Chapter 2. Romantic Composers and Their Public

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Chapter 2. Romantic Composers and Their Public
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• More freelancing than previous eras
• Outside aristocratic or church patronage
• Inspired by Beethoven
• Composed to fill an inner need rather than
  fulfill a commission

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• Partly due to economics
• French Revolution, Napoleonic wars left
  aristocrats unable to afford to maintain private
  music endeavors
• Merging of many tiny states into fewer, larger
  ones, left many musicians unemployed without
  courts

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• Industrial Revolution enlarged middle class
• Composers wrote even more for them
• Romantic Era a time of many public
  subscription-based concerts opening
• London Philharmonic Society (1813)
• New York Philharmonic (1842)
• Many conservatories opened in Europe and United
  States

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• Public captivated more than ever by virtuosity
• Best known Romantic virtuosos
• Pianist Franz Liszt
• Violinist Niccolò Paganini

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• Private music making more popular than ever
  nearly every home had a piano
• High demand for solo piano repertoire
• Even operas and orchestral works arranged for
  piano

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• Few Romantic composers were able to support
  themselves through composition alone
• Other income lessons - especially to the
  wealthy, who could be overcharged (Chopin taught
  wealthy young women) music criticism conducting

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III. The Art Song
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The Art Song

• Solo voice piano
• Accompaniment is an integral part of the
  composers conceptserves as interpretive partner
  to the voice
• Poetry and music are intimately fused
• Often has piano introduction and ending (called
  postlude)

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The Art Song, cont

• One of two forms
• Strophic form repeating same music for each
  stanza
• Through-composed new music for each stanza
• Song Cycle romantic art songs grouped in a set
• Unified by a story line that runs through the
  poems or by musical ideas linking the songs

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IV. FRANZ SCHUBERT
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Franz Schubert

• 1797-1828
• Born in Vienna, musically gifted at young age
• Earliest master of romantic art song
• First Viennese composer whose income came
  entirely from composition
• Taught at the school where his father was
  schoolmaster until age 21

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Franz Schubert, cont

• Composed rapidly, turned out music at incredible
  speeds
• Lived Bohemian lifestyle living for ones art
  rather than material goods
• Age 25 contracted venereal disease
• Became moody and despaired
• Could not get jobs later in life
• Died of syphilis at 31, one year after
  Beethovens funeral

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• Wrote over 600 songs, symphonies, string
  quartets, chamber music, sonatas, piano pieces
  for two and four hands, masses, operatic
  compositions
• Songs vary in mood and types

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LISTENING TO SCHUBERT

• Der Erlkönig (1815)
• Lyrics
• Poem by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
• 4 Characters
• Narrator
• Sick son
• Father
• Elf King

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The Story

• Father rushing his sick son home through the
  woods at night
• The deliriously sick son keeps insisting that the
  Elf King, the king of the elves, who symbolizes
  death, is trying to steal him away
• Father tries to comfort son and explains things
  away as being the fog or the trees
• Father gets son home to find that his son is dead

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The Accompaniment

• Through-composed different music for
• each verse, no repeated stanzas
• text painting

• Piano plays rapid triplets to simulate horse
  galloping until the very end when father and son
  arrive home

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The Accompaniment

• More text painting

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The Vocals

• 4 Characters sung by one person
• Narrator sung in middle range

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The Vocals

• Father sung in low range
• Low register contrasts with the high-pitched
  outcries of the child, as reassurance

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The Vocals

• Son sung in high range

• Each of the sons pleas of My father, my
  father! grows louder and higher as he panics

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The Vocals

• Erlkönig (Elf King) moves up and down

• Erlkönig sung pianissimo (very quiet) to seem
  sneaky and persuasive

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The Accompaniment

• Piano stops before the final line, symbolizing
• the horses gallop coming to a halt, and to
  allow a heartbreaking recitative as the narrator
  tells us, In his arms the child was dead!

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The Performance

• Challenging for piano
• Rapid hand movement throughout song
• Challenging for singer
• Portraying characters
• Books pg. 287

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The Erlking by Albert Sterner, 1910
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LISTENING TO SCHUBERT

• Die Forelle (The Trout 1817)
• Very famous
• Nature, folk-like simpicity
• A trout swims merrily in a brook before being
  caught by a clever fisherman

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• Modified strophic form
• A (stanza 1)
• A (stanza 2)
• BA (stanza 3)
• Piano intro that reappears as an interlude after
  the first and second stanzas and postlude after
  third stanza

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• First two stanzas, which portray the trout
  swimming happily, are the same lighthearted
  melody (A).
• Piano accompaniment includes short, ascending
  passages to depict the trouts leaps and twists
• Third stanza is more dramatic, minor, agitated,
  depicting the trout being caught.
• Books pg. 290

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LISTENING TO SCHUBERT

• Piano Quintet in A Major (Trout 1819), Fourth
  Mvmt
• Commissioned by a cellist who admired Die Forelle
  and asked Schubert to write variations on it

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• Variations found in 4th and 5th mvmts
• Scored for piano, violin, viola, cello, double
  bass

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V. ROBERT SCHUMANN
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• Born in Zwickau, Germany
• Son of bookseller, loved literature
• Wrote poetry, composed, decent pianist
• Studied law in Leipzig
• Rarely attended lectures and devoted time to
  literature and music

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• Age 20 tried to become piano virtuoso
• Developed finger pains/problems
• Used mechanical device to stretch/strengthen
  fingers
• Didnt work one finger permanently crippled
• Still composed many piano works
• Very personal, autobiographical

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• Multiple Personality Disorder
• Florestan and Eusebius
• Often signed his articles written for the New
  Journal of Music with these names

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• Met his piano teachers daughter and prize pupil,
  Clara Wieck, when he was 18 and she was a
  9-year-old piano prodigy
• Got engaged when she was 17, despite her fathers
  wishes
• Happy marriage, 8 children

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• Physical and mental health deteriorated
• 1854 tried to commit suicide, committed himself
  to an asylum where he died 2 years later

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Schumanns Music

• Wrote art songs, piano music, symphonies, chamber
  music
• Much of it organized into cycles or sets
• Full of extramusical references thought of
  music in emotional, literary, and
  autobiographical terms

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LISTENING TO SCHUMANN

• Carnaval (1834-1835)
• Cycle of 21 brief pieces with titles evoking a
  festive masked ball
• Varied characters, moods, activities

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• He called it a musical picture gallery
• Includes
• Sketches of fellow musicians
• Young women in his life at the time
• Stock characters from commedia dellarte
• Self-portraits representing the introverted and
  outgoing sides of his own personality (Florestan
  and Eusebius)
• Books pg. 294

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VI. CLARA WIECK SCHUMANN
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• Concert Pianist, premiered many of her husbands
  works and those of Brahms.
• Daughter of well known musicians and teachers
• Married day before 21st birthday
• Married for 14 years

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• Considered herself primarily a performer
• Wrote art songs, lyrical and virtuoso piano pieces

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LISTENING TO CLARA SCHUMANN

• Romance in G Minor for Violin and Piano, Op. 22,
  No. 2 (1853)
• Dedicated to a friend of hers who played them for
  his employer King George V of Germany, who loved
  them

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• The term romance was often used for short,
  lyrical pieces for piano or solo instrument with
  piano accompaniment.
• Displays her gifts as a melodist.
• Books pg. 298