Capital-M Music
Essays
The Great Storms of Classical Music
by Richard Bruner
I put together a playlist of some of my favorite storm settings in the standard orchestral repertoire. A lot of instrumental music is “pure music”, meaning it doesn’t have an explicit connection to the world outside of the piece itself. But many composers also write “program music”, which does try to depict external phenomena, and nature gives us many things to try to depict. And then, of course, there’s something like opera or film music, which explicitly accompanies an external context and often tries to depict in music what you can see visually (or, more interestingly, guides how you feel about what you see visually, sometimes counterintuitively).
One of the many things composers have frequently depicted are thunderstorms, which are one of the most common dramatic natural occurrences. I’ve chosen five pieces from the standard repertoire that I think do a great job musically showing storms. I’ve chosen music from the baroque through the 20th century.
I’ve included three versions of this list - the original Apple Music playlist I made for this project several years ago when I was first exploring this idea, and then two youtube videos for each piece (different performances), one with the score video where available and one with the players on video. I think watching orchestras perform can be as much fun as hearing them!
Vivaldi - The Four Seasons: Summer - III. Presto
Beethoven - Symphony No. 6 in F Major “Symphony Pastorale” - IV. Gewitter. Sturm.
Richard Wagner - Overture to Die Fliegende Holländer (The Flying Dutchman)
Antonio Vivaldi - The Four Seasons: Summer - III. Presto (1725)
This is one of the earliest instrumental program works that survives in the public consciousness today, from Baroque era Italy. Strings and continuo with a solo violin, and Vivaldi uses intense tremolo and rapidly descending and ascending scales to depict the rain. It conveys more the impression of a storm than the sound effects of a storm as we’ll see later in this list, but given the instrumental resources he had available it’s striking in its effect.
It’s also a lot of fun to play! I saw this on one of those “What people think is hard, and what’s actually hard” videos for violin, and I can confirm that this one looks more dramatic both on the page and in the visual effect of the players than it actually is to play. One of those somewhat challenging but fun once you learn it parts (I’m talking about the orchestral violin and viola parts, not the solo part, though I think even that part is more fun than insanely hard in terms of virtuoso concerto writing). Note that the player video here is using baroque tuning (A=415 hz rather than 440 hz), so it sounds a half-step lower than the score video or Apple Music track.
Ludwig van Beethoven - Symphony No. 6 in F Major “Symphony Pastorale” (1808)
IV. Gewitter. Sturm.
This was one of the first program symphonies, though it has been noted that this is again more about feelings and emotions than about a detailed, plotted story (that would wait until a couple decades later with Berlioz’ Symphonie Fantastique). Beethoven was the primary cross-over composer from the classical to the romantic period, and this symphony arguably leans towards the romantic side of things (even just the idea of a program symphony was more romantic than classical in character).
This is one of the more descriptive parts of this symphony, depicting actual events rather than just setting a mood. The fourth out of five movements is the storm. This one shows a couple of traits that we’ll see in some of the other pieces as well, one being frequent diminished chords, and the other being depicting the people involved in the scene, not just the storm itself. I once saw a National Geographic photography course where the instructor said that landscape photography without people was missing the key element - setting the stage with no action. I think you can make landscape photography work with the landscape as the subject, but this depiction of a storm does include people.
Tremolo basses show the beginning of the rain, and then violins depict people scurrying around securing things at their picnic sight before the full storm hits. This storm is short but intense, leaving people to give a “prayer of thanksgiving” that they survived the storm, which is the fifth movement that proceeds directly from this fourth movement, known as attacca (attached) in classical music. (Sorry for cutting it off on the Apple Music playlist - it really needs to go to the fifth movement to resolve, but this list is primarily about the storms! The youtube videos don’t have that problem and do move into the fifth movement).
Richard Wagner - Overture to “Die Fliegende Holländer” (The Flying Dutchman) (1841)
This is the overture to an opera by Richard Wagner. As an overture, it includes music from several parts of the opera, not all about the storm. But the opening section until it calms down and the English Horn takes over, and the fast string swells that start the next section after that, are the main focus of this storm. Der Fliegende Holländer, or The Flying Dutchman, is a ship, and this is a storm at sea. The string swells are the waves in the ocean threatening to roll the ship over. More diminished chord tremolos and chromatic rolling lines.
Ferde Grofé - Grand Canyon Suite: V. Cloudburst (1931)
This is a suite depicting scenes from the Grand Canyon area by a twentieth century American composer (he wrote the orchestration that is most commonly performed for George Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue). Grand Canyon Suite is probably his most famous original work, and he wrote several other “regional” American suites as well. It starts out peacefully with the orchestra playing themes from earlier in the piece, with no hint as to what’s about to hit them. It takes a couple of minutes to get to the actual storm in this movement (in the Apple Music track, the first rumbles happen in the tam-tam at about 2:27). It then builds to a frightening peak over the next few minutes. This is one of two pieces on this list that include acoustic sound effects, mostly in the form of operatic wind machines (and maybe thundersheets), in addition to musical effects in the orchestration. Eine Alpensinfonie does that as well.
Richard Strauss - Eine Alpensinfonie (An Alpine Symphony) (1915)
The Calm Before the Storm, Thunderstorm and Descent, and Sunset
This is the final of Strauss’ tone poems. It was actually written before Grand Canyon Suite, but it’s my favorite thunderstorm in music so I put it last on this list. It’s hard to follow it with anything else! This one pulls out all the stops (there’s even an actual pipe organ in there!). Wind machines, thundersheets, violent chromatic scales in the winds and strings. The piccolo gives vivid stabs of lightning. The brass here mostly represent the people scurrying back down the mountain, running away from the storm. An Alpine Symphony depicts a day trip to the Alps. The brass themes have been heard several times prior to these movements, so you should recognize them by this point in the music if you listen to the whole piece.
I included the section before the main storm partly because the album I wanted to use for this one on Apple Music does that, but I think it’s really effective because the ominous build to the storm gives the storm itself that much more impact. The climax of the storm is so dramatic that I think you might be blown backwards a few feet if you actually encountered that storm in real life (maybe even just from listening to this track)! The storm leaves almost as fast as it comes up, and then the brass chords bring in the sunset as the trip winds down, and the piece ends with the same night depiction that it started with nearly an hour before (not included in the Apple Music playlist).
I first heard this piece while I was in college at Berklee College of Music. I found the score in the library and put it on when I got back to my dorm room, intending to just listen to the first few minutes, and I was so transfixed by this piece that I listened to the full 50 or so minutes in one sitting anyway! I think this might be my favorite of Strauss’s tone poems, though I like most of them.
There are many other pieces I could have chosen. Honorable mention can be given to:
Gustav Mahler - Symphony No. 1, IV. Sturmisch Bewegt - this one didn’t make the cut because it’s more stormy than it is a storm. It’s dramatic but not really trying to depict a thunderstorm.
Richard Wagner - Die Walkurie Prelude - This one just isn’t quite as dramatic as the others I picked. More torrential rain than a thunderstorm. But it is in fact depicting at least a rainstorm - the opera (or music drama) begins with Siegmund seeking shelter from the storm raging outside.
Hector Berlioz - Symphonie Fantastique (end of Mvt. 3) - The thunderstorm is in the distance - it shows how effective timpani can be at making rumbles of thunder, but it isn’t dramatic. It’s almost anti-dramatic.
Gioachino Rossini - William Tell Overture - Just a subsection of stormy music for a relatively short passage after the opening cello sextet.