4.19 The Late Romantics

• @@1848@@ was a very important European year
  • Many @@failed revolutions@@
  • Including Germany’s revolution, which caused the expulsion of Wagner

Romanticism and Realism

• After the 1850s, literature and art had @@more realism@@ than romanticism
  • Dickens, Trollope, and George Eliot in England
  • Balzac, Flaubert, and Zola in France
  • Thomas Eakins (painter) and William Dean Howells (novelist) in America
• The @@camera@@ was invented
• Music was an @@escape@@

Program Music

• A @@symphonic poem@@ is “a one-movement orchestral composition with a program, in a free musical form”
  • Made by Franz Liszt in the 1850s
  • Hamlet, Orpheus, Prometheus, Les Preludes
  • Descended from Mendelssohn’s concert overture
  • Aka @@tone poems@@
  • Very popular in the later 19th century
  • Including those by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky and Richard Strauss

Tchaikovsky, Overture-Fantasy Romeo and Juliet (1869, revised 1880)

• Instead of the term symphonic poem, Tchaikovsky preferred @@symphonic fantasia@@ or ov@@erture-fantasy@@
  • Substantial one-movement pieces w/ free forms (borrowing features from sonata, rondo, etc.)
• Follows the general outline of the original Shakespeare play
• Structure:
  • Slow Introduction (Andante)
  • Dramatic
  • Sober Hymn theme
  • Low clarinets and bassoons
  • Allegro
  • Vendetta (Fate) theme
  • Short, vigorous rhythmic motives
  • Love Theme
  • Hymn theme returns!
  • Coda (Slow)
  • Romeo gives his final speeches before his suicide

Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky (1840-1893) Biography

• @@Russian@@, born in the countryside but then moved to St. Petersburg
• It was hard to have a serious musical education and career in Russia, but Tchaikovsky was lucky in that after a few years he entered the @@St. Petersburg Conservatory@@
• @@Professor@@ at the Moscow Conservatory
• Composed 6 symphonies, 11 operas, symphonic poems, chamber music, songs, and many famous ballet scores
• @@Not a devoted nationalist@@
  • Toured America, had success in worldwide concert halls
• @@Depressed and gay@@, he attempted suicide several times
  • Married a woman who loved him and ran away only weeks after, leaving her to die in an asylum
• Died from drinking unboiled water during a cholera epidemic

Nationalism

• @@Nationalism@@ was the musical feature of “the incorporation of national @@folk music@@ into concert pieces, songs, and operas”
• Sometimes nationalist composers deliberately broke traditional rules of harmony, form, etc.

@@Exoticism@@

• People started to like the folk music of other countries
  • The was “exotic”
• Composers used @@music from other countries@@

The Russian Kuchka

• The “@@Kuchka@@” were the “Mighty Five,” a group of 5 @@Russian nationalist@@ composers
  • Mily Balakirev (1837-1910), the only trained musician
  • Alexander Borodin (1833-1887), a distinguished chemist
  • César Cui (1835-1918), an engineer
  • Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov (1844-1908), a navy man
  • Modest Musorgsky (1839-1881), an officer in the Russian Imperial Guard
• Nationalism brought them together

Musorgsky, Pictures at an Exhibition (1874)

• Refers to a @@memorial exhibit@@ of Musorgsky’s recently dead friend, Viktor Hartmann, ‘s pictures
• Promenade 1
  • Depicts the composer walking around the exhibit
  • Rare meter, 5/4 alternating with 6/4
• Gnomus
  • “Drawing of a Russian folk-art nutcracker”
• Promenade 2
  • Spectator musing
• The Great Gate at Kiev
  • Last, longest, climatic number (grandiose)

Modest Musorgsky (1839-1881) Biography

• Son of a landowner, supposed to become an @@officer in the Russian Imperial Guard@@
• His family struggled for a time and lost their family estate
  • Joined the kuchka during this time
• @@Not confident@@ in his abilities
• Alcoholic, died of alcoholism and epilepsy

