Romanticism in Music

1
Romanticism in Music

• 1820-1900

2
Romantic Music in Society

• Middle Class
• Orchestras, operas, music societies
• Subscription series
• Virtuosos
• Conservatories
• Women
• Home
• Piano

3
Romantic Style Characteristics

• Expression
• Diverse rhythm
• Greater dynamics
• More tone color
• Expressive melodies
• Chromatic harmonies
• Homophonic texture

4
Influences

• Subjective Poetry
• Literature
• Supernatural
• Medieval
• Medieval
• Painting
• Nature
• Fantasy

5
Nationalism and Exoticism

• Nationalism composers deliberately created
  music with a specific national identity, using
  the folk songs, dances, legends, and history of
  their homelands. (as opposed to the more
  universal character of classical music)
• Exoticism Use of melodies, rhythms or
  instruments that suggest foreign lands.

6
Program Music

• Absolute Music Music as Music.
• Program Music instrumental music associated
  with a story, poem, idea, or scene

7
Piano

• cast-iron frame
• hammers covered with felt
• expanded range
• pedals

8
Musicians

• Franz Schubert
• Robert Schumann
• Clara Schumann
• Frèdèric Chopin
• Franz Liszt
• Felix Mendelssohn

• Johannes Brahms
• Hector Berlioz
• Bedrich Smetana
• Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky
• Giuseppe Verdi
• Richard Wagner

9
Musicians as "free artist

• conductor
• teacher
• critic
• performer

10
The Art Song, or Lieder

• art song or lieder a composition for solo voice
  and piano. The accompaniment serves as an
  interpretive partner to the voice.

11
Lieder makers

• Composers
• Franz Peter Schubert
• Robert Schumann
• Johannes Brahms
• Poets
• Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
• Heinrich Heine

12
Lieder - forms

• strophic form uses the same music for each
  stanza of the poem
• through-composed form uses new music for each
  stanza.
• The Song Cycle Romantic art songs grouped in a
  set.

13
Franz Peter Schubert
14
Franz Schubert

• b. Vienna
• father was a schoolmaster
• choirboy at the court chapel, scholarship to the
  Imperial Seminary.
• taught at father's school briefly
• bohemian life
• composed for the cultivated middle class he did
  not mingle with the aristocracy.

15
Schubert - Music

• 600 lieder (songs)
• 9 symphonies
• Symphony 8, the Unfinished
• Symphony 9, The Great C Major
• string quartets (and other chamber music)
• sonatas (and other short pieces for piano)
• masses
• operas

16
Listening Erlkönig

• "He paced up and down several times with the
  book suddenly he sat down, and in no time at all
  (just as quickly as he could write) there was the
  glorious ballad finished on the paper.
• Text by Goethe
• Acc. conveys the horse's hoofs
• Four characters

17
Erlkönig
18
Robert Schumann
19
Robert Schumann

• b. Zwickau, Germany
• Law at the Leipzig University
• _at_20, piano studies - Prof. Frederick von Wieck
• Don't worry about my finger, I can compose
  without it.
• Clara

20
Robert Schumann

• New Journal of Music - founder and editor
• reviews of new composers such as Chopin and
  Berlioz
• Suicide attempt asylum _at_44

21
Robert Schumann - Music

• Programmatic piano works
• Lieder (art songs)
• 4 symphonies
• chamber music

22
Listening Estrella

• A B A form

23
Clara Wieck Schumann

• b. Leipzig, Germany
• Child prodigy
• Pianist
• Married Robert Schumann
• Close friend of Brahms
• Performing artist
• Stopped composing at 36

24
Clara - Music

• Lieder
• piano pieces
• piano concerto
• piano trio (piano, violin, and cello)
• Romances

25
Listening

• Romance in E-flat Minor for Piano, Op. 11, No. 1
• Romanze short lyrical piece for piano.
• Ternary form
• ABA

26
Frederic Francois Chopin

• b. Warsaw, Poland
• Warsaw Conservatory
• Pianist

27
Frédéric François Chopin

• Tour of Europe to Paris _at_21
• Friends with the artistic elite
• Performed in Aristocratic Salons
• Piano teacher to the daughters of the rich
• George Sand, aka Aurore Dudevant
• Died of tuberculosis _at_ 39

