Big Ideas Simply Explained - The Classical Music Book

["ROMANTIC 1810\u20131920 149 LMOUVSEICITISSETLRFULY DCEARRLFRMEAISRCIAHV\u00dcOTZN (W18E2B1E)R, IN CONTEXT The magic bullets used in the shooting contest in Der Freisch\u00fctz FOCUS are fired in the spooky Wolf\u2019s Glen, German Romantic opera depicted here in an aquatint of the opera scene. BEFORE 1791 Mozart\u2019s The Magic A n example of a Viennese Premiered in Berlin in 1821, Der Flute, the supreme example Singspiel (\u201cplay in song\u201d), Freisch\u00fctz propelled its composer of the Singspiel tradition, is which links songs with to stardom. Its success was partly performed in Vienna. spoken dialogue, Carl Maria because it was grounded firmly von Weber\u2019s Der Freisch\u00fctz (The in German culture, using easily 1816 The premiere of E.T.A. Freeshooter) tells the story of Max, recognizable characters, settings, Hoffmann\u2019s Romantic opera a young huntsman from Bohemia folklore, and folk music. Weber had Undine, about a water spirit who is persuaded by the wicked envisaged a great new German who marries a human, takes Caspar to take part in a shooting opera tradition. place in Berlin. contest that will win Max the hand of Agathe. To ensure victory, The combination of national AFTER Caspar gives him magic bullets pride, emotional content, and the 1833 Heinrich Marschner\u2019s forged in the Wolf\u2019s Glen. depiction of the supernatural opera Hans Heiling, like his impressed the young Richard earlier success Der Vampyr, Wagner, who saw Der Freisch\u00fctz at contrasts the real and the age of nine. At the same time, supernatural worlds. Weber\u2019s innovative orchestration, especially the evocative use of 1834 Richard Wagner woodwinds and horns, influenced completes his opera Die Berlioz, Mahler, and Debussy. Feen (The Fairies), which is heavily influenced by Weber\u2019s Weber wrote two more operas. Der Freisch\u00fctz. He was in London to conduct the premiere of his last work, Oberon, in 1826, when he died of tuberculosis, aged 39. \u25a0 See also: The Magic Flute 134\u2013137 \u25a0 The Barber of Seville 148 \u25a0 La traviata 174\u2013175 \u25a0 The Ring Cycle 180\u2013187 \u25a0 Tosca 194\u2013197","GRIEF,NO ONE FEELS ANOTHER\u2019S NAONOONTE HUNEDRER\u2019SSTJANODYS DIE SCH\u00d6NE M\u00dcLLERIN (1824), FRANZ SCHUBERT","","152 LIEDER AND SONG CYCLES IN CONTEXT T he composer Franz Beethoven were introduced to the Schubert is most often medium when commissioned to FOCUS linked to the German art produce arrangements of folk songs, Lieder and song cycles song (or Lied; plural, Lieder). He did while the songs of Mozart, who not invent the genre. Several major reserved his most sophisticated BEFORE composers had written songs word setting for opera, are small- 1816 Beethoven composes before him, such as Beethoven, scale and modest in their scope. An die ferne Geliebte (\u201cTo the Mozart, and Haydn, as well as Writing songs was a sideline rather distant beloved\u201d), considered lesser-known figures. It is not than a central part of any of these to be the first song cycle. even true to say that Schubert composers\u2019 activities. produced the first \u201csong cycle,\u201d 1821 Wilhelm M\u00fcller the term used later for a set of Piano and song publishes his poems of Die songs with an overarching Schubert came of age in a world sch\u00f6ne M\u00fcllerin (including narrative or theme. Beethoven\u2019s of increased poetic sensibility, of six not set by Schubert) as An die ferne Geliebte, composed emphasis on subjective experience. part of an anthology. in 1816, was the first important The piano, still a relatively recent work to fit such a description. invention, had grown both in AFTER technical capacity and availability. 1840 Robert Schumann Schubert, however, transformed Domestic performances were on composes several major song the genre. Before Schubert, Lieder the rise, especially in Vienna, cycles, including Frauenliebe were predominantly na\u00efve or whose middle class, held back in und Leben and Dichterliebe. straightforwardly lyrical. The form many ways by a strictly controlled tended to be strophic, the same society, sought private outlets 1856 Baritone Julius melody repeated for each verse Stockhausen gives the first of the poem; the music engaged Schubert\u2019s art songs, or Lieder, were complete public performance with the text only as far as usually played in the private homes of of Die sch\u00f6ne M\u00fcllerin capturing its general mood, and his friends. Large-scale public concerts in Vienna. the keyboard accompaniment were typically reserved for more was often formulaic, functional, sweeping orchestral works. and without expression. Haydn and","ROMANTIC 1810\u20131920 153 See also: Symphonie fantastique 162\u2013163 \u25a0 Schumann\u2019s Symphony No. 1 166\u2013169 \u25a0 Faust Symphony 176\u2013177 \u25a0 Also sprach Zarathustra 192\u2013193 My compositions spring whose dilemma is summed up Franz Schubert from my sorrows. Those in the song\u2019s final line: \u201cThere, where you are not, is happiness!\u201d Born in a poor district of that give the world Vienna in 1797, Schubert the greatest delight were Schubert would also compose was the son of a well-known born of my deepest griefs. songs that espoused folkish schoolmaster and music simplicity, and throughout his teacher who taught him to Franz Schubert short but intensely creative life, he play the piano and violin. He would alternate between complex composed from an early age for their artistic impulses. This and more straightforward forms. and soon found favor with amateur form of music making, His output for voice is remarkable prominent figures in Vienna, away from the formal courts and for the variety and richness of his such as Antonio Salieri. concert societies, was reaching melodic inspiration, but the role Despite this, success in new levels of sophistication. of the piano accompaniment also large-scale \u201cpublic\u201d developed greatly in Schubert\u2019s composition eluded him. In his all too brief life, Schubert hands. It grew from offering composed some 600 songs. The straightforward support to include Schubert managed to first to be published, \u201cErlk\u00f6nig\u201d sophisticated reflections of, and make a respectable living with and \u201cGretchen am Spinnrade\u201d reactions to, the content of the works aimed at the amateur (\u201cGretchen at the spinning wheel\u201d), poem he was setting. market, such as compositions composed when Schubert was just and songs for piano. Although 17, remain among his most popular. Song cycles a few of his chamber pieces Set to texts by Johann Wolfgang The complete array of Schubert\u2019s were performed in public, von Goethe, they offered a new sort art is evident in his first song cycle, many of his best works\u2014piano of song: both are \u201cthrough-composed\u201d Die sch\u00f6ne M\u00fcllerin (\u201cThe beautiful sonatas and symphonies (without strictly repeated verses) miller\u2019s maid\u201d), published in 1824. among them\u2014were only and present powerful miniature For the cycle\u2019s 20 songs, Schubert rediscovered years after his dramas moving inexorably toward selected poems from a collection death in 1828, at 31. This led their climaxes. by Wilhelm M\u00fcller, a contemporary to a reappraisal that cemented poet whose verses Schubert also his reputation as a master \u201cErlk\u00f6nig\u201d features a narrating used for Winterreise (\u201cWinter composer of instrumental voice as well as the voices of a journey\u201d), his second song cycle, music as well as song. father, his son, and the titular three years later. Die sch\u00f6ne Erlking\u2014a malevolent goblinlike M\u00fcllerin loosely follows the story Other key works creature who inhabits the dark of a young miller boy\u2019s infatuation forest of the Romantic imagination. with the beautiful daughter of 1822 Symphony in B minor Gretchen, meanwhile, is the tragic a mill owner, from his early (\u201cUnfinished\u201d), D759 heroine of Goethe\u2019s masterpiece, obsession, through jealousy 1822 Mass No. 2 in G major, Faust. In 1816, Schubert composed and resignation to, listeners D167 \u201cDer Wanderer,\u201d one of many songs are left to assume, suicide. 1828 String Quintet in C, D956 focusing on another quintessential figure of German Romanticism, The narrative is presented largely through suggestion, with the poems giving snapshots in time, presented primarily in the voice of the miller boy himself. Together the songs encapsulate many of the quintessential themes of Romantic poetry, not least the solitude of the outsider and the \u276f\u276f","154 LIEDER AND SONG CYCLES Lied and Song Cycles Written for voice and piano for performance in homes or concert halls, sometimes as a cycle of three or more songs linked by a story or theme. They appear in three major forms Strophic: Modified strophic: Through-composed: all verses are sung to the music varies each verse has different the same music, as in music to match the words. Schubert\u2019s \u201cDer Fischer\u201d in some verses, such as Schubert\u2019s \u201cErlk\u00f6nig\u201d is and \u201cHeidenr\u00f6slein.\u201d \u201cDer Lindenbaum\u201d in Schubert\u2019s Winterreise. through-composed. desire, in the face of rejection, cycle, push the genre even further Schubert would give with his to find solace in nature. These and can be shocking in their friends, known as Schubertiads, ideas would be explored with an expressionistic power. and they were not initially even greater level of intensity in published together as a cycle. Winterreise, in which the poems Private to public The first public performance chart the progress of a lovelorn, The songs of Die sch\u00f6ne M\u00fcllerin of the cycle as a whole was not solitary wanderer through a bleak were, like so much of the music by until 1856. As the 20th century wintry landscape. The songs of Schubert that was disseminated approached, the Lied also became Schwanengesang (\u201cSwan song\u201d), during his lifetime, originally an increasingly public form, even published together after Schubert\u2019s designed primarily for private if many composers continued death but never conceived as a performances, such as those to use it for some of their most personal works. Romantic vehicle Schubert\u2019s influence, in terms of the later development of the Lied, is difficult to overestimate. What had been a peripheral activity for earlier composers became a major area of activity for several composers who came after him. The genre\u2019s unique mix of music and poetry proved particularly attractive to the Schubert set several of Goethe\u2019s poems to music, including his tragic 1778 work \u201cAn den Mond\u201d (\u201cTo the moon\u201d). This handwritten manuscript of Schubert\u2019s dates from 1815.","ROMANTIC 1810\u20131920 155 French Romantic chanson and beyond. The songs of such composers as Anton\u00edn Dvor\u02c7\u00e1k The story of the art song in following works by composers and Modest Mussorgsky often France was largely colored such as Hector Berlioz, whose have a nationalistic coloring. by the cultural landscape in Les Nuits d\u2019\u00e9t\u00e9 (Summer Nights, Paris, where song\u2014m\u00e9lodie or 1841), a setting for six poems At the turn of the 20th century, chanson\u2014designed primarily for by Th\u00e9ophile Gautier, count Gustav Mahler firmly put the performance in private salons, among the first songs for voice genre in the public sphere, not existed in the shadows of opera. and orchestra in the repertoire, least because he was one of the French song faced an additional although they were written first composers to orchestrate his problem: the irregular emphases for piano accompaniment songs himself, as would Richard and rhythms of the language originally. While subsequently Strauss. Several of Mahler\u2019s songs made it difficult to set words influenced by German composer also found their way into his to music with naturalness. Richard Wagner, a uniquely early symphonies, either complete French branch of art song or reworked as instrumental Nevertheless, the genre in developed in the hands of movements. Strauss, meanwhile, France became more ambitious Gabriel Faur\u00e9, Claude Debussy, composed songs throughout and sophisticated toward and Francis Poulenc. his long life and wrote his the end of the 19th century, valedictory masterpiece, The Four Last Songs, for soprano Romantics. Subsequent song the scene for his songs, as well as voice and orchestra, in 1948. cycles often represented attempts postludes to summarize the mood. to build on Schubert\u2019s legacy. Although Johannes Brahms wrote The art song also flourished two song cycles, both he and in France, Great Britain, and the Robert Schumann was greatly the Austrian composer Hugo United States, especially in the influenced by Schubert. His Wolf concentrated on grouping 20th century, with such composers own song cycles, many of them their songs into combinations as Ralph Vaughan Williams, Gerald composed in a burst of inspiration that were suitable for publication, Finzi, Charles Ives, and Benjamin in 1840, the year of his marriage which did not necessarily imply Britten, who, as a fine pianist, to pianist and composer Clara that they should be performed made a speciality of performing Wieck, tend to be on a smaller together. Wolf, in particular, was Schubert\u2019s song cycles. \u25a0 scale, offering a series of poetic remarkable for composing Lieder impressions or, in the case of almost exclusively. In his works, Frauenliebe und Leben (\u201cA woman\u2019s he successfully incorporated love and life\u201d), a broad picture of Wagnerian harmonic complexity a relationship. Schumann often and psychological insight into the wrote short piano preludes to set form on the most intimate scale. There is no song Song legacy of Schubert\u2019s Schubert\u2019s wider influence was enormous, too, and a greater desire from which one cannot to raise song to a higher artistic learn something. plane coincided, in the second half of the 19th century, with attempts Johannes Brahms to assert and define nationhood, both in the German-speaking world Hugo Wolf wrote several hundred art songs, often with deeply romantic and personal themes, as captured on this postcard depicting a song from his Spanish Songbook of 1891.","DREAM.MUSIC IS LIKE A ONE THAT I CANNOT HEAR STRING QUARTET NO. 14 IN C-SHARP MINOR, OP. 131 (1826), BEETHOVEN","","158 LATE BEETHOVEN IN CONTEXT B eethoven\u2019s music divides Increasing deafness from the age into three stylistic periods: of 30 led Beethoven to commission FOCUS the early (up to 1802), the hearing devices from Johann Nepomuk Proto-Romanticism middle (1803\u20131813), and the late Maelzel, inventor of the metronome, (1817\u20131827). He was born in 1770, including this \u201cear trumpet.