The Nineteenth Century

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In the nineteenth century, the Industrial Revolution transformed the economy, bringing people from the countryside to the cities and creating a society based on mass production and distribution. The result was a large and influential middle class, who saw transformations in musical life as well. Affordable pianos and printed music broadened the market for home music, encouraging a torrent of songs and piano pieces. The audience for music expanded, and opera companies, professional orchestras, and concert halls grew in number and size.

Nineteenth-century professional musicians typically worked for the public—playing in orchestras, giving concerts, composing for publication, or teaching amateurs. One path to success was to specialize, becoming a virtuoso on one instrument or a composer for one medium. Another path was to create music that was novel, individual, evocative, spectacular, nationalist, exotic, or in some other way distinctive yet attractive.

All of these traits are characteristic of Romanticism, a leading movement in the arts at the beginning of the 1800s and a term now associated with the entire century's music. Composers developed new styles to appeal to middle-class listeners, creating new kinds of instrumental music—from virtuoso showpieces to symphonic poems—and new operatic traditions in Italy, France, Germany, Russia, and elsewhere.

Two other developments had profound and lasting effects: the rise of a permanent repertoire of musical classics, and a growing rift between classical and popular music. These changes have shaped our modern musical culture, in which nineteenth-century music is still an enduring presence.

24 Revolution and Change 554

25 The Romantic Generation: Song and Piano Music 580

26 Romanticism in Classic Forms: Choral, Chamber, and Orchestral Music 618

27 Romantic Opera and Musical Theater to Midcentury 646

28 Opera and Musical Theater in the Later Nineteenth Century 671

29 Late Romanticism in German Musical Culture 711

30 Diverging Traditions in the Later Nineteenth Century 731

Revolution, War, and Music, 1789 to 1815 554

Ludwig van

Beethoven 557

Beethoven's

Centrality 578

Revolution and Change

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The generation born around 1770 came of age in a whirlwind of change. From the French Revolution in 1789 through the end of the Napoleonic Wars in 1815, the old political order in Europe gave way to a new one. At the same time, a new economic order began to emerge, in which the Industrial Revolution and middle-class entrepreneurship would eventually surpass the old wealth of the landed aristocracy. Along with these changes came a new sense of time associated with the idea of progress, the notion that technology, society, the arts, and other aspects of life were improving at an accelerating pace, making each new period of human history fundamentally different from past eras.

One member of that generation, Ludwig van Beethoven, grew up and was trained in the old world of court musicians; was inspired by the French Revolution and sympathetic to the idea of replacing rule by a monarch with a republic; made a successful career in Vienna by combining freelance income with support from aristocratic patrons; was angered by Napoleon's betrayal of republican ideals and isolated by increasing deafness; and suffered through war and the post-1815 economic depression and political repression. Formed by these experiences of revolution and social change, Beethoven led a revolution of like importance in the history of music. His creation of works unprecedented in their individuality, dramatic power, wide appeal, and depth of interest to connoisseurs changed society's concept of music and of composers.

Moth Dust

Revolution, War, and Music, 1789 to 1815

the French Revolution The French Revolution was inspired in part by Enlightenment ideas of equality, human rights, and social reform, but also had other causes. The first phase of the Revolution (1789 to 92) was reformist. Stimulated by King Louis the sixteenth's ruinous fiscal policies and supported by popular uprisings like the assault on the Bastille shown in Figure 24.1, a National Assembly of well-to-do citizens forced the king to accept a new constitution for France. The Assembly abolished old privileges, adopted the Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen, and set up elected local governments. But after Austria and Prussia attacked France in 1792, seeking to restore the old regime, a more radical group came to power, declared France a republic, and executed the king. In this second phase (1792 to 94), as French armies fought off attacks, the government maintained control by executing tens of thousands of political opponents in a Reign of Terror. In the third phase (1794 to 99), the government adopted a more moderate constitution and sought to restore order, but opposition and economic hardships continued.

Figure 24.1 summary: An oil painting depicting the storming of the Bastille on July 14, 1789, showing a crowd of Parisian citizens attacking the massive stone fortress. The scene captures the violent confrontation between the people and the symbol of royal authority to seize weaponry and protect their municipal government. The image illustrates a pivotal moment of revolutionary change in French history.

In 1799, Napoleon Bonaparte, an army general and war hero, became First Consul of the Republic. Ignoring the legislature, Bonaparte consolidated power and in 1804 crowned himself emperor. Through a series of military victories, he overran nearby countries, expanded French territories, ended the 840-year-old Holy Roman Empire, and created client states in Spain, Switzerland, and most of Germany and Italy, installing his own siblings as rulers. In these areas as well as France, he introduced reforms that made government more efficient, the legal system more uniform, and taxation less burdensome, carrying out some of the goals of the Revolution. But a disastrous campaign to take Moscow led to his defeat and abdication in 1814. As a congress of the major European powers met in Vienna to finalize the peace treaty, Napoleon escaped from exile in 1815, marched to Paris, and resumed power, only to suffer final defeat that summer in a battle at Waterloo in Belgium.

Though the Revolution and Napoleon's wars of conquest ultimately failed, they changed European society utterly. The Revolutionary motto "liberté, egalité, fraternité" (liberty, equality, brotherhood) attracted adherents from every stratum of French society, and French armies spread it across Europe. People everywhere saw the possibility of freedom, democratic reform, and the abolition of rank and privilege, and they sustained that vision even when its 山+学

1789 French Revolution begins

1792 Ludwig van Beethoven arrives in Vienna

1792 French Republic declared, King Louis the sixteenth executed

1792 Franz 2 becomes Holy Roman emperor

1793 Eli Whitney invents mechanical cotton gin

1793 to 94 Reign of Terror

1795 Paris Conservatoire founded

1797 to 98 Beethoven, Sonate pathétique

1802 Beethoven realizes his hearing loss is permanent, writes Heiligenstadt Testament

1803 to 4 Beethoven, Symphony No. 3 in E-flat Major (Eroica)

1804 Napoleon Bonaparte crowns himself Emperor

Napoleon the first

1806 Holy Roman Empire dissolved, Franz 2 continues as emperor of Austria to

1835

1809 Beethoven given lifetime annuity

1814 Napoleon defeated, exiled to Elba

1814 to 15 Congress of Vienna

1815 Napoleon defeated at Waterloo

1815 Postwar economic depression begins

1822 to 24 Beethoven, Symphony No. 9 in D Minor

1824 to 26 Beethoven, late string quartets realization was delayed. Moreover, the Revolution and subsequent wars introduced a new concept of the nation, conceived as citizens with a common heritage and equal legal rights, not as subjects to a monarch. As the French forged an identity as a nation, so increasingly did people in Germany, Italy, Spain, and Austria, giving rise to cultural and political trends that gained force throughout the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

Music and the Revolution The Revolution remade every aspect of French life, including music. Popular songs carried the messages and stories of the Revolution, often setting new words to familiar melodies. Composers wrote marches and symphonies for wind band for public ceremonies, and large choral works known as Revolutionary hymns for government-sponsored festivals held to celebrate the Revolution. The government also supported the Opéra and Opéra-Comique, the two main opera theaters in Paris, although opera librettos were subject to censorship for political reasons.

Many of the plots touched on themes of the Revolution or concerns of the time. One thrilling scenario (mentioned in Chapter 21) centered around the rescue of a hero from unjust imprisonment.

An enduring product of the Revolutionary era was the Paris Conservatoire, a music school founded by the government in 1795 as part of the new national system of education designed to make training in any field available to all citizens based on merit rather than on class, wealth, or family tradition. Combining traditional methods from the conservatories of Naples and Venice with newer approaches, the Conservatoire trained singers and instrumentalists through a standard curriculum and system of examinations and offered courses in composition, theory, and music history. As the first modern conservatory, it became the model for conservatories throughout Europe. It has been a dominant force in French musical life ever since.

the Industrial Revolution Meanwhile, new technologies began to transform the economy from chiefly rural and agricultural, with most goods made by hand, to an urban economy based on manufacturing by machine. This gradual change, known as the Industrial Revolution, started in Britain during the late eighteenth century and spread across Europe and North America over the next hundred years. It began in the textile industry with inventions such as the flying shuttle (1733), which made weaving on a hand loom twice as fast; the spinning jenny (1764), which greatly speeded up the spinning of yarn and thread; and the mechanical cotton gin (1793), which rapidly separated cotton fiber from the seeds. Such machines led to mass production of thread and cloth in large factories powered by water mills or by the new steam engine (invented 1769). Other industries followed suit, including the rise of instrument-making firms. Mass production lowered costs and thus prices, which drove out competitors who worked by hand. Men, women, and even children came to work in the factories and the coal and iron mines that kept them running, despite long hours and often bad working conditions. The Industrial Revolution brought unprecedented prosperity, but in many ways was as disruptive as the French Revolution and Napoleonic Wars, threatening traditional ways of life and enriching the urban middle and merchant classes at the expense of the landowning aristocracy and the poor.

CHÂTEAUX DE VERSAILLES ET DE TRIANON, VERSAILLES. PHOTO: RÉUNION DES MUSÉES NATIONAUX/ART RESOURCE, NY

Ludwig Van Beethoven

The musician whose career and music best reflect the tumultuous changes in the decades around 1800 was Ludwig van Beethoven (1770 to 1827; see biography and Figure 24.2). He was steeped in Enlightenment ideals; absorbed the music of Haydn and Mozart; was affected by the French Revolution; idealized and then was disillusioned by Napoleon; endured occupation and economic privation during the Napoleonic Wars; and lived his last dozen years under political repression. In his youth a promising piano virtuoso and composer, he was forced to cease performing because of deafness and in his later years became the first musician to make a living almost exclusively as a composer. His pieces placed new demands on listeners and performers, and in the process they redefined what listeners expected from and valued in music.

Figure 24.2 summary: Five snippets of musical notation showing instrumental parts including cello (Vc.), clarinet (Cl.), violin (Vn.), flute (Fl.), and horn (Hn.). The examples demonstrate various melodic lines, rhythmic patterns, and dynamic markings such as piano (p), forte (f), sforzando-piano (sfp), and crescendo. These clips provide illustrative musical examples of specific themes or techniques within a musical score.

Shortly after Beethoven's death, a scholar divided his career and works into three periods, beginning a tradition that survives to this day. During the first period, which takes us from his birth in 1770 to about 1802, Beethoven mastered the musical language and genres of his time and gradually found a personal voice. In the second period, through about 1814, he developed a style that achieved a new level of drama and expression and brought him enormous popularity.

In the third period, from about 1815 to his death in 1827, his music became more introspective and more difficult for performers to play and for listeners to comprehend. Such a neat framework is, of course, an interpretation, a convenient way to organize a discussion of Beethoven's career and music. But it both reflects changes in his style and marks crucial turning points in his life: a crisis in 1802 over his gradual loss of hearing and a growing isolation around 1815 caused by deafness, family troubles, and political and economic conditions.

BONN and the First Decade in Veeenna Beethoven's "first period" was really two periods: his youth in Bonn and his first decade in Vienna. In Bonn, after training by his father and other local musicians, he entered the service of Maximilian Franz, elector of Cologne, and attracted notice as a virtuoso pianist and improviser (see Source Reading, p. 560). In his late teens, Beethoven began to make his mark as a composer and gained patrons among the local nobility. On a visit to Bonn, Haydn praised Beethoven's music and urged the elector to send the young man to Vienna for further study. So in November 1792, just under twenty-two years of age, Beethoven traveled from Bonn to Vienna, a five-hundred-mile journey that took a week by stagecoach and required him to pass through lines of French troops at war with Austria and Prussia.

Ludwig van Beethoven (1770 to 1827)

For two centuries, Beethoven has dominated the world of classical music like no other composer. His symphonies, concertos, string quartets, and piano sonatas are central to the repertory, and his influence has been virtually inescapable. His perseverance in the face of deafness, combined with the sense of struggle and triumph depicted in much of his music, made him a heroic figure. His individualism and self-expression appealed to the growing middle-class audience for music and made him a model for generations of composers.

