#and!!!

Programmatic music is a genre within classical music that I love a lot, and it tends to be super listener-friendly! It’s made up of pieces written to tell a story with a real title (as opposed to more abstract music with titles like KJV Op. 2026, Mvt. 314) Some of my favorites:

The Water Goblin, by Antonin Dvorak - https://youtu.be/FIDTah3SvCU

This is drawn from Czech folk tale about a water goblin who steals away a young maiden and makes her his wife — it’s pretty dark, but I like how jubilant the goblin’s silly little dance is :)

Death and the Maiden, by Franz Schubert - https://youtu.be/CSdlrvC08lM

The figures of Death and the Maiden crop up a lot in romantic literature, and Schubert had already written a Lied (a vocal song, accompanied by piano) that formed a dialogue between the two. You can hear Death slowly seducing the maiden and her eventually succumbing. The theme of this song appears with variations in the second movement of this quartet, hence the name of the quartet, but the whole piece is gorgeous!

Dido’s Lament, by Henry Purcell - https://youtu.be/-H--Z9UzQYE

Lotta sad songs about ill-fated maidens in the classical world 🙂‍↕️ here, Dido (of Dido and Aeneas) sings about how sad she is that her boyfriend won’t love her back, and how death is the only comfort that remains to her. Some :) pleasant, easy listening. I love the use of period-accurate instruments in this performance!

The Lark Ascending, by Ralph Vaughn Williams - https://youtu.be/ZR2JlDnT2l8

Pretty straightforwardly, the violin takes the meandering melody of a lark in this one :)

The Moldau, by Bedrich Smetana - https://youtu.be/3G4NKzmfC-Q

Smetana wrote this as part of a larger collection in tribute to his native country of Czech; this particular piece is written after the river Moldau. You can hear the eddies and currents really clearly between the winds and strings!

Overture to A Midsummer Night’s Dream, by Felix Mendelssohn - https://youtu.be/out0FCQWBak

This was originally written to accompany a performance of Midsummer Night’s Dream, and Felix later turned it into the overture for a little opera. Overtures usually feature a lot of the themes and motifs that can be found through the whole opera, and were played before any of the actors came out so the audience could get all hyped up for the action :) You can hear a lot of fluttery fairy-like action in the strings, and if you listen to the big bouncy part there’s a couple clear, enunciated “HEE-haws” in honor of Nick Bottom

Promenade (Walking the Dog) by George Gershwin - https://youtu.be/-Oqrw93E1_g