\u201d BEFORE and by the age of 27, he had written 1781 Haydn, the inventor of a variety of works. However, for Beethoven\u2019s middle period included the string quartet, publishes much of this period, he avoided the his \u201cHeroic Phase\u201d of 1803\u20131808, his Op. 33 quartets. territory dominated by Haydn and during which he wrote the \u201cEroica\u201d Mozart\u2014the string quartet. It was Symphony for and about Napoleon 1782\u20131785 Mozart writes six not until the end of the 1790s, by Bonaparte. The middle period was quartets, which he dedicates which time he was no longer being a time of energy and positive to composer Joseph Haydn. compared to Mozart, that Beethoven commitment to Beethoven\u2019s wrote his first quartets, the Op. 18. humanistic and political beliefs. 1824 Franz Schubert writes These six works show such energy The period is often considered to String Quartet No. 14, known and technical mastery that had have begun in the wake of his as \u201cDeath and the Maiden.\u201d his life been cut short at this point, \u201cHeiligenstadt Testament\u201d of 1802\u2014 he would still be placed among a letter he had written to his two AFTER the world\u2019s great composers. The brothers describing his despair 1827\u20131829 Felix Mendelssohn shadow of Mozart mixes with the at his profound loss of hearing. composes his string quartets spirit of Haydn through his first five Only his music, Beethoven wrote, Op. 12 and Op. 13. The Op. 13 quartets, but in the sixth Beethoven held him back from suicide. quartet in particular has sowed the seeds of his later work. echoes of Beethoven\u2019s Op. 95 Beethoven\u2019s violin concerto and Op. 132. No composer before (Op. 61) is an outstanding example Beethoven ever disregarded of the productive middle period, in 1828 Schubert\u2019s last wish which he began to turn away from on his deathbed is to hear the capacities of both his classical conventions\u2014developing Beethoven\u2019s Op. 131 quartet. performers and his audience a bolder individual style and producing many of his most famous 1873 Johannes Brahms with such ruthlessness. compositions. The beginnings of publishes String Quartet Charles Rosen Romantic music can be found in No. 1 in C minor and String the slow movements of Beethoven\u2019s Quartet No. 2 in A minor, middle quartets. These five quartets comprising his Op. 51. These stretched the boundaries of the are Brahms\u2019s 20th attempt at form, first by extending the length, writing quartets. in his Op. 59 and Op. 74, and then by compressing it in the concise 1934 Michael Tippett Quartetto Serioso, Op. 95. In all five, composes the first of his five four players evolve into soloists, quartets, all inspired by each with virtuoso passages specific Beethoven works.","ROMANTIC 1810\u20131920 159 See also: Haydn\u2019s String Quartet in C major, Op. 54 122\u2013125 \u25a0 \u201cEroica\u201d Symphony 138\u2013141 \u25a0 Brahms\u2019s Symphony No. 1 188\u2013189 \u25a0 Pierrot lunaire 240\u2013245 \u25a0 Shostakovich\u2019s Fifth Symphony 274\u2013279 worthy of a concerto, while Op. 74, Variations on a theme in the fourth movement known as the \u201cHarp\u201d quartet, has movements in both the heroic and Violin 1 Violin 1 classical moods. The late period Violin 2 Violin 2 Between 1813\u20131816, Beethoven experienced major emotional Violins Cello upheavals, from financial troubles The theme is In the second to the struggle to gain custody first played in a variation, the of his nephew. These years saw dialogue between tempo is faster, a decline in his production, with the first and and the melody those works Beethoven did produce second violins. alternates between showing him to be struggling to In the first the high phrases develop his style further. However, variation, the of the first he emerged from these years of theme is played violin and the refinement with unparalleled ability by the lowest low phrases in to imagine melodies, forms, and three instruments. the cello. harmonies that would serve him well during his late period. Subsequent variations share the developing theme between the different instruments, in Beethoven\u2019s indifference to varying time signatures. contemporary social conventions and his passionate belief in his forms in concerti, symphonies, 14 minutes to less than one minute, own ideas created a unique set sonatas, and chamber works, he totaling around 40 minutes and of circumstances that would lead was ready to experiment further. performed without a break, are in to the composition of his five late an unconventional sequence that quartets. He was determined to Opus 131 (1826) is the most at the time seemed unlikely to push the boundaries of composition unorthodox of Beethoven\u2019s five late succeed as a major work. to new limits; having successfully quartets, all written in 1825\u20131826. extended the length and developed Its seven movements, ranging from Conventional quartets follow a the structure of the conventional four-movement formula: they begin and placed a high value on with an allegro in sonata form, in Music as self-expression personal freedom and heroic the tonic key; they slow down in resistance to oppressors. It the second movement; they employ The cultural and literary world advocated a synthesis of a minuet and trio as the third of Germany and the small states Romantic, Classical, and movement; and they end in rondo that surrounded it at the time Enlightenment ideas. form. In Op. 131, however, the first of Beethoven\u2019s birth were movement\u2014a sombre, extended strongly influenced by the Sturm Like literature and art, the fugue (a piece in which a melody is und Drang (Storm and Stress) musical world began to reflect strictly imitated by the other movement. Led by the poet and these ideals, giving them voices)\u2014is followed by a very short philosopher Johann Gottfried expression in symphonies and dance in the second movement. von Herder, it was expounded vocal music, with Beethoven The third movement (just 11 by writers and artists, such as himself later setting Schiller\u2019s measures) concludes with a florid Johann Wolfgang von Goethe poem An die Freude (\u201cOde to solo harking back to an earlier and Friedrich Schiller. The Joy\u201d) in his Ninth Symphony. musical period, while the fourth movement emphasized national presents a powerful theme and \u276f\u276f identities, language, and arts,","160 LATE BEETHOVEN Differences between\u00a0the Classical quartet the theme has undergone several and Beethoven\u2019s Op. 131 transformations of rhythm as well as texture. The second variation VERY QUICK Typical Classical quartet begins as a gentle dance in which Beethoven\u2019s Op. 131 melodic eighth-note phrases pass from one instrument to another, SPEED QUICK accompanied by detached chords, but as the variation progresses, MODERATE the running eighth notes take over and build to a climax with all four SLOW instruments playing in octaves\u2014 a different sound world altogether 1 23 4 5 6 from the variation\u2019s opening. The MOVEMENTS variations continue, punctuated by a couple of cadenzalike first violin Classical quartets generally had four movements. After flourishes recalling the \u201carchaic\u201d Beethoven, some Romantic quartets had more (or fewer) third movement. movements and abandoned the usual pattern of development. Thematic development also variations. The fifth jumps in with Beethoven\u2019s output; it cemented his takes place on a large scale. As in an extensive scherzo (a fast dance). great legacy and ensured praise for many of Beethoven\u2019s works (most A 28-measure adagio (leisurely) his late quartets. famously the Fifth Symphony of sixth movement leads to an intense 1807\u20131808), the quartet begins with and energetic seventh movement of Natural variations a short four-note motif, which also the kind that is generally placed A good example of Beethoven\u2019s preoccupied Beethoven in his first in more conventional works. structural ingenuity can be seen Op. 132 quartet, although the in his handling of the theme and pitches are presented here in a Building a structure with such variations in the fourth movement slightly different order, to unsettling unconventional foundations was a (which builds on techniques effect. This motif forms the first half challenge that Beethoven set for developed in his Diabelli variations, of the opening fugue subject, himself. Some consider Op. 131 to Op. 120). The traditional problem which, in turn, provides many of be the greatest composition of faced by composers in this form the motivic ideas from which the was how to create a feeling of other movements are developed. [Beethoven\u2019s quartets] natural continuity instead of the stand \u2026 on the extreme formulaic repetition of a set theme. Rousing ending boundary of all that has Beethoven\u2019s approach is to allow The fifth movement\u2019s key of E major is hitherto been attained by constant evolution of the music, the optimistic sister to the sad home human art and imagination. even from the very outset of the key of C-sharp minor, and, following theme. It begins at the top of the convention, a light-hearted scherzo Robert Schumann texture, as a dialogue between the alternates with a contrasting trio. first and second violin; it is then Unusually, however, Beethoven not doubled in 10ths, before moving only extends the conventional \u201cA-B-A\u201d down toward the middle of the form with a further repeat of the trio texture. When the first variation and scherzo (as he does in several begins with the theme in the three other works) but finishes with a lower strings, it feels like a natural curtailed repeat of each theme. continuation of this development, but by the end of this variation, This repetition allows him to explore various moods and techniques, not least in a passage played sul ponticello (with the bow near the bridge of the instrument), creating a glassy, delicate sound.","ROMANTIC 1810\u20131920 161 A powerful crescendo then leads before one of Beethoven\u2019s most To play a wrong note is to two sets of three chords, each Romantic themes appears, free in insignificant. To play without followed by a dramatic silence its pacing and encompassing heralding the sixth movement. In expressive leaps. After the theme passion is inexcusable. this short adagio, led by the viola, reaches its culmination, a \u201cghost\u201d Ludwig van Beethoven the four-note motif from the first appears, recalling the melody first movement is transformed by heard at the very start of the work. were his final gift to the world denying the use of its fourth and before his death in 1827. With most expressive note. An optimistic After this, the music begins to them, Beethoven transformed upward motion is always repelled by reflect the drained physical state of the string quartet\u2014influencing a sad, descending answer. the players after continuous playing Schumann, Mendelssohn, Brahms, for almost 40 minutes. The music Bart\u00f3k, Schoenberg, Shostakovich, In the seventh movement, the dissipates as the tempo gets slower, and Tippett\u2014and became an previous ideas come to a satisfying yet the expected soft ending to the imposing mentor and inspiration musical conclusion. As the music piece does not appear. In one last, to all those who came after. \u25a0 progresses, fragments of the first defiant gesture, the energies of the movement begin to surface until players are revived for a last push the four-note motif reappears. Many to end on three affirmative chords. dark and menacing sounds follow Lasting influence A statue of Beethoven was erected, Beethoven\u2019s late quartets\u2014which in 1880, on the Beethovenplatz in start and end with four movement Vienna, Austria. The figures sitting structures (Op. 127 and Op. 135) below the composer are allegorical but experiment with five, six, and representations of his symphonies. seven movements (Op. 130\u2013132)\u2014","162 IITSNHSAETTMRTUAHMRECEHHNETAADTIOOFN SYMPHONIE FANTASTIQUE (1830), HECTOR BERLIOZ IN CONTEXT T hroughout his career, Shakespeare\u2019s Romeo and Juliet French composer Hector starring the Irish actress Harriet FOCUS Berlioz explored the format Smithson as Juliet. It proved to be The programmatic of the programmatic symphony\u2014 a fateful encounter, because Berlioz symphony a mood-evoking work influenced fell in love with Smithson and by subjects outside of music, such would expend much energy over BEFORE as literature and art. It was his the next few years pursuing her. 1808 Beethoven premieres Symphonie fantastique, however, his Sixth Symphony, the composed early in his career, that During the course of this \u201cPastoral,\u201d which the composer proved to be his most successful infatuation, he felt compelled to insists is \u201cmore expression of and enduring work in the genre. write a piece that would describe feeling than tone-painting.\u201d his heightened passion and its Berlioz\u2019s inspiraton attendant joys and sorrows. He 1824 Beethoven\u2019s Ninth In 1827, as a 23-year-old music intended its performance to launch Symphony ends with a choral student, Berlioz went to see his career with a bold stroke and setting of a text taken from a performance in Paris of at the same time dazzle Smithson. German poet Friedrich The resulting piece Symphonie Schiller\u2019s \u201cOde to Joy.