Beethoven was born in Bonn in northwestern Germany, where his grandfather and father were musicians at the court of the elector of Cologne. He grew up surrounded by ideas of the Enlightenment, enthusiastically promoted by intellectuals, the social elite, and fellow musicians in Bonn. From early childhood, Beethoven studied piano and violin with his father, Johann, who hoped to make him into a famous child prodigy like Mozart. He took the boy out of school at age eleven so that Ludwig could concentrate solely on music, which included lessons in piano, organ, theory, counterpoint, composition, and improvisation. One of his significant teachers, court organist and composer Christian

Teachers, patrons, and publishers Gottlob Neefe, arranged for the earliest publication of a composition by Beethoven and first called attention to the young musician in print.

Beethoven took lessons with Haydn, but they were interrupted when Haydn left for London in January 1794. He then studied counterpoint for a year with Johann Georg Albrechtsberger, author of a famous composition treatise, and later studied how to set Italian poetry with Antonio Salieri. Meanwhile, Beethoven quickly established himself as a pianist and composer, with the support of generous patrons. For a while, Beethoven had rooms in a house owned by Prince Karl von Lichnowsky. At private concerts sponsored by Lichnowsky and others, Beethoven's outstanding abilities as a pianist, and especially his improvisations, won great admiration. He also played in public concerts and taught well-to-do piano students. Aside from juvenile music, he was twelve to fourteen years old, he started to sell works to music publishers in 1791, although his first work to bear an opus number did not appear until 1795. It was a set of three piano trios dedicated to Lichnowsky, and his Op. 2 of the following year, a set of three piano sonatas, was dedicated to Haydn. The piano trio and piano sonata were genres aimed at amateur performers, and thus potentially lucrative as well as prestigious.

Beethoven traveled to Vienna in 1787 and may have met Mozart, then moved to Vienna for good in 1792. His first teacher there was Haydn, with whom he studied counterpoint, at the same time cultivating patrons among the aristocracy. His compositions ranged widely, from music for amateurs to virtuoso works for himself and from private works for connoisseurs to public symphonies.

Confident in his own worth as an artist, Beethoven treated his aristocratic sponsors with independence and even occasional rudeness. His presumptions of social equality led him repeatedly to fall in love with women of noble rank, whom he as a commoner could not marry (and some of whom were already married). Especially poignant is a letter he addressed in 1812 to his “Immortal Beloved” but apparently never sent. Beethoven never established a permanent home, moving more than two dozen times during his thirty-five years in Vienna.

A gradual loss of hearing provoked a crisis around 1802, from which he emerged with new resolve to compose works of unprecedented scope and depth. The instrumental music of the next dozen years established him as the most popular and critically acclaimed composer alive. Through sales to publishers and support from patrons, notably a permanent stipend set up for him in 1809, he was able to devote himself entirely to composition and write at his own pace.

On his brother Caspar's death in 1815, Beethoven became guardian for his eight-year-old nephew Karl, giving Beethoven the family he had long desired but also bringing years of conflict with Karl's mother Johanna. Growing deafness, bouts of illness, political repression, and the death or departure of many friends and patrons led to an increasing withdrawal from society. His music became more intense, concentrated, and difficult.

His troubled relationship with Karl reached a shattering climax when the nineteen-year-old attempted suicide in 1826. But for all of Beethoven's social isolation and difficult personality, he never lost the support of a devoted circle of friends. We can eavesdrop on their discussions even now; because Beethoven was too deaf to hear them, they wrote their side of the conversations in bound notebooks for him to read and respond. These notebooks are now known as the "Conversation Books."

Beethoven died at fifty-six after years of ill health. His funeral procession was witnessed by over ten thousand people, and his popularity as a composer and as a cultural icon continues to this day.

Major Works 9 symphonies, 11 overtures, 5 piano concertos, 1 violin concerto, 16 string quartets, 9 piano trios, 10 violin sonatas, 5 cello sonatas, 32 piano sonatas, 20 piano variation sets, the opera Fidelio, Missa solemnism, Mass in C Major, the song cycle An die ferne Geliebte, over 80 songs, and numerous other works

Haydn was the most famous composer of both genres; that Beethoven gave both collections opus numbers and dedicated the sonatas to Haydn shows that he sought to place himself beside the older composer in the minds of the public, as Mozart had done a decade earlier in dedicating a set of quartets to Haydn (see p. 541).

Through performing, teaching, publishing, and the generosity of patrons, Beethoven was able to make a living without taking a position with a specific employer. Although he had hoped for the security of a court appointment, which did not come his way, his success as a freelance musician, backed up by a stipend from Lichnowsky, granted him an independence Haydn and Mozart did not achieve until late in their careers.

Since he was a pianist, piano works were a natural outlet for Beethoven's compositional impulses; indeed sonatas, variations, and shorter works for piano comprise the largest group of works he wrote during his first decade in Vienna. Beethoven followed the tradition of aiming solo keyboard music at the amateur market, although his early sonatas already make increasing

Beethoven's Playing and Improvising at the Piano

When Beethoven's Bonn employer, the elector of Cologne, presided over a meeting of the Teutonic Order for several weeks in 1791 at Mergentheim in southern Germany, he took his musicians along. Carl Ludwig Junker, a composer and writer on music and art, came to hear them, and published a glowing account of Beethoven's playing and improvising at age twenty.

HISTORISCHES MUSEUM DER STADT WIEN/BRIDGEMAN ART LIBRARY

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I have also heard one of the greatest of pianists—the dear, good Bethofen....I heard him extemporize in private; yes, I was even invited to propose a theme for him to vary. The greatness of this amiable, light-hearted man as a virtuoso may, in my opinion, be safely judged from his almost inexhaustible wealth of ideas, the highly characteristic expressiveness of his playing, and the skill he displays in performance. I do not know that he lacks anything for the making of a great artist. I have often heard Vogler play by the hour on the pianoforte—of his organ playing I cannot speak, not having heard him on that instrument—and never failed to wonder at his astonishing ability. But Bethofen, in addition to skill, has greater clarity and profundity of ideas, and more expression—in short, he speaks to the heart. He is equally great at an adagio as at an allegro. Even the members of this remarkable orchestra are, without exception, his admirers, and are all ears when he plays. Yet he is exceedingly modest and free from all pretension. He, however, acknowledged to me that, upon the journeys which the Elector had enabled him to make, he had seldom found in the playing of the most distinguished virtuosi that excellence which he supposed he had a right to expect. His manner of treating his instrument is so different from the usual that he gives the impression of having attained his present supremacy through a path that he discovered himself.

From Bossler's Musikalische Correspondenz (Speyer, November 23, 1791), adapted from the translation by Henry Edward Krehbiel in Alexander Wheelock Thayer, Thayer's Life of Beethoven, rev. and ed. Elliot Forbes, demands on the performer. Relatively difficult passages or movements appear next to easier ones, perhaps to challenge the player. Like Mozart, Beethoven often used strong contrasts of style or topic to delineate the form and broaden the expressive range. He also adopted new approaches to piano composition, including the use of frequent octaves, thick textures, and abrupt changes of dynamics, techniques he may have learned from the sonatas of Muzio Clementi (1752 to 1832), an Italian composer active in London, and the Bohemian-born Jan Ladislav Dussek (1760 to 1812).

The title of Beethoven's Sonate pathétique (Sonata with Pathos, 1797 to 98, published 1799), Op. 13, announced that the work would depict suffering and a tragic mode of expression. It was also likely to attract buyers, as composers and publishers found such evocative titles a useful marketing tool, and indeed this was one of Beethoven's most popular pieces. The sonata, in C minor, has outer movements of a stormy, passionate character—which Beethoven, like his predecessors, associated with that key—framing a calm, profound slow movement in Ab major. The first movement begins with a dramatic, fantasia-like slow introduction, a stunning depiction of grief, that is recalled before the development and again just before the end of the movement. A slow introduction is unusual for a piano sonata but common for symphonies, so its presence lends the Pathétique Sonata symphonic grandeur, while its unexpected reoccurrences deepen the pathos. The main themes of the movement are energetic and determined, and in the development the main motive of the introduction is transformed and assimilated into the character of the Allegro. Thus over the course of the movement, Beethoven first evokes the depths of suffering and then suggests a struggle to overcome it. The sonata-rondo finale is equally serious and intense, unlike the typically lighthearted rondos of Haydn and Mozart. Its theme recalls part of the second theme of the first movement, and its central episode is in Ab major, the key of the second movement, creating the sort of intermovement connections that Beethoven frequently used in later works.

Beethoven waited until he was well established in Vienna and confident in his craft before composing his first string quartets and symphonies. He knew these were genres in which Haydn, then regarded as the greatest composer alive, was preeminent, and that to write pieces in these genres would invite a direct comparison with his former teacher. For that very reason they offered Beethoven a chance to prove his merits.

Beethoven's first six quartets were completed in 1800, were probably first played by a quartet led by violinist Ignaz Schuppanzigh at private concerts sponsored by Prince Lichnowsky, and were published in 1801 as his Op. 18. Through these quartets, Beethoven sought to make himself the successor to Haydn and Mozart in the genre, using quartets by both as models, and thereby helped to establish the string quartet as a tradition stemming from these three composers. While he drew on their example, Beethoven's personality shows through in the individuality of every movement, the character of his themes, frequent unexpected turns of phrase, unconventional modulations, and subtleties of form. The slow movement of No. 1, which Beethoven indicated on the sketches and in conversation was inspired by the burial vault scene of Romeo and Juliet, is especially striking and perhaps the most dramatic—even operatic—movement yet written for string quartet. The hilarious scherzo of No. 6, shown in Example 24.1, emphasizes offbeats so convincingly that it is almost impossible for listeners to keep the beat. The finale of this quartet is a rondo with a long, intense, slow introduction labeled "La Malinconia" (Melancholy), which is recalled later in the movement. simultaneous invocation and subversion of tradition in these quartets and the stark juxtapositions of opposing emotions and styles became characteristic of Beethoven's music.

Image summary: A musical score excerpt from Ludwig van Beethoven's String Quartet in B-flat Major, Op. 18, No. 6, specifically the scherzo. The notation includes four staves for a string quartet, marked Allegro in 3/4 time, featuring rapid sixteenth-note passages and frequent sforzando markings against piano dynamics. It is a musical composition and contains no data or analytical results.

Beethoven's Symphony No. 1 in C Major, premiered in 1800, shows his allegiance to the model of Haydn's and Mozart's late symphonies. Yet Beethoven sought to distinguish himself in distinctive ways: a slow introduction that avoids any definitive tonic cadence; careful dynamic shadings; unusual prominence for the woodwinds; a scherzo-like third movement; and long codas for the other movements.

Circumstances in the Middle Period Around 1803, Beethoven began to compose in a new, more ambitious style that marks a pivotal point in his career. He was free to take this step because of his reputation, the support of patrons and publishers, and, paradoxically, the predicament created by his growing loss of hearing.

By this time, Beethoven was acknowledged in German-speaking lands as the foremost pianist and composer for piano and had begun to establish a reputation as a composer of symphonies and string quartets. He was befriended by the loftiest noble families of Vienna, and he had generous patrons. When Jérôme Bonaparte, king of Westphalia and youngest brother of Napoleon, offered Beethoven a position in Kassel in 1808, Prince Franz Joseph von Lobkowitz, Prince Kinsky, and Archduke Rudolph, brother of Emperor Franz the second, joined to provide the composer a lifetime annuity just to stay in Vienna, an unparalleled arrangement that caused astonishment at the time.

The strong financial backing Beethoven received from his patrons meant that he could do largely what he wished as a composer. His sponsors were connoisseurs devoted to his music; indeed, Archduke Rudolph was his student in piano and composition. The combination of financial, social, and creative support freed Beethoven to follow his own inspiration, a virtually unprecedented situation for a composer.

