ROMANTICISM 18201900

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ROMANTICISM1820-1900

• Cultural movement that stressed emotion,
  imagination, and individualism
• free exercise and expression of individual will
• Perhaps the most brilliant generation of
  composers in the entire history of music was that
  of the early Romantics
• All affected by Beethovens music.

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Franz Schubert
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Hector Berlioz
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Robert Schumann
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Frederich Chopin
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Felix Mendelssohn
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Franz Liszt
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Richard Wagner
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All composers deeply influenced by literary
Romanticism

• Literature England--Wordsworth, Colleridge,
  Shelley, Keats, Byron Germany--Hoffman
• Supernatural
• Poe,
• Shelley,
• Grimm (Fairy tales)
• Middle Ages
• Ivanhoe (Walter Scott),
• Hunchback (Victor Hugo)
• Nature

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All composers deeply influenced by literary
Romanticism

• Passion for freedom / Struggle for national
  independence (Greeks against Turks, Poles against
  Russia, Czechs against Austria, Norway against
  Sweden)
• People more conscious of their history and
  national character--composers wrote to
• celebrate a national hero
• an event
• beauty of their country
• Shakespeare

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STYLE OF ROMANTIC MUSIC

• RHYTHM rubato a romantic performance
  technique of slightly slowing down and speeding
  up the tempo to be expressive
• MELODY phrases long and irregular no clear
  cadences melody over ever-changing harmony
• FORM spontaneity, individualism and creative
  freedom so treasured by Romantics was at odds
  with preordained forms

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STYLE OF ROMANTIC MUSIC

• MINIATURE COMPOSITIONS lied character
  piece
• GRANDIOSE COMPOSITIONS Berlioz, Mahler, Wagner
  (The Ring cast of 30, 15 stage sets, specially
  created instruments)
• PROGRAM MUSIC music associated with a poem or
  story

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PROGRAM MUSIC

• Program symphony a multi-movement work for
  orchestra that follow some sort of literary
  program
• Concert overture single movement program
  composition for orchestra written in sonata form
• Symphonic Poem single-movement work for
  orchestra based on a poem, story or some literary
  model with no pre-ordained form

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Symphonie Fantastique (1830)Hector Berlioz

• PROGRAM SYMPHONY
• a big evening of music that tells a story--but
  without words or an acted-out dramatic story

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Symphonie FantastiqueHector Berlioz

• A young musician of morbidly sensitive
  imagination poisons himself with opium in a fit
  of lovesick despair.

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Symphonie FantastiqueHector Berlioz

• The dose of the narcotic, too weak to kill him,
  plunges him into a heavy sleep accompanied by the
  strangest visions,

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Symphonie FantastiqueHector Berlioz

• during which his sensations, his emotions, and
  his memories are transformed in is diseased mind
  into musical thoughts and images.

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Symphonie FantastiqueHector Berlioz

• Even the woman he loves becomes a melody to him,
  an idee fixe (fixed idea), as it were, that he
  encounters and hears everywhere

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Symphonie FantastiqueHector Berlioz

• I. Reveries, Passions
• II. A Ball
• III. A Scene in the Country
• IV. March to the Scaffold
• (in this, Berlioz dreams that he has killed
  Harriet and he is about to be be-headed. You can
  hear the fall of the guillotine at the end of the
  work)
• V. Dream of a Witches Sabbath

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V. DREAM OF A WITCHES SABBATH

• He finds himself at a Witches Sabbath, in the
  midst of a frightful crowd of ghosts, sorcerers,
  and all kinds of monsters come to bury him.
  Unearthly sounds, groans, shrieks of laughter,
  distant cries echoed by others. The melody of
  his beloved is heard, but it has lost all its
  character of nobleness and timidity. It is she
  who has come to the Sabbath! A roar of joy at her
  arrival. She joins in the devilish orgies. The
  funeral knell a parody of the Dies irae.

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What to remember about Symphonie Fantastique by
Berlioz

• content over form
• no sonata form here
• effect over content
• its about hallucinogenic effects of a narcotic
• Berlioz--a master of orchestration
• scholars still study his texts on orchestration

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CHARACTER PIECES

• Piano invented during first decades of the 18th
  century, but did not completely replace the
  harpsichord until the end of the century
• a one-movement piece for piano with a descriptive
  title--one mood or emotion

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FREDERIC CHOPIN (1810-1849)

• born in Poland, spent life in Paris
• most important piano composer
• a celebrity in Paris
• played privately in homes of the rich

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FREDERIC CHOPIN (1810-1849)

• Mazurkas (Polish peasant dance)
• Polonaises (Polish aristocratic dance)
• Nocturnes (night pieces
• Preludes, Etudes, Scherzos, Ballades, Impromptus

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FREDERIC CHOPIN (1810-1849)

• Most intense liason was with Baroness Aurore
  Dudevant, a writer (pen-name George Sand) --a
  steady stream of Romantic novels Romances.
• An ardent individualist who often dressed in
  mens clothing and smoked cigars. She became
  Chopins friend, lover, and protector.

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• CHOPINS TOMBSTONE

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ROBERT SCHUMANN (1810-1856)

• failure in many efforts (law school, piano
  perfomance)
• suffered from mental illness tried to commit
  suicide (unsuccessfully)
• spent final years in mental institution

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CLARA SCHUMANN

• married Clara Weich in 1840 over her fathers
  objections composed 125 lieder for piano
  including song cycles Dichterliebe (Poets Love)
  and Frauenliebe und Leben (Women in Love and Life)

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CLARA SCHUMANN

• Clara was a brilliant musician and composer
• Spent final years compiling her husbands music
  into orderly sets and nursing him in the asylum

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JOHANNES BRAHMS

• a brilliant composer
• a friend of both Robert and Clara Schumann
• letters published posthumously reveal that he and
  Clara were secretly in love

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• Clara Schumann has only received proper
  recognition in the last twenty years or so

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• Schumanns tombstone

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FRANZ LISZT (1811-1888)

• possibly the greatest pianist who ever lived
• attracted crowds like a rock star
• touring virtuoso--from Portugal to Turkey to
  Russia
• first person to perform on the stage alone

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FRANZ LISZT (1811-1888)

• After two marriages and countless love affairs,
  Liszt took orders in the Catholic church to
  become a priest.

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• LISZT MONUMENT IN WEIMAR

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• LISZT MONUMENT IN BAYREUTH

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• LISZT TOMB IN WEIMAR