\u201d No one who hears this fantastique premiered at the Paris symphony here in Paris, Conservatoire on December 5, 1830, AFTER played by Berlioz\u2019s orchestra, and a printed synopsis of the \u201cplot\u201d 1848\u20131849 Liszt composes can help believing that was supplied. Ce qu\u2019on entend sur la he is hearing a marvel montagne, the first symphonic Love and death poem, based on a poem by without precedent. The title suggests a symphony Victor Hugo. Richard Wagner of the imagination, while its subtitle\u2014\u201cEpisode in the life of 1857 First performance an artist\u201d\u2014hints at the work\u2019s of Liszt\u2019s Faust Symphony, autobiographical element, although which he dedicated to Berlioz. its descriptive program (which Berlioz provided to audiences) focuses more on fantasy than reality. In the first movement, a young musician awakens to find love in the shape of an unknown beautiful woman. Her image","ROMANTIC 1810\u20131920 163 See also: The Four Seasons 92\u201397 \u25a0 Faust Symphony 176\u2013177 \u25a0 The Ring Cycle 180\u2013187 \u25a0 Also sprach Zarathustra 192\u2013193 \u25a0 Das Lied von der Erde 198\u2013201 (represented by a recurring melody Scaffold,\u201d he is executed. In the Hector Berlioz Berlioz called the id\u00e9e fixe) imposes second nightmare, he dreams itself upon his vision everywhere that he is at a Witches\u2019 Sabbath The son of a doctor, Berlioz he goes, such as at a ball and even and sees his beloved joining in was born at La C\u00f4te-Saint- in the country, where the sound of the grisly spectacle. Andr\u00e9, in southeastern thunder seems to symbolize his France, in 1803. At 12, he gloomy state of mind. Lasting influence began studying music, and Other composers emulated Berlioz\u2019s at 17, he moved to Paris to Determined to poison himself combination of music and story- study at the Conservatoire. with opium, he finds instead telling, notably Franz Liszt in A that the dose merely induces Faust Symphony and 12 symphonic In 1833, on his fifth attempt, nightmares. In the first of these, he poems (one-movement pieces in Berlioz won the Prix de Rome imagines he has been condemned the programmatic genre), including (a prestigious scholarship). to death for murdering his beloved: Mazeppa and Hamlet. Although By then, he had produced his at the end of the \u201cMarch to the some major composers, including Symphonie fantastique to Bruckner and Brahms, avoided the impress the actress Harriet Hector Berlioz conducts a deafening form, others such as Tchaikovsky, Smithson, whom he later orchestra in a caricature published C\u00e9sar Franck, Elgar, and Richard married. In Paris, he enjoyed by the French newspaper L\u2019Illustration, Strauss mined its possibilities limited success as a composer in 1845. Behind him, members of the inventively and exhaustively. \u25a0 and so also worked as a audience hold their ears. journalist. From 1842, he toured abroad, finding audiences in Russia, England, and Germany more receptive. He longed for success in the opera house, but his opera Benvenuto Cellini (1838) failed, and his masterpiece Les Troyens (1858) had only a partial production during his lifetime. Suffering from Crohn\u2019s disease and depression, he died in 1869. Other key works 1837 Grande Messe des morts (Requiem) 1839 Rom\u00e9o et Juliette 1856\u20131858 Les Troyens","164 SIMPLICITY IASCTHHIEEVFEIMNEANLT PR\u00c9LUDES (1839), FR\u00c9D\u00c9RIC CHOPIN IN CONTEXT W hile Chopin was one of evocation of moods. Every one the supreme composers of his compositions includes the FOCUS of the early Romantic piano, and the vast majority are Solo piano music period, he was in some respects for piano alone, yet within this untypical of the age he has come precisely defined area the breadth BEFORE to embody. Unlike fellow musicians of his musical thought is vast. 1812 John Field, an Irish Robert Schumann and Franz composer based in Liszt, Chopin had little interest in Chopin created an unparalleled St. Petersburg, publishes using music to express narratives intensity of melody, harmony, and the first Romantic piano piece inspired by Romantic art and expression. Writing in a style that to be called a \u201cnocturne.\u201d literature, or in producing grandiose seemed to represent the soul of works with huge orchestras in 1833 In Paris, Chopin\u2019s the manner of Hector Berlioz. Chopin plays for Prince Radziwi\u0142\u0142 Nocturnes, Op. 9, are the Instead, Chopin perfected his art during a trip to Berlin, in 1829. The composer\u2019s first nocturnes within circumscribed confines, same year, he composed the Polonaise to be published. tending toward brevity and the brillante for the prince (a cellist) and his daughter (a pianist) to practice. 1834\u20131835 Robert Schumann composes Carnaval, a collection of 21 piano movements, one of which is titled Chopin. AFTER 1892\u20131893 Brahms publishes four collections of small piano pieces, including intermezzos, fantasias, and capriccios. 1910\u20131913 Debussy, who described Chopin as \u201cthe greatest of us all,\u201d writes his two books of Pr\u00e9ludes.","ROMANTIC 1810\u20131920 165 See also: Pi\u00e8ces de clavecin 82\u201383 \u25a0 Die sch\u00f6ne M\u00fcllerin 150\u2013155 \u25a0 Pr\u00e9lude \u00e0 l\u2019apr\u00e8s-midi d\u2019un faune 228\u2013231 \u25a0 Ravel\u2019s Piano Concerto in D for the left hand 266\u2013267 Preludes, nocturnes, rain at Valldemossa, on the island and \u00e9tudes of Majorca, where she and Chopin, who was then her lover, spent the winter of 1838\u20131839 together. Preludes Short introductory Polish dance movement often Chopin\u2019s interest in dance was preceding a partly a conscious homage to his larger piece. Polish heritage. The polonaise (meaning \u201cPolish\u201d in French) Nocturnes Expressive and was used by many composers Fr\u00e9d\u00e9ric Chopin tranquil compositions across Europe, and Chopin wrote inspired by the night, more than a dozen examples, Born near Warsaw in 1810, following no set form. his first when he was just seven Chopin studied the piano years old. Like the polonaise, in the Polish capital and \u00c9tudes Pieces designed for the mazurka was a traditional performed at musical soir\u00e9es practice, to perfect dance form to which Chopin in its greatest houses. He musical skills. returned regularly on no fewer visited Paris at the age of 20 than 50 occasions. and settled there, making a the instrument itself, Chopin had a living by teaching, publishing profound effect on piano technique Chopin mainly used the waltz his music, and appearing at and helped push the instrument dance form for lighter salon music. salons. Chopin disliked to the forefront of 19th-century The so-called \u201cMinute Waltz\u201d concerts, and performed in music. Preferring to compose in and the Waltz in E-flat, Op. 18 few, yet his influence was miniature rather than on a large (Grande valse brillante) are rapid huge, founded on works that scale, he produced three four- pieces. In contrast to the showy embraced the folk music of his movement piano sonatas and many waltzes, Chopin\u2019s 20 nocturnes native land, as well as other, short \u201ccharacter\u201d pieces, especially are predominantly intimate and more conceptual forms that preludes, nocturnes, \u00e9tudes, and introverted in mood, slow and lifted piano technique to new dances, such as the mazurka, dreamy, as their title suggests. levels. Initially composing in polonaise, and waltz. The nocturnes enjoy an enduring a style that favored virtuosity legacy as some of the most popular in the tradition of composers Mood and style solo works ever written for piano. Johann Nepomuk Hummel, Between 1835 and 1839, Chopin The term \u201cnocturne\u201d and its style Friedrich Kalkbrenner, and composed a set of 24 preludes\u2014 were the invention of the Irish Carl Maria von Weber, he later one in each of the major and minor composer and celebrated pianist absorbed within his piano keys\u2014using J.S. Bach\u2019s Preludes John Field, whose work Chopin textures the influence of Bach. from the Well-Tempered Clavier knew and admired. His most durable personal (1722) as his model. For Chopin, the relationship, with the novelist prelude was essentially an abstract Like Field, Chopin was a George Sand, ended in 1847. form, although some of his pieces virtuoso pianist, and his interest He died of tuberculosis two were prescribed titles by his in the extension of piano technique years later in Paris. publishers that suggested specific is demonstrated in his 27 \u00e9tudes influences. The \u201cRaindrop\u201d Prelude, (\u201cstudies\u201d), which he began writing Other key works for example, earned its (inauthentic) in his teens. In these pieces, Chopin nickname from the French novelist managed to combine technical 1830 Piano Concerto No. 1 George Sand\u2019s account of incessant advances with great expressive 1835 Ballade No. 1 in G minor and musical quality. They have 1844 Sonata No. 3 in B minor remained both a challenge and 1846 Barcarolle in F-sharp a joy to pianists ever since. \u25a0","166 IN CONTEXT MOWWPYORUUISSTLYT1DME0PNH0HATIOVFHENEIIRMEHESADADOCWHEND FOCUS The Romantic symphony SYMPHONY NO. 1, THE \u201cSPRING\u201d SYMPHONY (1841), ROBERT SCHUMANN BEFORE 1824 First performance of Beethoven\u2019s Symphony No. 9 in Vienna. 1838 Schumann \u201cdiscovers\u201d Schubert\u2019s \u201cGreat\u201d C major Symphony in Vienna. AFTER 1876 Premiere of Brahms\u2019s Symphony No. 1, which Hans von Bulow dubs \u201cBeethoven\u2019s Tenth.\u201d 1889 Mahler\u2019s Symphony No. 1 premieres in Budapest. It marks the beginning of a cycle that redefines the symphony as a form. A t the end of the Classical age, Beethoven\u2019s Ninth Symphony, with its revolutionary message, inclusion of a choir and soloists, and many narrative musical features, offered a bold new vision of what a symphony might be. Yet many other Romantic composers, such as Chopin and Wagner, felt that Beethoven had taken the symphony to such heights with his Ninth that they could go no further with developing its form, and they turned to other genres instead. This led to a dearth of symphonic writing until the second half of the 19th century. Nonetheless, the symphonies that were produced by the most successful Romantic composers were among the greatest music written in the 19th century. These","ROMANTIC 1810\u20131920 167 See also: \u201cEroica\u201d Symphony 136\u2013139 \u25a0 Die sch\u00f6ne M\u00fcllerin 148\u2013153 \u25a0 Symphonie fantastique 162\u2013163 \u25a0 Faust Symphony 176\u2013177 Nothing right in art can a visit to Vienna after Schubert\u2019s Robert Schumann be accomplished death. Schumann took a copy of the manuscript back to Leipzig, where Born in the Saxon city of without enthusiasm. Felix Mendelssohn conducted its Zwickau (now part of Robert Schumann premiere in 1839. Germany) in 1810, Schumann began composing music as a works include Hector Berlioz\u2019s While Beethoven\u2019s works young boy. No less interested Symphonie fantastique, Franz focused on an intense musical in literature, he wrote a Liszt\u2019s Faust Symphony, and Robert argument and inner drive, Schubert number of youthful novels Schumann\u2019s Symphony No. 1, approached the form as a more before heading to Leipzig to known as the \u201cSpring\u201d Symphony. gentle and discursive structure, study law. Schumann gave up reminiscent of the romantic novels his studies in order to become Schubert\u2019s influence of the period. In Schubert\u2019s Ninth a concert pianist, but a hand At the same time that Beethoven Symphony, unexpected and injury prevented him from was writing his last symphony, nontraditional keys are used to achieving his goal. Instead, Schubert was also working on his produce a greater range of moods. he focused on composition and mature works in the genre. In 1822, Taking some 55 minutes to musical criticism, becoming he started on his Ninth Symphony, perform, a long work for the period, editor of the New Journal for now known as the \u201cGreat C Major\u201d the piece extends many traditional Music, through which he Symphony. Unperformed in his features of the symphony, suchas introduced the world to the lifetime, it was discovered by the introduction to the first music of Chopin and Brahms. Schubert\u2019s friend Schumann, on movement (almost a complete His novel piano works, often sonata in itself) and the numerous inspired by literature, quickly thematic elements in the last. became popular. After marrying Clara Wieck, a Taking up the baton famous pianist herself, he It was only after hearing Schubert\u2019s began to concentrate on other Ninth Symphony that Robert musical genres. His last years Schumann was inspired to begin were plagued with mental working on his own first symphony, illness, and he died in an in 1841. Until then, he had mainly asylum in 1856. been known as a composer of piano pieces. For the most part Other key works eschewing large-scale works, he had concentrated on collections or 1838 Kreisleriana, Op. 16 cycles of smaller pieces, cementing 1840 Dichterliebe, Op. 48 his reputation as a miniaturist. 1845 Piano Concerto in As such, writing a symphony was A minor, Op. 54 a new challenge for Schumann. 1850 Symphony No. 3, Op. 97 Extraordinarily, he sketched the whole work in just four days. Five weeks later, the fully orchestrated work premiered in \u276f\u276f Schumann\u2019s wife, Clara, was the daughter of his first piano instructor, Friedrich Wieck. Both Clara and her father were celebrated for their skills on the keyboard.","168 THE ROMANTIC SYMPHONY New era, new aesthetics Classical Romantic Inspired by the Inspired by nature, Enlightenment and the poetry, and myth. Age of Reason. Emphasis is on emotional expression. Emphasis is on elegance New styles of melody, and structure. harmony, and Era of the symphony, rhythm emerge. instrumental sonata, Growing audiences expand to include the and string quartet. middle classes. Music is largely the preserve of the court and the wealthy. Leipzig, with Mendelssohn as its score for the symphony, he gave a symphony of the Romantic period. conductor, and was well recieved each of his movements titles: Full of contrast and surprise, its by its audience. \u201cBeginning of Spring,\u201d \u201cEvening,\u201d quickly shifting moods keep \u201cJolly Playmates,\u201d and \u201cSpring listeners in suspense. Avoiding A Romantic symphony Replete.\u201d However, by the time the both the musical arguments of The title of the \u201cSpring\u201d Symphony symphony was published, he had Beethoven and the discursive was taken from a poem by Adolf removed them. approach of Schubert, Schumann B\u00f6ttger that ends with the lines, found a way to direct the music\u2019s \u201cOh turn and turn and change your It is clear from the opening energy through juxtaposition and course, In the valley Spring blooms brass fanfare, with its intense repetition, while still conveying forth,\u201d which inspired the opening feeling of expectation, that this is subtle emotions. He also avoids of the symphony. The poem is using traditional key structures about a melancholy lover whose To send light into the so that the second subject\u2014or pain is heightened by the arrival of darkness of men\u2019s hearts\u2014 melodic theme\u2014is in a minor key, spring, but Schumann claimed that such is the duty of the artist. adding a note of melancholy. a longing for spring in general inspired the work. In a letter to the Robert Schumann The symphony\u2019s second conductor William Taubert in 1843, movement often seems as if it were he wrote, \u201cI should like the very first originally written for the piano\u2014 trumpet call to sound as though a criticism frequently leveled at proceeding from on high and like a Schumann\u2019s orchestral works\u2014 summons to awaken. \u2026 It might be but this brings an original, almost possible to feel the world turning improvisatory quality to the piece green; perhaps \u2026 a butterfly that marked a departure from fluttering.