Write a paper on Absolute Music vs. Program Music (Module 6)Read the following four quotes from prominent 19th century composers, and post your response to the following: Label each quote as either pro-absolute music or pro-program music (see Chapter 37), then summarize your argument in your own words. Finally, select which position you agree with more, and state why.
1. “It has been the composer’s goal to develop different situations in the life of an artist, insofar as they are susceptible of musical treatment. The plot of the instrumental drama, lacking the help of the spoken word, needs to be pre sent beforehand…[which] serves to introduce musical pieces whose character and expression it motivates.” — Hector Berlioz, 1830, from Piero Weiss and Richard Taruskin, Music in the Western World (Belmont, CA: Thomson- Schirmer, 2008), p. 301.
2. “If you ask me what I was thinking of when I composed it [Songs without Words], my answer is: the song exactly as it stands. And if I did have a particular word of particular words in mind, I would not breathe them to anyone, because a word does not mean to one person what it means to the other, because only the song says the same thing to one, awakens the same feeling in him, as in the other— a feeling that cannot be expressed by the same words.” — Felix Mendelssohn, 1842, from Piero Weiss and Richard Taruskin, Music in the Western World (Belmont, CA: Thomson- Schirmer, 2008), pp. 325–26.
3. “The poet- symphonist, who takes it upon himself to convey clearly an image distinctly perceived in his own mind, a succession of feelings unambiguously and definitely pre sent in his consciousness— why pray, should he not strive to be fully understood by the aid of a program?” — Franz Liszt, n.d., from Piero Weiss and Richard Taruskin, Music in the Western World (Belmont, CA: Thomson- Schirmer, 2008), p. 327.
4. “Thus the program. All Germany is happy to let him keep it: such signposts always have something unworthy and charlatan- like about them! (…) In a word, the German, with his delicacy of feeling, and his aversion to personal revelation, dislikes having his thoughts so rudely directed.” — Robert Schumann, 1835, from Hector Berlioz, Fantastic Symphony, ed. Edward T. Cone (New York: Norton, 1971), pp. 246–47.
