incidental music

American  

noun

1. music intended primarily to point up or accompany parts of the action of a play or to serve as transitional material between scenes.

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incidental music British  

noun

1. background music for a film, television programme, etc

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Etymology

Origin of incidental music

First recorded in 1860–65

Example Sentences

The closest thing, a staging of Mendelssohn’s incidental music to “A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” was canceled last minute for supposed scheduling difficulties.

From Los Angeles Times • Jul. 21, 2023

Franz Schubert, master melodist and progenitor of the song cycle, never wrote for the theater with success, producing scores for singspiels, operas and incidental music that collect dust on the shelf.

From New York Times • Nov. 23, 2022

The evening opened with “The Consecration of the House,” an overture Beethoven wholly revised in 1822 from incidental music originally composed a decade earlier for August von Kotzebue’s play, “The Ruins of Athens.”

From Washington Post • Jan. 28, 2022

The calliope-heavy incidental music sounds like a carousel.

From Salon • Dec. 5, 2021

Lulli composed the incidental music for a ballet, La Princesse d’Elide, which formed part of Moli�re’s divertissement, “Les plaisirs de l’�le enchant�e,” written for a great festival at Versailles on the 7th of May 1664.

From Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 13, Slice 6 "Home, Daniel" to "Hortensius, Quintus" by Various