# Narrative Music



## Polednice (Sep 13, 2009)

Forgive me if you can't make sense of any of the following - it's a potentially bonkers interpretation of music, and I can't describe it very well, but I'd still like to ask about it. 

Do you ever find some music (specifically non-programme music here - no operas or tone poems, etc., just 'absolute' music) to sound particularly 'narrative'? Like it's telling a complex story? There is obviously no story there, it just sounds like it's weaving a tale?

I'm sure that most of the music we all listen to evokes all kinds of emotions, maybe some scenes or imaginings, but I find a small number of works feel as though I'm actually being told something in the manner of a story. It's not that I actually imagine a story - I don't picture anything at all - it just gives the sense of telling a tale... OK, I'm rambling incoherently, maybe an example will help. 

I think the most I have ever felt this is with the first movement of Saint-Saens' 2nd Piano Concerto. Here's Hamelin playing it along with a little run-down of my 'narrative' feelings about the opening:






*00:00-00:35*: Most pieces have their introductions, but this one is particularly grand. Like revealing a huge stage, setting the mood for a complex sequence of events to follow.
*00:35-00:52*: Here, I find that the little flourishes in the left hand circling around the fast notes in the right do a job of suggesting a more specific scene setting.
*01:45-03:19*: This, to me, is practically: "Come closer, sit down, make yourself comfortable, and now I'll begin my tale. A long time ago..."

And so it continues...

I know this all probably sounds absolutely ludicrous, but maybe it's one of those things that just can't be described and you just have to feel intuitively. I just get the sense that I'm hearing a drama unfold without words; an opera without arias.

The more I try to analyse it, the more I think it is a feeling created by relatively long, elaborate melodies. Melodies that, when they run their course, don't repeat much material and move about quite a bit in pitch contour. In all, the sense is not of a tight development of a single coherent argument, but instead of a grand, gradual unfolding of a sequence of lengthy, dreamy ideas.

So, am I crazy?  I hope not because I'd love more music like this!


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## Polednice (Sep 13, 2009)

Just by means of an example of the kind of melodies I mean, this is a perfect one by Tchaikovsky. Now this _is_ programme music so it doesn't really count, but it's a depiction of someone actually telling a story, so it works in my favour.  Listen to the clarinet entrance where Francesca da Rimini starts to tell her story - it's a long elaborate melody with a sizeable range.






I think the "come here and listen" feeling is also apparent in the opening few bars of Grieg's Piano Sonata:


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## Ukko (Jun 4, 2010)

_Poley_, I thought this phenomenon was generally recognized; some music seems to be telling a story. It happens more often when the story is being told by an instrument capable of cantabile, e.g. a clarinet or a violin/viola/cello, but sometimes the music permits a piano to do so. Maybe by the cadence and sequence of intervals? Another example similar to "Francesca" is the 'narrative' that connects the episodes in Rimsky's Scheherazade. If you can manage to forget the written storyline, the pseudo narrative still tells a story related to the 'action', it's just that you don't get the details. Some of Debussy's piano music may include a narrative, if you catch it right. Much of it is better taken as descriptive, for instance the drowned cathedral, but there are other things. It is even possible to hear a narrative in Ravel's Le Gibbet, if the circumstances are conducive.

Hmm. I seem to have run on. Sorry _Poley_.


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## violadude (May 2, 2011)

Polednice said:


> Forgive me if you can't make sense of any of the following - it's a potentially bonkers interpretation of music, and I can't describe it very well, but I'd still like to ask about it.
> 
> Do you ever find some music (specifically non-programme music here - no operas or tone poems, etc., just 'absolute' music) to sound particularly 'narrative'? Like it's telling a complex story? There is obviously no story there, it just sounds like it's weaving a tale?
> 
> ...


Listening to the Saint-Saen's with your explanation, I can hear what you mean, so you aren't crazy. Personally though, I have never thought of music in that way. but I think lots of people do so maybe I am the crazy one


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## Polednice (Sep 13, 2009)

Hilltroll72 said:


> _Poley_, I thought this phenomenon was generally recognized; some music seems to be telling a story. It happens more often when the story is being told by an instrument capable of cantabile, e.g. a clarinet or a violin/viola/cello, but sometimes the music permits a piano to do so. Maybe by the cadence and sequence of intervals? Another example similar to "Francesca" is the 'narrative' that connects the episodes in Rimsky's Scheherazade. If you can manage to forget the written storyline, the pseudo narrative still tells a story related to the 'action', it's just that you don't get the details. Some of Debussy's piano music may include a narrative, if you catch it right. Much of it is better taken as descriptive, for instance the drowned cathedral, but there are other things. It is even possible to hear a narrative in Ravel's Le Gibbet, if the circumstances are conducive.
> 
> Hmm. I seem to have run on. Sorry _Poley_.


I suppose so, but can you think of some examples where that sense is sustained throughout the entire piece? I think the Saint-Saens does this, but examples I can think of in line with your descriptions are just moments or sections within a larger piece. I recognise that that kind of narrative is common, but what about lengthier stuff?