Responses to Romanticism

• “No-nonsense world increasingly devoted to @@industrialization@@ and commerce”
• Romantic music was “out of step” or prize because it “offered escape”
• Johannes Brahms and Gustav Mahler are both good composers to look at

The Renewal of Classicism: Brahms

• German Johannes Brahms moved to Vienna
• He liked @@traditional Classical@@ genres, forms, or even style
  • String quartets, chamber music, symphonies, and concertos
  • Sonata, theme and variations, rondo
  • Oddly also miniatures

Other Nationalists

• Bohemia:
  • modern Czech Republic
  • Bedřich Smetana (1824–1884): nationalist symphonic poems and folk operas
  • Antonín Dvořák (1841–1904): Slavonic Dances and other large-scale works such as symphonies; I recommend his 12th string quartet!
• Scandinavia:
  • Edvard Grieg (1843-1907): Norwegian, wrote sets of piano miniatures (like Norwegian Mountain Tunes), and also a well-known suite of music for Peer Gynt (based on a great drama by a Norwegian playwright)
  • Jean Sibelius (1865-1857): powedul symphonist, produced symphonic poems based on his native Finnish folklore
• Spain:
  • Enrique Granados (1867-1916): Nationalist
  • Joaquín Turina (1882-1949): Nationalist
  • Manuel de Falla (1876-1946): Nationalist known for his Nights in the Gardens of Spain
  • Exotic compositions with “Spanish flavor” included Bizet’s Carmen, along w/ orchestral pieces from Emmanuel Chabrier, Claude Debussy, and Maurice Ravel
• Great Britain:
  • Ralph Vaughan Williams (1872-1958): Major English nationalist
  • Charles Villiers Stanford (1852-1924): Irish composer who wrote Irish Rhapsodies and the opera Shamus O’Brien

Johannes Brahms (1833-1897) Biography

• Son of an orchestral musician in Hamburg, had good early music education
• @@Met and lived with Robert and Clara Schumann@@
  • After the former’s death, he sent Clara his compositions always and they were very close
• Wrote @@4 great symphonies@@
• Conducted a chorus and wrote a lot of choral music

Violin Concerto in D Major, Op. 77 (1878)

• Brahms wrote this to @@show off a virtuoso@@ (common at the time), in particular Joseph Joachim
• First movement in @@double-exposition sonata form@@
  • Seemed stuffy
• Last movement is a relatively @@simple rondo@@
• Third Movement (Allegro giocoso, ma non troppo vivace)
  • Rondo form
  • A had double stops, is in aaba’ form
  • B again has double stops
  • C is in 3/4 time
  • The coda is in 6/8

Romantic Nostalgia: Mahler

• Gustav Mahler was “ambivalent about the Romantic tradition”
• Mahler wrote huge @@program symphonies@@
• His works encoded “seemingly profound metaphysical or spiritual messages”
• Mahler has “deliberate and self-conscious” exaggeration in his music

Symphony No. 1 (1888)

• Mahler’s @@first symphony@@
• Went from 1 movement to @@5 to 4@@
• Has fragments of some of his other songs
• Special kind of counterpoint (“kaleidoscopic effect”)
• Third Movement, Funeral March (Feierlich und gemessen, ohne zu schleppen—“With a solemn, measured gait; do not drag”)
  • Section 1: Makes a funeral march from “Frère Jacques,” slow
  • Section 2: “Study in frustration”
  • Section 3: Contrasting “trio” with major mode and triplet harp accompaniment
  • Section 4: Combines elements from 1 and 2

Gustav Mahler (1860-1911) Biography

• Really @@bad childhood@@

  • Born in Bohemia (not necessarily bad, just part of his story)
  • Abusive father
  • Lost 5 siblings to diphtheria and others to suicide/mental illness

• Jewish, w/ Viennese @@anti-Semitism@@ around him

• Had other tragedies, such as the young death of his youngest daughter and other “psychological turmoil”

• Studied at the @@Vienna Conservatory@@

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