\u201d In Schumann\u2019s first classical strictures. Meanwhile, in choosing to write the third","ROMANTIC 1810\u20131920 169 I feel so entirely in my element considerable acclaim. In using Form gives way with a full orchestra; even if programmatic titles and literary to expression my mortal enemies were \u2026 references, as well as in the very before me, I could lead them, sounds of the music he produced, The music composed by the master them, surround Schumann helped to define the Romantic generation strove to them, or repulse them. early Romantic ethos. reflect the importance of the Robert Schumann individual. Taking their cue in The early Romantic symphony part from Beethoven\u2014whose movement as a scherzo and trio, paid more attention to orchestration Ninth Symphony had broken Schumann was influenced by than the classical symphony had; the mold\u2014composers sought Beethoven, who had created this it used a wider palette of orchestral to create music free from structure out of the older minuet timbres and combined instrumental well-established structures, and trio, but here, too, Schumann\u2019s forces in new ways. Instruments such as the minuet and trio composition contains further that had previously been less and the rondo, and develop innovation: there are two trios popular\u2014such as the harp, tuba, other forms, such as the instead of the usual one, and they and trombone, as well as a number sonata principle and fugue. are in different time signatures. of percussion instruments\u2014also The last movement of the \u201cSpring\u201d became standard features. Their innovations gave Symphony is traditional in its the music of the Romantic structure but full of a humor that Composers of this period seldom composers an immediacy that seems to anticipate Tchaikovsky thought of themselves as markedly enabled it to be more easily in his lighter moments. Toward different from their classical understood by middle-class the end, Schumann has one last forebears and were essentially audiences, who were generally surprise in store\u2014a theme from his trying to bring the new \u201cRomantic\u201d untrained in music but wished piano piece Kreisleriana suddenly spirit of revolutionary politics to to enjoy it as entertainment. appears in a slightly altered form. life, using quite traditional means. In the same vein, Romantic Although it is not known why he However, as the wider Romantic works were often given titles did this, such self-quotation was movement gained traction, some to help new listeners grasp not unusual for Schumann. innovative composers\u2014such as the mood and story of the Berlioz and Liszt\u2014experimented, music. Some musicians, such not always successfully, with new as Berlioz and Liszt, would approaches to harmony, rhythm, even provide a written and structure. It was this spirit of program to explain the experimentation that paved the intended narrative of the way for late Romanticism. \u25a0 music to their audience. New approach Almost entirely self-taught as a composer, Schumann brought an originality and freshness to the symphony that earned him The German city of Leipzig became Schumann\u2019s home from 1828. He wrote many works at the house he shared with his wife, Clara Wieck. Situated on Inselstrasse 18, this is now a museum.","170 IN CONTEXT IWTVNHOAAELSLULEDANYRSAOOTNWFINMNPOOLETUADESU\u2026DITS FOCUS 19th-century sacred ELIJAH (1846), FELIX MENDELSSOHN choral music BEFORE 1741 Handel composes his oratorio, Messiah. 1829 Felix Mendelssohn conducts Bach\u2019s St. Matthew Passion for the first time since the composer\u2019s death in 1750. AFTER 1857 The Handel Festival at the Crystal Palace in London includes a performance of Messiah with a choir of 2,000 people and an orchestra of 500, creating a vogue for very large choral performances in England. 1900 Edward Elgar composes The Dream of Gerontius\u2014a setting of an 1866 poem by Cardinal Newman\u2014for the Birmingham Music Festival. C horal music had started to wane in popularity by the 19th century. The Classical period had heralded a new philosophy that deemed music to be at its purest when it was self-contained and referenced nothing outside itself. Instrumental music\u2014especially the symphony\u2014 had become the most important genre. While church musicians kept the choral tradition alive to some extent, they were increasingly amateurs. Secular choirs began to flourish, but because they were not professional musicians, the prestige of choral music suffered, compared to other types of music. In the absence of a market for choral","ROMANTIC 1810\u20131920 171 See also: Magnus Liber organi 28\u201331 \u25a0 Canticum Canticorum 46\u201351 \u25a0 Monteverdi\u2019s Vespers 64\u201369 \u25a0 St. Matthew Passion 98\u2013105 Oratorios, such as Elijah, were regularly performed with huge choirs and crowd-drawing soloists at the Crystal Palace, London, and elsewhere in England during the Victorian era. sacred music, there was also little professional conductor and defray Felix Mendelssohn incentive for composers to write concert expenses. It started as an new choral works. As a result, the educational venture for wealthy Born into a wealthy German- choral music performed tended to ladies, then went on to include men Jewish family in 1809, the draw on works from the past. in 1791, and thereafter gave regular young Mendelssohn was a concerts. It was here that the young child prodigy. He excelled An appetite for oratorios Felix Mendelssohn, whose father not only at the piano, violin, In England, regular renditions was a member of the choir, first conducting, and composition of Handel\u2019s oratorios in the late came across the works of J.S. Bach but also at painting, fencing, 1700s marked the start of a trend and was inspired to conduct a and riding. At the age of 20, that continued through the 19th performance of the St. Matthew he conducted a performance century. Among the first works Passion, which helped to establish of the St. Matthew Passion\u2014 to be revived after the composer\u2019s the Bach revival in Germany. the first since Bach\u2019s death. death, they were often updated Further choral societies sprang up for large, grandiose performances. throughout Europe and America, Mendelssohn\u2019s visit to At later music events, such as the and publishing choral music England in 1829 was well Three Choirs Festival (instituted became a lucrative concern, as received and made a great by the cathedrals of Hereford, some choirs needed in excess of impression on him, resulting Worcester, and Gloucester), 300 copies of a vocal score for a in nine further extended trips choirs could number more than single performance. and invitations to Buckingham a thousand singers\u2014a far cry from Palace. As well as composing the composer\u2019s original intentions. It was almost certainly through and performing, Mendelssohn attending performances of Handel\u2019s conducted the Leipzig The Berlin Singakademie was oratorios in London in the 1790s Gewandhaus Orchestra and one of the first choral societies to be that Haydn was inspired to create also founded the Leipzig established, with amateurs paying a similar work in the Classical style. Conservatoire. Following a regular subscription to engage a The Creation, based on the Book of ill-health, possibly due to Genesis, was published in 1800, overwork and the death of and curiously in a bilingual edition his beloved sister, he suffered in both German and English\u2014 a series of strokes and died in probably because Haydn had an 1847, at the age of 38. eye on the British market, in which he was very successful. The Creation Other key works was an instant success and was performed throughout the Western 1826 Overture \u201cA Midsummer world in Haydn\u2019s lifetime. Even as Night\u2019s Dream,\u201d Op. 21 his other music dropped out of the 1833 Symphony No. 4 in standard repertoire, this oratorio A major (\u201cItalian\u201d), Op. 90 remained one of the core works 1844 Violin Concerto in for choral societies and festivals. E minor, Op. 64 It was within this cultural climate that Mendelssohn composed his oratorio St. Paul in \u276f\u276f","172 19TH-CENTURY SACRED CHORAL MUSIC 1836. Its subsequent performance Never before was anything it still reflects the Early Romantic (in an English translation) in like this season \u2026 I got period in its colorful orchestration Liverpool, England, and later in through more music in and subtle lyricism. The chorales the US gained him a reputation as two months than in all mark structural divisions in the a composer who was sympathetic the rest of the year. music, as found in the Bach to the possibilities of amateurs Felix Mendelssohn Passions. Also, unlike other works performing his works. of the period, a surprisingly wide Eventually, she sang the soprano variety of styles and textures can Mendelssohn had conducted role of Elijah in London in 1848, be heard, which is reminiscent of St. Paul for the Birmingham after Mendelssohn\u2019s death, in a Handel. However, Mendelssohn Triennial Music Festival in 1837, charity concert that funded the also uses innovative forms, such and its organizers requested a new Mendelssohn Scholarship, which as including the choir in certain oratorio for 1846, the year before he still exists today. recitatives for dramatic effect, and died. The composer at first declined he attempts to bring a sense of the invitation but was persuaded to Elijah itself has a curious hybrid unity to the whole work by linking write Elijah when told that the quality. Although clearly influenced movements and using recurring festival could provide as many by the Baroque and modeled on motifs, both of which were musical performers as he requested. Its the oratorios of Bach and Handel, devices of his own era. Of special premiere featured an orchestra of interest are the fugues in the 125 players and a chorus of 271 overture and finale, which clearly singers. The organizers even tried demonstrated to the Romantic to engage the famous Swedish generation that this Baroque form opera singer Jenny Lind, for whom could be revived to great effect. Mendelssohn had tailored the soprano part. However, because Elijah was immediately this would have been her British successful, especially in its English debut, she declined, preferring an version, and became a mainstay opera to showcase her vocal skills. of choral concerts throughout the 19th century. Later commentators, however, often found it too conventional and considered it a product of mid-Victorian values. Grand sacred works While many composers of the period were not very interested in choral music, Hector Berlioz created two of the grandest choral works in the repertoire. With their extraordinarily large forces, his Requiem of 1837 and his Te Deum, first performed in 1855, are vivid examples of the excesses of High Romanticism; the Requiem requires four off-stage brass ensembles while the score of The prophet summons the Israelites in the bass recitative \u201cDraw near all ye people\u201d from the oratorio Elijah. This page, handwritten by Mendelssohn, is from an original 1846 score of the work.","ROMANTIC 1810\u20131920 173 Four strong Elijah\u2019s curse Somber since, opinion has been divided chords introduce woodwind and as to whether it is a religious work brass are used. The or an outpouring of rather more drama and brighter strings drama than sacrament. foreboding. are silent. A \u201chuman\u201d requiem Brahms\u2019s German Requiem was Descending A final drum roll perhaps the most singular sacred tritones, imparts a sense choral work of the period. It was his of doom. first major composition and brought signaling danger, him international acclaim. He are capped by a avoided the traditional requiem trombone blast. Mass text, instead creating his own from the Lutheran Bible. There Mendelssohn\u2019s Elijah begins with the prophet\u2019s curse on King is a focus in the work on comforting Ahab and the Israelites. Their punishment for corrupt governance the living, no reference to the Day and the worship of false idols will be a terrible drought. of Judgment, and no mention of Jesus. Brahms thought of it as a the Te Deum specifies 12 harps. As between secular operatic and \u201chuman requiem\u201d rather than a result, performances were\u2014and sacred choral works. Verdi belonging to any particular still are\u2014rare and impractical, and composed it in the operatic style, theological outlook, which is so this music had little opportunity with immense drama, especially perhaps why it is still so frequently to affect the genre. Composers in the powerful \u201cDies Irae,\u201d and performed. Written in seven large such as Rossini wrote a number wrote parts for female voices at sections, the musical material of cantatas, but these tended to a time when the Catholic Church is tightly organized around the be overshadowed by their more used only men in its choirs. The opening notes sung to Selig sind popular operas and are seldom Requiem\u2019s first performance was (\u201cBlessed are\u201d). This creates a very heard. It was Verdi\u2019s Requiem at St. Mark\u2019s in Milan, but its unified whole, in which Brahms that managed to bridge the gap second was at La Scala. Ever seems to have avoided using any previous models. A work of subtle majesty, the German Requiem stands in sharp relief to most choral music of the 19th century. \u25a0 Music in Victorian Britain Between industrial innovation wealthy background, and even Prince Albert plays the organ for and empire building, the arts\u2014 feted by the Queen, became Mendelssohn as Queen Victoria looks especially music\u2014were rather ubiquitous. Meanwhile, the brass on. The composer enjoyed several marginalized in early Victorian band movement in northern visits to Buckingham Palace in 1842. Britain. Although there was a England and music halls in the thriving concert culture, it was cities were both thriving musical predominated by foreign artists. outlets for the working classes. Yet, with a rapidly expanding, wealthy middle class, there Later in the century, the search were many amateurs\u2014young for a cultural identity inspired women especially\u2014who needed British classical musicians, which socially acceptable music to also led to the creation of British play. In this climate, Songs conservatoires. Figures as diverse Without Words by Mendelssohn, as Sullivan and Elgar emerged a \u201crespectable\u201d composer from a from this new, so-called \u201cEnglish Musical Renaissance.\u201d","174 IOSLPOOERRVEEAC\u2014IKTLAIELTSI\u2019SASN LA TRAVIATA (1853), GIUSEPPE VERDI IN CONTEXT I t was usual in the first decades Italian tenor Francesco Meli of the 19th century for Italian performs as Violetta\u2019s lover, Alfredo, FOCUS opera to be concerned with in the brindisi drinking song in a 2016 Italian opera the tragedies of the great and production of La traviata. His love for noble. Giuseppe Verdi challenged Violetta brings shame upon his family. BEFORE this and produced operas about 1829 Rossini shocks the ordinary people as well. However, it wasn\u2019t until well into musical world by retiring Verdi\u2019s creative life that he fulfilled from opera after his final Verdi enjoyed notable early his democratic ambitions with stage work, William Tell, successes, such as Nabucco (1842), three masterpieces composed in premieres in Paris. based on the biblical story of quick succession\u2014Rigoletto (1851), Nebuchadnezzar II. Its chorus Il trovatore (1853), and La traviata 1848 Composer Gaetano \u201cVa pensiero,\u201d in which the Hebrew (1853). Rigoletto focuses on the Donizetti dies, 13 years after slaves lament the loss of their eponymous character\u2014a hunchback his compatriot Vincenzo homeland, would later become an who, in trying to protect his Bellini, leaving Verdi as the anthem for Italian independence. leading light of Italian opera. AFTER 1887 Milan hosts the premiere of Verdi\u2019s Otello, his first opera since Aida in 1871. 