Is classical music a collection of fine notes that are beautiful, or does a classical piece tell a s

I know that music is different things to different people, and that each person can get something different from listening to the same piece. One person may simply enjoy the beauty of the notes, another may vividly imagine the coming together and parting of lovers when listening to the same piece. My question is whether the composers of classical pieces are intending to tell a story in music with their compositions, is there a narrative element inherent in these works (besides opera, of course, which is all about story)? Even though the music can be enjoyed on many different levels, when I listen to it, I get a sense that there's a story going on. I'm thinking that the composer has a story in mind when creating, but I could be wrong...

Is classical music a collection of fine notes that are beautiful, or does a classical piece tell a story?performing arts

Some classical music is intended to be a story. It is called "program" music. Pieces like "Romeo and Juliet" by Tchaikovsky or by Prokofiev, "Peter and the Wolf", "Scheherezade", and Richard Strauss' tone poems are pieces that tell stories and Debussy's pieces, like La Mer, evoke their setting. But a lot of music has emotional content that we can construe to be a story. Mahler's music, for example, is rich with lots of themes that seem to depict what he is feeling. Beethoven's "Pastoral" 6th symphony evokes a kind of landscape. That is probably why Disney used it in Fantasia.

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Is classical music a collection of fine notes that are beautiful, or does a classical piece tell a s

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