The Early RomanticsIndividualism Triumphant

The Lied

• “Art song”

• Piano and voice, but in equal partnership

• The text is usually a poem of some sort

• Intimate expression, like a whiff of emotion in a bottle

The Lied

• Strophic

• Uses the same music for most of its stanzas

• Through-Composed

• Uses different music for various stanzas, depending on the text

Franz Schubert

• The earliest and greatest master of the lied

• Prolific composer, in many genres

• Died very young

• Either in a typhoid epidemic

• More likely from syphilis

Erlkönig

• An early song of Schubert’s

• Poem by Goethe

• Tells a story, like a ballad

Erlkönig

• In the animated chart:

• The narrator’s text is red

• The father’s text is blue

• The son’s text is light purple

• The Erlkönig’s text is orange

Robert SchumannRomantic Extraordinaire

Zwickau

• Born June 8, 1810

• Literary family: father a bookseller and writer

• Earliest unpublished compositions date from around 1822

• Psalm settings for chorus & orchestra

• Piano concertos (begun but not completed)

Heidelberg

• Law student in 1829

• But music was to be his great passion

• Wrote some short piano pieces during this time.

Leipzig

• Settled in Leipzig in 1830 to study with Friedrich Wieck, an outstanding piano teacher of the era.

Clara Wieck Schumann

• Wieck’s daughter Clara would become both Schumann’s wife (after a long and bitter battle with Wieck), and one of the greatest pianists of the 19th century.

Journalism

• By 1831 Schumann was well established as a musical journalist.

• He was particularly good about identifying promising new compositional talent.

Journalist: Chopin

• “Hats off, gentlemen! A genius”

Journalist: Brahms

• “Destined to give ideal expression to the times”

No more Piano

• Schumann ruined his piano-playing career via a gizmo called a chiroplast.

• He wound up with a nearly useless left-hand middle finger.

Character Piece for Piano

• Similar in overall style to the lied

• For solo piano, no text

• Generally captures a single mood, or a few shifts of mood, in a single piece

• Character pieces were often joined together in cycles

Program Cycles

• With Schumann’s Opus 2, Papillons, we enter the programmatic keyboard cycles that figure so prominently in his output.

• Papillons

• Carnaval

• Kreisleriana

• Davidsbundlertanze

• Faschingsschwank aus Wien

Carnaval

• A series of portraits of guests at a masked ball

• Archetypes and real people combined

• Harlequin

• Columbine

• Pierrot

• Schumann himself

• Chopin

• Paganini

Carnaval

• Three selections:

• Eusebius

• The dreamy, poetic side

• Florestan

• Impetuous and dynamic

• Chiarina

• A portait of teenaged Clara Wieck

The Style

• One small idea is typically used in any given piece.

• That small idea isn’t really developed: usually it is repeated, maybe with slight variation.

• Not a technique conducive to larger development, but highly effective for shorter pieces.

sotto voce

Adagio

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œ œ œ œn œ œ œn˙̇

Eusebius

• The basic idea

7œn œ œ œ œn œ œ œ

œ̇ œn

Eusebius

• Repeat a step higher

7œ œ œb œ œ œ œ œœ̇ œ

Eusebius

• Repeat lower

œ œ œ œ œ˙̇

Eusebius

• Add a little finishing figure.

Eusebius

• But if you just play it, nothing much happens.

sotto voce

Adagio

5

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7

7

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œ œ œ œn œ œ œn œ œ œ œn œ œ œ œ œb œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ˙̇ œ̇ œn œ̇ œ ˙̇

œ œ œ œn œ œ œn œ œ œ œn œ œ œ œ œb œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ˙̇ œ̇ œn œ̇ œ ˙̇

Carnaval

• The presentation offers portraits of Robert and Clara Schumann throughout various periods of their lives

Song Cycle

• A collection of lieder with some kind of common poetic theme connecting the lieder to one another

Dichterliebe

• Schumann’s song cycle traces a progression from optimism to despair

• The poems are by Heinrich Heine

• “Im wunderschonen Monat Mai” opens the set; “Die alten, bösen lieder” concludes it.

Illness

• Schumann’s bipolar disorder grew worse in the early 1850s.

• He was admitted to a sanitorium in Endenich, on the outskirts of Bonn.

• His mental condition slowly deteriorated and his physical state along with it.

Illness

• The actual cause of his death remains uncertain.

• Tertiary syphilis still remains a possibility.

• The many medications may have played a part.

• He stopped eating almost altogether during the last two months.

Illness

• Schumann died in the sanitorium on July 29, 1856.

• He was 46 years old.

• The last of Robert and Clara’s children, Eugenie, died in 1938.

Frédéric Chopin

• Polish-born, but lived most of his life in Paris

• Splendid, innovative pianist who changed piano-playing and piano-writing forever

• Performed in public only rarely; made most of his money from teaching and publishing

• Died from tuberculosis in 1849, at the age of 39

Chopin and the Piano

• Chopin wrote almost exclusively short piano pieces

• Most of them have generic titles of various types:

• Prelude

• Impromptu

• Nocturnes

Chopin and the Piano

• There are also dances:

• Waltzes

• Mazurkas

• Polonaises

• Larger works:

• Ballades

• Scherzi

• Sonatas

Chopin’s Nocturnes

• Literally means “night music”

• Each piece is a world into itself

• Some are moody, some extroverted, some mysterious

• Often lyrical, harmonically adventuresome, and startlingly original

• The form is usually a simple A-B-A

Nocturne in F#, Op. 15, No. 2

• Three distinct sections (A-B-A)

• The first section repeats its melody and contains a contrasting phrase (a-a’-b)

• The third section ends with a shimmering coda

Left Behind

• Felix Mendelssohn

• Franz Liszt

Felix Mendelssohn

• Mozartean prodigy

• Pianist, composer, and conductor

• Became the archetype of the modern conductor

• Virtually worked himself to death at an early age

Felix Mendelssohn

• Classicist within the Romantic tradition

• Superb structuralist and formalist, with the finest compositional technique of the early Romantics

• Comes across as a bit stuffy, rather Victorian, to many modern listeners

A Midsummer Night’s DreamII - Scherzo

Alfred Hertz/San Francisco SymphonyRecorded April 11-12, 1927

Columbia (American Conservatory) Theater, San Francisco

Franz Liszt

• The greatest pianist of the century, possibly of all time

• Established the model of the super-virtuoso celebrity performer

• Lived a long life remarkable for its many contradictions

Franz Liszt

• Serious musician/showy virtuoso

• Generous teacher/avaricious celebrity

• Fine composer/spinner of glitzy trash

• Cleric/libertine