Program Music
Instrumental music with literary or pictorial association
Program music
This type of orchestral program music, often a single-movement piece, originated as an outgrowth of opera overtures and typically retains classical forms while evoking an idea or place
Concert overture
In the Middle Ages, life in a monastery was devoted to this institution, involving religious seclusion, prayer, scholarship, and charity
Catholic church
This French composer wrote Symphonie Fantastique
Hector Berlioz
This Norwegian composer, known for his lyricism and use of folk music, wrote the incidental music for Henrik Ibsen’s play Peer Gynt
Edvard Grieg
Named after a pope, this type of plainchant features monophonic melodies, free-flowing rhythms, and modal scales
Gregorian chant
A five-movement program symphony
Symphonie fantastique
This Hungarian composer created the symphonic poem, a one-movement orchestral work with freer structure and contrasting sections that develop poetic ideas and create mood
Franz Liszt
A 12th-century German abbess, poet, and composer, she was known for her visionary writings and unique musical style, including Alleluia, O virga mediatrix
Hildegard of Bingen
The fourth movement in Symphonie fantastique
March to the Scaffold
A famous excerpt from Peer Gynt, this piece features a minor-mode theme that grows in intensity, portraying wild troll daughters taunting the main character before a dramatic collapse
In the Hall of the Mountain King
This Greek prayer for mercy, often set in a three-part structure symbolizing the Trinity, is the first sung portion of the Ordinary of the Mass
The Kyrie