• The early Romantics has some of the greatest composers of all time

  • Franz Schubert born in Vienna in 1797

  • Robert Schumann, Frédéric Chopin, Felix Mendelssohn, Franz Liszt, Hector Berlioz, Richard Wagner, and Giuseppe Verdi were all born between 1803 and 1813

• Beethoven’s music was very influential here, especially in German composers

• Literary Romanticism was also highly influential

  • A lot of composers made at least something associated with Shakespeare

The Lied

• Lied is “song” in German, but it is also a “miniature” genre of the romantic area

• Almost always accompanied by only piano

• Text is generally some Romantic poem

• Intimate expression, not for a concert hall, but for a living room

Schubert, “Erlkönig” (“The Erlking”) (1815)

• Franz Schubert is known to be the earliest and greatest master of the lied

  • Wrote almost 700 and didn’t live that long

  • Wrote many ballads when young

• Schubert’s best known lied, Opus 1

• Poem is by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  • Old storytelling ballad form

  • Dealt w/ death and the supernatural

  • 8 parallel stanzas

• Through-composed, with each stanza having different or modified music (opposite of strophic)

• Dramatic story of a boy being killed by a demon (the Erkling) as his father tries to rush him home, as he believes his son has a high fever

• Different “voices” and music for each character and the narrator

  • Father is low and stiff

  • Boy is high and frantic

  • Erkling is ppp and ominously sweet

• Triplet rhythm

• Some musical repetitions

The Song Cycle

• A song cycle is a group of songs associated by a common poetic theme or an actual story

• Schubert wrote 2 late in his career

• Extended the lied into a larger and more impressive unit

Franz Schubert (1797-1828) Biography

• His father was a Viennese schoolmaster

• Trained in music from a young age, always talented

• Lead an unspectacular life, surviving on odd fees

• Had friends that called themselves Schubertians

• Never married, many think he was gay now

• Wrote nearly 700 lieder and many choral songs

• Died at 31 from the typhoid fever epidemic

Schumann, Dichterliebe (A Poet’s Love) (1840)

• Schumann was a German composer that loved Schubert’s piano music

  • Only wrote piano music for the first decade of his career

  • After he got married, he wrote a lot of lieder

• Doesn’t truly have a story

• Poems were by the German Heinrich Heine

• Im wunderschönen Monat Mai (In the Wonderfully Lovely Month of May)

  • Piano intro

  • Ends without cadence (yearning; dissonance)

  • Strophic

• Die alten, bösen Lieder (The Hateful Songs of Times Past)

  • Through-composed

  • Black humor

  • About the burial of a coffin

  • Lovely meditative piano solo

  • Group the three things above this together- think about that for a minute

Robert Schumann (1810-1856)

• Schumann’s father was not a musician, but encouraged Schumann in music

• Attended the University of Leipzig for law for a time

• Was a piano virtuoso until a finger injury

• Wrote musical criticism

• Piano pieces are mostly “character pieces”

• Wrote many love songs for Clara Wieck, who he later married (the daughter of his piano teacher; famous pianist at 15)

• Later made many larger works

• Worked as a teacher/conductor

• Withdrawn personality, had mood swings and breakdowns, later had hallucinations and loss of memory and heard voices and tried to drown himself (1854), after which he spent 2 years in an asylum before death

Clara Schumann, “Der Mond kommt still gegangen” (“The Moon Has Risen Softly”) (1843)

• Pensive mood, unusual chords

• Cliche “lovey-dovey” (my words, not theirs) poem

• Modified strophic form (AAA’)

Clara Wieck Schumann (1819-1896) Biography

• Eldest child of ambitious piano teacher Friedrich Wieck

• Known as a prodigy pianist by 15

  • Composed her own music to perform

• Married to Robert Schumann, which made her life hard in some respects due to his depression and instability

  • After he died (she outlived him by 40 years), fell in love with Johannes Brahms, but neither married

