Before the Romantic musical age, composers wrote music for the purpose of arranging sounds into the most beautiful way possible. Because of these goals, they followed some very specific ideas and wouldn't stray from them. Once the Romantic era hit, composers wanted to express a variety of things in their music. This is when the idea of program music appeared. Program music is usually instrumental music without spoken or sung words to explain the story or event that the composer has chosen to describe with his or her music. However, program music relies on a few non-musical things to make sure that the listener is interpreting the correct story. These things are often the title of the piece, a written forward and many times notes written to the performer/director directly in the score. After all, it is easy for a composer to say "I am sad" in his or her music by just using minor sonorities and dissonances, but it isn't possible for the composer to say "I am sad because my......

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Title: Program Music: Richard Strauss's "Don Quixote"
Approximate Word Count: 1423
Approximate Pages: 6 (250 words per double-spaced page)

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