The Nature of Landscape Music

Abstract

Many diverse notions are involved in what is loosely called “landscape music”. This short discussion article distinguishes five categories. They are music inspired by landscapes, music that depicts chosen aspects of a landscape, music associated by listeners with landscapes unintended by the composer, musical landscape and film, and music that has been influenced by built surroundings. The use of these descriptive categories enables a more detailed elucidation of how landscape and music interact, and leads into a discussion of Beethoven’s influence on the development of classical music in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The article concludes with an example of contemporary South African landscape music.

Keywords:

• landscapes
• composers
• liturgical
• pre-Renaissance
• classical music
• folk music
• sonata form
• tonality

Notes

1 Stravinsky is alleged to have said this when questioned about Beethoven by Marcel Proust at a dinner party in 1922.