Transcript Chapter 14: Late Romantic Orchestral Music

Chapter 26:
Late Romantic Orchestral Music
Romantic Venues and Today’s Concert Hall
• Construction of large concert halls
– Vienna (Musikverein, 1870), New York (Carnegie Hall,
1891), Boston (Symphony Hall, 1900)
– Newer concert halls: Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los
Angeles (2003) and the Schermerhorn Symphony Center
in Nashville (2006) continue this tradition
• Today’s symphony-going experience very similar to that
of the late Romantic Era
The Late Romantic Symphony and Concerto
• Both the symphony and the concerto expanded in length
during the Romantic Era
– Longer, more complex movements
– Concerto remained in three movements (fast – slow –
fast)
• Solo Concerto
– Virtuoso soloists: Franz Liszt and Niccolò Paginini
mesmerized audiences
– Flashy showpieces, showmanship
Johannes Brahms (1833-1897)
• Born in Hamburg, Germany
• Pianist and composer
• Robert Schumann spoke Brahms’ praises (1853)
– Brahms was a lifelong friend of Robert and Clara
Schumann
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Moved to Vienna in 1862
Lived a modest (“un-Wagnerian”) lifestyle
Champion of absolute music
Used traditional musical forms
Revered Beethoven and was humbled by Beethoven’s
legacy
Violin Concerto in D major (1878)
• Friend and violin virtuoso Joseph Joachim assisted
Brahms and played the solo part at the premiere
• Mvt. 3 - Allegro giocoso, ma non troppo vivace
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Traditional Rondo form
Lively rhythm
Double stops
Refrain has the flavor of a Hungarian gypsy tune
A Requiem for the Concert Hall:
Brahms’s Ein Deutsches Requiem (1868)
• Brought the sacred Requiem Mass into the secular
concert hall
• Ecumenical work in his native German
• Profession of faith that extends sounds of solace to all
who have suffered the loss of a loved one
• Brahms had lost his mentor Robert Schumann and more
recently his mother
• Hour-long, seven-movement work
• Movement 4: “How lovely is Thy dwelling place”
– Text from Psalm 84
– Blend of homophonic and polyphonic textures
Antonín Dvorák (1841-1904)
• Native of Bohemia, an area of the Czech Republic
south of Prague
• Worked as a freelance violist and organist in Prague
while composing
• Musical Nationalism
– Dvorák became known throughout Europe
• 1892 received an offer to become director of the
newly founded National Conservatory in New York
• There that he began writing, and while traveling for a
summer to Spillville Iowa among the mainly Czechspeaking people of this rural farming community, he
finished, his ninth symphony.
Symphony No. 9 in E minor,
“From the New World” (1893)
• Capstone of Dvorák’s career and is his best-known work
• Premiered at the new Carnegie Hall in New York
• Interest in the indigenous music of African Americans
and American Indians
• Tribute to the memory of some distant home
• Movement 2: Largo
– Calm strength of the brass leads to a haunting melody in
the English horn
– Tune published later as “Goin’ Home”
The Orchestral Song
• Full orchestra replaces the piano as the medium of
accompaniment
• Large orchestra adds more color and more contrapuntal
lines – Orchestral songs grew longer, denser, and more
complex than the piano-accompanied art song
Gustav Mahler (1860-1911)
• Born in Czechoslovakia; made his career in Vienna
• Composer and conductor
• Travelled to the United States (1909-1911); conducted
and toured with the New York Philharmonic
• 1897-1907 Director of Vienna Opera
• Also directed the Metropolitan Opera in New York
• Symphonies of great size and length; use of solo voice
and chorus in symphonies
• Wrote only orchestral songs and symphonies
• “The symphony is the world; it must embrace
everything.”
• Last in the long line of great German symphonists that
extends back to Haydn
Mahler: Ich bin der Welt abhanden gekommen
(I Am Lost to the World, 1901-1902)
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Reflected his own outlook on life and on art
Text from German Romantic poet Friedrich Rückert
Third song from Five Rückert Songs (1901)
Speaks of the artist’s growing remoteness from the
travails of everyday life and his withdrawal into a
private, heavenly world of music
• Through-composed form depicts the emotional
progression of the text