Overture (1882) famously uses different themes to represent the French and Russian armies in the Napoleonic Wars, and concludes with the firing of cannons and the ringing of the church bells.

Antonio Vivaldi

• The Four Seasons (Le quattro stagioni, 1723) A set of four violin concerti depicting the four seasons of the year. There are also four sonnets that go with these concerti, see the article for more details.

Richard Wagner

• Siegfried Idyll