Music of the Romantic Era Test #2 -- JARROD

Narrative poem with some supernatural or mysterious content

What is a ballade?

Chopin was the first to use the title of ballade for a purely instrumental piece of music

Why is the name of Chopin’s Ballade #1 in G Minor special?

Poetry, narration, and mystery

What are some of the things that Chopin suggests by calling his piece a ballade?

Sort-of sonata form (with an exposition, development, and recap), but not really, also uses a mirror form (palindromic)

Describe the structure of Chopin’s ballade #1 in G Minor.

Thematic transformation and motivic manipulation

How does Chopin build the musical content of his ballade #1 in G Minor?

Use of programs

What changed about concerts post-Beethoven that enabled Berlioz to write the Symphonie Fantastique?

A fixed or obsessive recurring melody

What is the Idée Fixe?

Appears in each movement of the symphony, but melody is changed to fit feel of the situation- this is thematic transformation

How does Berlioz use the idée fixe?

The beloved turns into a witch (shown via the clarinet), there’s a dance, and the dies irae Gregorian chant (played by tubas) is played to show association with death

What is movement 5 of the Symphonie Fantastique depicting? (3)

Idée fixe (beloved’s theme) goes from romantic at the beginning, idolizing her, to portraying her as a witch/demon at the end

How does Berlioz use thematic transformation in the Symphonie Fantastique?

Uses fugue to portray people dancing in circle, has violins play col legno

What are some of the other interesting things Berlioz does in the symphonie fantastique movement 5? (2)

To be sung at musical soirees held in the garden of her house

What was the purpose of Fanny Mendelssohn’s gartenlieder?

Songs written for a series of separate voices or in parts (can be song with one voice to a part or chorus with multiple voices to each part), intended for the singers themselves

What is a part-song?

Part-song

What kind of song is “Im Wald”?

Large work for chorus, orchestra, and soloist built around a religious topic. They have narratives but are not staged.

What is an oratorio?

Oratorio

What genre of piece is Elijah?

Handel and Bach

Who inspired Mendelssohn’s oratorios?

Elijah confronting King Ahab for worshipping Baal, Elijah asks followers of Baal to bring flames, they try but it does nothing, but the God of Abraham listens to Elijah

What is happening in our excerpt of Elijah? (4)

Uses it for a choir of angels commentating, derived from Lutheran church hymns set by Bach

When does Mendelssohn use a chorale setting in Elijah? Why?

The Middle East

What was David’s Le Desert looking to evoke?

Symphonic Ode, similar to Beethoven’s combination of orchestra and vocal music in the 9th symphony

What genre of piece is David’s Le Desert? Why?

Repetitive rhythms, drones, ornamentation, repeating little patterns, augmented second

How did David attempt to portray the Middle East in Le Desert? What musical techniques did he use? (5)

French Fetes- hymn-like choruses with march-like character to unify population

Aside from the Middle East, what inspired David’s choral writing?

Three choirs, full orchestra, and organ

What’s the orchestration of Berlioz’s Te Deum?

Complex counterpoint reflects old, romantic sense of the massive/sublime is new

How does Berlioz combine concepts of the old and the new in Te Deum?

Text is sacred, initially part of liturgical service, but started to be used for secular celebrations too (Berlioz initially conceptualized it as the end of a symphony about Napoleon)

Explain Berlioz’s Te Deum’s relation to the sacred and secular.

Symphonic poem

What genre of piece did Liszt invent to describe Les Préludes?

One movement composition for orchestra with some sort of programmatic connection

What is a symphonic poem? (tone poem)

A poem by Alphonse de Lamartine about life being a series of preludes

What is the work that Liszt’s Les Préludes is based on?

Sonata form and symphonic 4-movement form

What two forms does Liszt use as the inspiration for the structure of Les Préludes?

Thematic transformation

What technique does Liszt use to build the melody of Les Préludes?

Fast, Slow, Dance, Big Finish, inspired by Beethoven’s Ode to Joy

What are the four characters of Liszt’s Les Préludes? What work inspires him to include these four characters?

Liszt is putting the text first and the music second, music should instead be abstract, a form of its own; finds Les Préludes boring

What is Hanslick’s critique of Liszt’s Symphonic poems?

