Romantic Era Music

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Romantic Era Music
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Musical Overview

• Dramatic, both light and dark
• Three composers
• Beethoven
• Tchikovsky
• Wagner

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Beethoven

• First composer to earn his living directly from
  his own work without being subsidized
• Benefited from the emergence of the new upper
  middle class audience who bought tickets for
  Beethoven's concerts.
• First Rock Star
• Received money from
• lessons
• the sale of his compositions
• public performances, Beethoven was able to
  survive if not to prosper.
• Allowed him to express his extreme individualism,
  rejecting the role of artistic servant

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Tchaikovsky

• Wrote operas, piano compositions and various
  chamber works, but he is chiefly remembered today
  for his 1812 Overture, Symphonies 4-6 and his
  popular ballet scores
• Swan Lake
• Sleeping Beauty
• The Nutcracker
• Much of his music reflects a sunny, celebratory
  mood
• Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairies, from the
  Nutcracker
• The cannon from 1812 Overture
• Russians (and Tchikovsky) were first to transform
  ballet into a truly exalted art

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Richard Wagner

• Revolutionized opera in the mid-19th century
• One of the most important and influential figures
  in the history of opera.
• Masterwork "The Ring of the Nibelung" or "The
  Ring Cycle,"
• Strove to establish Germanic mythology as an
  equal of Greco-Roman mythology by using its
  stories as the basis of his works
• "Ride of the Valkyries, memorably used to
  accompany a U.S. helicopter attack during the
  Vietnam War in Francis Ford Coppola's Apocalypse
  Now.
• In the opera it is performed during the flight of
  the female warrior spirits known as "Valkyries.
• Basis for Bugs Bunnys Whats Opera, Doc?
• Elmer Fudds Killed the Wabbit