Music 101: Who won the bloodless war over whether classical music should tell stories or not?

Jeremy Reynolds / Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

Imagine a war in which no blood was spilled.

No, not the Cold War — I’m talking about the aesthetic War of the Romantics, in which ego and artists’ finances were often casualties.

Our principal combatants were both German musicians of great renown: the composers Richard Wagner (born 1813), he who wrote the “Ride of the Valkyries” — “Kill the wabbit!” in Bugs Bunny parlance — and Johannes Brahms (born 1833), the man who wrote the “Cradle Song,” probably the most famous lullaby in the Western world.

Who won?

Wagner, a musical progressive, advocated ferociously that music should serve a larger narrative or purpose, either telling a story on its own or intensifying the drama of an opera or ballet or play. This sort of music is called “program music.”

Brahms, the conservative, believed that music should exist on its own merits without being beholden to a particular narrative. This is called “absolute music.”

In classical music, any work can be either programmatic or absolute. There are symphonies that exist purely on their own terms, and these tend to be numbered and have no nickname, like Mozart’s Symphony No. 40. And, there are symphonies that tell explicit stories, like Hector Berlioz’s “Symphonie Fantastique,” in which you can hear a severed head bounce down a set of stairs in the “March to the Scaffold” movement if you know the story well. The same goes for suites, concertos, overtures and other genres.

The exception: Music written for operas and ballets and film is pretty much always programmatic.

On its own merits, music is of course abstract — we think of it as a “language” colloquially, as it can convey the semblance of emotions and energy and changes in feeling. But it can’t really reliably convey specific ideas or thoughts to others without lyrics or knowledge of the composer’s intentions, at least not across cultural traditions.

Brahms found Wagner’s music to be overly prescriptive and dramatic when joined to a story, writing: “I can’t listen to much of Wagner’s music. I start getting the urge to bang my head against the wall.”

You’ll have to forgive Brahms such a brutal outburst — this was war.

And Wagner got plenty of his own shots in, writing, “I believe Brahms would like to compose operas, but he has no talent for dramatic art, so he writes symphonies instead,” and also that “Brahms writes symphonies like the composer of a lullaby.”

Burn.

“I admire Wagner's talent, which is something very remarkable, but I don't like the tendency of his music. I find it immoral,” Brahms shot back.

Pow.

Outside the debates of these venerable dead artists, does knowing the difference between absolute and program music change the experience for listeners?

It doesn’t have to, but it certainly can. The more familiar with absolute forms one becomes, the more of the compositional structure can be revealed, which I find can increase appreciation and pleasure in sitting through a symphony, for example.

At the same time, knowing a work follows an explicit story or theme invites all sorts of interpretation of moments and gestures in the music, and repeated listening reveals more of the detail of how a composer is reproducing events and ideas in abstract sound.

Such preparation may sound like homework. Rather, I think of it as an opportunity to immerse more deeply in a performance and experience the music more intensely while letting the week’s cares float away.

Then again, I’m paid to go to performances. (I love my job.)

So, again, who won the war? 

Musical organizations still play both composers’ music regularly. Today, composers are writing both kinds of music, but the top-paying compositional positions — film and television scoring — are programmatic. Historically, successful operas tended to earn more than absolute compositions like symphonies, as well.

Even the briefest of personality analyses would indicate that Wagner was more materialistic than Brahms and enjoyed a lavish lifestyle. Maybe, like some other historical conflicts, it’s less of a moral and aesthetic question than an economic one.

Food for thought.

And now, just because:

Some examples:

You’ll hear both kinds of music on the same program. Take the next few days of concerts in Pittsburgh:

At the Pittsburgh Symphony:

• Ravel’s Piano Concerto in G (absolute music)

• Sibelius Symphony No. 4 (a loosely programmatic work about human psychology)

• Bartok’s Suite from “The Miraculous Mandarin” (an explicitly programmatic ballet about three tramps and a prostitute — charming)

Friday at 7:30 p.m. and Sunday at 2:30 p.m. at Heinz Hall. Tickets start at $25 at pittsburghsymphony.org.

At the Pittsburgh Chamber Orchestra:

• King David Oratorio (explicitly programmatic oratorio drawn from the Bible)

Saturday at 7:30 p.m. at Calvary United Methodist Church and Sunday at 3 p.m. at Shadyside Presbyterian Church. Tickets begin at $30 at copgh.org. 

At Chamber Music Pittsburgh:

• Samuel Barber’s Quartet in B minor (Absolute music but includes the famous “Adagio for Strings,” which has taken on tragic or solemn overtones because it’s used so often during public ceremonies at times of tragedy.)

• Florence Price’s Quartet No. 2 in A minor (absolute music)

• Brahms’ String Quintet in G Major (take two guesses)

Monday at 7:30 p.m. at the Pittsburgh Playhouse. Tickets begin at $35 at chambermusicpittsburgh.org.

Jeremy Reynolds: [email protected]. His work at the Post-Gazette is supported in part by a grant from the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, Getty Foundation and Rubin Institute.