1890 Italian composer Pietro Mascagni\u2019s masterpiece Cavalleria rusticana premieres in Rome and ushers in the naturalistic, melodramatic \u201cverismo\u201d style of opera.","ROMANTIC 1810\u20131920 175 See also: The Magic Flute 134\u2013137 \u25a0 The Barber of Seville 148 \u25a0 Der Freisch\u00fctz 149 \u25a0 Tosca 194\u2013197 \u25a0 The Wreckers 232\u2013239 \u25a0 Peter Grimes 288\u2013293 daughter, unwittingly brings about censors, so the opera was set in the To copy the truth can her undoing; Il trovatore tells the 1700s for the premiere. La traviata be a good thing, but to melodramatic tale of the beautiful was nonetheless unique as it boldly invent the truth is better, Leonora who is caught between confronted society\u2019s hypocritical two men and a gypsy woman\u2019s treatment of women. much better. vengeance; and in La traviata (\u201cThe Giuseppe Verdi fallen woman\u201d), a courtesan named Although some of La traviata\u2019s Violetta sacrifices her love and, most famous numbers\u2014especially written for the opening of the new ultimately, herself, for the sake of the brindisi drinking song in Act opera house in Cairo in 1871, marked the patriarchal society that seeks One\u2014feature crowd scenes, La a break for Verdi, who was unhappy to control her. These three operas traviata is an opera remarkable for with the importation of French and confirmed Verdi\u2019s break away from its moments of intimacy. Verdi German opera to Italy. Verdi began what he described as his galley draws us into the world of his to focus on other aspects of his years: time spent producing works heroine, and this groundbreaking life and composed little after the to order for the \u201copera industry.\u201d focus on a female protagonist paved Missa da Requiem of 1874, written the way for others, such as the in memory of the nationalist poet, Bending the rules gypsy heroine of Georges Bizet\u2019s Alessandro Manzoni, until his Verdi managed to manipulate and Carmen (1875)\u2014a character from final two pieces, which were both subvert operatic conventions to French opera, who is similarly based on works by his beloved achieve a synthesis of tradition and drawn from the literary world (from Shakespeare: Otello (1887) and innovation. With La traviata, he a story by Prosper M\u00e9rim\u00e9e) and Falstaff (1893). \u25a0 took a subject drawn from a well- similarly exposed the hypocrisy known novel, La Dame aux cam\u00e9lias of 19th-century sexual mores. (The Lady of the Camellias) by Alexandre Dumas, and, in a step Final masterpieces unprecedented then, set the Verdi\u2019s many subsequent works drama at the time of composition. saw the composer tackle the Ultimately, the portrayal of a fallen different conventions of grand woman in modern society was op\u00e9ra in such masterpieces as rejected as too risqu\u00e9 by the Italian Don Carlos, composed for the Paris opera in 1867. However, Aida, Giuseppe Verdi Verdi was born in Busseto, become the most successful northern Italy, in 1813. His father, opera composer of his day, and an innkeeper of modest social from the 1850s his music was standing, encouraged his son\u2019s embraced by the nationalist early education, and a wealthy Risorgimento movement. merchant in the town, Antonio Barezzi, paid for the young Verdi In 1859, Verdi married the to study in Milan. operatic soprano Giuseppina Strepponi, staying with her until In 1836, Verdi married Barezzi\u2019s her death in 1897. Verdi himself daughter, but both she and their died four years later, in 1901. two young children died four years later. In spite of this tragedy, Other key works Verdi\u2019s career began to take off. His breakthrough came with 1842 Nabucco Nabucco in 1841. Over the 1867 Don Carlos following decade, he produced 1874 Missa da Requiem 13 operas. The 1850s saw him 1887 Otello","176 HDWEOHVLOIDLH,HOLIMELTDWSHEITMLHLE FAUST SYMPHONY (1854\u20131857), FRANZ LISZT IN CONTEXT Mephistopheles holds a mirror up T he central myths of to Faust in a poster created by Richard European art can often FOCUS Roland Holst for a 1918 Dutch National be traced back to sources The Faust legend and Theatre production of Goethe\u2019s play. thousands of years old. Unusually, German Romanticism the Faust legend is a more recent phenomenon, based on a real BEFORE person. The original Johann 1830 The premiere of Berlioz\u2019s Faustus was a late 15th-century Symphonie fantastique, with magician-illusionist, who claimed the young Liszt in the Paris to be in league with the devil. His audience, sees the debut of the dubious career traveling through Romantic symphony orchestra, the southeast German region much more colorful than those of Thuringia even secured him that came before. a doctorate from Heidelberg University. The Faust story had 1846 Berlioz conducts already become part of folklore the first performances of The when the literary doyen of the Damnation of Faust, based on German Romantic movement, Goethe\u2019s Faust Part I. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, began to explore the character AFTER in the 1770s. 1861 Liszt arranges a piano version of his Mephisto-Waltz Powerful appeal No. 1, which was originally Romanticism had multiple roots in written for orchestra. the political and social upheavals of its time. With industrialism came 1906 Mahler composes his the rise of a middle-class less Eighth Symphony; its main beholden to the Church and the movement is a huge setting of aristocracy, and in this more the closing \u201cChorus mysticus\u201d liberated climate, Goethe\u2019s verse- scene of Goethe\u2019s Faust Part II. play Faust developed a potent appeal. Faust concerns the corruption of a secular, rational mind. Goethe\u2019s hero is a brilliant","ROMANTIC 1810\u20131920 177 See also: Stamitz\u2019s Symphony in E-flat major 116\u2013117 \u25a0 Mozart\u2019s Symphony No. 40 in G minor 128\u2013131 \u25a0 \u201cEroica\u201d 138\u2013141 \u25a0 Symphonie fantastique 162\u2013163 \u25a0 Schumann\u2019s Symphony No. 1 166\u2013169 \u25a0 Brahms\u2019s Symphony No. 1 188\u2013189 agnostic philosopher, whose Berlioz. Enthralled, he sketched out A frontispiece of sheet music for intellectual disillusionment leads some ideas first for an opera, then a Lizst\u2019s Faust Symphony, published him to be waylaid by the demon symphony, but the idea remained in Leipzig, Germany, lists the main Mephistopheles\u2019s offer of a world on hold until he had settled in characters of the symphony and the of sensual and sexual satisfaction. Goethe\u2019s adopted hometown of type of orchestral arrangement. Weimar. In 1854, over a period In the poem\u2019s first part of two months, he composed added the finale, with its tenor (published in 1808), Faust is and orchestrated the first three soloist and male-voice choir, for the introduced to the trusting young movements of his Faust Symphony. first performance three years later. Gretchen, whom he seduces, Dedicating the work to Berlioz, he impregnates, and abandons to Rather than following Goethe\u2019s madness and death. The second complex narrative, each of the part (completed in 1831) finds the symphony\u2019s first three movements remorseful Faust applying his presents a portrait of one of the powers to the cause of human main characters. The long first good; as Faust\u2019s death approaches, movement portrays the multiple Gretchen\u2019s soul intercedes for him, layers of Faust\u2019s restless nature and angels carry Faust aloft to a in a complex, chromatic musical higher world. The legend was taken language (based on all 12 up in Charles Gounod\u2019s grand opera semitones in an octave). While Faust, Robert Schumann\u2019s oratorio Gretchen\u2019s movement is Faust\u2019s Scenes from Goethe\u2019s Faust, and by opposite in its sweet winsomeness, Wagner in his Faust Overture. The Mephistopheles has a diabolic most significant musical version, Scherzo, in which each theme is however, is the one by Hungarian a distortion of one already used virtuoso Franz Lizst. to portray Faust. The finale is a radiant choral setting of the poem\u2019s Liszt\u2019s Faust concluding \u201cChorus mysticus,\u201d as The young Liszt was introduced to Gretchen\u2019s theme leads Faust\u2019s Faust Part I (in G\u00e9rard de Nerval\u2019s soul, much like in Goethe\u2019s version, French translation) by his friend into a transfigured musical world. \u25a0 Franz Liszt In 1848, Liszt moved with the Ukrainian Princess Carolyne Born in Raiding, eastern Sayn-Wittgenstein to Weimar, Austria, in 1811, Liszt showed where he composed principal early talent as a pianist. He works of the Romantic era. Later, studied in Vienna, where he he took minor Catholic orders played to an amazed Beethoven, in Rome. In 1886, Liszt died of and his subsequent teenage pneumonia in Bayreuth, Germany. years in Paris consolidated his standing as the supreme pianist Other key works of his time. At 24 years old, he eloped to Switzerland with 1842 Ann\u00e9es de p\u00e8lerinage Countess Marie d\u2019Agoult; later, (Years of Pilgrimage) in Italy, they had three children 1853 Piano Sonata in B minor but drifted apart as Liszt 1856 Dante Symphony (choir pursued a relentless concert and orchestra) schedule throughout Europe. 1868 Christus (choral oratorio)","178 IGWANINDHTDDIHRYTELHMWEAARADZOLAETUNSZNC\u2019DSERGSAILY THE BLUE DANUBE (1867), JOHANN STRAUSS II IN CONTEXT O ne of the most instantly Europe\u2019s ballrooms. Couples held recognizable waltzes ever one another face to face as they FOCUS written, An der sch\u00f6nen, twirled around the floor, in contrast 19th-century waltz music blauen Donau (By the Beautiful to the stately minuets and other Blue Danube) was first performed in French-style court dances that BEFORE Vienna in February 1867 as a choral the waltz was starting to replace. 1819 Carl Maria von Weber\u2019s piece, conducted by its Austrian By the early 1800s, the waltz had Invitation to the Dance is composer, Johann Strauss II. spread throughout Europe, with the first waltz written for Comprising five interlinked waltz Vienna as its capital. Invigorated concert performance rather themes, it was designed to lift the first by Johann Strauss I, then his than dancing. spirit of the Austrian nation after son, it became the signature its defeat by Prussia in the Seven dance of the 19th century. \u25a0 1823 Schubert writes Valses Weeks\u2019 War. It was, however, the sentimentales, a collection of purely orchestral version, premiered 34 waltzes for solo piano. in Paris later that year, that took off. The lilting beauty of Strauss\u2019s 1834 Chopin\u2019s Grande valse melodies made the piece beloved brillante is the first of his solo the world over. piano waltzes to be published. Waltzes have their roots in AFTER the country dances of southern 1877 Tchaikovsky\u2019s Swan Germany, Bohemia, and Austria. Lake is one of many late From the mid-1700s, more refined 19th-century ballets and versions, with a distinctive triple operas that feature waltzes. beat, started to become popular in 1911 Maurice Ravel publishes A statue of \u201cThe Waltz King\u201d a suite of waltzes, Valses playing the violin stands in Stadtpark, nobles et sentimentales. Vienna. As a child, Strauss practiced the violin secretly, as his musician 1919\u20131920 Ravel composes La father wanted him to become a banker. valse, about the rise and fall of See also: Le bourgeois gentilhomme 70\u201371 \u25a0 Water Music 84\u201389 \u25a0 Symphonie the waltz as a musical genre. fantastique 162\u2013163 \u25a0 The Nutcracker 190\u2013191","ROMANTIC 1810\u20131920 179 IILNILKIWVEEAATIFNEIRSMHUSIC PIANO CONCERTO NO. 2 IN G MINOR (1868), CAMILLE SAINT-SA\u00cbNS IN CONTEXT T he French composer replaced the usual fast-slow-fast Camille Saint-Sa\u00ebns\u2019 Piano sequence of movements with a FOCUS Concerto No. 2 premiered in slow-fast-faster progression, giving 19th-century solo Paris in May 1868. It had taken him rise to the quip that it \u201cbegins with concertos 17 days of flat-out labor to finish it Bach and ends with Offenbach.\u201d in time for the concert, which his BEFORE friend, the Russian musician Anton Lack of rehearsal time resulted 1830 Chopin\u2019s Piano Concerto Rubinstein, conducted. Saint-Sa\u00ebns in a disappointing premiere, but the No. 1 in E minor is premiered played the solo part. concerto won admirers and remains in Warsaw, Poland. a staple of the concert repertoire. Exploring the form Saint-Sa\u00ebns wrote another three 1836 Clara Schumann writes Solo concertos had evolved over the concertos for the piano, three for her Piano Concerto in A minor, course of the 19th century. Dazzling the violin, and two for the cello. \u25a0 nine years before her husband, displays by virtuoso performer- Robert Schumann, writes his composers, notably violinist He who does not get Piano Concerto in A minor. Paganini and pianists Chopin and absolute pleasure from Liszt, dominated the years after a simple series of well- 1849 Liszt completes the final 1810, with the orchestra providing constructed chords, beautiful version of his Piano Concerto little more than a backdrop. Later only in their arrangement, No. 1 in E-flat major. figures, such as Robert Schumann, is not really fond of music. called for a better balance. Camille Saint-Sa\u00ebns AFTER 1868 Grieg composes one Most major composers of the of the most popular piano time, including Mendelssohn, concertos ever written, his Brahms, Grieg, and Dvor\u02c7\u00e1k, wrote Piano Concerto in A minor. concertos and experimented widely with the form. In his Piano 1881 Johannes Brahms Concerto No. 2, Saint-Sa\u00ebns ignored completes his Piano Concerto convention by opening not with No. 2 in B-flat major. the orchestra but with a solo piano prelude in the style of Bach, and he See also: Pi\u00e8ces de clavecin 82\u201383 \u25a0 Scarlatti\u2019s Sonata in D minor, K.9, \u201cPastorale\u201d 90\u201391 \u25a0 Clementi\u2019s Piano Sonata in F-sharp minor 132\u2013133","WEEP,OPERA MUST MAKE PEOPLE FEEL HORRIFIED, DIE TRHICEHRAIRNDG CWYACGLNEE(R1848\u20131874),","","182 COMPLETE ART WORK IN CONTEXT T wo things changed beyond The valkyrie Br\u00fcnnhilde meets the recognition in Wagner\u2019s lovers Siegmund and Sieglinde to warn FOCUS lifetime: German opera and Siegmund of his imminent death. This Complete art work Germany itself. The country that he scene from Wagner\u2019s Die Walk\u00fcre was grew up in was little more than a painted by Gaston Bussi\u00e8re (1893). BEFORE group of loosely linked principalities 1821 Weber\u2019s Der Freisch\u00fctz, and kingdoms, while German opera for even a fraction of the quasi- considered to be the first before Wagner was fighting a losing religious devotion that Wagner\u2019s German Romantic opera, battle against imports from France vast musical dramas inspired. premieres in Berlin. and Italy\u2014apart from a few notable exceptions. Beethoven\u2019s Fidelio, The road to Revolution 1824 Beethoven completes Mozart\u2019s Don Giovanni (performed More than any other composer his Ninth Symphony. In a form in German in the German-speaking before him, Wagner\u2019s own life that was traditionally wordless, lands), and the Romantic operas of and art were intertwined with the Beethoven\u2019s use of words in Carl Maria von Weber represented developments\u2014political, historical, the symphony\u2019s finale greatly the only resistance against the and philosophical\u2014of the world influenced Wagner. prevailing taste for foreign operatic around him. From an early age, imports, often poorly performed in he was fascinated with how to 1849 After being forced into the various court theatres that were combine drama and music, and exile, Wagner begins a series dotted around Germany. increasingly, with how a new sort of essays setting out a plan for of opera could help revitalize the art reforming opera. The first step By the time of Wagner\u2019s death in form in Germany, as well as inspire later becomes The Ring. 1883, Germany was a nation-state. and unite the country itself. He was German opera\u2014or, more correctly, unusual among opera composers 1862 Wagner conducts Wagnerian opera\u2014had conquered in that he always wrote his own Beethoven\u2019s Ninth Symphony France, Italy, and beyond. Other librettos (the words that were set to in Bayreuth to celebrate the composers rushed to emulate his music) and did so even in his early laying of the corner stone of harmonic adventurousness and his operas. His first opera, Die Feen the Festspielhaus. richly symphonic style and longed AFTER 1883 Wagner\u2019s widow Cosima takes over the running of the Bayreuth Festival, exercising iron control until her death in 1930. 