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## violadude (May 2, 2011)

Polednice said:


> I suppose so, but can you think of some examples where that sense is sustained throughout the entire piece? I think the Saint-Saens does this, but examples I can think of in line with your descriptions are just moments or sections within a larger piece. I recognise that that kind of narrative is common, but what about lengthier stuff?


Opera ......


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## Dodecaplex (Oct 14, 2011)

What about pieces that are not exactly programmatic but still have a title that is somewhat representative of something?

For instance, this Alkan etude is titled "Fire in the Neighboring Village". And it starts all pastoral and peaceful until the first "danger" is noticed at 2:14 with eight extremely low notes being played as a "warning". But it doesn't disturb the pastoral life and the peace comes back, until 2:34 when the warning returns. From then on, it becomes more serious until it goes hogwild insane at 3:04. (Read the video description, it gives more information about what's going on).






I don't know. Does this count?


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## Rasa (Apr 23, 2009)

Pretty programmatic to me...


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## Ukko (Jun 4, 2010)

Dodecaplex said:


> What about pieces that are not exactly programmatic but still have a title that is somewhat representative of something?
> 
> For instance, this Alkan etude is titled "Fire in the Neighboring Village". And it starts all pastoral and peaceful until the first "danger" is noticed at 2:14 with eight extremely low notes being played as a "warning". But it doesn't disturb the pastoral life and the peace comes back, until 2:34 when the warning returns. From then on, it becomes more serious until it goes hogwild insane at 3:04. (Read the video description, it gives more information about what's going on).
> 
> ...


I call that, and several other Alkan pieces, descriptive rather than narrative. A narrative requires a teller.


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## Polednice (Sep 13, 2009)

Hilltroll72 said:


> I call that, and several other Alkan pieces, descriptive rather than narrative. A narrative requires a teller.


I hadn't thought about that distinction, but yes, I suppose you're right. Rather obtusely, I'm looking for things that sound narrative without actually describing anything at all.


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## Guest (Dec 19, 2011)

IMHO the human brain is designed to try to extract patterns and meaning, and will often do so even when there is none. It seems perfectly natural and probably nearly universal to imagine a story, or at least wonder what the composer was thinking, particularly when the music isn't tightly structured. But this goes well beyond music - people find patterns in their luck at cards, stock market movements, random historical events, etc.


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## regressivetransphobe (May 16, 2011)

I think about most music in a narrative or visual way, from "pure music" to serialism. To me, it's essential that music engages the imagination. That might be a childish way of going about things, but hey.


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## clavichorder (May 2, 2011)

I haven't been particularly inspired to feel out the meaning in a piece lately, due to the sheer number of pieces I consume, but certain pieces I become so familiar with, that I start to hear things in them. Sometimes even when I'm not as familiar, the intensity of a good listen at an opportune time can bring out descriptive ideas from the music to my emotions and imagination.

My most recent experience of high intensity feeling in a piece of music of epic length and scope(I.E., symphony or overture or the like) was with William Schuman's 3rd symphony. Large parts of the symphony almost agitated me, but I would wait for certain parts that really hit a chord with my heart strings. In this one particularly section in the "Fugue" movement(second movement), right towards the end, it perfectly depicts a firefighter saving a boy from a flaming house just in the knick of time before the house collapses. Its a really dreary story, but it has such soul and depth to it, the whole symphony I mean. Hmmm, this is making me want to relive it!


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## Sid James (Feb 7, 2009)

Polednice said:


> ...
> Do you ever find some music (specifically non-programme music here - no operas or tone poems, etc., just 'absolute' music) to sound particularly 'narrative'? Like it's telling a complex story? There is obviously no story there, it just sounds like it's weaving a tale?
> 
> ...


Well, I do have a fertile imagination, and that lends itself to thinking about music in this way. Esp. when I was younger. Now, only images, not stories come to my mind, usually, with music.

When I was younger, Prokofiev's _Sym. #3_ always bought to my mind some story. Of course no wonder since this work was extracted from an opera, I think. Anyway, I can't remember exactly what I thought, but the scherzo movement, with this leaping thing from the strings, felt like to me as if it was a tiger chasing a deer or something, the latter represented by a flute (if my memory is correct, haven't listened to it for ages). Of course, in the final movement, there is tubular bells, so of course the classic images of Russian Orthodox onion domed churches come to mind, but I can't remember how this tied in with the tiger and deer scenario.

Of course,_ Scheherazade _was always like this for me, but as people have said, that's obvious.

Mahler's symphonies come across often as a story of his life, again obvious. Eg. in_ Sym. #1_, the first theme of the 1st movement, based on one of his _Wayfarer Songs_, is to me like riding in a carriage, the trotting of the horses hooves. Maybe I saw this as soundtrack to a film with that kind of scene when I was young, I have a feeling. Of course, the rest of that symphony has a kind of narrative, the landler like a trip to the country, then the _Frere Jacques _tune in the funeral march bit, then a kind of apocalyptic triumph or raising from the dead of someone like Lazarus even, in the finale.

These are two things that came to mind straight away, but I had to do a bit of dredging, these memories are from last century!!!...


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## Klavierspieler (Jul 16, 2011)

I've always found Schumann's Fourth Symphony to have a definite narrative quality.


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