Reading: Early Romantic Program Music

Question 1

What are the two main forms of early Romantic miniature compositions?

Answer 1

The lied and the character piece for piano.

Question 2

Concert Overture

Answer 2

An early nineteenth-century genre resembling an opera overture – but without any following opera.

Question 3

What makes music like Mendelssohn’s Hebrides Overture an overture?

Answer 3

It is clearly program music, but it is an overture only because it follows the standard scheme for overtures at the time (a single movement in sonata form).

Question 4

Program Symphonies

Answer 4

A symphony with a program, as by Berlioz.

Question 5

Idee Fixe

Answer 5

A fixed idea, an obsession; the term used by Berlioz for a recurring theme used in all the movements of one of his program symphonies.

Question 6

Why was Berlioz special?

Answer 6

He encouraged listeners to think his work had been composed under the influence of opium, he was madly in love from afar with an Irish actress, he demanded an orchestra of unprecedented size, and also pioneered the notion of an idea fixe.

Question 7

Dies Irae

Answer 7

Day of Wrath