Publishers competed for Beethoven's music. He drove hard bargains, got them bidding against each other, and followed Haydn's lead in publishing works in several countries at once to preserve his rights and maximize his returns. Although he wrote on commission, he often failed to meet deadlines. He could afford, as he said, to “think and think,” to revise and polish a work until it suited him.

Beethoven composed with great deliberation, one reason that he wrote so much less than his predecessors—for instance, only nine symphonies compared to Haydn's 106 and Mozart's 55. He kept notebooks of sketches in which he jotted down themes and plans for compositions, worked out the continuity of each piece, and gradually filled in details. Figure 24.3 shows a page from the sketchbook for Beethoven's Third Symphony. Thanks to these sketchbooks, we can follow the progress of his ideas through various stages until they reached final form (for an example, see the commentary for N.A.W.M 130). By composing in this deliberate way, Beethoven created music in which the relation of each part to the whole was remarkably sophisticated, satisfying one of the central tenets of nineteenth-century aesthetics.

While his status, financial position, and compositional methods made it possible for Beethoven to strike out in new directions, it was apparently a psychological crisis that helped to make it necessary. In 1802, he realized that the hearing loss he had noticed for some time was permanent and would only get worse. A deaf musician was as inconceivable as a blind painter. In despair, Beethoven considered suicide, but resolved to continue for the sake of his art (see Source Reading, p. 564). He played in public less and less but kept on composing and, occasionally, conducting.

Figure 24.3 summary: A photograph of a handwritten musical manuscript featuring several staves of notes and annotations. It serves as a historical document of a musical composition.

Beethoven's courageous resolve to continue composing in the face of calamity was translated into his music, as he sought with each piece to say something new. His compositions seem to reflect the struggle of his own life, becoming like narratives or dramas. The music gives the impression of conveying the composer's own experience and feelings rather than representing the emotions of a text or operatic character or invoking generalized affections, as was typical in earlier music. Often, the thematic material assumes the character of a protagonist who struggles against great odds and emerges triumphant. Haydn and Mozart had often introduced dramatic gestures into their music to highlight important junctures in the form or to heighten expression, giving their late music a remarkable profundity, but they did not treat their musical material like characters in a drama, as Beethoven came to do. This new conception of instrumental music as drama, extending the achievements of Haydn and Mozart while replacing earlier notions of music as entertainment or diversion, is part of what musicians and listeners have valued in Beethoven's music since his own time.

This interpretation and some others to follow represent only one way to view Beethoven's output after 1802. Some commentators prefer to discuss Beethoven's music in more abstract terms. But the expansiveness, dynamism, and unusual features of many of Beethoven's works create the sense of experiencing a dramatic conflict, climax, and catharsis more than any previous instrumental music.

FIGURE 24.3 Apage from the sketchbook Beethoven used while composing his Symphony No. 3 in E-flat Major (Eroica). For a partial transcription, see NAWM 130.

The Heiligenstadt Testament

Beethoven began to lose his hearing by 1798, and by 1818 he could hardly hear at all. In October 1802, just before leaving his summer lodgings in the village of Heiligenstadt, he wrote about his affliction in a letter, now known as the Heiligenstadt Testament, intended to be read by his brothers after his death.

Japanese text

For 6 years now I have been hopelessly afflicted, made worse by senseless physicians, from year to year deceived with hopes of improvement, finally compelled to face the prospect of a lasting malady (whose cure will take years or, perhaps be impossible). Though born with a fiery, active temperament, even susceptible to the diversions of society, I was soon compelled to withdraw myself, to live life alone. If at times I tried to forget all this, oh how harshly was I flung back by the doubly sad experience of my bad hearing. Yet it was impossible for me to say to people, "Speak louder, shout, for I am deaf." Ah, how could I possibly admit an infirmity in the one sense which ought to be more perfect in me than in others, a sense which I once possessed in the highest perfection, a perfection such as few in my profession enjoy or ever have enjoyed.—Oh I cannot do it, therefore forgive me when you see

Style characteristics me draw back when I would have gladly mingled with you. My misfortune is doubly painful to me because I am bound to be misunderstood; for there can be no relaxation with my fellow-men, no refined conversations, no mutual exchange of ideas. I must live almost alone like one who has been banished, I can mix with society only as much as true necessity demands. If I approach near to people a hot terror seizes upon me and I fear being exposed to the danger that my condition might be noticed. Thus it has been during the last six months which I have spent in the country.

By ordering me to spare my hearing as much as possible, my intelligent doctor almost fell in with my own present frame of mind, though sometimes I ran counter to it by yielding to my desire for companionship. But what a humiliation for me when someone standing next to me heard a flute in the distance and I heard nothing, or someone heard a shepherd singing and again I heard nothing. Such incidents drove me almost to despair, a little more of that and I would have ended my life—it was only my art that held me back. Ah, it seemed to me impossible to leave the world until I had brought forth all that I felt was within me.

Trans. Henry Edward Krehbiel, in Alexander Wheelock Thayer, Thayer's Life of Beethoven, rev. and ed. Elliot Forbes,

The music of this period continues to build on the models of Haydn and Mozart in most respects. The genres, forms, melodic types, phrasing, and textures all draw on tradition. But the forms are often expanded to unprecedented lengths or reworked in novel ways. Typically, Beethoven is economical in his material, adopting Haydn's focus on a few ideas subjected to intense development rather than Mozart's abundance of melody, yet he achieves great variety through ingenious transformations of his themes.

Eroika Symphony The first work that fully exemplifies Beethoven's new approach is his Symphony No. 3 in E-flat Major, composed in 1803 to 4, which he eventually named Sinfonia Eroica (Heroic Symphony). Longer than any previous symphony, the Eroica goes beyond evoking conventional moods and topics, as his First Symphony had done. The title suggests that the symphony expresses in music the ideal of heroic greatness. It has been said that the heroism it depicts is Beethoven's own: that it represents in music his experience of being almost overpowered by affliction, fighting against despair, and winning back his will to create. But it also reflects Beethoven's understanding of heroism as portrayed in the ancient Greek and Roman literature he most admired, Homer's Iliad and Odyssey and Plutarch's Parallel Lives, marked by nobility of character, acceptance of one's circumstances, and determination to overcome obstacles.

According to one possible interpretation, the first movement (N.A.W.M 130) encapsulates this story of challenge, struggle, and final victory. Within an enlarged sonata form, the main motive of the first theme, shown in Example 24.2, serves as protagonist. In its original form (Example 24.2a), it is more pastoral than heroic. The movement is in the fast triple meter of the deutsche, the German peasant dance that evolved into the waltz, and the first three measures of the triadic motive are identical to a traditional deutsche melody Beethoven may have known, published in a collection of dance tunes around 1790. Moreover, the motive is first presented in a low register, in the cello, at a soft dynamic, followed by a chromatic descent to a surprising C Sharp. None of these characteristics suggests heroism, and the associations with a peasant dance imply that the protagonist is of common rather than noble origin.

The heroic content of this movement lies not in its opening motive, but in what happens to it. Over the course of the movement, the motive undergoes a

Example 24.2 Main Motive and Its Transformations in the First Movement of Beethoven's Symphony No. 3

a. Original form b. In rising sequence c. Disguised as a “new theme” in the development

asterisk equals note shared with original form d. Unison statement, striving upwards e. Final form number of transformations: treated in sequence, with the chromatic tail now rising (Example 24.2b); disguised as a “new theme” in minor, with stepwise motion filling in its skips and leaps (Example 24.2c); and striving upward, only to tumble back down (Example 24.2d). By the end of the movement, it has achieved a new form, no longer falling at the end but sustaining its high note in a sign of final triumph (Example 24.2e). At this point, especially given its scoring for horn, the triadic motive sounds no longer like a dance but like a fanfare, as if its potential for heroism has been realized.

Victory requires an opponent. Here the principal antagonist is another element from the first theme group: a leaping figure, shown in Example 24.3a, whose strong accents on weak beats create a forceful duplex meter against the serene triple meter of the main motive. Offbeat accents appear in the transition, second theme, and closing theme, and near the end of the exposition they briefly threaten the equilibrium with a powerful assertion of duplex time before a varied fragment of the main motive restores the proper meter, as shown in Example 24.3b.

In the development, the leaping figure and offbeat accents build to a terrifying, dissonant climax. Almost overcome, the main motive gradually struggles to reassert itself. First it assumes the disguised form of Example 24.2c, in the remote key of E minor. Next it returns as in Example 24.2d, a statement in three parallel octaves without accompaniment that reaches for the heights but falls back down, deflected by another offbeat accent.

Finally, as shown in Example 24.4, it achieves its new form with the sustained high note. It is now accompanied by the leaping figure, which has also been transformed, in two ways: it has been stripped of its offbeat accents so that it fits into triple meter; and it has been altered so that its contour echoes that of the main motive, arpeggiating the notes of a major triad in a similar order, as can be seen by comparing it with the transposed version of the main motive in the bottom staff of Example 24.4. The transformation of both motives resolves the principal conflict of the movement in favor of the main motive. Its victory is confirmed in the recapitulation, where its return in original form (as in Example 24.2a) is immediately followed by two statements in its new form, while the leaping figure is omitted entirely.

The second and closing themes unfold as before, transposed into the tonic. The long coda revisits episodes from the development, retracing the path back to victory, and reaffirms the new form of the theme. Like Beethoven in his personal crisis, the motive emerges from its struggle triumphant but changed by the experience.

This account of the movement is only one possible interpretation, and there have been many; from its first performance this symphony has been regarded as an especially challenging work. What most analyses share is an emphasis on the economy of material, the great variety of gestures drawn from a few central ideas, the expansion of the form to unprecedented length, and the sense of struggle, achievement, and progressive change over the course of the long movement. It is particularly this spirit of struggle and progress that reflects so well the temper of the times, suggesting a new conception of musical time parallel to the belief of Beethoven's contemporaries that their era differed fundamentally from the past.

The other movements are also large and dramatic. The slow movement is a funeral march in C minor, full of tragic grandeur and pathos. A contrasting

Example 24.3 Leaping Figure and Associated Rhythmic Disturbances

a. First appearance section in C major, brimming with fanfares and celebratory lyricism, is followed by further development of the march and a varied reprise, broken up with sighs at the end in a stunning musical depiction of grief. The third movement is a quick scherzo, with grandiose horn calls in the trio. The finale is a complex mixture of variations with fugal, developmental, and marchlike episodes, all based on a theme from Beethoven's ballet music for The Creatures of Prometheus. Thus each movement reflects a different aspect of heroism: struggle and triumph in the first movement, mourning a fallen hero in the second movement, calls to battle in the trio of the third movement, and in the finale an invocation of Prometheus, the hero who brought wisdom, science, and the arts to humanity at great cost to himself.

Figure 24.3 summary: A series of four musical score excerpts illustrating the transformation and reconciliation of a main motive and leaping figure. The excerpts show musical phrases for first violin, tutti orchestration, and combined sections including flutes, oboes, and bassoons, demonstrating how these thematic elements evolve across different instruments and dynamics.

In addition, the second movement has strong links to France during the Republic, with which Beethoven was in sympathy. Thirty-second-note upbeats in the strings imitate the roll of muffled drums used in the Revolutionary processions that accompanied heroes to their final resting place. The C-major section has the character of a Revolutionary hymn, punctuated by fanfares and drum rolls and ending in unisons.

Beethoven originally named the symphony "Bonaparte" in honor of Napoleon, whom he admired as a hero of the French Republic. But according to his student Ferdinand Ries, when Beethoven heard that Napoleon had crowned himself emperor, he angrily tore up the title page, disillusioned when his idol proved to be an ambitious ruler on the way to becoming a tyrant. The title page of a score containing Beethoven's corrections, shown in Figure 24.4, reveals that Bonaparte's name was violently scratched out, confirming the gist if not the details of the story. But Beethoven seems to have wavered in his opinion of Napoleon: that August he wrote to his publisher that the symphony's title was "Bonaparte," in 1809 he conducted the symphony in Vienna during the French occupation of the city at a concert that Bonaparte was to have attended, and in 1810 he considered dedicating his Mass in C, Op. 86, to the emperor. In any case, Beethoven's plan to honor Napoleon may explain the strong links to music of the French Republic.

