the early romantics - scott foglesongscottfoglesong.com/music_27/romantic/early_romantics.pdf ·...
TRANSCRIPT
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• Earliest unpublished compositions date from around 1822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
2424
&bbb 7
?bbb
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
2424
&bbb 7 77
?bbb
&bbb 7
7
7
?bbb
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