Program music increased in extent and status within the art through the program symphonies and symphonic poems of the 19th century.
Between the symphony and the symphonic poem there is an intermediate stage, the program symphony illustrated by the pa...
Program music increased in extent and status within the art through the program symphonies and symphonic poems of the 19th century.
Between the symphony and the symphonic poem there is an intermediate stage, the program symphony illustrated by the pastoral symphony.
Before L. V. Beethoven, J. Haydn had in his humorous way infused an element of external reality in small does into the Farewell, the Suprise, and the Clock symphonies. But L. V. Beethoven in the pastoral symphony went the whole way and indicated in words what he has depicting cheerful. From the pastoral symphony stemmed a line of program symphonies, in which the form was musically self-sufficient but the content contained extra musical matter in varying degrees of density; very thick in H. Berlioz' Symphonie fantastique, which purports to depict episodes in the life of an artist and minimal in his symphony.
H. Berlioz was a most successful seccessor of L. V. Beethoven in the history of Program music, who despised the traditional method as a composer but used his gifted literary or psychological method to express his image. His romantic idea scattered in his composition succeeded to express his poetic thought in his time.
F. Liszt radically extended the technique of giving the instruments not only brilliante but a full and rich for orchestral sound.
Most of F. Liszt's pieces bear litles and are representations of some natural scene or of some poetic idea or work of art.
Apart from introducing a new poetic note into music, F. Liszt extended the harmonic language of his time, even in his ealier works, and his later development of chromatic harmony led eventually to the breakdown of tonality and ultimately to the atonal music of his followers.
His transformation of themes was fully developed by R. Wagner in his system of Leitmotive, and the invention of the one-movement symphonic poem was also due to F. Liszt.
G. Mahler inherited the romantic conception of music as an expression of a guest for spiritual reality. He drew together many different strands of romanticism, L. V. Beethoven's conflict symphony, F. Liszt's program symphonic poem, R. Wagner's enlarged time scale, expanded orchestra, prominent brass tone and emotional intensity.
R. strauss gave a new importance, as well as independence to discords; in fact it might well be said that he was one of the first important composer to make effective use of unresolved discords. He also enriched and extended the art and science of orchestration.
With H. Berlioz, R. Strauss the orchestra assumed the role of a virtuoso and extended orchestration coloration. Each instrument shared equal importance with every other instruments.