Figure 24.4 summary: A musical score excerpt showing the interaction between woodwinds (Flute, Oboe, Clarinet, Bassoon) and strings. The passage depicts the main motive and a leaping figure being transformed and reconciled, characterized by a rhythmic disruption near the end of the exposition. The point is to illustrate how these musical elements are modified and resolved within the composition.

At its public premiere in 1805, the Eroica Symphony was recognized as an important work, but its unprecedented length and complexity made it difficult for some audience members to grasp. Beethoven had tilted Haydn and Mozart's balance between learned and less-learned listeners toward the connoisseurs and had sacrificed some immediate widespread appeal in order to gain the freedom to write as he chose. This decision put Beethoven, the genre of the symphony, and indeed much music of the next two centuries on a new course, challenging listeners to engage music deeply and thoughtfully rather than merely seeking to be entertained.

Yet in another sense Beethoven's music was better suited to attract a broad and devoted public than that of his predecessors. From Baldassare Galuppi and Giovanni Battista Sammartini through Haydn and Mozart, the instrumental music of the middle to late eighteenth century was rooted in the galant style, a style whose effects depended on its audience's familiarity with a common repertoire of gestures that composers presented in ever new guises and combinations, like the characters and situations of improvised commedia dell'arte theater (see Chapter 20). It was a style that was nurtured in court culture and depended on insider knowledge to follow the subtle play of expectations in a Galuppi sonata or a Haydn quartet (see N.A.W.M 116 and 121). Beethoven's music grew out of the same stylistic tradition, but instead of relying on the interplay of familiar schemata, each piece has its individual internal logic, a drama that can be understood on its own terms, even for a listener unfamiliar with the music of galant composers. The Eroica and Beethoven's later symphonies became the center of the symphonic tradition because someone who had never heard a symphony before could be riveted by them on first hearing, and because they could hold a listener's interest through many rehearings.

Other Works of the Middle Period Other major works over the next decade followed in the footsteps of the Third Symphony. In each, Beethoven probed new possibilities in traditional genres and forms, and several works of this period took their place among the most popular ever written in their genres.

Beethoven turned next to opera, still the most prestigious form of music. For a libretto, he borrowed from a French Revolutionary opera, Léonore, ou Lamour conjugal (Leonore, or Conjugal Love), in which Leonore, disguised as a man, rescues her husband Florestan from prison. Operas on rescue themes were embraced at the time both in France and in Vienna. Beethoven's opera, Fidelio, makes Leonore into an idealized figure of sublime courage and self-denial, and the last scene of the opera glorifies Leonore's heroism and the humanitarian ideals of the Revolution. The subject perfectly suited Beethoven's new heroic style, but it took him several tries to achieve the right balance between musical depth, broad appeal, and dramatic concision. original three-act production of 1805, called Leonore, was a financial failure in part because the French army occupied Vienna a week before the premiere, and Beethoven's primary supporters in the nobility and wealthy middle class had left the city. In addition, the opera's length and music overwhelmed the drama. Beethoven made cuts, but the shortened revision staged the following year was again a failure, and only in 1814 was a third version successful under the new title Fidelio. In contrast to Mozart, for whom writing operas seemed almost effortless, Beethoven found it a struggle and never wrote another opera.

His other dramatic music consists of overtures and incidental music for plays, notably Egmont by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749 to 1832), whose prominence among German writers was even greater than Beethoven's as a musician, and whom Beethoven regarded as the best living writer. He also wrote dozens of Lieder, often making the music as interesting as the poetry, as in later Romantic Lieder (see next chapter), rather than subordinate as in the eighteenth-century Lied.

The chamber music of the middle period abounds in fresh explorations of each genre, including five string quartets, three piano trios, two violin sonatas, and a cello sonata. Like piano sonatas, chamber music had traditionally been intended for enjoyment in the home, but, as he did in his piano sonatas, Beethoven increasingly tested the limits of amateur players, most notably in his string quartets. Beethoven dedicated the three quartets published as his Op. 59 to Count Andrey Razumovsky, the Russian ambassador to Vienna. As a compliment to the count, Beethoven introduced Russian melodies as themes in the finale of No. 1, the scherzo of No. 2, and the slow movement of No. 3. The style of these quartets was so new that musicians were slow to accept them.

The first movement of No. 1, for example, is particularly charged with idiosyncrasies, including frequent changes of texture, exploitation of the instruments' extreme ranges, and fugal passages. The Op. 59 quartets were premiered by the first professional string quartet, founded in 1804 by Ignaz Schuppanzigh, whose repertoire centered on quartets by Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven. Having professional players to work with allowed Beethoven to increase the difficulty, length, complexity, and individuality of his quartets and to write with the expectation of public performance, while still aiming to sell copies to amateurs.

During his first decade in Vienna, Beethoven composed three piano concertos to play at his own concerts, following the pattern of Mozart a decade earlier. But the concertos of his middle period are, like the symphonies, composed on a grander scale. In the Piano Concerto No. 5 in E-flat Major, Op. 73 (the Emperor), and the Violin Concerto in D Major, Beethoven greatly expanded the music's expressive range and dimensions.

The soloist is often coequal with the orchestra, as if playing the part of a hero in a drama. In the first movement of the Emperor Concerto, for example, the soloist enters with a written-out cadenza even before the orchestra's exposition begins. Such dramatic interaction between soloist and orchestra was to become a frequent feature of nineteenth-century concertos.

Beethoven's Fifth Symphony (1807 to 8) can be considered the musical projection of his resolution"I will grapple with Fate; it shall not overcome me." He symbolizes his struggle for victory by passing from C minor to C major, in a grand expansion of the move from chaos to light that he found in Haydn's Creation (see N.A.W.M 123). Like that moment, though on a much larger scale, Beethoven's symphony embodies an experience of the sublime. The first movement is dominated by one of the best-known motives in all of Western music: the four-note figure that is emphatically announced at the outset. The same rhythmic idea recurs in various guises in the other three movements.

The transition from minor to major takes place in an inspired passage that begins with the timpani softly recalling the rhythm of the four-note motive and leading without a break from the scherzo into the triumphant finale. Here the entrance of the full orchestra with trombones on the C-major chord has an electrifying effect. The finale adds piccolo and contrabassoon as well as trombones to the normal complement of strings, woodwinds, horns, trumpets, and timpani.

The Pastoral Symphony, No. 6 in F Major, was composed immediately after the Fifth, and the two were premiered on the same program in December 1808. Each of the Pastoral Symphony's five movements bears a title suggesting a scene from life in the country, following the normal sequence of movements but with an extra movement (Storm) that serves to introduce the finale (Thankful feelings after the storm). In the coda of the Andante movement (Scene by the brook), flute, oboe, and clarinet join harmoniously in imitating bird calls—the nightingale, the quail, and the cuckoo—as shown in Example 24.5. The symphony is more a character piece than a work of program music (see Chapter 25 for the distinction), marked by what Beethoven called “expression of feelings rather than tone-painting.”

By 1814, Beethoven had reached the height of his popularity. He was celebrated as the greatest living composer of instrumental music, he received a steady demand from publishers for new works, and his music was played regularly throughout Austria and Germany and increasingly across Europe from England to Russia. The heroic style evident in some of his works, a source of controversy a decade earlier when the Eroica Symphony and Razumovsky Quartets first appeared, was now widely appreciated. He had changed audience expectations for what instrumental music can do.

Circumstances in the Late Period Ironically, at the height of his renown, several factors forced Beethoven into greater isolation, slowed the pace of composition, and prompted a change in focus and style. His deafness became increasingly profound, until by 1818 he could hardly hear at all. Because it caused him to lose contact with others, he retreated into himself, becoming moody and morbidly suspicious even toward his friends. A currency devaluation in 1811 and the death of Prince Kinsky in 1812 had reduced the value of Beethoven's annuity, making him feel financially vulnerable. Family problems, ill health, and unfounded apprehensions of poverty also plagued him, and it was only by a supreme effort of will that he continued composing amid all these troubles.

Compounding these personal problems was the political and economic situation. The final defeat of Napoleon in 1815 was followed by a disastrous postwar depression, making it difficult to produce large-scale public works. That same year saw the beginning of tremendous repression instituted by Count Metternich, head of the Austrian government under the emperor.

Beethoven's sympathy with the ideals of republican government as it had developed in France was now seen as a threat to the state, and he was investigated and spied on by government security forces. During these years, he did not write politically linked works like Fidelio, or even the Eroica Symphony; the heroic style itself became psychologically inappropriate. In his last dozen years of life, Beethoven produced only two large public works, the Missa solemnly published his first work on the subject of the work.

nis (1819 to 23) and the Ninth Symphony (1822 to 24), both completed only after the economy began to improve in the early 1820s. Otherwise, his major focus was on the last five piano sonatas (1816 to 21), Diabelli Variations for piano (1819 to 22), and last five string quartets (1824 to 26), all in genres traditionally intended for private music-making.

Characteristics of the Late Style By now, Beethoven was addressing most of his compositions to connoisseurs. The publication of his late quartets in score, as in Figure 24.5, in addition to the traditional format of a set of four parts for performance, shows they were meant to be studied, not just played through for the pleasure of the performers. Indeed these quartets were too difficult for most amateurs; Beethoven composed them with the expectation of concert performance by professional string quartets, notably the quartet led by Ignaz Schuppanzigh, which premiered four of the five. The urgent sense of communication to a large public was replaced by a more introspective character, aimed at a smaller, more select audience, and the musical language became more concentrated. Classical forms remained, like the features of a landscape after a geological upheaval—recognizable under new contours, lying at strange angles beneath the new surface.

Figure 24.5: Columns: Ob. cresc., Quail 1.. Row 1. Ob. cresc.: Cl.. Cuckoo a2.

An essential element of Beethoven's late style is the high degree of contrast. Extremes meet in these pieces: the sublime and the grotesque in the Missa solemnis and Ninth Symphony, the profound and the apparently naive in the late quartets and sonatas, high seriousness and high comedy often side by side. Contrasts of topic become exaggerated, involving not only style, figuration, and

MON DA DORI PORTFOLIO/BRIDGEMAN IMAGES

Example 24.6 Opening of Beethoven, Piano Sonata in E Major, Op. 109, First Movement

Figure 24.6 summary: A musical score for piano featuring three distinct sections. The first is marked Vivace, ma non troppo and Sempre legato, the second is a Transition with a crescendo, and the third is a second theme marked Adagio espressivo with alternating forte and piano dynamics. The image depicts a progression of musical themes and moods within a composition.

character but also meter and tempo. The two ideas presented at the beginning of the Piano Sonata in E Major, Op. 109 (1820), shown in Example sound like they belong in entirely different movements, a light bagatelle or fast finale in duple meter and a pensive triple-meter slow movement. Yet they function as the first and second themes in a sonata-form first movement with a relatively brief exposition and recapitulation and much more extensive development and coda. Everything the music refers to is familiar, but the juxtapositions are strange, and even sympathetic listeners at the time found such pieces hard to understand.

Beethoven balanced the contrasts in his late style with an emphasis on continuity. Within movements, he achieves continuity by intentionally blurring divisions between phrases or placing cadences on weak beats. He also emphasized continuity between movements, sometimes indicating that successive movements should be played without a pause in between. His An die ferne Geliebte (To the Distant Beloved), Op. 98 (1816), inaugurated the genre of the song cycle, a group of songs performed in succession that tell or suggest a story; earlier published song collections had little or no continuity from one song to the next.

