Program music is a term for instrumental music written in association with a poem, a story, or some other literary source — or even just a highly suggestive word or two. While program music was certainly not new in the Romantic era, it gained new importance and prestige, for program music answered the general Romantic demand for transcending inter-art boundaries. Instrumental music could be made even more expressive, many felt, by linking it to poetry and ideas.

The term program music is sometimes restricted to music that tells or at least traces a story, the story being the “program.” In 1829, at the premiere of his Fantastic Symphony, the composer Hector Berlioz actually handed out a pamphlet containing his own made-up program, and the music of the symphony behaves like a narrator a good deal of the time. From the weird shrieks and groans at the start of the symphony’s last movement, through the riotous welcome of the heroine, to the final frenzied round dance, we are treated to musical events that follow the events of the story step by step (see page 252).

Another type of program music adopts a different strategy. Instead of telling a story, it attempts to capture the general flavor of a mood associated with some extramusical state, concept, or personality. The single word nocturne, as the title for a whole genre of compositions by Frédéric Chopin, is enough to set up expectations of nighttime romance — and the music does the rest (see page 245). In short piano pieces, Schumann drew portraits of his friends (and even of himself; see page 244).

Program music sparked a great debate in the nineteenth century, a debate that still goes on. Does the music really illustrate or represent the program? Suppose the music is played without listeners being given the program — could they tell it from the music? Shouldn’t the music make complete sense on its own terms, even if we grant that the program provides an added dimension to it?

But the point is that the Romantics did not want to be without the program. They did not necessarily want the music to “make sense on its own terms.” And it seems they were prepared to live with this apparent inconsistency: On the one hand, they revered purely instrumental music as the highest form of art; on the other hand, they embraced program music, music that is less “pure” because it mixes in nonmusical elements.