“On the Beautiful in Music,” all about how we judge the beautiful in art/music

What’s the book that Edward Hanslick writes? What is it about?

Pathological and aesthetic

What are the two types of reactions that Hanslick says we have to music?

When you’re just sitting there and emotionally engaging with the music, letting it wash over you

What is the pathological reaction to music?

Determining when it is good and bad, looking at how something is done, analyzing it- rational, objective

What is the aesthetic reaction of music?

By tradition- look at Beethoven and Mozart

How does Hanslick determine what is good music?

Sonata form, inspired by Beethoven’s 9th symphony opening

What’s the form of the first movement of Brahms’ Piano Concerto in D Minor? Who inspired it?

Developing variation- each theme is built off the previous one, evolving it

What technique does Brahms use to build the melody of the piano concerto in d minor? How so?

Sees Brahms as the champion of abstract (non programmatic) music

Why does Hanslick like Brahms so much?

Wagner's term for his later operas in which the musical, verbal, and scenic elements cohere to serve one dramatic end in a total work of art (gesamtkunstwerk)

What is a music drama?

A recurring theme or other coherent musical idea that can represent or symbolize a person, object, place, idea, feeling, or other ingredient in a dramatic work.

What is a leitmotif?

Alliteration used for poetic cohesion and to emphasize conceptual connections

What is stabreim?

A type of vocal line that freely moves between declamation and lyricism but avoids the excessive display and formal regularity of Italian melody

What is unendliche melodie (unending melody)?

Siegfried being the child of Siegmund and Sieglinde

What is an example of stabreim?

Wanted to capture the revolutionary spirit of the times by writing an opera on the downfall of the gods

What inspired Wagner to write The Ring cycle?

Storm motive (low strings), weariness, Liebesnot/love (melodic dip and yearning chromaticism), sword motive (major key in trumpet), compassion motive (winds), Walsungs strength (higher winds), Walhalla motive, Spring/love/rebirth motive, rapture motive (more yearning), Hunting, and Walsung’s woe

What are some of the leitmotifs in Die Walküre? (9)

An injured man stumbles into the home of Sieglinde, having no ideas who he is, she nurses him, they fall in love, her husband comes home and realizes the man killed his allies and threatens to fight the man in the morning, Sieglinde realizes the man is Siegmund (they are siblings), points out a sword left for him in a tree by the gods, and Siegmund pulls it out

What’s the plot of Die Walküre Act I?

Greek drama

What was the type of historical work that Wagner revered?

Music = Beethoven, drama = Shakespeare

Who does Wagner think music and drama respectively found perfection in?

Erlkonig

What work inspired Wagner’s storm melody?

Instead of recurring structural conventions/forms (recitatives and arias), you get an interweaving web of motives in a loose evolutionary way

Describe the web and wave structure that Wagner uses in his work

Teases you forever

What characterizes the Wagnerian hyper dramatic climax?

Combines the sword motive with Sieglinde’s motive, the male = brass instruments, the female = woodwind instruments, puts the sword motive in wind instruments, puts a pared down version of the Hunding motive behind the sword theme, showing how Sigmund is thinking about Hunding and the sword

How does Wagner use motives in the Dritte scene?

Distinction and individualization of character and melody, juxtaposition of different musics to heighten drama, loosening of formal differences for more fluid dramatic action, integration of orchestral color in drama, and integration of melodrama into opera

What are some characteristics of Verdi? (5)

Initially a type of music theater in which actors speak above a more continuous accompanying musical support, the term is used for sections of recitative above a more continuous or a more formally structured accompaniment or to refer to operas that are more drama- and action-based, versus aria-based.

What is melodrama?

Voice, orchestra

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In Verdi’s operas, everything is shown in the \[blank\]. In Wagner’s operas, some things are shown just in the \[blank\]

Writes melodies that tell you distinctly who the character is: Duke’s melodies sleazy and seductive, Madalena’s coquettish, Gilda’s hopelessly in love and lamenting, Rigoletto’s fatherly

How does the Quartet from Rigoletto show Verdi’s ability to write character melodies?

Madalena is laughing, Gilda is lamenting

How does the quartet in Rigoletto show juxtaposition?