The way Beethoven used variation technique epitomizes his late style. Usually in a variations movement composers preserved the essential structure of the entire theme in each variation while introducing new embellishments, figurations, rhythms, and even meters and tempos. But Beethoven's late variations often go beyond this to reexamine the very substance of the

The Performer as Subordinate to the Composer

Written music was traditionally viewed as a vehicle for the performer, who was at liberty to alter it in performance, for instance by adding embellishment. But the writer and critic E. T. A. Hoffmann suggested in 1813 that Beethoven's music was different, requiring the performer's total subordination to the vision of the composer, as if the notated music were a sacred text to be rendered with devotion and restraint. Scrupulous adherence to the composer's score gradually became a hallmark of performance in the classical tradition.

Chinese text

The correct and fitting performance of a work of Beethoven's asks nothing more than that one should understand him, that one should enter deeply into his being, that—conscious of one's own consecration—one should boldly dare to step into the circle of the magical phenomena that his powerful spell has evoked. He who is not conscious of this consecration, who regards sacred Music as a mere game, as a mere entertainment for an idle hour, as a momentary stimulus for dull ears, or as a means of self-ostentation—let him leave Beethoven's music alone. Only to such a man, moreover, does the objection "most ungrateful" apply. The true artist lives only in the work that he has understood as the composer meant it and that he then performs. He is above putting his own personality forward in any way, and all his endeavors are directed toward a single end—that all the wonderful enchanting pictures and apparitions that the composer has sealed into his work with magic power may be called into active life, shining in a thousand colors, and that they may surround mankind in luminous sparkling circles and, enkindling its imagination, its innermost soul, may bear it in rapid flight into the faraway spirit realm of sound.

From E. T. A. Hoffmann,"R-Instrumental-Musik," Sämtliche Werke, p. 1, 63-March 1813.

theme. In the slow movement of his String Quartet in C-sharp Minor, Op. 131 (1825 to 26), for example, only a few basic elements of the theme—a harmonic plan, a rhythmic quirk of deemphasizing the downbeat, a neighbor-note motion in the melody—are preserved through a very diverse series of variations.

Beethoven's search for new expressive means in his late works gave rise to new sonorities, such as the simultaneous use in all four instruments of pizzicatos or of sul ponticello effects (playing on the bridge to produce a thin sound) in the scherzo of the C-sharp Minor Quartet. Early critics deemed some passages unsuccessful, holding that Beethoven went too far in subordinating euphony and performability to the demands of his musical conceptions, perhaps because of his deafness. But we have no reason to believe that even with perfect hearing Beethoven would have altered a single note, either to spare tender ears or to make life easier for performers. Such insistence on the composer's vision at the expense of performer freedom and audience comfort was to become an important strain in nineteenth-and, especially, in twentieth-century music, with Beethoven as the model for later composers (see Source Reading).

In his late works, Beethoven frequently used familiar styles and genres, either for expressive purposes or to reflect on tradition. For example, the slow movement of the String Quartet in A Minor, Op. 132 (1825; N.A.W.M 131), opens in the style of a sixteenth-century chorale setting, each phrase simply harmonized and preceded by a brief point of imitation, then alternates this style with a sprightly dance in triple meter. Beethoven composed this movement after being seriously ill and used the contrasting styles to express his personal feelings, titling the chorale section “Holy Song of Thanksgiving to the Divinity from One Who Has Recovered from Illness, in the Lydian Mode” and the dance section “Feeling New Strength”; such expression of a composer's own experience in his music, instead of a generalized emotional state or the feelings of an operatic character, was rare before Beethoven but became increasingly common during the nineteenth century. The next movement (N.A.W.M 131b) presents a boisterous march that is suddenly interrupted by an operatic accompanied recitative for the first violin, leading into a finale (N.A.W.M 131c) whose main theme resembles an impassioned opera aria. Other works include equally surprising references to both popular and cultivated styles.

Characteristic of Beethoven's late works is his use of imitative counter-point, especially fugue. There are numerous canonical imitations and contrapuntal devices in all the late works, particularly in the fugatos that play a central role in development sections. Many movements or sections are predominantly fugal, such as the finales of the Piano Sonatas Opp. 106 and 110, the two double fugues in the finale of the Ninth Symphony, and the gigantic Grosse Fuge (Great Fugue) for String Quartet, Op. 133, first conceived as the finale for the Quartet in B-flat Major, Op. 130. The fugal finale has a long tradition extending back through Haydn's Op. 20 quartets to Corelli's trio sonatas. More unusual is Beethoven's use of a long, slow fugue as the first movement of the C-sharp Minor Quartet, Op. 131.

Beethoven's reflections on tradition include reconceiving the number and arrangement of movements. Each of the last five piano sonatas has a unique succession of movement types and tempos, often linked without pause. The first and last of the late quartets (Opp. 127 and 135) have four movements, but Op. 132 has five, Op. 130 has six, and Op. 131 has seven played without breaks between them. The succession of movements is again unique in each, reshuffling or adding to the traditional four movements: the scherzo comes before the slow movement in Opp. 132 and 135; Op. 132 adds the march and recitative before the finale; Op. 130 features outer movements in sonata form framing a scherzo in cut time, a sonata-form slow movement, a second dance movement, and a second slow movement in the style of an aria; and Op. 131 offers a slow fugue, fast sonata-rondo, recitative, slow variations movement, scherzo (again in cut time), slow introduction, and sonata-form finale.

While Beethoven varied the traditional sequence of movements, he sought ways to integrate the movements more closely. In Op. 132, he does this through motivic and key relationships. The key scheme is symmetrical: A minor in the outer movements, A major in movements 2 and 4, and F Lydian in the central slow movement. (F Lydian has a pitch center of F but uses B instead of B for the fourth degree of the scale; see the discus sion of modes in Chapter 2.) F is also the key of the second theme in the first movement's exposition, forecasting its importance in the overall structure of the quartet.

The notes A and F are also highlighted in the thematic material, together with their neighbors a half step below. The first movement begins with a brief slow introduction initiated by the G Sharp-A-F-E cello motive in

Example 24.7 Motivic Links in the String Quartet in A Minor, Op. 132

a. First movement, opening cello motive b. First movement

Image summary: A musical score excerpt showing the transition from the end of the fourth movement to the beginning of the finale. The passage begins with a Poco adagio tempo in common time, marked with a smorzando, and transitions into an Allegro appassionato in 3/4 time, characterized by a piano dynamic with gradual crescendos across the ensemble. This segment illustrates the structural shift and change in musical character between the two movements.

Example 24.7a. The same half steps are emphasized in the first theme of the Allegro, and when that theme repeats at measures 23 to 26 it is combined with an echo of the long-note half steps from the introduction, as seen in Example 24.7b. These same semitone pairs reappear in later movements: the theme of the second movement scherzo begins G Sharp-A; the chorale tune in the third movement begins F-E; and, as shown in Example 24.7c, both half steps are stressed at the end of the fourth movement and in the first theme of the fifth. These relationships between themes are subtle yet audible, and they help to draw all five movements together as a unified whole.

Like all of Beethoven's late sonatas and quartets, Op. 132 is a piece for connoisseurs. It is dramatic and emotionally rich, ranging from prayer to lightheartedness and from puckish humor to passion, so that it appeals to audiences on many levels. But only those "in the know" about music are likely to notice and appreciate the complex relationships between the whole and the individual parts, or the crafty combination of tradition and innovation, as the old and the new are inextricably intertwined. Music like this asks us to interpret it. It calls for analysis of its structure and motivic development but also of its meanings and its topical references. It draws us into its world. It poses problems—motivic problems that Beethoven addresses over the course of a movement (why this introductory motive in the cello? what does it portend?) and interpretive problems that seem never-ending (what does this music mean? how am I as a performer or listener supposed to respond?). That is why it is both difficult and satisfying, ever fresh and ever enduring.

Last Public Works Like his late sonatas and quartets, the two large public works of Beethoven's final period reexamine the traditions of their respective genres.

Beethoven began his Missa solemnis as a mass to be performed at the elevation of Archduke Rudolph to archbishop of Olmütz in 1820, but it grew too long and elaborate for liturgical use. It is full of musical and liturgical symbols, reinterpreting traditional elements in new ways. The choral writing owes something to Handel, whose music Beethoven revered. But a Handel oratorio was a string of independent numbers, whereas Beethoven shaped his setting of the Kyrie, Gloria, Credo, Sanctus, and Agnus Dei as a unified five- movement symphony. As in the late masses of Haydn, choruses and solo ensembles freely alternate within each movement. Beethoven's setting was an idealized musical treatment of a well-loved text, not a liturgical work; like the late quartets, it was a concert piece in a genre that traditionally had a different function.

The Ninth Symphony was first performed in May 1824 on a program with one of Beethoven's overtures and three movements of the Missa solemnis, as advertised in the handbill in Figure 24.6. The large and distinguished audience applauded vociferously after the scherzo (the modern tradition of maintaining silence between movements had not yet been introduced); Beethoven, who was conducting, did not hear the applause, so one of the solo singers pulled his sleeve and pointed to the audience, and he turned and bowed.

The first three movements of the symphony are on a grand scale, and the whole takes more than an hour—even longer than the Eroica Symphony. But the most striking innovation is the use of solo voices and chorus in the finale. Just as Beethoven's mass was symphonic, and his quartets referred to vocal genres from recitatives and arias to the chorale motet, his last symphony looked to another genre, the choral Erenmitglied der lönig. Akademie der Künste und Wissenschaften zu Stockholm und Amsterdam, dann Chrendürger von Wien.

: Figure 24.6 summary: A historical printed announcement for a "Great Musical Academy" featuring works by Ludwig van Beethoven at the K. K. Hoftheater in Vienna. The text lists the program, including a Great Overture, three great hymns, and a Great Symphony featuring Schiller's "Ode to Joy," while noting the performers and the start time of 7 o'clock. It is a promotional document detailing a specific concert program.

Die dabei vortomenden Mufstücke sind die neuesen Werte des Herrn Ludwig van Beethoven.

Drittend. (Große Amphonie, mit im Finale eintretenden Solo und Chor-Stimmen, auf Schillerö Lied, an die Freude.

Die Solo, Stimpen werden die Dieß. Sontag und Unger, und die Herren Haizinger und Seipelt vortragen. Herr Schuppangigh hat die Direction des Erheher, Herr Kapelmeister Umlauf die Leitung des Gangen, und der Musik-Berein die Verstärkung des Chors und Dräfsferds aus Gesalligkeit übernommen.

Herr Ludwig van Beethoven selbst, wird an der Leitung des Gangen Antheil nehmen.

(Die Intrittpreife find wie gemöhnlich.)

Grepbillets fin boute ungültig.

Der Anfang ist um 7 Uhr.

Figure 24.6 Handbill for the concert of May 7, 1824, at the Kärntnertor Theater, advertising a "Great Musical Academy of Herr L. van Beethoven, Honorary Member of the Royal Academy of Arts and Sciences of Stockholm and Amsterdam and later Honorary Citizen of Vienna." The program promises "first: a grand overture; second: three grand hymns with solo and choral voices; third: a grand symphony with solo and choral voices entering in the finale on Schiller's Ode to Joy." The "hymns" were the Kyrie, Credo, and Agnus Dei of the Missa solemnis, and the symphony was the Ninth. ode. Beethoven had thought as early as 1792 of setting freed-rick Schiller's Ode to Joy, but more than thirty years went by before he decided to incorporate a choral finale on this text in his Ninth Symphony. Consistent with his ethical ideals and religious faith, he selected stanzas that emphasize universal fellowship through joy, and its basis in the love of an eternal heavenly Father.

The apparent incongruity of introducing voices at the climax of a long instrumental symphony posed an aesthetic difficulty. Beethoven's solution determined the finale's unusual form:

• tumultuous introduction, inspired by the operatic genre of accompanied recitative;

- review and rejection (by instrumental recitatives) of the themes of the three preceding movements, then proposal and joyful acceptance of the "joy" theme;

- orchestral exposition of the theme in four stanzas;

• return of the tumultuous opening;

• bass recitative: “O Freunde, nicht diese Töne!” (O friends, not these tones! Rather let us sing more pleasant and joyful ones);

- choral-orchestral exposition of the joy theme, “Freude, schöner Götterfunken” (Joy, beautiful, divine spark), in four stanzas, varied (including a march in Turkish style), and a long orchestral interlude (double fugue) followed by a repetition of the first stanza;

• new theme, for orchestra and chorus: “Seid umschlungen, Millionen!” (Be embraced, O millions!);

• double fugue on the two themes;

• a brilliant Prestissimo choral coda, bringing back the Turkish percussion, in which the joy theme is hailed in strains of matchless sublimity.

