# Programmatic Music



## southupper (Mar 28, 2010)

Hi Guys

I am a BA Honours Music Production Final Year student, and as part of my dissertation I am trying to discover if it is possible to differentiate programmatic music, to that of 'normal' romantic music.

Below is a link to a questionnaire I have devised to try to help conclude an answer.

http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/3RKNBD9

If you could fill it out for me i'd be very grateful

Thanks

James


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## emiellucifuge (May 26, 2009)

Done!
good luck


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## Guest (Mar 29, 2010)

Tchaikovsky?

Wouldn't it be better to have chosen music that people would be less likely to know? (No, I didn't go past the first page, so I don't know which pieces you chose, but I can think of very few pieces by Tchaikovsky that most listeners wouldn't already know, and wouldn't already know the stories to, if any.)

In any event, don't you pretty much know the answer to this already? (I.e., that some people make pictures or stories to every piece they listen to, and that some people make nothing to any piece, "programmatic" or not.)

I remember when I was first listening to classical music. I'd read the programs and then try to follow the stories. Not very successful. Later, after years of listening and reading about music, I started making up stories to go with this or that piece, just because I could (and to confound the idea that music, any music, is even able to narrate). That was fun for a little while, though kind of silly. And since then, I've just listened to music. Since then, I've also read some more about how different pieces came to be. You'd be amazed at how many piece are made of bits of other pieces. That's especially true for Berlioz and Prokofiev, who were prime raiders of their earlier music. But it's true to a certain extent for all composers.

And what one learns from that is that to the composers apparently the same tune used for praising God in one piece can be used for "depicting" a carnival in another. Apparently the music portraying boredom with girls and falling in love in one piece can be used to accompany the pleasure of giving a nice girl some in another.

Composers apparently are in the business of putting notes together into phrases, phrases that are apparently flexible enough to be associated with widely varying moods and story lines.


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## starry (Jun 2, 2009)

some guy said:


> And what one learns from that is that to the composers apparently the same tune used for praising God in one piece can be used for "depicting" a carnival in another.


This is what I said in a thread looking at religion in music. JS Bach used some music for sacred purposes and reused it for secular, or the other way round.

It's not so much about the basic material often anyway, it's what's done with it by the composer.



some guy said:


> Composers apparently are in the business of putting notes together into phrases, phrases that are apparently flexible enough to be associated with widely varying moods and story lines.


Yes, it's a craft...not really about some vague unproven or unexplained ideas that some like to put into music. It's the same with popular music as well. There can be a formula, a style...but the creativity comes with how the individual makes a piece unique within that.


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## JRFuerst (Apr 2, 2010)

Done. I enjoyed that, thank you.


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