Transcript File

The Romantic Era
1820-1900
Romantic Ideal
• Striving for a better, higher, ideal state of
being.
• Everyday life seemed dull and meaningless.
• Searched for a life of feeling, unconstrained by
convention, religion, or social bad will.
Artistic Barriers
• The search for higher experience and more intense
expression brought a reaction to artistic restraint.
• Artist and composers resisted all rules and regulations.
• They wanted to be spontaneous and mystifying so they did
not allow abstract notions of beauty and decorum (keeping
with good taste).
• William Turner – The Fighting Temeraire (1838)
• http://www.ibiblio.org/wm/paint/auth/turner/i/temeraire.j
pg
• Composers worked to break down harmonic and formal
barriers.
• Experimented with chord progressions that had previously
never been used.
Concert life – 19th Century
• 19th century concert halls and opera houses dominated the
presentation of music.
• Every town had its own symphony association. Made up of
anyone and everyone who wanted to play.
• Concerts were not just for symphonies and masses, but
now lesser known genres such as art songs and string
quartets.
• The vast amount of concert halls made music available to
more people.
• However, because of the greater accessibility to music,
audiences because more conservative. Wanted a bang for
their buck and wanted to hear what they already knew was
good.
Composers response
• Composers felt as if their work was being
neglected.
• Composers relied on the public who resented
them; the public’s admiration for composers was
met with hostility…oops.
• So composer Robert Schumann started a
magazine (Neue Zeitschrift für Musik) that
campaigned for romantic music. His goal was to
culture the uncultured audience.
• Point being, composers were unwilling to stoop
to the unchangeable audience.
Style features
• The main artistic value of the Romantic era
was having one’s own personal feeling.
• Therefore, each individual composer has his
own personal style.
• Can be seen as a breakdown of artistic
barriers, or a breakthrough of personal
development.
• However, composers were united with some
common interests…
Rubato
• Rhythmic idea – essentially a give and take in the
tempo.
• Literally means “robbed time”
• Meant to be expressive. Think schmaltz.
• Seldom indicated in the music. It is something felt, not
written.
• Essentially never used in Baroque or Classical music.
• A musician’s “feeling” depended greatly on his artistic
use of rubato.
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YGRO05WcNDk
Romantic Melody
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Most instantly recognizable feature of Romantic music.
More emotional and chromatic than before.
Used to build up to bigger climaxes.
Irregular rhythms and phrases. Sounded more
spontaneous.
Romeo and Juliet - Tchaikovsky
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cxj8vSS2ELU 4:30-6:50
Listen for emotion. What is she singing about?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kxhpNRZZ7vs
My peace is gone, My heart is heavy, I will find it never and
never more. Where I do not have him, That is the grave,
The whole world Is bitter to me.
Romantic Harmony
• Area in which Romantic music made the greatest
technical advance.
• Composers were able to use harmony to
underpin melody in such a way to bring out its
emotion in a different way than seen before.
• Harmony and melody go hand in hand. Rely on
each other.
• Listen to the emotion in both the piano and
voice. Unsteady harmonies.
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F2J_u97gP_
E
Romantic Harmony
• Harmony was experimented with freely. New
chord forms and how they fit together.
• This contributed to the new moods of the
Romantic era. New mysterious, sinister, and sultry
moods were evoked.
• Some themes and motifs are characterized more
from their harmony than melody.
• Chromaticism: The use of non-diatonic tones in a
composition. All Romantic composers used this
tool.
Program Music
• Non-vocal music written to tell a story.
• A “program” being the story told, composers
used this to get across musical expression
without words.
• Frederic Chopin composed a with a genre entitled
“Nocturne” to bring the expectation of nighttime
romance.
• Tell me what you hear. Write down the scene you
see in your mind. Unplug projector
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WVra2IotKM
Program Music
• Hector Berlioz handed out a pamphlet containing his own made up
program (story).
• https://www.google.com/search?q=hector+berlioz&source=lnms&t
bm=isch&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjuj7CkytnKAhWEJpQKHSx4AugQ_AUI
CCgC&biw=1067&bih=516
• The music acts as the narrator. A story of the welcoming of the hero
all the way to the final dance. We are given a story without words.
• However, there is some speculation to the idea that music can tell a
specific story.
• Imagine there is no pamphlet. There are ideas stating there are
many interpretations of music without specifically knowing what it
is about.
Berlioz “Symphonie Fantastique”
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g2Kky5BC9Uk
• 1st movement
• “The author imagines that a young vibrant musician,
afflicted by the sickness of spirit which a famous writer has
called the wave of passions, sees for the first time a woman
who unites all the charms of the ideal person his
imagination was dreaming of, and falls desperately in love
with her. By a strange anomaly, the beloved image never
presents itself to the artist’s mind without being associated
with a musical idea, in which he recognizes a certain quality
of passion, but endowed with the nobility and shyness
which he credits to the object of his love.”
