Program and “Absolute” Music

Viewing art in a gallery

Students of music sometimes think that there has to be a story or picture to go along with art music, that the music is otherwise incomplete. Actually, art music requires no such “program” (a “program” in this sense is an extra-musical idea), although images may spontaneously come to mind. The greatest program music—program music is music that refers to an extra-musical idea—can stand on its own without the program. The opposite of program music is “absolute” music—music without reference to anything outside itself.

We often can tell right off just by the titles if a piece is “program” music or “absolute music” (absolute music stands by itself without any extra-musical ideas). Program music tends to have imaginative titles like “Spring,” “The Engulfed Cathedral,” or “The Old Castle.” Absolute music tends to have more generic titles like “Prelude and Fugue in Bb Major,” Concerto Number 3, or Symphony Number 4.

I’m sure you will want to think about the program as you listen. Music is so ephemeral—so fleeting and brief. Unlike the musical score that you can hold in your hand and examine for as long as you wish, music itself, especially in live performance, flits into our experience, hovers for its brief moment, and then is gone.

Now I will tell you a secret. Many performers, including me (see “My Jennifer Sonata”), perhaps most of the really good performers, have an undisclosed and personal program that goes along with the music they are performing. The performer himself made it up while he was practicing. The audience never hears about it; the performer rarely will talk about it even with friends; and yet there it is, floating along in the performer’s mind, making the music personal, real, and expressive. Somehow, although the audience doesn’t know the metaphor, they do hear something personal, real, and expressive. To me, it seems almost like magic.

Listen to all or part of a great piece of program music, Modest Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition (35 minutes). As we listen to the music, we can imagine ourselves strolling from picture to picture in the gallery to the sound of the Promenade. Here are the names of the ten pieces of art in Mussorgsky’s masterpiece:

The Gnome, The Old Castle, Tuileries (Children at Play), Cattle, The Ballet of Unhatched Chicks in Their Shells, Two Jews: One Rich, One Poor, The Market at Limoges, The Catacombs, The Hut on Fowl’s Legs, and The Great Gate of Kiev.

Mussorgsky’s piano masterpiece has been orchestrated (arranged for the orchestra to play) many times over the years. The most famous and popular of these arrangements is the one created by French composer Maurice Ravel (1875-1937), and his orchestration is a masterpiece in its own right.