28
Chopin - Salon Music

• Prélude a short introductory piece
• Nocturne (night piece), a slow, lyrical,
  intimate composition for piano
• Listening Nocturne in E Flat Major, Op. 9, No.
  2
• Étude a study piece designed to help a
  performer master specific technical difficulties
• Listening Etude in C Minor, Op. 10, No. 12
• Revolutionary

29
Chopin Polish Dances

• not meant for ballroom dancing
• Mazurka
• Polonaise
• Listening Polonaise in A-Flat Major, Op. 55

30
Franz Liszt

• Esterhaza, Hungary
• Studied in Vienna and met
• Schubert
• Beethoven
• Paris
• Nicolò Paganini - violin virtuoso
• Chopin - "The Poet of the Piano

31
Liszt

• Touring piano virtuoso - Greatest of his day
• Weimar - court conductor, composer.
• taught pianists free
• supported Wagner's works
• Biography of Chopin

32
Liszt - Mistresses

• Countess Marie d'Agoult
• Cosima
• Princess Carolyne Sayn-Wittgenstein
• Rome Abbé Liszt
• "Liszt was what a prince ought to be."

33
Liszt - Music

• Piano Music - Transcendental Etudes
• created the Symphonic Poem or Tone Poem a
  one-movement orchestral composition based to some
  extent on literary or pictorial ideas.
• Faust Symphony
• Dante Symphony

34
Listening Transcendental Étude No. 10 in F
Minor

• dedicated to Carl Czerny
• "Studies in storm and dread meant to be played
  by, at most, ten or twelve players in the world."
  Robert Schumann
• ABC B' A form

35
Liszt and Friends
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Program Music

• Program Music instrumental music associated
  with a story, poem, idea or scene.
• Program symphony
• Concert overture
• Symphonic poem or tone poem
• Incidental Music

37
Program symphony

• a symphony (with several movements) with a
  program.

38
Concert overture

• one movement, in sonata form, not intended to
  usher in a stage work. An independent
  composition.

39
Symphonic poem or tone poem

• a one-movement orchestral composition based to
  some extent on literary or pictorial ideas

40
Incidental Music

• music to be performed before and during a play

41
Felix Mendelssohn

• Hamburg, Germany
• prominent/wealthy Jewish family
• gifted musician and artist
• Overture to A Midsummer Nights Dream

42
Listening Overture to A Midsummer Night's
Dream

• Sonata Allegro Form
• Enchanted Forest - introduction
• Wood Nymphs - First Theme
• King Oberon's Court - Bridge
• Lovers - Second Theme
• Actors and Donkey - Closing
• Later added incidental music including the
  Wedding March

43
Leipzig

• Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra conductor
• _at_20 - Bach's St. Matthew Passion rekindled
  interest in Bach
• Performed as pianist, organist, and conductor
• Leipzig Conservatory founder/president
• Conventional private life
• Died of a stroke at 38

44
Music

• all forms except opera
• Violin Concerto in E Minor
• Midsummer Night's Dream Overture
• Hebrides Overture
• 4 Symphonies
• Italian Symphony
• Scotch Symphony
• Elijah (oratorio)
• Chamber music

45
Hector Berlioz

• b. near Grenoble, France
• son of a physician, study medicine
• Paris Conservatory
• Prix de Rome
• Symphonie fantastique
• 1st Program Symphony
• Music Journalist
• Died embittered at 65

46
Music

• Most for orchestra
• Symphonie fantastique 1st Program Symphony
• Romeo and Juliet
• The Damnation of Faust, opera and oratorio
• Les Troyans
• Requiem, "I have seen one man listening in
  terror shaken to the depths of his soul, while
  his next neighbor could not catch an idea ....

