September 29, 2025 | Author: Dominic Nicholas | Category:Discover
Saint Saens and a Swan
When listening to music it’s often easy to feel that it is painting pictures or telling a story, even where a piece is entirely ‘abstract’. Abstract pieces are intended to be enjoyed for the sake of the sound itself—even though they may invoke a mood, or have a specific purpose, such as for dancing.
Sometimes, however, composers intentionally write ‘programmatic’ music, where the music evokes a specific image, story or idea. Such pieces are normally purely instrumental, with the music alone conveying the narrative, unlike, for example in an opera where there is also a sung text, set design and lighting.
Here are some of the very best of these most colourful works. Be sure to check out our sheet music—just follow the links—so you too can enjoy playing the best tunes from them.
One of the earliest and most important examples of programmatic musical story telling, Vivaldi’s Four Seasonsis a collection of four concertos, each of which evokes one of the four seasons of the year, the sprightliness of spring,the enervating heatand storms of summer,the bounty of the autumn harvest and the iciness of winter. Read our full guide to this marvellous work, here.
One of the few programmatic works (1802-1808) by Beethoven, his Pastoral symphony evokes different aspects of the countryside.
Each of its five movement is marked with a bucolic description: 1. Awakening of cheerful feelings on arrival in the countryside; 2. Scene by the brook; 3. Merry gathering of country folk; 4. Thunder, Storm; 5. Shepherd's song. Cheerful and thankful feelings after the storm. Melodically rich and emotionally charming, it is justifiably one of the composers most popular works.
Berlioz’s Symphonie Fantastique is his drug-fuelled depiction of an ‘Episode in the Life of an Artist.’ In it the artist becomes obsessed by a beautiful women as represented by a musical idée fixe,a melody that is used throughout the work to evoke her presence.
It is first heard in the 'Daydreams—passions’ of the first movement, then at ‘A Ball’ and, in the third movement, a melancholic ‘Scene in the Country.’ Things turn dark after the artist ingests opium, with a nightmarish March to the Scaffold,where he dreams he has killed his beloved, followed by an orgiastic and terrifying Witches Sabbath.
Pictures at an Exhibition was originally a piano suitebut was orchestrated by Maurice Ravel in 1922. This subsequent version is most often heard today. The work is a musical depiction of an art exhibition, each movement portraying either a different painting or a Promenadetheme as the viewer walks from canvas to canvas.
The picture moments include a mysterious Old Castle,a playful ‘Ballet of Unhatched Chicks,’ a procession of cattle in Bydloand the triumphant The Great Gate of Kiev.
Saint-Saëns—The Carnival of the Animals (1886)
Saint-Saëns'Carnival of the Animals consists of fourteen movements, each of which contains a depiction of a different animal or group of animals.
Highlights of this menagerie of movements include the noble fanfares of the Royal March of the Lion;the incessant clucking of Hens and Roosters;the hilarious and heavy double bass solo depicting The Elephant;a silky and sparkling Aquariumfull of fish; the bony sound of the xylophone used to evoke Fossils;and, gracefully depicted by a solo cello, The Swan.
Presumably in a joke against himself and others, one of the movements also depicts that commonest of musicianly breeds, ‘Pianists.’
By the time of Bedrich Smetana an entire genre of programmatic music, the ‘tone poem,’ had emerged. The tone poem is a symphonic piece, often in one span of connected sections, that depicts a poem, story, painting or any other non-musical source.
Smetana wrote a sequence of six symphonic poems between 1874 and 1879, collectively known as ‘Má vlast’ (‘My Fatherland’). Each depicts a difference aspect of his Czech homeland.
The most famous of these is his magnificent depiction of the Vltava (The Moldau, in English) river, from its source in two springs, the Studená and Teplá Vltava, to its tributary with the Elba. Along this course there are evocations of woods, meadows, of wedding celebrations near the bank, of palaces, castles and of a growing power as it widens towards Prague.
Rimsky-Korsakov’s Scheherazade is a symphonic suite inspired by the exotic tales of ‘The Arabian Nights.’
The suite tells the story of the Sultan Schakhriar who is convinced that all women are false and faithless, so vows to put to death each of his wives after the first nuptial night. But the Sultana Scheherazade saves her life by entertaining Schakhriar with fascinating tales for 1001 nights, leading him eventually to repudiate his vow.
It is separated into four colourful movements, justifiably popular for their brilliant melodies and colourful orchestration: The Sea and Sinbad's Ship;2. The Story of the Kalendar Prince; 3. The Young Prince and the Young Princess;and 4. Festival at Baghdad—The Sea—The Ship Breaks against a Cliff Surmounted by a Bronze Horseman.
Richard Strauss wrote around 10 tone poems (depending on how they are categorised), including the depiction of the legendary lover in Don Juan,a humorous portrayal the German folk trickster Till Eulenspiegeland even a programmatic depiction of a day in the life of the Strauss family in Symphonia Domestica.
His greatest works are arguably his magnificent portrayal of an epic climb in An Alpine Symphonyand Also Sprach Zarathustra,inspired by Nietzsche’s philosophical novel and known for its powerful opening fanfare, popularised by its use in Stanley Kubrick’s film ‘2001.’
