Program music or
programme music is a type of
art music that attempts to musically render an extra-musical
narrative. The narrative itself might be offered to the audience in the form of
program notes, inviting imaginative correlations with the music. A paradigmatic example is
Hector Berlioz's
Symphonie fantastique, which relates a drug-induced series of morbid fantasies concerning the unrequited love of a sensitive poet involving murder, execution, and the torments of Hell. The genre culminates in the symphonic works of
Richard Strauss that include narrations of the adventures of
Don Quixote,
Till Eulenspiegel, the composer's domestic life, and an interpretation of
Nietzsche's philosophy of the
Superman. Following Strauss, the genre declined and new works with explicitly narrative content are rare. Nevertheless the genre continues to exert an influence on film music, especially where this draws upon the techniques of late romantic music.