1933 Hitler comes to power in Germany and, as an ardent Wagnerian, involves himself intimately with the running of the festival. 1976 Bayreuth\u2019s centenary staging of The Ring, later widely televised, presents the work as a critique of 19th-century industrialization.","ROMANTIC 1810\u20131920 183 See also: The Magic Flute 134\u2013137 \u25a0 The Barber of Seville 148 \u25a0 Der Freisch\u00fctz 149 \u25a0 La traviata 174\u2013175 \u25a0 Tosca 194\u2013197 \u25a0 The Wreckers 232\u2013239 \u25a0 Peter Grimes 288\u2013293 (\u201cThe fairies,\u201d 1834) delved deep Wagner founded at Bayreuth. They With one bound I became into Romanticism, while his second, show the composer increasingly a revolutionist, and acquired Das Liebesverbot (\u201cThe ban on love,\u201d breaking down the traditional 1836), loosely based on Shakespeare\u2019s structures of opera\u2014blurring the the conviction that every Measure for Measure, was closer to lines between individual arias, decently active being ought Italian comic opera. duets, and choruses, and focusing on the psychological development to occupy himself with A largely unsuccessful period in of characters of unprecedented politics exclusively. Paris in the late 1830s exposed the complexity. The operas addressed Richard Wagner young composer to the bel canto of subjects that would concern him Vincenzo Bellini (whom he much for the rest of his creative life: came up with the idea of the admired) as well as to grand op\u00e9ra, redemption, the nature of desire, Gesamtkunstwerk (literally a local genre whose extravagant and, in Tannh\u00e4user, how religion \u201ccomplete art work\u201d), which would scenic features would broaden his can and should temper this desire. combine all the elements of stage theatrical horizons. The German- performance in one. His new works born composer Giacomo Meyerbeer Theory and practice would amalgamate the genius of was among the most successful Wagner\u2019s involvement in the Beethoven and Shakespeare and exponents of this type of operatic uprising in Dresden in 1849\u2014part be modeled on ancient Greek spectacle. Wagner\u2019s next work, of a series of republican revolts drama, which, as far as Wagner Rienzi (1840), was modeled closely that swept through Germany understood it, not only combined on Meyerbeer\u2019s style and proved to and other parts of Europe\u2014led all the arts but did so in a way be his first breakthrough, leading to a warrant being issued for his that was essential for uniting a \u276f\u276f to Wagner\u2019s appointment as arrest, forcing him into exile in Kapellmeister (director of music) Switzerland. During the first five at the Dresden Court Theatre. years in exile, he did not compose a single note of music, concentrating Wagner\u2019s subsequent works in instead on setting out the the 1840s, Der fliegende Holl\u00e4nder foundations for his operatic reforms (The Flying Dutchman), Tannh\u00e4user, in a series of long essays. It was and Lohengrin, are the earliest during this period that Wagner operas included in the canon of works performed at the festival that Richard Wagner Wagner was born in Leipzig most ambitiously in The Ring. In in 1813 and was drawn to the the 1860s, his fortunes improved theatre at an early age, also thanks to the financial aid of developing an obsession with King Ludwig II of Bavaria, which music\u2014particularly Beethoven. gave him new artistic freedom. His early years were dominated Wagner died in Venice in 1883, by instability, exacerbated by his the year after Parsifal premiered irresponsible attitude toward in Bayreuth. money. His operas began to see success in the 1840s, and a job as Other key works Kapellmeister in Dresden followed, but both were jeopardized by his 1841 The Flying Dutchman political activism. 1848 Lohengrin 1859 Tristan und Isolde Forced into exile in Switzerland 1867 Die Meistersinger in the 1850s, he set about a von N\u00fcrnberg wholesale reform of opera: first in 1882 Parsifal theoretical essays, then in practice,","184 COMPLETE ART WORK population. Wagner sought to originally called Siegfrieds Tod I shall never write an create an artistic experience with (\u201cSiegfried\u2019s death\u201d), led to him Opera more. As I have no religious, social, and ethical aspects. expanding it backward, adding wish to invent an arbitrary more and more prehistory in each title for my works, I will Such an artwork would gain additional work. yet further resonance with its call them Dramas. audience, he argued, by being This process also necessitated Richard Wagner based on subjects rooted deep in the development of \u201cleitmotif\u201d\u2014a their unconscious, ideally myth. technique latent in his works of the with conversation-like directness In his new \u201cmusic dramas,\u201d as his 1840s but raised in The Ring to a (using punchy alliterative verse works became known, he would be level of extraordinary complexity called Stabreim), while the able to harness the power of music and sophistication. This method orchestra provides commentary. to explore the inner workings of allowed Wagner to weave together his characters. Unlike with the continuous acts over large spans For the \u201cfirst day\u201d of the cycle, predominant forms of opera, in but also meant that the orchestra Die Walk\u00fcre (\u201cThe Valkyrie,\u201d 1856), which musical concerns and, in the could begin to offer \u201ccommentary\u201d Wagner created music of far greater worst cases, the vanity of singers, on the action, much as the chorus sensuality and warmth, in part were primary considerations, here had done in ancient Greek drama. because this installment added it would be the drama that would humans into the tale, specifically define the form of the music. Wagner finally completed his the long-lost twins Siegmund and text for the cycle by 1852, and he Sieglinde, who fall in love during Composing the world began composing the music shortly the course of the first act. (The The work that came closest to this afterward, without any realistic aim was a cycle of operas, Der Ring prospect of the works ever being des Nibelungen (\u201cThe ring of the performed. Das Rheingold, which Nibelung\u201d), based on a mixture of Wagner called a \u201cpreliminary Norse and Germanic mythology. evening\u201d to the main drama, came It was not initially conceived as a first and was the nearest Wagner tetralogy (a cycle of four works), but came to realizing the theoretical Wagner\u2019s inability to progress with ideal laid out in his essays. the subject as a single opera, The opera\u2019s cast of Norse gods, dwarves, and giants communicate Timeline for the production of The Ring The Ring was made up of four operas, Key Tristan und Isolde First performance which Wagner worked on in two distinct Text written Die Meistersinger phases during his lifetime, beginning and ending with G\u00f6tterd\u00e4mmerung. Music composed Das Rheingold Munich Die Walk\u00fcre Siegfried Bayreuth G\u00f6tterd\u00e4mmerung 1850 1855 1860 1865 1870 1875 1880 1885 1845","ROMANTIC 1810\u20131920 185 Tristan and its chord Inspired by his discovery of Arthur Schopenhauer's philosophies and a romantic obsession with Mathilde von Wesendonck\u2014the wife of his Swiss patron\u2014Wagner began composing Tristan und Isolde in 1857, finishing it less than two years later. The work, which explores the adulterous romance and subsequent death of the legendary lovers, arguably laid the foundations for the breakdown of tonality. In it, Wagner creates a disorientating, intoxicating world built on harmonic tension that\u2014reflecting the drama\u2019s obsession with the impossibility of perfect love\u2014 remains unresolved until the very end. Emblematic of this work is the so-called \u201cTristan chord\u201d\u2014the first chord in the Prelude\u2014whose apparently unrelated notes of F, B, D-sharp, and G-sharp form the basis for the work\u2019s harmonic instability. The Tristan chord, as used by Wagner, was hugely influential on composers seeking to push\u2014and break\u2014 the boundaries of harmony. Wagner\u2019s style was not popular with creative output. Not only did Tristan und Isolde (1859) first everyone, as seen in this American Schopenhauer present a philosophy premiered in Munich in 1865, cartoon (1877), which criticized the of pessimism incompatible with starring Ludwig Schnorr von dense noise of G\u00f6tterd\u00e4mmerung, the revolutionary zeal that inspired Carolsfeld and his wife Malwina the last opera of the Ring Cycle. The Ring, but he viewed music as Garrigues as the doomed lovers. the most profoundly expressive of promotion of incest was just one of any of the arts\u2014turning Wagner\u2019s many sins the composer would be drama-first conviction on its head. accused of during his career.) By 1856, however, Wagner had also Breaking the cycle discovered the philosopher Arthur In practical terms, Wagner\u2019s Schopenhauer, who would prove discovery of Schopenhauer brought to be a powerful influence on his about a break in his composition \u276f\u276f","186 COMPLETE ART WORK of The Ring: he stopped composing cycle, bringing an even greater The English National Opera Siegfried (the \u201csecond day\u201d of the harmonic richness to the third act performs \u201cThe Ride of the Valkyries\u201d cycle) after completing a draft score of Siegfried and to the fourth opera, at Glastonbury Festival in 2004. The of the second act in 1857. He did G\u00f6tterd\u00e4mmerung (\u201cThe twilight well-known piece comes at the start not return to it for seven years. of the Gods\u201d)\u2014in which the Ring of Act Three of Die Walk\u00fcre. is finally returned to the Rhine During the interim, Wagner Maidens, and Valhalla, home of the The theatre that Wagner built in completed two very different works, gods, collapses. Wagner completed the Franconian town of Bayreuth both of which were deeply inspired his final installment in November to stage The Ring in 1876 is in by Schopenhauer\u2019s philosophy\u2014 1874, 25 years after first starting many ways as revolutionary as specifically, its idea that relative work on the project. the works it was built to stage. fulfillment could be achieved only It has a broad auditorium, with through renunciation. The first of Festival theatre long rows of seats laid out to these new works was Tristan und Upon completion of The Ring, resemble an ancient amphitheatre. Isolde (completed in 1859, though Wagner decided that no existing The orchestra and conductor are not performed in its entirety until theatre would do to stage it and not visible to the audience, as 1865), an overtly philosophical and set about raising funds for a new their pit is sunk beneath the stage. sensuous work in which Wagner Festspielhaus (festival theatre). In an unprecedented step for the pushed traditional harmony to its limits. The second work, Die Meistersinger von N\u00fcrnberg (\u201cThe master-singers of Nuremberg,\u201d 1867), was a comedy of unprecedented dimensions\u2014the final act alone is more than two hours long when staged\u2014that dealt with profound issues, such as the place of art within society, art\u2019s relationship with national identity, and the balance to be struck between rule- based tradition and innovation. When Wagner finally returned to his composition of The Ring, he immediately applied the musical and philosophical lessons learned from his interim projects to the I laid my plans on so important Leitmotif musical fabric\u2014specifically in a scale, that it would be the orchestra\u2014of the work was The leitmotif (or \u201cleading motif\u201d) built from melodic fragments impossible to produce this technique is related to Berlioz\u2019s that become associated with opera \u2026 at any lesser theatre. id\u00e9e fixe, a fixed idea or theme different characters, ideas, in a work, which he used in his or states of mind. From the Richard Wagner Symphonie fantastique. It is very first performances of The also related to other earlier Ring, attempts were made to forms of \u201creminiscence motif,\u201d a \u201cdecode\u201d these leitmotifs and recurring set of notes signifying to interpret the orchestral a character or their memories. writing as a commentary on Motifs were utilized to a greater the drama. The technique extent, and with unprecedented went on to be widely adopted\u2014 sophistication, in Wagner\u2019s The including, in the 20th century, Ring, however, where the whole by film composers.","ROMANTIC 1810\u20131920 187 time, the lights in the auditorium wife, Cosima, famously complained conventional symphonies and would be extinguished during the that the costumes, painstakingly those who were fully under the performance, and comings and researched, made everyone look Wagnerian spell. goings were forbidden. like Native American chiefs. The dragon Wagner had ordered from Leitmotif became a standard Operatic pilgrimage Manchester, UK, for Siegfried, never technique for a generation of From the very first festival in 1876, arrived in full\u2014the neck section, younger composers, many of whom the great and the good flocked the story goes, ended up not in attempted, after Wagner\u2019s death, to Bayreuth, and with Wagner\u2019s Bayreuth but Beirut. to create earnest facsimiles of his final opera, Parsifal (1882), the operatic works. Italy, traditionally unmistakable allure of the festival A new beginning the home of opera, had a crisis only grew. Things were not The legacy of The Ring, Wagner\u2019s of musical identity, torn between straightforward, however, and the Bayreuth project, and the composer embracing Wagner\u2019s innovations unprecedented scenic demands himself cannot be overestimated. and preserving its own revered of The Ring were only imperfectly Wagn\u00e9risme was fashionable in traditions. Thanks to Wagner, met at its first production. One of Paris at the end of the 19th century opera\u2014which he once criticized Wagner\u2019s most vocal critics, Eduard as artists were inspired by the for being too susceptible to Hanslick, said that the rainbow heady mix of religion and sex in frivolousness\u2014was now an art bridge that leads to Valhalla at the Parsifal. Meanwhile, in Vienna, form that dealt with the grandest end of Das Rheingold resembled a debate raged between those who philosophical questions and \u201cseven-colored sausage\u201d; Wagner\u2019s supported Brahms and his more demanded a new revolutionary sort of music to do so. \u25a0 The opera house Wagner had Bayreuth Festspielhaus built in Bayreuth was designed by Gottfried Semper, with Dressing rooms beside continental seating (no central the stage for the opera's aisle) that allowed all patrons principal singers. an equal view of the stage. Wings providing Deep stage to allow access to the stage action in the foreground, from the dressing rooms. middle ground, and background. Sunken orchestra pit Wooden interior to to give the illusion that provide greater resonance. the sound is coming Fantailed seating from the stage. instead of traditional No boxes or galleries, horseshoe shape to focus in line with Wagner\u2019s attention on the stage. democratic principles. Darkened auditorium to create a \u201cmystic chasm.