47
Symphonie fantastique

• Fourth movement,
• "March to the Scaffold
• Harriet Smithson
• idée fixe a melody which represents a person,
  place or thing, (a musical noun)
• the beloved
• descending march to the scaffold
• march through the street

48
Listening Movement V, "Dream of a Witches'
Sabbath

• the beloved caricaturized
• Funeral knell, Dies irae
• Witches' dance

49
Nationalism in Nineteenth-Century Music

• nationalism Inclusion of folk songs, dances,
  legends, and other national material in a
  composition to associate it with the composer's
  homeland.
• Chopin, Poland
• Edvard Grieg, Norway
• Jean Sibelius, Finland
• Smetana and Dvorak, Bohemia
• Tchaikovsky, Russia
• Verdi, Italy
• Wagner, Germany

50
Russia (The Five)

• Mily Balakirev
• César Cui
• Alexander Borodin
• Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov
• Modest Mussorgsky

51
Bedrich Smetana

• Founder of Czech nationalist music
• Composer and conductor
• The Bartered Bride - opera
• Má Vlast (My Country)

52
Listening The Moldau, by Bedrich Smetana

• Two springs
• The river
• Forest hunt
• Peasant wedding
• Moonlight dance
• The river
• The rapids of St. John
• The river at its widest
• Vyšehrad Castle

53
Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky

• Russian
• Government clerk
• Music _at_21 St. Petersburg Conservatory
• Professor _at_ Moscow Conservatory
• Married Antonina Ivanova Miliukova
• Benefactress Nadezdha von Meck
• Died _at_53 mysterious circumstances

54
Music

• Six Symphonies (4-6 best known)
• Piano Concerto No. 1 in B Flat
• Violin Concerto
• Romeo and Juliet (overture-fantasy)
• Ballets
• Swan Lake
• Sleeping Beauty
• Nutcracker
• Orchestral showpieces
• Marche slav
• Overture 1812

55
Listening Romeo and Juliet, Overture-Fantasy

• Sonata Form
• Friar Lawrence - intro (5 min.)
• Feud between Montagues and the Capulets - First
  Theme
• Love theme - Second Theme
• Orthodox Hymn in Coda

56
Johannes Brahms

• b. Hamburg, Germany
• Son of a bass player - poor family
• played piano in waterfront bars
• Schumann
• Met on tour at age 20
• young eagle
• Lived in the Schumann home for two years after
  Robert was committed
• Lifelong friendship with Clara

57
Brahms

• Hamburg Philharmonic - snubbed
• Vienna, Austria
• composer
• teacher
• pianist
• Died of Cancer at age 64
• Music heir to Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven

58
Music

• 4 symphonies
• 1 dubbed, "Beethoven's 10th
• 2 piano concertos
• 1 violin concerto
• piano pieces
• chamber music
• 200 lieder (songs) including Brahms's Lullaby
• German Requiem

59
Listening Symphony No. 3 in F Major

• Mvt. 3
• Ternary ABA
• Not the usual scherzo

60
Giuseppe Verdi

• b. near Bussetto
• Milan, studies
• La Scala
• Parliament
• Viva "Vittorio Emmanuele, Re D'Italia

61
Music

• For the mass public
• Emphasis on expressive vocal melody
• used duets, trios, quartets, and choruses
• Oberto - First opera
• Nabucco first big success

62
Nationalism

• Rigoletto
• Il Trovatore
• La Traviata

63
Final operas

• Aïda
• Otello
• Falstaff
• Last two based on Shakespeare plays

64
Listening Rigoletto, "La donna è mobile

• Aria
• Vocal melody dominates
• Simple orchestral accompaniment

65
Giacomo Puccini
66
Richard Wagner

• b. Leipzig, Germany
• son of theater musicians
• Conductor - German theater
• Paris
• Dresden, Conductor of Dresden Opera
• Revolutionary due to accumulated debts
• Switzerland
• King Ludwig of Bavaria
• Munich Opera, Bayreuth Opera
• Cosima Liszt von Bülow

67
Genius

• German nationalist
• absolute self-conviction
• Died in Venice
• (heart attack)

68
Music

• Wrote his own librettos
• medieval German legends
• heroes, gods, demigods
• music dramas
• unending melody continuous musical flow instead
  of traditional arias, recitatives and ensembles
• speech song inspired by rhythms of the German
  language
• emphasis on the orchestration
• Leitmotif A short musical idea associated with
  a person, an object, or a thought in the drama.
  (very similar to Berlioz' idée fixe)

69
Works

• Rienzi first music drama, done in the tradition
  of French Grand Opera
• Lohengrin
• Die Meistersinger
• Fliegen Hollander

70
The Ring of the Nibelung

• Das Rheingold
• Die Walküre
• Siegfried
• Götterdammerung

71
More Music Dramas

• Tannhäuser
• Tristan and Isolde
• Parsifal

72
Listening Die Walküre (The Valkyrie)