Nevertheless program music, or at least descriptive music, in some form or other, is nearly as old as music itself. We have part-songs dating from the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries which imitate the cuckoo’s call, or the songs of other birds. Jannequin, contemporary with Palestrina, wrote a piece descriptive of the battle of Marignan, fought between the French and the Swiss in 1515. Even Bach joins the other program composers with his ‘Caprice on the departure of his brother,’ in which the posthorn is imitated. Couperin gave picturesque titles to nearly all his compositions, and Rameau wrote a delightful piece for harpsichord, suggestively called ‘The Hen.’ Many of Haydn’s symphonies have titles which add materially to the poetry of the music. Beethoven admitted that he never composed without some definite image in mind. His ‘Pastoral Symphony’ is so well known that it need only be mentioned, though strict theorists may deny it a place with program music on the plea that, in the composer’s own words, it is ‘rather the recording of impressions than painting.’ Yet Beethoven wrote one piece of downright program music in the strict sense, for his ‘Battle of Vittoria’ frankly sets out to describe one of the battles of the Napoleonic wars. It is, however, pure hack work, one of the few works of the master which might have been composed by a mediocre man. It is of a sort of debased program music which was much in fashion at the time, easy and silly stuff which pretended to describe anything from a landscape up to the battle of Waterloo. The instances of imitative music in Haydn’s ‘Creation’ are well known. Coming down to later times we find the ophicleide imitating the braying of the ass in Mendelssohn’s ‘Midsummer Night’s Dream’ overture, and since then few composers, however reserved in manner and classic in taste, have wholly disdained it.