Everything here builds on tradition, but the whole is unprecedented. This combination of innovation with reverence for the past, of disparate styles, and of supreme compositional craft with profound emotional expression is characteristic of Beethoven's last period and has been seen as a measure of his greatness.

Figure 24.7 summary: Two musical score excerpts showing the transition between the end of the fourth movement and the beginning of the finale. The first snippet shows a bass clef passage with a pianissimo marking and tied notes across a bar line, while the second shows a full ensemble score across treble, alto, and bass clefs with piano markings and detailed melodic phrasing. The purpose is to illustrate the musical connection and thematic continuity between these two movements.

Beethoven's Centrality

Having often celebrated heroism in his music, Beethoven himself became a cultural hero, a reputation that grew throughout the nineteenth century. His life story helped to define the Romantic view of the creative artist as a social outsider who suffers courageously to bring humanity a glimpse of the divine through art. The stories told about him and the images of him in art and literature reflect the mythology that grew up around him. In the twentieth century, biographers and historians began to peel back the myth and reclaim the mere human being who was Beethoven. But he has remained a central figure in music, both because of what he accomplished and because of how he has been regarded by critics and the public.

Many of Beethoven's compositions, particularly from the late 1790s through the 1810s, were immediately popular and have remained so ever since. His late works were considered idiosyncratic during his lifetime and were not absorbed into mainstream musical culture until decades after his death. But gradually they too came to be regarded as great, reflecting his inner life and consummate craft even more deeply than his more accessible music.

Works of Beethoven form the core of the symphonic repertoire and are central to the repertoires for piano, for string quartet, and for other chamber ensembles. All later composers for those media, from Schubert to Schoenberg and on to our own time, have had to confront him as model and competitor. His influence has been felt not only in style and technique but also in conceptions of music and the role of the composer.

Beethoven's works invited attentive listening and probing critical interpretation. Seeking to explain his music, theorists developed new approaches in harmonic, motivic, formal, and tonal analysis, some of which have become standard and are applied to a wide range of music. The coherence and unity Beethoven achieved through development, key relationships, motivic links, and other means were highlighted in such studies and became a measure of greatness in musical art. Many composers in the classical tradition from nineteenth-century Romantics through twentieth-century modernists aspired to greatness in similar terms.

But since the 1950s, the notions of what is most valuable in music that are embodied in Beethoven's works have been challenged by new values and by attempts to rediscover the values of earlier generations. Musicians, critics, and scholars have often used ideas derived from their understanding of Beethoven's work and aesthetic as a measuring rod, but doing so can be inappropriate or misleading when evaluating music of other traditions, periods, styles, or purposes.

Beethoven could afford the time to compose as he pleased, without answering to an employer. Perhaps as a result, sometimes he put his own experiences and feelings at the heart of a work, going beyond the long-standing traditions of representing the emotions of a poetic text, dramatizing those of an operatic character, or suggesting a generalized mood through conventional devices. Such self-expression was in tune with the growing Romantic movement described in the next chapter, and it came to be expected of composers after Beethoven. Modern musicians and listeners who assume that composers before Beethoven also wrote when they felt inspired and sought to capture their own emotions in music are astonished to discover that earlier composers typically created music to meet an immediate need, to please their employer, or to gratify their audience. Beethoven, and especially the critical reaction to Beethoven, changed everyone's idea of what a composer is and does. The image he fostered of a composer as an artist pursuing self-expression who composes only when inspired continues to hold sway.

Chapter 25

The New Order.

1815 to 1848 580

Romanticism 587

Song 590

Music for Piano 600

The Romantic

Legacy 616

The Romantic Generation: Song and Piano Music

华

Most music that survives from the Middle Ages through the eighteenth century was composed for the church or for courts. In later centuries, genres suitable for home music-making, such as madrigals and string quartets, or for public performance, exemplified in Venetian opera, Handel's oratorios, and Haydn's late symphonies, became progressively more prominent. In the nineteenth century, music for home or public performance took center stage.

The market for music to play at home and the popularity of concertgoing stimulated new styles tailored to broad musical tastes. At the same time, writers and musicians promoted new artistic ideals for music that focused on individuality, originality, fantasy, expression of pure emotion, and transcending conventional limits in pursuit of deeper truths. The new ideas and styles were called Romantic, an evocative term whose vagueness is part of its power.

The word is now used to identify music of the entire nineteenth century, but such an overarching concept should not blind us to the great variety of styles and ideas manifest in the music of the time.

The next three chapters address music from the end of the Napoleonic Wars to the middle of the century. After outlining the economic and social settings for music and the ideas of Romanticism, this chapter will focus on songs and piano music, the mainstays of home music-making and of virtuoso piano recitals, and the Romantic styles they fostered. The following two chapters will examine music for public venues, in the concert hall and in the theater. Chapters 28 to 30 then address music in the second half of the nineteenth century, when Romanticism combined with other trends such as realism.

The New Order, 1815 to 1848

The upheavals of 1789 to 1815 changed the European political landscape. The French Revolution made peasants and workers into citizens instead of subjects. Napoleon's wars swept away old political boundaries and spread the Revolutionary ideas of liberty, equality, brotherhood, and national identity across Europe. In 1814 to 15, the Congress of Vienna drew a new map, shown in Figure 25.1, made up of far fewer states. Although Italy and German-speaking lands were still partitioned, the inhabitants of each felt an increasing sense of belonging to a nation united by language and culture. So did the people in lands that had recently lost independence, such as Poland, or had long endured foreign domination, such as Hungary and Bohemia: to them, the independent nation-state seemed an ideal. In the Austrian Empire and elsewhere, close surveillance, censorship, and repression held aspirations for freedom in check and made it almost impossible to express political ideas directly through literature, art, or music until the stirring but largely unsuccessful revolutions of 1848 to 49. But interest in national culture grew, and composers incorporated national traits in song, instrumental music, and opera. The eighteenth-century cosmopolitan ideal was replaced by the expectation that composers write music true to their national identity.

The Americas saw equally radical change. In the wake of the American and French Revolutions, a revolution in Haiti began in 1791 and led to Haiti's establishment in 1804 as the second independent state in the Americas and the first nation founded by liberated slaves. After Spain and Portugal were

The Americas

Figure 25.1 Europe, 1815 to 48.

Figure 25.1 summary: A political map of Europe in the mid-19th century depicting national boundaries, including the Kingdom of France, Prussia, and the Austrian Empire. A red line delineates the boundaries of the Germanic Confederation, which encompasses several smaller states alongside Prussia and Austria. The map illustrates the fragmented geopolitical landscape of Central Europe before the unification of Germany and Italy.

Japanese text

1810 to 24 Revolutions bring independence to nations in Latin America

1814 Franz Schubert, Gretchen am Spinnrade

1817 to 26 Muzio Clementi,

Gradus ad Parnassum circa 1818 Caspar David

freed-rick, Wanderer above the Sea of Fog

1821 Sébastien Erard intro- duces faster action for piano

1822 Franz Liszt begins career as virtuoso pianist

1827 Schubert, Impromptus

1830 Felix Mendelssohn,

Songs without Words,

Book 1

1831 Fryderyk Chopin settles in Paris

1834 to 35 Robert Schumann,

Carnaval

1835 Chopin, Nocturnes, Op.27

1837 Queen Victoria succeeds to British throne

1838 to 61 Liszt, Années de pèlerinage, Books 1 to 2

1840s Railroads spread across Europe and United States

1840 Robert Schumann, Dichterliebe

1841 Fanny Hensel, Das Jahr

1845 to 49 Liszt, Un sospiro

1848 Liszt appointed court music director at Weimar

1850 London firm of Broadwood making 2,000 pianos a year

1853 Stephen Foster, Jeanie with the Light Brown Hair

1857 to 58 Louis Moreau

Gottschalk, Souvenir de Porto Rico weakened by Napoleon's invasion, revolutions in 1810 to 24 brought independence to most of Latin America, and by 1838 most modern nations of the region had emerged. Between 1803 and 1848, the United States expanded west and south through purchase, treaties, and wars. The indigenous Native American peoples in many areas fought to retain control, but settlers moved west in increasing numbers. The United States began to create its own cultural identity in the tales of Washington Irving and Nathaniel Hawthorne, the novels of James Fenimore Cooper, and the songs of Stephen Foster. In Canada, French and British provinces were officially united in 1841, although the two sides continued in conflict until the Canadian Confederation was established in 1867.

the Decline of Aristocratic Patronage The economic order in Europe changed along with the political, dramatically affecting musicians. War and inflation impoverished the aristocracy, and the elimination of over one hundred small states drastically reduced the number of courts supporting the arts. The typical musician no longer served a prince or church but made a living as a free agent through public performance, teaching, composing on commission, or creating music for publication.

While patrons had expected their employees to play several instruments and, like Bach and Haydn, compose in most genres, musicians were now competing in an open market and often found a neesh through specialization. Among the most prominent musicians of the age were virtuosos—performers, such as violinist Nicolò Paganini and pianist Franz Liszt (see p. 612 to 15), who specialized in one instrument and dazzled audiences with displays of technical mastery. Many composers also specialized in one medium, as Fryderyk Chopin did in piano music and Giuseppe Verdi in opera.

Opportunities for careers in music broadened as well. Legal reforms begun during the French Revolution and spread across Europe by the Napoleonic Wars eliminated the privileges enjoyed by the old guilds—which set standards and controlled various crafts, including music—and opened careers to anyone with talent. Conservatories opened in cities across Europe and the Americas, providing training for students and steady income for musicians who taught them. Rising interest in music supported a growing number of music journalists and critics, including several known today primarily as composers.

As the aristocracy declined, the urban middle class grew in size and influence. The Industrial Revolution was mechanizing manufacturing, thereby reducing prices, drawing people from the country to work in factories, creating more leisure time, and allowing merchants and entrepreneurs to become the economic leaders.

Middle-CLASS Music-MAKING Music-making was an important outlet for the middle and upper classes, who had the money and leisure to purchase instruments and learn to play them. In many homes, evenings were a time for making music with family and friends, singing or playing piano, violin, flute, guitar, harp, or other instruments. Music released social pressures. It provided a way to express aspirations for equality and national freedom without risking censorship or imprisonment. It offered an escape from wars, depressed economies, and political repression.

Music also was a means of social control. State-sponsored opera often carried political messages. Churches established amateur choirs, and factories organized wind bands for their workers, seeking to provide entertainment, elevate taste, make working conditions more palatable, and divert the working classes from drinking and carousing (or from political organizing). And in an era of starkly differentiated gender roles, music kept women occupied at home.

Although many working-class women and children labored long hours in factories, women and girls of the middle and upper classes were expected to stay at home, their leisure sign of status. The genders were assigned separate spheres: boys went to school and men to work while women and girls maintained the home, regarded as a sacred refuge in a harsh world. When possible, servants were employed to do housework, releasing the women of the family to pursue what were regarded as appropriate feminine accomplishments, from needlework to music.

the Piano At the center of home music was the piano. Innovations in manufacturing greatly increased the availability of pianos and lowered their cost (see Innovations: Musical Instruments in the Industrial Revolution, pages 584 to 85). Square pianos like that in Figure 25.2, small enough for parlors, found their way into many homes on both sides of the Atlantic, from Montreal to Moscow.

Figure 25.2 summary: A painting by Sebastian Gutzwiller depicting a domestic music-making scene in a room. A woman plays a square piano while other family members play the violin and flute, with other occupants of the room listening or engaged in their own activities. The image captures a typical mid-19th-century home concert setting.

