Absolute Music: What is it?

I've heard the term 'absolute music' used in reference to Brahm's compositions. I've also heard it said that Bruckner, even though he was associated with the Wagner faction rather than the Brahms faction, composed 'absolute music' as well. What exactly is 'absolute music' and what does a peice need to qualify as such?

Jarl Sigurd

to decide whether my guitar concerto qualifies as absolute music, visit: http://www.ampcast.com/JarlSigurd

I always assumed it to mean music that wasn't descriptive of anything in particular. Not 'programme music'.

Searching www.google.com for 'program music' found this, which I found interesting and, I hope you agree, short enough to quote:

Programme Music

I wonder if the distinction between program and abstract music is ever tht cut and dried. Certainly the association of composers such as Bartok (Miraculous Mandarin) and Stravinsky (Petrushka's famous cadenza) suggests as much. What about a piece like The Lark Ascending? Is that abstract (absolute) or program music? True, George Meredith's poem is referred to sometimes; but I'm not sure if the Meredith reference is compulsory, as with the Vivaldi sonnets. And what about genres such as marches and funeral dirges. Where is the line between program and abstract music? All music is, to some degree, referential; if only in terms of timbre or instrumentation. And sonata form, with its dramaturgical pretensions, is (it might be argued) in itself referential. In the final analysis, the difference between absolute and program music might be an issue of fiat merely: whatever the composer says it is. Nonetheless, obviously some kind of distinction like this is useful. We DO recognize some distinction between the Pastoral and Ninth symphonies of Beethoven in terms of their relative degrees of referentiality. I suppose the issue of referentiality might be as tendentious as the concept of autobiographicism in art; which, although certainly foregrounded in later, Romantic, specimens, nonetheless is present in a great deal of art (such as Bach's Farewell to his brother, or even the denominational cantatas for that matter. And much of autobiographical art is itself deceptive. For example, recent Swedish scholars now claim that Strindberg's so-called autobiographical testaments are themselves fictional to a large degree (Inferno, among others.) How much of Dante's Inferno, is I and how much We (as in the celebrated opening reference to 'nostra vita'?

Absolute music is the opposite of program music. It is music from which all explicit context has been removed. It has nothing to do with the music itself but with the 'frame' in which the music is presented. Examples:

Penderecki once composed a piece, 8 minutes and 33 seconds long, called 8'33'. It was absolute music. Then he renamed it 'Threnody for the Victims of Hiroshima', and - abracadabra - it became program music.

Absolute music: 'Symphony no. 2', 'Concerto for Two Orchestras', 'Adagio', 'Notations', 'Canonical Variations On Schönberg's Opus 41'...

Program music: 'Night on a Bald Mountain', 'Central Park in the Dark', 'Lady McBeth of Mchensk'.

David or Matthew (or Simon) - isn't the distinction between program and absolute music something that was formalized in the 19th(????) century in terms of certain treatises. That's my dim recollection from long ago and far away. I am certainly not clear that the disctinction would have been made in this 'either or' way until the 19th century -

I also thought the purpose of the distinction had to so with certain agendas relating to the superiority of absolute music.

Please enlighten me (and then I will have the material to b become tendentious).

Thanks

Actually, Laurence Payne is right. It just so happens that program music tends to have those types of names because of their musical nature.

Hmmm...I spose if it's got a context it aint total music. MUSIC CAN ONLY BE AWESOME CUZ IT CAN'T BE EXPLORED IN ANY OTHER WAY BUT THRU TONES...but perhaps it becomes a part of the culture where it's otherwise not communicated cuz it's under a popular microscope.

*Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk* is an opera.

'Absolute Music' is music that everyone understands and no one disagrees about. Of course, 'absolute music' is much less common than the opposite kind, 'disagreeable music'.

See ya

And goodness knows there is certainly far too much of THAT in the world.