Hwm- Romanticism & 19Th Century Orchestral Music-16

Front 1

Background

Back 1

1. Classic & Romantic are rough and imprecise labels - like Renaissance & Baroque -
the terms are used to define chronological boundaries and to give us starting points
for discussing the music of these periods
2. the two are not entirely contradictory
a) the historical continuity between the two cultural movements is greater than any
contrast
b) the great bulk of music written between 1770 & 1900 lies on a continuum
employing common conventions of harmonic progression, rhythm, & form
c) the Romantic in music is not so much a collection of style traits as a state of mind
that enabled composers to seek individual paths for expressing intense emotions
d) composers respected conventions of form and tonal relationships up to point - but
their imaginations drove them to trespass limits and to explore new realms of
sound
3. Musical orientations
a) some 19th century writers considered instrumental music the ideal Romantic art
because being free form the burden of words it could perfectly communicate pure
emotion - while an aria is limited by its text and can only express the feelings that
develop from the dramatic context
a) some 19th century writers considered instrumental music the ideal Romantic art
because being free form the burden of words it could perfectly communicate pure
emotion - while an aria is limited by its text and can only express the feelings that
develop from the dramatic context
b) poetry and literature occupied a central place for the Romantic composer
c) when music and words were combined in song, great attention was paid to the
instrumental complement
4. Program Music
a) the strong literary orientation of the 19th century composer combined with the
ideal of instrumental music as the premier mode of expression converged in the
concept of Program Music
b) program music referred to instrumental music associated with poetic, descriptive,
or narrative subject matter

Front 2

Orchestral Music

Back 2

1. Intro
a) increasingly made up of the middle class
b) public concerts became more popular but the experience of hearing a symphony
orchestra was still a relatively rare event
c) the composers who followed Beethoven had to come to terms with how this
towering figure of the immediate past had transformed the symphony

Front 3

Schubert (1797-1828)

Back 3

1: Career
i- born into a humble family, his father was a school master in Vienna and
was educated to follow his father's profession
ii- he taught school from 1814-1817 and then devoted his life entirely to
writing music
iii- died at age 31
2: Music
i- chief formative influences were Haydn, Mozart, Cherubini, and early
Beethoven - Gioachino Rossini the opera composer can also be detected
in some of Schubert's symphonies
ii- all his symphonies follow regular Classic forms, but the music's lyricism,
adventurous harmonic excursions, and enchanting colors chart a new path

Front 4

Hector Berlioz (1803-1869)

Back 4

1: Career
i- his first 3 symphonies - especially the Symphonie fantasique - made him
the leader of the Romantic movements radical wing
ii- his influences were besides Beethoven were Gluck, Rossini, Meyerbeer,
and Spontini
2: Music
i- all subsequent composers of program music would be indebted to him
ii- his orchestration would initiate a new era
a- new resources of harmony, color, expression, and form
b- by example and precept he was the founder of modern orchestration
b- by example and precept he was the founder of modern orchestration
c- device of having a theme recur in different movements - idée fixe - gave
impetus to the development of the cyclical symphonic forms of the later
19th century
iii- idée fixe - a recurring theme common to all the movements of a composition
but varied in shape and treatment according to the fluctuating demands of
the dramatic scheme
iv- following Beethoven's Pastoral Symphony, Berlioz had license to shape the
Classic form around a set of feelings or passions

Front 5

Felix Mendelssohn (1809-1847)

Back 5

1: Beethoven influenced his symphonic writing less than did his study of Bach and
Handel and the rigorous training in the Classic forms he received under Carl
Friedrich Zelter (1758-1832)
2: Music
i- in the Italian (No. 4, 1833) and the Scottish (No. 3, 1842) symphonies fit into
the regular Classical forms
ii- use of folk idioms reveals a nostalgia for faraway places and also illustrates
the Romantic's interest in both native music and local color
iii- Violin Concerto (1844) is one of he greatest of all violin concertos - displays
unity through thematic content and links between movements
iv- Midsummer Night's Dream Overture set the standard for all subsequent
overtures of the period