Musical Instruments in the Industrial Revolution

The Industrial Revolution was not a single event, but a series of inventions and applications that together radically changed the way goods were manufactured. Items that had been crafted by hand for centuries, from cloth to clocks, could now be mass-produced by machine, making them much more widely available and less costly. In addition, existing products were improved and new ones developed in a continuing stream of innovation.

Musical instrument-making was one of many industries to be revolutionized. One profound change was in the sheer quantity of instruments that could be produced. In the 1770s, the output of even the largest piano manufacturers in Europe was only about twenty pianos a year, because every piece had to be made by hand. By 1800, John Broadwood & Sons of London was manufacturing about four hundred pianos a year by employing a large and specialized workforce, and by 1850 the firm was using steam power and mass-production techniques to make over two thousand pianos a year, one hundred times as fast as eighty years before. Many were grand pianos, but most were square pianos like the one in Figure 25.2. Because they were produced in such quantity, pianos became inexpensive enough for middle-class families to afford.

The design of the piano was also improved through a number of innovations. The sustaining pedal (also called the damper pedal), by holding all dampers off the strings, let tones continue after the keys were released, allowing greater resonance, closer imitation of orchestral sound, and new pianistic effects. The metal frame, introduced in England during the 1820s, allowed higher tension on the strings and thus greater volume, wider dynamic range, longer sustain, and better legato. Felt-covered hammers allowed more powerful fortissimos and quieter pianissimos. The standard range was extended to six octaves by 1820 and seven by 1850. The double-escapement action, introduced in 1821 by Parisian manufacturer Sébastien Erard, allowed quick repetition of notes and thus enabled a new level of virtuosity. All of these new capabilities were exploited by pianists and composers, and the piano became the indispensable instrument for home music-making and for public concerts. But it was clearly a modern-day machine, with thousands of separate parts and hundreds of mechanical connections.

Figure 25.3 summary: A photograph of a trumpet featuring piston valves, created around 1865 by Antoine Courtois of Paris. It is a historical musical instrument, showing its brass construction and valve mechanism.

Figure 25.4 summary: A photograph of a brass horn manufactured by W. Glier of Warsaw in 1835, featuring rotary valves. The image depicts the instrument's curved piping and bell structure to illustrate an early example of valve-operated horn design.

The same spirit of innovation was applied to other instruments. Erard's firm also played an important role in creating the modern harp. Traditionally, harps were tuned to a single diatonic scale, so that they could not play chromatic passages, and even to change keys required retuning some of the strings.

Several eighteenth-century harp makers had tried to solve this problem, but harps strung with all the chromatic notes were cumbersome to play, and finding a way quickly to change tuning proved difficult. Erard's solution was a new fork mechanism, operated by a set of seven pedals, that allowed the strings to be shortened, raising the pitch by one half step. Eventually, Erard patented a harp that could be played in any key because each string could be adjusted almost instantaneously to produce any of three semitones by a double-action fork mechanism.

By 1820, the firm had sold 3,500 of these instruments, whose principles are still in use by modern pedal-harp makers.

Starting in the 1810s, brass instrument makers applied the valve technology of the steam engine—in which valves controlled the flow of steam, water, or air—to the design of trumpets and horns, finally enabling these instruments to produce all the notes of the chromatic scale. Using either piston valves, as in the trumpet in Figure 25.3, or rotary valves, as on the horn in Figure 25.4, the player can open one or more lengths of pipe to extend the sounding length of the air column and thus lower the pitch one or more semitones. Only three or four valves are needed, rather than the many holes and keys on a flute or clarinet, because brass instruments produce notes from the harmonic series, and only a few semitones separate each note in the series from the next one up or down. Many new brass instruments were invented as well, including the tuba, which became the bass of the orchestral brass section.

Wind instruments also profited from a combination of new technologies, enterprising innovators, and improved manufacturing methods. Theobald Boehm established a successful flute factory in Munich in 1828. He experimented with mechanisms that would achieve uniform tone production, superior volume, and better control of tuning. By 1849, he had created the modern "Boehm-system" flute, an all-metal instrument with large holes that were closed not with the bare fingers but with padded keys, linked to each other through a series of rod-axles, levers, and clutches, as shown in Figure 25.5. Louis-Auguste Buffet, working in Paris, applied some of Boehm's ideas to the clarinet, producing a design that has remained standard to the present. Adolphe Sax used a similar system to create the saxophone, a new wind instrument most familiar today in marching bands and jazz.

Similar mechanical innovations brought about by the Industrial Revolution—such as interlocking rods, gears, and screws—improved the construction and tuning methods of the timpani in the early nineteenth century. String instruments were also altered to create a bigger, more dramatic tone, with greater string tension, a higher bridge, and a tilted fingerboard. Fingerboards were lengthened to allow for higher notes. The modern bow, devised by Francois Tourte around 1785, had a wider, uniform band of bowhair kept taut with concave curvature of the wood and a screw tightening mechanism, which gave more control and a larger sound.

By the late nineteenth century, the piano, the harp, and the instruments of the orchestra had almost all reached their modern form, thanks to the inventors and industrialists who applied the century's new technologies to music.

Figure 25.5 summary: A photograph of a Boehm-system flute from 1856, created by Theobald Boehm. It depicts the physical design and key mechanism of the instrument, representing the standardized flute system used in modern orchestras.

The years 1820 to 50 saw many design improvements that allowed for new pianistic effects and a greatly expanded range. On such an instrument, a pianist could express a complete musical thought almost as well as an entire orchestra, yet more personally. These characteristics made the piano the quintessential nineteenth-century instrument, ideal both for home music and for public concerts.

Women, particularly, played piano, continuing a tradition of keyboard-playing for their own and others' pleasure that stretched back to the sixteenth century. Pianist-composers such as Fryderyk Chopin and Franz Liszt supported themselves in part by giving lessons to well-to-do women. Teachers expected daily practice, often for several hours, thereby keeping energetic young women occupied at home but also helping many of them achieve astonishing fluency.

There were quite a few professional women pianists in the first half of the nineteenth century—such as Clara Wieck, a formidable virtuoso who was to marry Robert Schumann—and many excellent amateurs who played at a professional level. Yet for most women, music was an accomplishment, designed to attract a spouse and entertain family and friends, rather than a career. Men also played, often accompanying their wives, sisters, or daughters as they sang. A favorite format was music for two players at one piano, which offered siblings a joint recreation or a married or dating couple a structured physical and emotional intimacy.

the Market for Music and the New Idiom All these amateurs needed music to play, creating a boom in music publishing. In the 1770s, the largest publishers in London, Paris, and Leipzig listed hundreds of items in their catalogues, already a great number in comparison to earlier decades; by the 1820s they listed tens of thousands of pieces. The number of music stores in Europe and the New World grew rapidly in the early 1800s, increasing in London from thirty in 1794 to 150 in 1824. Technology again proved crucial: lithography, invented around 1796, let publishers print music cheaply with elaborate illustrations that helped it sell. Consumers demanded a constant flood of new music, and composers supplied it. As a result, the amount of music from the nineteenth century still available to us is overwhelming, far greater than for any previous era.

The market in sheet music gave the public at large unprecedented influence over what music was produced, because publishers had to supply what their customers wanted. Composers wrote songs, piano works, and piano duets in great quantities. Arrangers transcribed orchestral and chamber works for piano solo or duet, making concert works accessible to a large public. At a time before recordings, such arrangements were the only opportunity many people had to hear most works.

Composers writing for the public sought to make their music accessible and appealing to amateur performers by writing tuneful melodies with attractive accompaniments, little counterpoint, and relatively uniform rhythm and level of difficulty from measure to measure; by using predictable four-bar phrasing, simple songlike forms, and idiomatic writing that exploited the textures, sonorities, and dynamic contrasts available on the modern piano; by interspersing familiar chords and progressions with dramatic or colorful harmonic contrasts; and by introducing strong musical and extramusical imagery, evocative titles, or national or exotic associations. The most successful music offered something novel and individual that made it stand out from the crowd. Competition for sales fostered innovations in harmony such as greater use of nonharmonic tones, unexpected progressions, chromatic chords and voice leading, distant modulations, and tonal ambiguity.

These characteristics defined a new idiom, known today as the early Romantic style. The best composers of the time deepened their music's appeal to discerning players and listeners, but their styles were rooted in this idiom. The high value placed on a beautiful melody and striking harmonies within small forms such as songs and short piano pieces carried over into larger forms as well. Originality was now marked, not by how one treated conventional material, as in the Classic era, but by the material itself.

BATE COLLECTION, OXFORD, ENGLAND

Romanticism

The new idiom, which focused on melody, emotion, novelty, and individuality, paralleled Romanticism in literature and art and came to be called Romantic. The term has many meanings, and tracing its history will clarify its use and implications.

The word romantic derived from the medieval romance, a poem or tale about heroic events or persons, such as King Arthur or Charlemagne. It connoted something distant, legendary, and fantastic, an imaginary or ideal world far from everyday reality. In the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, especially in German-speaking lands, writers applied the term to literature and then to art and music. Philosopher and critic freed-rick Schlegel (1772 to 1829) differentiated “classic” poetry—which he deemed objectively beautiful, limited in scope and theme, and universally valid—from “romantic” poetry, which mixed genres and forms, transgressed rules and limits, or expressed insatiable longing and the richness of nature. Schlegel thought of the dichotomy as a difference of character, not time period, classing as “romantic” Dante's Divine Comedy (1307), the plays of Shakespeare, and the relatively new genre of the novel, called Roman in both French and German. Like the novel, political liberalism, and idealist philosophy, Romantic art focused on the individual and on expression of the self. As the word gained currency, composers and artists who came of age in the 1820s and 1830s, such as Berlioz, Mendelssohn, Chopin, Liszt, and Robert and Clara Schumann, conceived of themselves as “romantics.” By the mid-nineteenth century, Schlegel's dichotomy seemed to distinguish the elegant, natural, simple, clear, formally closed, and universally appealing (and therefore classic) music of Haydn and Mozart from the music of the second quarter of the nineteenth century, marked as Romantic because of its search for the original, interesting, evocative, individual, expressive, or extreme. The music of Beethoven was regarded as straddling the two camps, Romantic in its aspirations and individuality yet Classic in language and forms.

This distinction crystallized into the notion of two style periods, Classic and Romantic, divided around the 1820s. Schlegel's original dichotomy between artworks with different characters was now used to distinguish two eras. Some later music historians considered the whole nineteenth century "Romantic," while others saw the entire span from the mid-eighteenth through the early twentieth century as a single Classic-Romantic period in which composers shared conventions of harmony, rhythm, and form but differed in how they treated those conventions. For our purposes, the political and economic events of 1815 serve as a convenient starting point for the Romantic period because their impact on composers helps to explain the distinctive music of the era. As we will see in Chapters 28 to 30, music in the second half of the nineteenth century is characterized by a shifting blend of Romanticism with realism and other trends.

The flowering of Romanticism after 1815 was a direct reaction to several of the themes explored in the first part of this chapter. Society was changing rapidly, driven in part by science and technology, and Romanticism sought refuge in the past, myth, dreams, the supernatural, and the irrational. As the new political concept of “nation” emerged, Romantics regarded “common folk” as the true embodiment of the nation.

As people crowded into cities, Romantics valued rural life and looked to nature for refuge, inspiration, and revelation. As industrialization brought about a mass society, Romantics esteemed solitude and the individual. As people in factories, shops, and homes were bound to routine, Romantics pursued novelty, boundlessness, and the exotic.

And as a new capitalist economy replaced old forms of support for artists, Romantics saw artists as pursuing not money but a higher ideal of enlightening the world through access to a realm beyond the everyday. Some of these impulses are captured in the art of Caspar David freed-rick, the leading German Romantic painter, as in his Wanderer above the Sea of Fog (circa 1818), shown in Figure which depicts solitude and the boundlessness of nature, transcending everyday experience. The same impulses suffuse the music of many Romantic composers.

