Program Music

Instrumental music that represents extramusical content: a narrative, scene, character, landscape or literary text, usually identified by a descriptive title or an accompanying programme note. Against the ideal of absolute music, programmatic composition shapes its succession of themes, keys and climaxes after the events it depicts, from *Vivaldi*'s sonnet-illustrated seasons and *Berlioz*'s "Symphonie fantastique" to the tone poems of *Liszt*, *Smetana* and *Richard Strauss*, in which the orchestra functions as narrator and the listener follows a story told in sound alone.