overture

Overture (from French ouverture, lit. "opening") is a music instrumental introduction to a ballet, opera, or oratorio in the 17th century. During the early Romantic era, composers such as Beethoven and Mendelssohn composed overtures which were independent, self-existing, instrumental, programmatic works that foreshadowed genres such as the symphonic poem. These were "at first undoubtedly intended to be played at the head of a programme". The idea of an instrumental opening to opera existed during the 17th century. Peri's Euridice opens with a brief instrumental ritornello, and Monteverdi's L'Orfeo (1607) opens with a toccata, in this case a fanfare for muted trumpets. More important was the prologue, consisting of sung dialogue between allegorical characters which introduced the overarching themes of the stories depicted.¶

The text above is adapted from the Wikipedia article “Overture”, available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 licence.¶

overture is instrumental introduction to any musical piece, according to the structured record cited below. This entry was generated automatically from that record and has not yet been reviewed by a person familiar with the tradition.¹¶

The source record links this tradition to 33 external registers, which can be verified through the citation.¹¶