\u201d","188 IHFFRESO\u2026EMNGTCOOSDMTREASIGASHT SYMPHONY NO. 1 (1876), JOHANNES BRAHMS IN CONTEXT I n the first decades of the Franz Liszt. Brahms believed in 19th century, Beethoven took producing \u201cpure\u201d music, which was FOCUS the symphony to new heights, abstract, rather than associated Fall and rise of making it the most important with a plot line. the symphony genre in the Austro-German tradition. In the wake of his death, In 1853, Brahms met Robert BEFORE a handful of composers stepped Schumann and his pianist wife, 1824 Beethoven completes in to assume Beethoven\u2019s mantle. Clara. Schumann, who was the his Symphony No. 9. Among them was German composer of four symphonies, composer Johannes Brahms, who hailed Brahms as the great hope 1853 Robert Schumann hails deplored program music\u2014music Brahms as the hope of German that sought to follow or describe Brahms and Adele Strauss, wife music in an influential essay, a narrative line\u2014and openly of Johann Strauss II, sit down to Neue Bahnen (\u201cNew Paths\u201d). criticized the New German School breakfast in his villa in the summer represented by Richard Wagner and of 1894. Brahms often visited their 1858 Brahms completes his villa in Bad Ischl, Austria. First Piano Concerto, which at one point was conceived as a symphony, and his First Serenade. AFTER 1877 In a review, the conductor Hans von B\u00fclow hails Brahms\u2019s First Symphony as \u201cBeethoven\u2019s 10th.\u201d 1889 Mahler conducts the premiere of his Symphony No. 1 in Budapest, the first of his nine completed symphonies.","ROMANTIC 1810\u20131920 189 See also: Mozart\u2019s Symphony No. 40 128\u2013131 \u25a0 \u201cEroica\u201d Symphony 138\u2013141 \u25a0 Symphonie fantastique 162\u2013163 \u25a0 Schumann\u2019s Symphony No. 1 166\u2013169 \u25a0 Faust Symphony 176\u2013177 \u25a0 Dvor\u02c7\u00e1k\u2019s Symphony No. 9 212\u2013215 Johannes Brahms The son of a struggling musician, particularly close to his widow, Brahms was born in Hamburg, Clara, and would be a friend of northern Germany, in 1833. He hers for life. received his first music lessons from his father, and as a teenager In later life, Brahms focused he helped support his family on instrumental music, but in by playing piano in the inns of 1896, the year before his death, Hamburg, before finding work he wrote Vier ernste Ges\u00e4nge as a choral conductor. (\u201cFour Serious Songs\u201d), reflecting on the transience of life. In 1863, Brahms settled in Vienna, marking the start of a Other key works highly successful period in which he composed A German Requiem, 1853 Piano Sonata No. 3 in the First Symphony, and his F minor, Op. 5 Hungarian Dances. In the years 1868 A German Requiem following Robert Schumann\u2019s 1869 Hungarian Dances (for death in 1856, Brahms became piano duet) of German music, describing the A German Requiem (1868), Brahms Brahms\u2019s First Symphony, like 20-year-old composer as a \u201cman of set Lutheran texts in a manner that Beethoven\u2019s Ninth, moves from destiny,\u201d placing on Brahms the looked back to the earliest German darkness to light, with a stormy weight of public expectation. choral music, while his so-called opening from bass and timpani Haydn Variations (1873) explored an that subsides into a dreamy First Symphony array of compositional devices old Andante before bringing in Brahms started sketching his First and new in an orchestral context. urgent pizzicato strings. The third Symphony soon after Schumann\u2019s movement, the Allegretto, captures endorsement but did not complete This synthesis of tradition a joyful atmosphere while at the it until the mid-1870s\u2014more than and innovation distinguished the same time showcasing Brahms\u2019s 20 years later. In the interim, First Symphony, whose themes close attention to symmetry. Brahms tried his hand at other fused folk song and chorale, as symphonies, but none reached well as allusions to Bach and to Further works fruition. Meanwhile, he composed Beethoven\u2019s Ninth Symphony. Following the success of his First many orchestral and chamber Symphony, Brahms composed works, including sonatas for violin, [Brahms is] someone three more, choosing to conclude cello, and piano. He destroyed the destined to give ideal his Fourth Symphony (1885) with a works he was unhappy with, but presentment to the thrilling passacaglia\u2014a Baroque parts of his attempts at symphonic highest expression form that develops its material over writing were recast in other pieces, a constantly repeating bass line. such as the opening of his First of the times. Brahms\u2019s symphonies may seem Piano Concerto. Robert Schumann conservative in comparison to those who succeeded him\u2014such The intensely self-critical as Gustav Mahler, whose First composer published his first string Symphony heralded a new direction quartets\u2014another Beethovenian when it burst onto the scene in genre par excellence\u2014only in 1889\u2014but Brahms\u2019s development 1873, and they, as well as two other of earlier forms and processes important works rooted in different would prove influential for a whole traditions, arguably paved the way generation of modernists. \u25a0 for the symphonic breakthrough. In","190 TTHHEERNEOOTNESTHDEANSCTEAGUEP THE NUTCRACKER (1892) PYOTR ILYICH TCHAIKOVSKY IN CONTEXT T he 19th century brought a for dancers to explore \u201cfloating revolution in the world of motion\u201d and pointe work (dancing FOCUS ballet. Earlier ballet music on tiptoe), with ever-shorter dresses Ballet music had been largely made up of well- to allow the dancers\u2019 feet and legs known opera songs linked by to be seen. The music for these BEFORE melodies written by a theatre earlier ballets was very much 1832 La Sylphide, the first musician. Few original scores for at the service of the dance, and Romantic ballet, opens ballet were composed before 1820. usually written by \u201cspecialists\u201d\u2014 in Paris, choreographed by composers prepared to produce Filippo Taglioni to music At this time, light Romantic light, rhythmic music that would composed by Jean-Madeleine ballets began to appear, dominated not upstage the dance. Schneitzhoeffer. in Europe by dancers such as Marie Taglioni, whose father Filippo Ballet moves east 1870 L\u00e9o Delibes\u2019s ballet choreographed La Sylphide to From about 1850, ballet\u2019s center Copp\u00e9lia, about a dancing doll showcase her skills. Its central began to shift from Paris to Russia, that comes to life, is staged at themes of enchantment and an where tsarist patronage facilitated the Paris Op\u00e9ra. ethereal female lead were a vehicle lavish productions. Tchaikovsky received the commission for his 1876 Delibes\u2019s ballet Sylvia The heart of the first ballet, Swan Lake, in 1875. opens in Paris. Tchaikovsky classical repertory is the Approaching the commission praises his score for Sylvia with symphonic ambition, he above Wagner\u2019s Ring Cycle. Tchaikovsky\u2013Petipa created melodies associated with Sleeping Beauty, and characters in the story. The critics, AFTER however, were not ready for a ballet 1911 Stravinsky\u2019s ballet no ballet is harder score worthy of the concert hall, Petrushka premieres in Paris. to get right. and in spite of a warm audience reception, critical incomprehension 1920 The Paris Op\u00e9ra stages Robert Gottlieb saw the work shelved. the premiere of Stravinsky\u2019s Pulcinella, with choreography American writer and dance critic While the choreographer on by Leonid Massine. The Swan Lake, Julius Reisinger, had libretto is inspired by a allowed Tchaikovsky quite a lot of folk tale. freedom, the choreographer Marius Petipa was more specific about what he required of the music when","See also: Le bourgeois gentilhomme 70\u201371 \u25a0 The Magic Flute 134\u2013137 \u25a0 ROMANTIC 1810\u20131920 191 Le Sacre du printemps 246\u2013251 \u25a0 Romeo and Juliet 272 \u25a0 Appalachian Spring 286\u2013287 Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky he collaborated with Tchaikovsky defeat a vicious Mouse King, the on Sleeping Beauty (1890). The work Nutcracker turns into a prince, who Born in Votkinsk, Russia, in was well received by the critics, takes her to the Land of Sweets, 1840, Tchaikovsky received and the two men joined forces again ruled by the Sugar Plum Fairy. piano lessons from an early for The Nutcracker two years later, age. He enrolled at the newly although illness compelled Petipa The charm of Tchaikovsky\u2019s opened St. Petersburg to delegate much of the work to his score is in large part due to his Conservatory in 1861 and assistant Lev Ivanov. creative use of the orchestra, wrote his First Symphony in from the sinuous woodwind of the 1866. His Romeo and Juliet Fairytale ending Arabian Dance and the trilling overture (1869) was his first Composition of The Nutcracker flutes\u2019 and piccolos\u2019 contrast with international success. had a difficult start. Tchaikovsky felt the low bassoons in the Chinese constrained by the unimaginative Dance, to the novelty of the celesta, Despite recognizing libretto Petipa had created from a newly invented keyboard his own homosexuality, Alexandre Dumas\u2019s adaptation of instrument with bars like a Tchaikovsky entered a German author E.T.A. Hoffman\u2019s glockenspiel, to introduce the Sugar doomed marriage in 1877. darker tale. The composer finally Plum Fairy. While the music gave A year earlier, the wealthy found inspiration in the death of his Petipa and his dancers the lead widow and arts lover sister, his childhood playmate. He they required, Tchaikovsky\u2019s unique Nadezhda von Meck had poured his memories of her into the sonority raises the music far above become his patroness, music, particularly into the central the old music of the \u201cspecialists.\u201d \u25a0 enabling him to devote his character, the young girl Clara, time to composing. Von Meck who creeps down on Christmas Columbine and Harlequin evoke declared herself bankrupt Eve to play with her favorite gift, a The Nutcracker\u2019s fantasy world in in 1890, causing a rift with nutcracker figure, which magically costumes designed by Denmark\u2019s Tchaikovsky. The fatalism comes to life. After she helps it to Queen Margrethe II for a production that often tinged his music is in Copenhagen in 2016. clearly present in last works, such as his Sixth Symphony (\u201cPath\u00e9tique,\u201d 1893). He died nine days after its premiere. Other key works 1876 Swan Lake 1878 Eugene Onegin 1889 Sleeping Beauty 1893 Symphony No. 6 (\u201cPath\u00e9tique\u201d)","192 CALIOSKNYETMTAPHINHEOEWNVYOERRMYLUTDSH. TIITNBGMEUST ALSO SPRACH ZARATHUSTRA (1896) RICHARD STRAUSS IN CONTEXT T he period after Richard traditional symphonic form. Gustav Wagner\u2019s death in 1883 Mahler expanded the form even FOCUS was a time of uncertainty further, employing an orchestra of From Romanticism for German music. Some composers unprecedented size in symphonies to modernism sought to emulate Wagner in their that incorporated programmatic own operas; others avoided opera elements and vocal parts. BEFORE altogether and applied Wagner\u2019s 1849 Franz Liszt completes innovations to music composed for New forms his first tone poem, Ce qu\u2019on the concert hall. Anton Bruckner, Richard Strauss, Mahler\u2019s great entend sur la montagne for example, brought Wagnerian contemporary, took a different (\u201cWhat one hears on the grandeur, dimensions, and route with the tone poem\u2014a mountain\u201d), after the poem harmonic adventurousness to the musical form that seeks to capture by Victor Hugo. the story or atmosphere of a nonmusical work, such as a 1865 Richard Strauss\u2019s father, poem or painting. The genre Franz, plays the horn in the was pioneered by Franz Liszt premiere of Wagner\u2019s Tristan and formed the basis for Strauss\u2019s und Isolde in Munich. early reputation as a firebrand. AFTER Strauss\u2019s breakthrough was the 1903 Gustav Mahler conducts daringly erotic Don Juan (1888), and the first full performance of his in the next decade he produced a 100-minute Third Symphony, series of works that combined his which he completed in 1896. virtuosity as an orchestrator with formal innovation\u2014eschewing, 1917 The premiere is held of for example, the need for a piece Alexander von Zemlinsky\u2019s to end in the key it begins in. A Florentine Tragedy, an opera Controversial at the time, Strauss\u2019s based, like Strauss\u2019s Salome, works were not written to be on a work by Oscar Wilde. The prophet Zarathustra\u2019s (or Zoroaster\u2019s) writings about Ahura Mazda (god) form the basis of the Zoroastrian faith. This portrait of him hangs at a fire temple in Yazd, Iran.","ROMANTIC 1810\u20131920 193 See also: The Four Seasons 92\u201397 \u25a0 Faust Symphony 176\u2013177 \u25a0 The Ring Cycle 180\u2013187 \u25a0 Symphonie fantastique 162\u2013163 \u25a0 Das Lied von der Erde 198\u2013201 I would only