Back in the 1970s when I was exploring the classical music repertoire, I was especially interested in what was known as program music, i.e., music that attempts to render a narrative or a description of something, as opposed to absolute music which is simply music for the sake of music.

So, for example, Beethoven’s Sixth Symphony, the Pastoral, could be considered program music, as each movement has an extra-musical title such as “Scene by the brook”, and the fourth movement is a clear depiction of a thunderstorm.

I was curious whether someone who didn’t know what the music was meant to depict could figure it out simply from hearing the music itself, so I set up a little experiment and invited a few folks who were not classical devotees to listen to brief excerpts to let me know what they thought they sounded like. None of them even came close to guessing the composer’s intention, not even with Debussy’s La Mer, which I thought was a dead giveaway as a depiction of the sea.

Then I had the thought to come up with my own program for a piece of music. By happenstance, I was listening to Chaikovsky’s Romeo and Juliet Overture, so I worked with that. I think I developed my own program over the course of several listenings, but I’m not sure.

Chaikovsky’s overture does not tell the story of Shakespeare’s play scene by scene, but rather it suggests several aspects of it. It begins with a slow introduction representing Friar Laurence, then it moves into an agitated section representing the strife between the Capulets and the Montagues. The music calms down and we hear the love theme of Romeo and Juliet. The strife music returns, even more agitated than ever, only to be pushed aside by one more glorious statement of the love theme. But if you know their story, love does not conquer all, but the hate between the families does, and so a final battle theme is heard and then a dirge leading to Friar Laurence’s music closing out the piece, which is capped with a fortissimo final series of chords. A very bleak ending to an overture on a very tragic story.

What alternative program did I come up with for this music?

As best as I can recall, it went something like this.

With the slow introduction I pictured the stars viewed from a spaceship. I think I was influenced by the the photograph of the planet earth that the astronauts had taken from the moon and also from that series of pictures that started with a woman sitting in a chair and each picture was ten times higher than the previous one. Except I was starting way out in space and and moving towards the earth, gradually zeroing in on a verdant paradise of a freshly flowing brook surrounded by plants, flowers, trees, and wildlife of all sorts.

The paradise is soon interrupted by bulldozers and other equipment plowing through the lush greenery, as the wild animals scurry to find a new place to settle, which they manage to do to the first statement of the love theme, as they frolic in a clear pond.

But their relief doesn’t last, as the bulldozers find them and once again force them to new ground. This time they climb over a mountain top and feel they have arrived at a truly safe place as the love theme seems to be triumphant and they splash around in the clear waters of a lake.

But their joy is short lived as the tractors and bulldozers once again find them over the mountain and lay waste to their beautiful green paradise, leaving sterile buildings and cold parking lots in their wake.

As the Friar Laurence music returns, the image from the beginning reverses, and we now gradually move up and see the entire planet has been transformed into a series of cold skyscrapers and parking lots with no trees or other greenery left. The planet gradually recedes into the cold, uncaring darkness of outer space as the mournful music draws to a close.

Well, that’s what I imagined. What do you hear in the music?