Grace Notes

Antonio Vivaldi was arguably a composer who was well ahead of his time. His Four Seasons is one of the earliest and most famous examples of what we’d now call “program music,” even though that term wasn’t popularized until well over a century after he composed it. Program music is descriptive of a specific extra-musical element, such as a story or object. The composer supplies a reference to guide the audience’s ear; in the case of The Four Seasons, Vivaldi’s “programs” take the form of four sonnets that were written in the score. Each one not only describes general features of the named season, but changing landscapes and conditions that clearly play out in the music. In contrast, “absolute music” is often described as “music for music’s sake,” and is not meant to signify anything specific outside itself. Program music reached the height of its popularity in the Romantic period, when Franz Liszt wrote about the term and composed examples such as the Faust Symphony. Hector Berlioz’s Harold en Italie and Richard Strauss’s Don Quixote go as far as to clearly represent individual characters with solo instruments.