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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@@