Pro-west incorporated aspects of native Russian culture within harmonic language and procedures of Western Europe, the Mighty Five tried to discover new harmonies and sounds to produce a non-Western influenced Russian music

What was the divide between Russian composers? What did each side do?

Rubinstein and Tchaikovsky

Who were the key people of the pro-West side of Russian music?

Borodin, Cui, Mussorgsky, Rimsky-Korsakov, and Balakirev

Who were the Mighty 5?

Glinka

Who were the Mighty 5 inspired by?

Sonata form

What’s the form of Romeo and Juliet?

Overture fantasy

What is the genre of piece of Romeo and Juliet?

Changing background and leitmotifs

What are some of the musical techniques Tchaikovsky employs in Romeo in Juliet? (2)

Russian orthodox chant representing Friar Lawrence

What’s an example of a leitmotif in Romeo and Juliet?

Distinct melodies, danceable rhythmic gestures, hyper-romantic melodies, Wagnerian wave, changing background

What are some of Tchaikovsky’s features as a composer? (5)

Restates and reorchestrates, Western chromatic yearning, gradual buildup, made up of extreme intervals- very big or small

What makes the Romeo and Juliet theme so romantic?

Love, tragedy, battle, death, separation

What are some of the ideas that Tchaikovsky conveys in Romeo and Juliet? (5)

Melody intended to capture the inflections and rhythms of speech in more than a recitative and less than a song, capturing the personality of the speaker

What is speech melody?

Hobbling, sneezing, and cracking glass

What are some examples of speech melody from “With Nursery”? (3)

A cycle of piano pieces

What is Pictures at an Exhibition?

Promenade theme

How does Mussorgsky link together the musical pictures of Pictures at an Exhibition?

Spin-wheel melody, bells, harmony as sound vs. function, changing meters, and additive construction

What are some characteristics of Russian music shown in Pictures at an Exhibition?

Goes between 5 and 6

What is the changing meter of Pictures at an Exhibition?

Chords sound like orthodox chants, Russian bell sounds that happen in rhythmic layers

What are some of the ways Mussorgsky portrays Russian nationalism in The Great Gate of Kiev?

Mazurka and Polonaise

What are the two dances associated with Polish folk traditions?

Country/peasant dance, triple meter, jumpy, dotted rhythm then an accent

What is a Mazurka?

Courtly dance

What is a polonaise?

Drones, folk scale (slavic scale with raised 4th degree), distinct dotted rhythms, and ornaments

What are some of the features of Chopin’s Mazurka that draw on Polish traditions? (4)

Sevillana

What’s the name of the rhythm that Sevilla uses?

l-s-s-l-l-l-l

What is the pattern of the Sevillana rhythm?

Sung interlude in the middle of a dance

What is a copla?

Like a copla and uses saeta style

How is the middle section of Sevilla representative of Spanish tradition?

Vocalization of a melancholy character improvised by women in Seville during processions in Holy Week

What is Saeta?

Bohemia (now the Czech Republic)

What was Dvorak’s national origin?

Narrative ballad of remembrance

What is a dumka (originally)?

Imitates sound of cimbalon (hammered dulcimer) and shows influences of Schubert (sudden contrasting shifts of major and minor, colorful use of figuration)

How does Dvorak represent Bohemia and Western classical music in Dumky?

Symphonic poem

What is the genre of Smetana’s Moldau?

Follows the river from the source to the end, showing different events along the way

What does Moldau show? Why is it programmatic?

Conflated form- combines four characters of symphony into a sonata form

What is the form of Moldau?

Arching vs. compact melodies, colorful and complex vs simple harmonies

How does Smetana combine both Western romantic and nationalist types of music? (2)

Flowing flutes and clarinets, strings representing water drops, brass representing hunting

What are some of the ways Smetana paints a picture in Moldau? (3)

Movement which called for a return to a Renaissance sacred style—*a cappella*, using modes and a predominantly imitative contrapuntal style—that is, music like the Renaissance master Palestrina 

What is the Caecilian movement?

Imitation among voices, dialogues, minimal dissonance

How does Beati Quorum Via show the renaissance style?

Moved from just churches to concert halls too

How was the use of secular music changing in the 1800s?

A requiem group project for the death of Rossini

What was Verdi’s “Libera Me” originally composed for?

The death of his mother

What prompted Brahms to write his requiem?