Front 6

Robert Schumann (1810-1856)

Back 6

1: Until 1840, he dedicated himself to mainly piano music and lieder completing
his first symphony in 1841 & a second in 1842
2: Some critics & historians have maintained that his personality did not lend itself
to Classic forms

Front 7

Franz Liszt (1811-1886)

Back 7

1: Intro
i- foremost composer of program music after Berlioz writing 12 "symphonic
poems" (his own term) between 1848 - 1858 and a 13th in 1881 - 1882
ii- devised a method of unifying a composition by transforming a single motive
to reflect the diverse moods needed to portray a programmatic subject
iii- works that Liszt called symphonies are also programmatic
iv- his bold chords and chromatic harmonies helped form Wagner's style after
1854
v- his play with cells for small sets of intervals and pitches enjoyed
unexpected resonance in the 20th century

Front 8

Symphonic Poem

Back 8

i- relatively short and not divided into separate movements
ii- presents a continuous form with sections in contrasting character & tempo
iii- a small number of themes are developed, repeated, varied, or transformed
iv- are poems by anology to word poems - not drama, narrative, or prose
exposition it is an imaginative structure free of these genres' conventions
v- content and form may be suggested by a picture, statue, play, poem, scene,
personality, etc., but the subject is converted into music without specific
reference to the details of the original
v- content and form may be suggested by a picture, statue, play, poem, scene,
personality, etc., but the subject is converted into music without specific
reference to the details of the original
vi- the title and usually a program (may or may not have been written by the
composer) identify the subject

Front 9

genre of symphonic poem was taken up by others

Back 9

a- Bedrich Smetana (1823-1884)
b- César Franck (1822-1890)
c- Camielle Saint-Saëns (1835-1921)
d- Piotr Il'yich Tchaidovsky (1840-1893)

Front 10

Johannes Brahms (1833-1897)

Back 10

1: deliberately set out to carve a fresh path - in this search, he probably owed
more to Schumann's 4th symphony than to Beethoven
2: through the age of 40, Brahms completed 4 orchestral pieces
i- two serenades
ii- piano concerto
iii- Variations on a Theme of Haydn
3: later works
i- Academic Festival Overture
ii- Tragic Overture
iii- a second Piano Concerto
iv- the Violin Concerto
v- the Double Concerto for violin & violoncello

Front 11

Anton Bruckner (1824-1896)

Back 11

1: Into
i- Bruckner looked to Beethoven's 9th as a model for procedure, purpose,
grandiose proportions, and religious spirit
ii- Unlike Beethoven, he exhibited no striking changes in style during his
career
iii- had the misfortune of living in Vienna in the shadow of Brahms whose 4
symphonies are approximately contemporaneous with his last 6 and of
being continually attacked by critics as a disciple of Wagner
2: Influences
i- his idol Wagner is particularly evident in large-scale structures, the great
length of the symphonies, the lush harmonies, the sequential repetition of
entire passeges, and the huge size of the orchestra
ii- his experience as an organist is evident from his orchestrations -
instruments and instrumental groups are handled like registers or manuals
of an organ as well expanding thematic material in massive blocks of sound
comparable to an organist's improvisation

Front 12

Piotr Il'yich Tchaikovsky (1840-1893)

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1: scored his first success with the Romeo & Juliet Fantasy (1869), his best known
symphonies are the last 3 (No. 4 (1877-78), No. 5 (1888), & No. 6, Pathétique
(1893)
2: Other works are the symphonic poem Francesca da Rimini, the First Piano
Concerto, the Violin Concerto, and the 1812 Overture
2: Other works are the symphonic poem Francesca da Rimini, the First Piano
Concerto, the Violin Concerto, and the 1812 Overture
3: also composed for ballet which include Swan Lake, The Sleeping Beauty, and
the Nutcracker

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i) Antonìn Dvorák (1841-1904)

Back 13

1: No. 7 is considered the best
2: No. 9, From the New World is the most familiar