• Gave up composing

• Was one of Europe’s leading pianists and toured widely

The Character Piece for Piano

• Character pieces are short works which portray some definite mood of character

  • Chopin’s Nocturne, Waltz, Scherzo, Étude (study) are examples of simple titles, others had descriptive ones

• Analogous to the lied, but w/o poem

Robert Schumann, Carnaval (1833-1835)

• Exudes warmth and privacy

  • Scores often marked “innig”

• 20 short characters, each a masked guest at a Mardi Gras ball

  • Pierrot, Harlequin, Columbine, Schumann, Estrella, Chiarina, Chopin, Paganini

Chopin, Nocturne in F-sharp Major, Op. 15, No. 2 (1831)

• Chopin wrote 21 nocturnes (night pieces), each very different

• Elegant, with a decorated melody

• Chromaticism

• Main tune A (aa’b)

• Form is aa’bca’’ coda

• Rubato

Liszt, Transcendental Etude No. 8 in C Minor, Wilde Jagd (Wild Hunt, 1851)

• Liszt was “the greatest of nineteenth-century piano virtuosos” in his younger days

  • Wrote 12 “Etudes of Transcendental Execution”

• “Three-hand effect”

• Refers to a folklore story of northern Europe

• Thematic transformation

  • Expressive markings

• Second theme is the “heart of the work”

Franz Liszt (1811-1886) Biography

• Learned from his father

• Like a rock star, handsome (apparently), incredibly talented, having “liaisons” with married noblewomen…

• Gave concerts throughout Europe, then took to conduct/directing the theatre at Weimar in Germany and writing more radical/influential music

• Wrote (also had ghostwriters) and performed

• Friends with Richard Wagner, endorsed his music

• “…had three careers,” piano virtuoso, orchestral music focus, and then sacred music/experimental piano later in life

Early Romantic Program Music

Program music refers to instrumental compositions associated w/ poems, stories, etc.

The Concert Overture: Felix Mendelssohn

• Concert overture was for the theater

• ==Felix Mendelssohn’==s concert overtures are the “best-known and best-loved”

  • Wrote concert overture for Shakespeare’s “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” at 17, w/o intending its usage in the play, but now it has been (there is also a derived suite)

    • Sonata form

  • Also from the Hebrides Overture

    • Depicts “lonely Scottish islands”

    • Single movement in sonata form

Felix Mendelssohn (1809-1847) Biography

• Came from upper-class converted-Jew bankers

• Felix was a successful composer, along with being a pianist, organist, organist, conductor, educator, and musicologist

  • Also founded the Leipzig Conservatory of Music

• Stuck with a foundation of Classical technique

• Wrote largely concert overtures

Fanny Mendelssohn (1805-1847)

• Felix’s older sister

• “Highly prolific” composer

• Wrote many beautiful pieces in many genres, and ped weekly concerts at the Mendelssohn home in Berlin

• Not largely popular, due to the patriarchal society and her upper class position

• Died suddenly at 41, and her brother died only 6 months later

The Program Symphony: Hector Berlioz

• Berlioz’s most famous work is “Fantastic”

  • Radical approach to program music

  • About a young (and unhealthily imaginative/lovesick) musician’s odd dream after an opium suicide attempt

  • His first symphony

• Berlioz wrote program symphonies, which were “entire symphonies with programs spelled out movement by movement”

  • Set basis for grandiose compositions

Fantastic Symphonie (Symphonie fantastique): “Episodes in the Life of an Artist” (1830)

• “Lurid” program with “autobiographical fantasy”

  • “Encouraged listeners to think it has been written under the influence of opium”

• Has an idée fixe (obsession), where a single theme is reoccuring in all the movements

• Lots of dynamic (and other) specifications written in the piece

• Four movements, detailed in textbook

Hector Berlioz (1803-1869) Biography

• Grew up in France without a large music education

• Attended the Paris Conservatory of Music after a brief stint following in his father’s footsteps in medical school

• Imagination for orchestral tone color

• Supported himself with musical journalism