believe the way for his brand of amoral Richard Georg Strauss in a God that knows modernism, epitomized in his scandalous breakthrough opera The son of a famous horn how to dance. Salome (1905)\u2014based on a play by player, Richard Strauss was Friedrich Nietzsche Oscar Wilde that featured incest, born in Munich in 1864. necrophilia, and blasphemy. After early success with Also sprach Zarathustra (1883\u20131891) Age of uncertainty his tone poems and songs Strauss\u2019s Also sprach Zarathustra (many composed for his wife), edifying or morally empowering, as depicts a conflict between nature, he finally found the operatic demanded by 19th-century musical which is represented by the success he longed for with aesthetics. This aligned him with trumpet\u2019s simple opening C-G-C Salome (1905), followed by other \u201cmodernist\u201d composers, motif, and humanity, whose Elektra (1909). The latter whose defining feature was their complex passions and intellectual marked the start of a 20-year emphasis on innovation and struggles are conveyed by more collaboration with the writer progress\u2014redefining composition harmonically adventurous writing. and librettist Hugo von by challenging formal conventions. The tone poem includes nine Hofmannsthal\u2014one of the sections, named from Nietzsche\u2019s greatest partnerships in Role of the artist book, with music that includes a operatic history. Also sprach Zarathustra (\u201cThus mocking fugue and a light-hearted spake Zarathustra,\u201d 1896) was waltz. Man and nature remain Strauss\u2019s prestige suffered arguably Strauss\u2019s boldest tone unreconciled at the work\u2019s daring in the 1920s and especially in poem. The 35-minute work took conclusion, which vacillates the 1930s, as his relations its title from the book by Friedrich uncertainly between the keys with the Nazi Party tarnished Nietzsche, in which the philosopher of C major and B major. \u25a0 his reputation in the English- used the character of the ancient speaking world. In the 1940s, Persian prophet to present his Also sprach Zarathustra was however, the elderly Strauss, philosophy. In Strauss\u2019s own words, completed in 1896. This frontispiece heartbroken by the national he set out \u201cto convey in music an from that year, printed in Munich by catastrophe, produced a series idea of the evolution of the human Joseph Aibl, prefaced the original of late works, including the race from its origin, through the orchestral score. Four Last Songs, composed various phases of development \u2026 just months before his death up to Nietzsche\u2019s idea of the in Garmisch-Partenkirchen, \u00dcbermensch\u201d through his tone Germany, in 1949. poem. This idea of the \u00dcbermensch (superman), a figure unburdened by Other key works conventional morality or religion, resonated well with Strauss\u2019s own 1888 Don Juan vision of the role of the independent 1905 Salome artist at the dawn of the 20th 1911 Der Rosenkavalier century. It also helped to pave 1949 Four Last Songs","194 IN CONTEXT EOAMRFTOILTILSIONANESAKLSIND FOCUS Verismo TOSCA (1900), GIACOMO PUCCINI BEFORE 1890 Winner of a competition for a new one-act opera, Pietro Mascagni\u2019s Cavalleria rusticana launches the \u201cverismo\u201d (realism) music movement in Rome. 1892 Modeled on Cavalleria, Ruggero Leoncavallo\u2019s opera Pagliacci is a hit in Milan, consolidating verismo style. AFTER 1904 Puccini suffers a setback when Madama Butterfly is booed at its premiere in Milan, although it bounces back three months later in Brescia. 1926 Two years after Puccini\u2019s death, his Turandot, completed by his younger colleague Franco Alfano, is premiered at La Scala in Milan. W ith the first performance of Cavalleria rusticana in 1890, a new kind of opera was born. Rather than being based on romanticized historical or legendary subjects, it strove for realism (or verismo, in Italian), embracing down-to-earth, sometimes sordid events, lived by believably ordinary people in often contemporary settings. At this time, Puccini, a former flatmate of Cavalleria\u2019s composer Pietro Mascagni, was six years into an opera career. This had begun in 1884 with Le villi, a picturesque leggenda drammatica (dramatic legend) based on the same story of dead spirits as the romantic ballet","ROMANTIC 1810\u20131920 195 See also: Orfeo ed Euridice 118\u2013119 \u25a0 The Barber of Seville 148 \u25a0 Der Freisch\u00fctz 149 \u25a0 La traviata 174 \u25a0 The Wreckers 232\u2013239 \u25a0 Peter Grimes 288\u2013293 Giselle (1841). It was followed five Although Manon Lescaut was not Giacomo Puccini years later by Edgar (1889), an opera truly a \u201crealist\u201d work, it contained set in a 14th-century world of two scenes in particular that sat Born into a family of church medieval knights. Although not squarely in the new style. In Act III, musicians in Lucca in 1858, the strictest follower of verismo, the poignant spectacle of the Puccini claimed to have Puccini, once the new style became embarkation of the prostitutes decided on an operatic career established, took its passionate, condemned to transportation and, after watching a performance heartrending, and cruel elements in Act IV, the heroine\u2019s lengthy of Verdi\u2019s Aida in Pisa in 1876. and clothed them in daring music death scene in an American desert After studying at the Milan that reached a breathtaking climax both provided a focus for some of Conservatory, he entered his in the tragic opera Tosca. the most emotionally powerful one-act opera-ballet Le Villi in writing in the score, delivered in a competition. Although it was Embracing the realistic a style that epitomized the essence rejected for being illegible, it Puccini\u2019s first response to verismo of musical verismo. was staged by the publisher was the opera Manon Lescaut Giulio Ricordi. (1893), based on an 18th-century Puccini\u2019s next opera, La Boh\u00e8me French novel by the Abb\u00e9 Pr\u00e9vost. (1896), set among down-at-the-heels Puccini\u2019s breakthrough This had already been turned into artists and their girlfriends in came in 1893 with Manon several operas, notably Manon Paris around 1830, was closer to Lescaut, which put him at the (1884) by the opera specialist, Jules the true subject matter of verismo. forefront of Italian composers. Massenet. He was one of a number It also crystallized the intense Thereafter, he produced his of French composers whose operas sentiment, characterization, and three greatest successes\u2014La had been gaining ground in Italian craftsmanship of the musical Boh\u00e8me, Tosca, and Madama theatres. These included Faust (1859) language of verismo that was \u276f\u276f Butterfly. His productivity by Charles Gounod and Carmen slowed in later years, but the (1875), the final masterpiece of Carmen talks to the smuggler operas La fanciulla del West Georges Bizet, which shocked Le Danca\u00efre in a scene from Carmen (1910), La rondine (1917), Il critics of the time with its earthy by Georges Bizet. The opera, with trittico (1918), and the realism and amoral heroine. its themes of passion, jealousy, and posthumously produced violence, was an influence on verismo. Turandot displayed increasing refinement. He died of a heart attack in Brussels in 1924 following an operation for throat cancer. Other key works 1896 La Boh\u00e8me 1904 Madama Butterfly 1918 Il trittico","196 VERISMO widely apparent in Puccini\u2019s work. works of fellow composers, such as News of Napoleon\u2019s victory at This he handled with a greater Debussy, Strauss, Stravinsky, and Marengo, pictured here by the degree of flexibility and far more even Schoenberg, but also made French artist Louis-Fran\u00e7ois Lejeune technical variety and finesse than modernist musical initiatives of his (1775\u20131848), reaches Rome in Act II most of his contemporaries. There own, many of which came to the of Tosca, three days after the battle. was also in Puccini\u2019s scores a fore in Tosca. persistent interest in new musical by this time), seems to prefigure developments from beyond Italy\u2019s Using music for menace innumerable individuals who, (or even opera\u2019s) borders, which Puccini premiered Tosca, his fifth over the next century, served added heightened expressive color opera, in Rome in 1900, a time of cruel, dictatorial regimes, and richness to his music. He made great uncertainty and instability in including Fascist Italy. use of the harmonies, rhythms, and Italian politics. Though clothed in orchestral effects displayed in the the theatrical dress of a period 100 Scarpia is introduced in the years prior to its opening, the opera concise motif of two chords on dealt with issues and characters lower woodwind, brass, and that seemed contemporary to its strings, followed by an unrelated first audience but would become and clashing third chord by the even more starkly relevant as the higher strings and woodwind, and 20th century progressed. In a lurid gleam from the cymbals. particular, the figure of Scarpia, Every note in this chord sequence the sadistic police chief, who is a is accented and marked \u201cfff\u201d presence in the opera musically (\u201cextremely loud\u201d). Long before from its opening bars right through we see him, here stands Scarpia to the final act (although dead in all his power and brutality. At the premiere of Tosca, the lead Musically, this tiny (yet role was played by the Romanian-born sonically huge) motif also throws 39-year-old soprano Hariclea Darcl\u00e9e, our expectations of standard seen here in Act II holding the knife harmonic progression out of kilter she will use to kill Scarpia. by landing not only in a key (E major) unrelated to the first chord (B-flat) but in a diminished","ROMANTIC 1810\u20131920 197 fifth (a semitone less than a fifth) which, at first, is loud, violent, and of lyrical reflection, not simply as below it, resulting in a tritone (an consistently moving off the beat. opportunities for aria or duet but interval of three tones). Medieval gradually diminishes into a to voice the hopes, desires, and musical theorists regarded this downward slither that ends up, memories that motivate them and interval as highly disruptive and with a feeling of exhaustion, on drive the plot. The drama\u2019s final forbade its use, calling it diabolus another tritone. This image of impression is of individuals hurtled in musica (\u201cthe devil in music\u201d). disheveled flight and collapse along by events over which they Puccini, who came from a long line serves as a second harbinger have little control, and certainly far of distinguished church musicians, of what is to come in the opera. less than they believe they have. would certainly have been familiar Its emotional and musical power with the nickname. The opera\u2019s action is based helped to redefine the English on the play La Tosca (1887) by the tradition of choral music. \u25a0 In a clear break with harmonic Frenchman Victorien Sardou, orthodoxies, Puccini not only which was criticized at the time for Verismo uses the motif to characterize his its dizzying tempo of unrelenting secular devil-figure in the opera but action and reaction. Puccini\u2019s Puccini\u2019s Verismo creates a also employs the theme throughout librettists despaired of making a musical naturalism that the opera as an emblem of Scarpia\u2019s viable libretto from it, but the influence on events that take place composer was able to use daring reflects real life. when he is not present, or even harmonic instability not only to alive. The impact of this is to place contain but also to hold together, He places the emphasis on harmonic instability at the center and even magnify, the play\u2019s helter- psychological reality, with of the musical action. skelter ride of swiftly changing events as part of his overall emotionally charged arias. Real drama musical strategy. Immediately after the Scarpia He uses atmospheric music to theme, the curtain rises on the Tosca\u2019s three central characters suggest a sense of character church of Sant\u2019Andrea della Valle, all begin the drama with their lives and we see the fleeing figure of apparently secure, yet through an and inner conflict. Cesare Angelotti, a political unpredictable and unstoppable prisoner on the run. Beginning in sequence of cause and effect, all another unrelated key (G minor), three are dead by the curtain, in the harmonic movement here is less than 24 hours. Yet Puccini much faster. The chord sequence, still manages to give all three of his chief characters their moments Opera and the rise of the new reality Verismo owed its philosophical often allied to a corresponding He uses familiar sounds, basis to a literary movement focus on the social evils of such as church bells, to mimic begun in France by the novelists poverty, crime, and violence. \u00c9mile Zola (1840\u20131902) and everyday reality. Honor\u00e9 de Balzac (1799\u20131850). In opera, the new style\u2019s It was represented in Italy by emotional extremities were The ultimate effect is the Sicilian Giovanni Verga, realized in taxing vocal writing, to make the music whose short story and play which threw away the remnants and drama more Cavalleria rusticana inspired of the display and niceties of bel Mascagni\u2019s opera of the same canto (\u201cbeautiful singing\u201d) in personal, immediate, name. The premise of verismo favor of hard-hitting directness. and effective. lay in a scrutiny of the lives of Musical continuity was \u201cordinary people\u201d\u2014usually increased with the dissolution urban or rural workers\u2014in a of the old divisions between local and everyday setting and recitative (speechlike singing), arias, and other set pieces.","198 IN CONTEXT ISSWTFOAAOAYYSUICWNALOYGDHMIIANNTPTOOWIHTNSEOBEMRRHOUDATCSSHDOI,ECUHRLED FOCUS Exotic worlds in music DAS LIED VON DER ERDE (1908\u20131909), GUSTAV MAHLER BEFORE 1863 Set in Ceylon, The Pearl Fishers, by rising opera- composer Georges Bizet, is a success at its Paris premiere. 1882 Wagner\u2019s final opera, Parsifal, blending elements of Buddhist spirituality with Christian ideas and imagery, is first performed at Bayreuth\u2019s Festival Theatre. AFTER 1926 Maurice Ravel composes Chansons mad\u00e9casses (Songs from Madagascar), based on three prose-poems written in 1787 by \u00c9variste de Parny. 1957 Benjamin Britten conducts the premiere of his ballet The Prince of the Pagodas in London. The score is influenced by Indonesian gamelan music, which Britten heard in Bali in 1956. W hen Gustav Mahler began work on the six settings of Chinese poems that make up Das Lied von der Erde (The Song of the Earth), he was exploring what was for him new territory. But exotic oriental subject matter was already a familiar theme in European art and culture, reflecting the yearning of the popular imagination for more colorful and intriguing worlds. This sense of longing had come into sharper focus in the 15th and 16th centuries, when long-distance sea voyages had led to the discovery"]