Overture

The opening music for opera and theatre that grew into a single-movement work

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RomanticOvertureSonata Form

An overture is the opening music for an opera, a play or a concert, grown from a dependent section into a single-movement work that stands alone.

Origins and era

In the seventeenth century the French overture used a slow then fast pair with dotted rhythms, while the Italian overture ran fast-slow-fast and grew straight into the symphony. Eighteenth-century opera overtures were mostly cast in sonata form, and Mozart made them foreshadow the plot. In the nineteenth century the concert overture became independent, with Mendelssohn's Midsummer Night's Dream and Hebrides, Berlioz and Brahms putting literature and landscape into one movement. After Wagner, the operatic prelude replaced the full overture.

What you hear

One movement of five to fifteen minutes, usually in sonata form, with themes that return later in the opera. A French overture begins with a slow dotted introduction and a fugal fast section; an Italian one links three sections, its last already the symphony's presto. A concert overture has no stage, so all its material must be argued within one movement, which concentrates thematic contrast and changes of scoring. Listen for the opening motif, whether it returns unchanged at the close, and whether a new closing theme appears. Opera overtures also quote the most memorable tunes of the evening in advance, so the audience recognises what is coming, a habit close to a rule in nineteenth-century Italian opera. Mendelssohn wrote the Midsummer Night's Dream overture at seventeen and added the rest of the theatre music sixteen years later, leaving two sets that can be compared directly.

Key figures

Lully and Scarlatti fixed the two types, Mozart and Beethoven made the overture foreshadow the drama, Mendelssohn and Brahms wrote concert overtures as independent works, and Suppé and Offenbach made them a theatre signature.

Lineage

It comes from opera openings and the French court overture and leads to the symphonic poem, the operatic prelude and the film title sequence.

Common misunderstandings

Not every overture is an opera excerpt, since nineteenth-century concert overtures had no stage work behind them. Nor is it a prelude, because an overture normally carries a complete structure while a prelude is shorter and runs straight into what follows.

Sources

• The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, 2nd ed., entry Overture, 用于核对法国与意大利两种序曲
• Richard Taruskin, The Oxford History of Western Music, Vol. 3, 用于核对十九世纪音乐会序曲的独立过程

Used for fact-checking only; all prose is original.