Program Music:

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Program MusicPictures at an ExhibitionMussorg
sky

• The Burning River Brass
• Arr. Michael Allen

Powerpoint by Michael Macartney
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Program Music

• Program Music is intended to musically represent
  or accompany an extra musical theme such as a
  painting, geographical feature, emotion etc.
  The term is almost exclusively applied to works
  from the Romantic Period (1825-1910)

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Examples of Program Music

• Berlioz Symphonie Fanstastique
• Saint Saëns Carnival of the Animals
• Smetana Die Moldau
• Stravinsky The Rite of Spring

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About the Composer

• Mussorgsky wrote a colossal opera (Boris
  Godunov), five-dozen wonderful songs, and not
  much else. More accurately, he started many
  pieces, and the few he finished typically
  suffered editorial interference when they were
  published. At first it seemed to have been sheer
  indolence that curbed his output eventually he
  paid more attention to drinking than to music,
  and thats what did him in at age 42

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Pictures at an Exhibition

• Written by Mussorgsky for his late friend Victor
  Hartmann. Hartmann was an architect and painter
  who passed away in 1873. After his death an
  exhibition was organized in honor of Hartmann. A
  huge selection of his creations over 400
  watercolors, drawings, and jewelry designs was
  exhibited in tribute at the St. Petersburg
  Academy of the Arts. Mussorgsky was so moved by
  the display that he composed a piano suite in
  tribute, however it wasnt published until 5
  years after the composers death.

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Tuileries

• This movement comes from the painting The
  Tuileries Gardens. The gardens are located in
  Paris and like most of the paintings represented
  in this work this one was lost, however through
  Mussorgskys use of the universal melody and
  falling thirds you can imagine the children
  playing and taunting each other in the garden.

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Pictures at an Exhibition

• 10 of Hartmanns pictures are represented through
  Mussorgskys music, however only 3 appeared in
  the actual exhibition. The others were in
  Mussorgskys private collection or he had seen
  them somewhere else.

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Pictures at an Exhibition

• The other 5 movements are the recurring Promenade
  theme used to illustrate the viewers walk from
  painting to painting and to unify the 15 movement
  work
• He also uses this theme in the pieces finale
  The Great Gate of Kiev

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The Great Gate of Kiev
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The Great Gate of Kiev

• A competition was held to select the best design
  for a gateway to be built in Kiev to honor the
  failed assassination of Czar Alexander II in
  1866. Hartmann won the competition. His entry
  showed a Moorish-looking structure topped with a
  cupola in the shape of an old Russian battle
  helmet, with a small crowd of people admiring the
  gate that dwarfs them.

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The Great Gate of Kiev

• Pictures at an Exhibition rises to this grand and
  glorious finale that leaves the listener feeling
  as if they had traveled to Kiev and are now
  standing in front of this tragically non-existent
  gate.

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Program Music

• This suite is a perfect example of Program Music
  because it takes pictures (an extra-musical idea)
  and uses themes, textures, and timbre to
  represent them musically. The beauty of this
  piece is that Hartmanns lost artwork lives on
  through the music.