OVERTURE (Fr. Ouverture), a piece of instrumental music which precedes the opera, the pantomime, the cantata, &c.; and named Sinfonia by the Italians. The overture originated in France, and received a settled form from Lulli in particular. The opera overture has now no settled form, but is moulded according to the fancy of the composer. In the latter part of the last century overtures for concert-rooms and theatres were introduced. Among the composers of these were Stamitz, Abel, Lord Kelly (a Scotchman), Vanhall, Haydn, Pleyel. This kind of overture was, in fact, the early form of the symphony, afterwards developed by Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven. Some writers think that the overture to an opera ought to consist of a sort of analysis of the opera itself; but the Spaniard Don Tomas de Yriarte, in his poem La Musica, very properly dissents from that opinion, and considers opera overtures so constructed as
"Diligencia pueril que en vano ostentan;
Porque la imitacion no causa agrado,
Si antes non se conoce lo imitado." (Canto iv., § 6.)
(G. F. G.)