Berlioz “Symphonie Fantastique”
• 15:00
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g2Kky5BC9U
k
• 2nd Movement
• “The artist finds himself in the most diverse
situations in life, in the tumult of a festive party,
in the peaceful contemplation of the beautiful
sights of nature, yet everywhere, whether in
town or in the countryside, the beloved image
keeps haunting him and throws his spirit into
confusion.”
Romantic Form
• We see a breakdown of form, resulting in an
individual’s spontaneity. Composers were set
free.
• No longer see Classical forms. Each piece of
art contained it’s own inner form. Themes
blend into each other to fuse sections.
• Frederic Chopin’s Mazurka – a polish dance
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k9MDJuK
L3sA
Miniatures
• Many compositions lasted as long as large works from the 18th
century, though a new style and length of piece began to come
forth.
• Miniatures - Pieces that last for only a few minutes.
• As songs and short piano pieces, these works were meant to convey
a single emotional message, sometimes undeveloped.
• Useful for composers to convey an intensity toward the listener,
with an intimate setting.
• Robert Schumann – Im Wunderschonen Monat Mai. Listen for an
indecisive piano entrance that gives the feeling of an immediate
transition; possibly hearing music that happened long ago. Ending
ends in dissonance, then silence.
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=00-7gHZLWC0
The Leid
• A type of miniature genre. German art song in the 19th
century. (Plural - Leider)
• Nearly always accompanied by a piano. Contributes to the
artistic feel of the piece. Compare to basso continuo of the
Baroque.
• Poetry is used for the text. We listen to how the composer
sets the text so that the music dictates the text’s emotion.
• In a leid, the mood is intimate and is meant to express their
emotion with each individual listen. Accompaniment and
vocalist are intertwined to deliver message.
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vKh4JsWvsPw
Franz Schubert
• Born Vienna, Austria – 1797
• One of 14, only 5 survived.
• Age of 7 took lessons out side the family. Previously
learned violin from his Father.
• Earliest ensemble was with family members. String
quartet with two brothers on violin, he on viola, and
his father on cello. First quartet compositions written
for this ensemble.
• Became a pupil of Antonio Salieri in 1804 where he was
introduced to the overtures and symphonies of Mozart
and Joseph and Michael Haydn.
Schubert Compositions
• Erlkonig – Piano and Voice
• The death of a child by a supernatural being.
• Story: An anxious young boy is being carried home at night
by his father on horseback. To what sort of home is not
spelled out. The lack of specificity of the father's social
position allows the reader to imagine the details.
• As the poem unfolds, the son seems to see and hear beings
his father does not; the father asserts reassuringly
naturalistic explanations for what the child sees – a wisp of
fog, rustling leaves, shimmering willows. Finally the child
shrieks that he has been attacked. The father makes faster
for the home. There he recognizes that the boy is dead.
Erlkonig
• Who rides, so late, through night and wind?
It is the father with his child.
He has the boy well in his arm
He holds him safely, he keeps him warm.
"My son, why do you hide your face so anxiously?"
"Father, do you not see the Elfking?
The Elfking with crown and tail?"
"My son, it's a wisp of fog."
"You dear child, come, go with me!
Very lovely games I'll play with you;
Some colourful flowers are on the beach,
My mother has some golden robes."
Erlkonig
"My father, my father, and don't you hear
What the Elfking quietly promises me?"
"Be calm, stay calm, my child;
The wind is rustling through withered leaves."
"Do you want to come with me, pretty boy?
My daughters shall wait on you finely;
My daughters will lead the nightly dance,
And rock and dance and sing you to sleep."
"My father, my father, and don't you see there
The Elfking's daughters in the gloomy place?"
"My son, my son, I see it clearly:
There shimmer the old willows so grey."
"I love you, your beautiful form entices me;
And if you're not willing, then I will use force."
"My father, my father, he's grabbing me now!
The Elfking has done me harm!"
It horrifies the father; he swiftly rides on,
He holds the moaning child in his arms,
Reaches the farm with trouble and hardship;
In his arms, the child was dead.
Erlkonig
• Listen and watch for the different change in
character.
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5XP5RP6
OEJI
Schubert Compositions
• Symphony #5
• Finished in only 6 months
• Scored for a smaller orchestra; does not include clarinets,
trumpets, or timpani.
• Writing resembles that of Mozart.
• "O Mozart! immortal Mozart! what countless impressions
of a brighter, better life hast thou stamped upon our souls!”
This is reflected particularly in the lighter instrumentation,
as noted above. Indeed, the instrumentation matches that
of the first version (without clarinets) of Mozart's 40th
symphony.
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cdLuvGsjwlA
• Big Box