Considering the appearance of my musical trajectory throughout the last recent years in the Netherlands, I have come to realize that what really drives my musical curiosity is the will to dig into the depths of diverse artistic influences and ideas within the music I perform; finding an existing correlation between music and the rest of art disciplines. Hence, my interest and attraction for the concept “program music” is an idea I wish to investigate and implement in my way of playing.
On the other hand, I am aware of the wideness of this very distinct approach to music playing. I have been considering confining the original intention of this paper into a more specific concept of interdisciplinary art and music, such as literature as an object of attention towards the music that has been composed for violin repertoire.
Context in terms of “Program Music”
Since the beginning of program music in the XIX century, composers have been significantly influenced by the beauty and visceral power of drama and tragedy, so idiosyncratic from the Romantics, when artists would dream about the inspiration evoked by the nostalgia and the anti-present sentiment. Delusion and void would be filled by ancient ideas coming from the Classical Greek times and Renaissance Period.
The dramatic genre or “theater” ruled as the main literary genre in both periods as it originated in Classical Greece. Program music met at once the English renaissance dramaturgist William Shakespeare, when those composers made use of the so-called romantic feature “glorification of the past” and their emphasis on emotional suffering, being love and death the main topics to be inspired on. Shakespeare’s works were used as a major exponent in program music.