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Learning Objectives

Be ready to...
  • Explain the difference between casual listeners, referential listeners, critical listeners, and perceptive listeners.
  • Discuss the casual listener's approach to music and the use of certain pieces of music, e.g., Johann Sebastian Bach's Air from Suite No. 3 in D major, BWV 1068, as background or mood music.
  • Discuss the referential listener's approach to music and the use of certain pieces of music, e.g., Hector Berlioz's Symphonie Fantastique, as program music.
  • Discuss the critical listener's motivation to music listening and how her/his approach differs from that of the casual and the referential listener.
  • Discuss the perceptive listener's approach to music listening and how their listening attitude combines, but is not limited by that of the casual, referential, and critical listener.
  • Explain the difference between program music and absolute music.
  • Review Berlioz's Symphonie Fantastique and Vivaldi's The Four Seasons (Le Quattro Stagioni) as examples of program music.
  • Define the following musical terms: absolute music, ideé fixe, program music, symphony, tempo, and theme.

Types of Listeners

The Referential Listener

Sometimes music may remind people of past events, or it may bring to mind particular images, feelings, or situations. At times, these external references are so strong that the music is not really heard anymore; instead, the listener is caught up in the memories of the person, event, or feeling. Although it is undeniable that extra-musical connections or associations may be developed through listening, referential listeners tend to relate to music exclusively in that way.

Composers are aware of the associative power of music and sometimes intentionally title their compositions to bring certain connections to mind. Music of this type may follow an explicit story or program, and is therefore known as program music. By contrast, music that is not associated with a particular story, image, object, or event is called absolute music. Regardless of the composer’s intent, those whose main connection with music is through memories of some sort are known as referential listeners.

In 1827, Hector Berlioz, then a 23-year-old French composer, fell madly in love with an Irish Shakespearean actress named Harriet Smithson, who, much to his chagrin, coldly rejected him. To impress and win her affection, he set off to compose a gigantic autobiographical work, a love letter that occupied him for the next three years of his life. The Symphonie Fantastique was the first major symphony to include a detailed story (lurid details included) for each movement. Berlioz did eventually marry Smithson in 1833, with predictably disastrous consequences.

Example of Program Music

In the Symphonie Fantastique, a young, lovesick musician in the throes of a desperate, impossible passion takes a large dose of opium with the intention of killing himself. Instead, he has wild hallucinations. The five movements of the symphony represent different hallucinogenic episodes in the life of the artist.

Berlioz wrote lengthy program notes for this symphony. The ones excerpted here were published in 1845 (the capitalized words are his). The composer deemed them "indispensable for a complete understanding of the dramatic outline of the work."

The first movement represents the passion of the lovesick musician. In it, the beloved is represented by a musical theme that appears in every movement, recurring as an obsession or idée fixe—an idea that continually haunts the artist. About this movement Berlioz wrote:

Composer: Hector Berlioz

  • "Symphonie Fantastique, Op. 14: IV. March To The Scaffold"

Hector Berlioz

Hector Berlioz

(1803-1869)
Symphonie Fantastique IV. 'March to the Scaffold'
The author imagines that a young musician, afflicted with that moral disease that a celebrated writer calls “the surge of passions,” sees for the first time a woman who embodies all the charms of the ideal being of whom he has dreamed, and he falls hopelessly in love with her. Through a bizarre trick of fancy, the beloved image always appears in the mind's eye of the artist linked to a musical thought whose character, passionate but also noble and reticent, he finds similar to the one he attributes to his beloved.

In the second movement, "A Ball," the artist sees his beloved across the room, and the initially calm waltz evolves into a mad swirl. Berlioz wrote:

The artist finds himself in the most varied situations—in the midst of THE TUMULT OF A FESTIVITY, in the peaceful contemplation of the beauties of nature; but wherever he is, in the city, in the country, the beloved image appears before him and troubles his soul.

The third movement, "Scene in the Fields," depicts a peaceful country scene in which the artist's intoxicated mind is tinged with dark suspicions that his beloved is not being faithful to him. Berlioz wrote:

Finding himself in the country at evening, he hears in the distance two shepherds piping a ranz des vaches in dialogue. The pastoral duet, the scenery, the quiet rustling of the trees gently disturbed by the wind, certain hopes he has recently found reason to entertain—all these come together in giving his heart an unaccustomed calm, and in giving a brighter color to his ideas. He reflects upon his isolation; he hopes that soon he will no longer be alone...But what if she were deceiving him!...This mixture of hope and fear, these ideas of happiness disturbed by black presentiments, form the subject of the ADAGIO. At the end, one of the shepherds again takes up the ranz des vaches; the other no longer replies...The distant sound of thunder...solitude...silence.

(The term ranz des vaches refers to a Swiss cattle herder's song, a type of folk song also used by other composers.)

To illustrate how Berlioz depicts events with music, the following description corresponds to a section of the fourth movement, which Berlioz titled "March to the Scaffold":

Composer: Hector Berlioz

  • "Symphonie Fantastique, Op. 14: IV. March To The Scaffold"

Composer: Hector Berlioz

  • "Symphonie Fantastique, Op. 14: IV. March To The Scaffold" [ 03:45-04:21 ]00:36

Composer: Hector Berlioz

  • "Symphonie Fantastique, Op. 14: IV. March To The Scaffold" [ 04:28-04:52 ]00:24

"March to the Scaffold" depicts the young artist as he marches to the scaffold to be executed for his crime of passion, having killed his beloved in a fit of jealousy. Berlioz wrote:

Having become certain that his love goes unrecognized, the artist poisons himself with opium. The dose of the narcotic, too weak to kill him, plunges him into a sleep accompanied by the most horrible visions. He dreams that he has killed the woman he had loved, that he is condemned, led to the scaffold, and that he is witnessing HIS OWN EXECUTION. The procession moves forward to the sounds of a march that is now somber and fierce, now brilliant and solemn, in which the muffled noise of heavy steps gives way without mediation to the most noisy clangor. At the end of the march, the first four measures of the IDÉE FIXE reappear like a last thought of love interrupted by the fatal blow.

The drama increases with the fifth and final movement, "Dreams of a Witches' Sabbath." The artist burns in hell, while his beloved, transformed into a horrible witch, mocks him for all eternity. Of this movement Berlioz wrote:

He sees himself at the sabbath, in the midst of a frightful assembly of ghosts, sorcerers, monsters of every kind, all come together for his funeral. Strange noises, groans, outbursts of laughter, distant cries which other cries seem to answer. The beloved melody appears again, but it has lost its character of nobility and reticence; now it is no more than the tune of an ignoble dance, trivial and grotesque; it is she, come to join the sabbath...A roar of joy at her arrival...She takes part in the devilish orgy...Funeral knell, burlesque parody of the DIES IRAE, SABBATH ROUND DANCE. The sabbath round and the Dies irae combined.

Composer: Hector Berlioz

  • "Symphonie Fantastique, Op. 14: IV. March To The Scaffold" [ 01:33-01:39 ]00:06

Composer: Hector Berlioz

  • "Symphonie Fantastique, Op. 14: V. Dreams of a Witches' Sabbath" [ 01:40-02:59 ]01:19

Composer: Hector Berlioz

  • "Symphonie Fantastique, Op. 14: V. Dreams of a Witches' Sabbath" [ 07:02-09:52 ]02:50