Romanticism encouraged composers to seek individual paths for expressing intense emotions, such as melancholy, longing, or joy. Composers respected conventions of form or harmony to a point, but their imagination drove them to trespass limits and explore new realms of sound. E. T. A. Hoffmann and other writers considered instrumental music the ideal Romantic art because it was free from the concreteness of words and visual images and thus could evoke impressions, thoughts, and feelings that are beyond the power of words to express (see Source Reading).

Figure 25.6 summary: A painting depicting a man from behind, standing on a rocky precipice and looking out over a misty landscape with distant mountains. This is a representational artwork with no data or analytical result to report.

Such writers saw instrumental music as an autonomous art, free from earlier notions that music must serve the words of a madrigal or opera, convey an appropriate affect, or fulfill a particular social role, whether as entertainment or as accompaniment to a religious ritual or dinner party. This autonomy paralleled the composers' own freedom as independent entrepreneurs outside the old patronage system. They were no longer part of the servant class as Haydn and earlier composers had been. The autonomy of music as an art symbolized the individualism and economic independence so valued by the nineteenth-century middle class.

The idealization of instrumental music as the

FIGURE 25.6 Caspar David Friedrich, Wanderer above the Sea of Fog.

The Most Romantic Art

In an influential essay, poet, novelist, critic, and composer E.T.A. Hoffmann (1776 to 1822) lauded instrumental music as the most Romantic art.

Japanese text

When we speak of music as an independent art, should we not always restrict our meaning to instrumental music, which, scorning every aid, every admixture of another art (the art of poetry), gives pure expression to music's specific nature, recognizable in this form alone? It is the most romantic of all the arts—one might almost say, the only genuinely romantic one—for its sole subject is the infinite. The lyre of Orpheus opened the portals of Orcus Roman god of the underworld—music discloses to man an unknown realm, a world that has nothing in common with the external sensual world that surrounds him, a world in which he leaves behind him all definite feelings to surrender himself to an inexpressible longing.

premier mode of artistic expression led Hoffmann, Ludwig Tieck, and other writers to formulate new distinctions among instrumental works between absolute, characteristic (or descriptive), and program music. A programmatic work recounts a narrative or sequence of events, often spelled out in an accompanying text called a program; a character piece depicts or suggests a mood, personality, or scene, usually indicated in its title; and absolute music offers instead an idealized play of sound and form. Program music was not a nineteenth-century invention. Composers in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries expected their instrumental music to convey particular emotions, associations with everyday life (from dance rhythms to hunting horns), and in some cases even specific characters, scenes, or programs, as in Biber's Mystery Sonatas, Couperin's character pieces, or Vivaldi's Four Seasons. What is truly new in the nineteenth century is the notion of absolute music, which refers to nothing but itself—a powerful idea that lay behind numerous developments in both nineteenth-and twentieth-century music.

The esteem for instrumental music was reflected in a new concept of organic musical form. Eighteenth-century writers conceived of musical works as rhetorical, shaped like a speech and intended to have a certain effect on the listener (see Chapter 20). This metaphor for music can be traced back at least to the Renaissance and continued to echo throughout the nineteenth century and into the twentieth. But Goethe argued in a study of plant metamorphosis that, just as all the parts of a plant are adaptations of the same basic shape, so too artists should shape their works so that all the parts are unified by being derived from a common source.

Applying this view to music, the organic relationship of the themes, sections, movements, and other parts to the whole (and to each other) becomes more important than rhetorical structure or persuasive force. In the metaphor of organicism, motivic links can contribute more to a work's unity than its harmonic plan or use of a conventional form.

Despite the prestige of instrumental music, literature was central to the work of most composers. Many had writers as friends, and some were writers themselves: Berlioz and Schumann were professional music critics, Liszt and Wagner wrote influential essays on music, and Wagner wrote his own opera librettos. From songs to choral works and opera, several leading genres required an integration of music and text.

In setting words, composers sought to draw out the inner meanings and feelings suggested in the poetry or libretto. Even many instrumental works bore inseparable links to words through a descriptive title or program. The effort to find a musical effect capable of expressing an idea or program often led to innovations in harmony, melody, and instrumental color. Such novelty appealed to middle-class consumers, and the program enhanced that appeal while justifying the unusual effects. For this reason, composers and publishers often added programs or descriptive titles after a work was composed.

From E.T. A. Hoffmann, "Beethovens Instrumental-Musik," Sämtliche Werke, ed. C. G. von Maassen, vol. 1 (Munich and Leipzig, 1908), adapted in 1813 from a review first published in July 1810. Trans. Oliver Strunk, in SR 160 (6:13), pp. 1193–94.

Song

The trends described in previous sections are apparent in songs of the time. Voice and piano (played by the singer or an accompanist) was the preferred medium, offering a wide expressive range with minimal forces. Texts were typically strophic poems, and the words were meant to be heard, set for the most part with one note per syllable and reserving longer gestures for special emphasis. Whether expressing a feeling or telling a story, the poem usually adopted a persona and situation—a woman in love, a man wandering in nature, an adult remembering childhood—that gave the singer an opportunity to act a part as well as sing. Songs varied from simple settings with chordal accompaniment and the same melody for every verse to artful, through-composed miniature dramas in which the accompaniment rivaled the voice in importance. Only later in the century did a firm line develop between popular songs for sale to the widest possible musical public and art songs for connoisseurs.

The most influential and prestigious repertoire of nineteenth-century song was the German Lied. The Lied was in many ways the quintessential Romantic genre: a fusion of music and poetry, centering on the expression of individual feelings, with descriptive musical imagery and aspects of folk style. The Lied influenced song composers in other nations, especially later in the century (see Chapter 30). A significant independent tradition was the British and American parlor song. Among the thousands of song composers active before midcentury, the following focuses on only a few of the most exemplary.

the LIED The Romantic Lied built on a strong eighteenth-century tradition (see Chapter 21). The popularity of Lieder grew after 1800. The number of German song collections published increased from about one month in the late 1700s to over one hundred a month in 1826, when the Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung (General Music Journal) asked “has there ever been an age more prolific in song than ours?” Changes in poetry anticipated changes in the Lied. Poets drew elements from both classical and folk traditions. A frequent theme was an individual confronting the greater forces of nature or society, vulnerable yet ennobled by the encounter; another was nature as a metaphor for human experience.

The chief poetic genre continued to be the lyric, a short, strophic poem on one subject expressing a personal feeling or viewpoint. The ultimate models were the lyric poets of ancient Greece and Rome, such as Sappho and Horace. Two collections of folk-song verses, Johann Gottfried von Herder's Volkslieder and Clemens Brentano and Achim von Arnim's Des Knaben Wunderhorn, influenced poets to adopt similar language and imagery. Both ancient lyrics and folk verses were meant to be sung, and the poetry written in imitation of them was ideal for setting to music, with short strophes and regular meter and rhyme.

In the late eighteenth century, German poets cultivated a new form, the {ballad} , in imitation of the folk ballads of England and Scotland. Ballads might alternate narrative and dialogue and usually dealt with romantic adventures or supernatural incidents. Their greater length and wider palette of moods and events inspired composers to use more varied themes and textures. The ballad thus expanded the Lied both in form and in emotional content. In many such Lieder, the piano rose from accompaniment to equal partner with the voice in illustrating and intensifying the meaning of the poetry.

Lieder composers often grouped their songs into collections with a unifying characteristic, such as texts by a single poet or a focus on a common theme. Beethoven's An die ferne Geliebte (see Chapter 24) introduced the concept of the song cycle, in which all the songs were to be performed in order, as movements of a multimovement vocal work. Using this format, composers could tell a story through a succession of songs, combining the narrative emphasis of ballads with the focused expressivity of the lyric poem.

Franz Shooburt The characteristics of the Romantic Lied are exemplified in the songs of Franz Schubert (1797 to 1828; see biography and Figure 25.7). Schubert wrote over six hundred Lieder, many of which were first performed for friends in home gatherings known as Schubertiaids. In the picture of one such evening in Figure many of the listeners seem transported, gazing into space with attentive expressions on their faces. The drawing conveys the intensely emotional engagement with music that was characteristic of the age.

Figure 25.7 summary: A series of musical score excerpts for piano. The first panel shows an agitated section with a 2/8 time signature and rapid sixteenth-note patterns. The second panel features a slower section with a sustained melody over steady eighth-note chords. The third panel contains a more lyrical passage with slurred melodic lines and undulating accompaniment. The final panel transition to a Largo tempo with an espressivo marking and a slow-moving melody over continuous chordal accompaniment. The figure provides a visual representation of the contrasting musical styles and tempos within these compositions.

Figure 25.8 summary: Three segments of piano sheet music depicting the opening and the third section of a composition. The music is marked Vivace and features complex rhythmic patterns, dynamic markings ranging from pianissimo (pp) to fortissimo (ff), and expressive instructions such as rubato, sotto voce, and scherzando. This notation captures the specific melodic contours, harmonic structure, and performance directions of the piece.

Schubert set poetry by many writers, including fifty-nine poems of Goethe. Some of Schubert's finest Lieder are found in his two song cycles on poems by Wilhelm Müller, Die schöne Müllerin (The Pretty Miller-Maid, 1823) and Winterreise (Winter's Journey, 1827). When Schubert wrote a song he strove to make the music the equal of the words, not merely their frame. Through melody, accompaniment, harmony, and form, he sought to embody the person speaking, the characters described, the scene, the situation, and the emotions expressed.

Schubert always chose forms that suited the shape and meaning of the text. When a poem sustains a single image or mood, Schubert typically uses strophic form, with the same music for each stanza, as in Heidenröslein (Little Heath-Rose, 1815) and Das Wandern (Wandering), the first song in Die schöne Müllerin. Most Lieder of his time were strophic and unadorned, and when Schubert deviates from that norm (as he often does), it is for expressive purposes. Contrast or change is often depicted with modified strophic form, in which music repeats for some strophes but others vary it or use new music; an example is Der Lindenbaum (The Linden Tree) from Winterreise. Some songs

Franz Schubert

(1797 to 1828)

Schubert was the first great master of the Romantic Lied and a prolific composer in all genres.

The son of a Vienna schoolmaster, Schubert grew up surrounded by music-making at home and at school. As a child he studied piano, singing, violin, organ, counterpoint, and figured bass, and took composition lessons from the court music director, Antonio Salieri. Schubert's musical talent won him a free, first-class education at a prestigious Vienna boarding school. Although trained to follow his father's profession, his heart lay in composing. For several years he taught at his father's school, all the while composing with astonishing speed and fluency; in 1815 alone he produced more than 140 songs. January 1818 saw the first publication of his music, and from then on he devoted himself entirely to composition.

By 1821, Schubert's music was widely performed in Vienna, and he was earning substantial sums from publishers. As he never secured a permanent salaried position, he gained most of his income from publication, especially of songs and piano music. Thus he was a freelance composer, largely independent of the patronage system that supported earlier composers and on which even Beethoven had depended. In the 1820s, he began to focus increasingly on larger works, including chamber music, symphonies, and operas, but most were not performed until after his death.

The last years of Schubert's life were clouded by illness. He died at thirty-one, possibly from syphilis he had contracted by 1823 or from its treatment with mercury. His tombstone was inscribed “Music has here buried a rich treasure but still fairer hopes.” Given the brevity of his career, his output of almost one thousand works is astounding.

Major Works Over 600 songs, including the song cycles

Die schöne Müllerin and Winterreise; 9 symphonies, notably

No. 8 in B Minor (Unfinished) and No. 9 in C Major (Great);

about 35 chamber works, including Piano Quintet in A Major

(the Trout), String Quartet in D Minor (Death and the Maiden), and String Quintet in C Major; 22 piano sonatas; many short piano pieces; 17 operas and Singspiels; 6 masses; 200 other choral works use ternary form (aba or aba'), as in Der Atlas (Atlas), or bar form (A.A.B), as in Ständchen (Serenade), both from the posthumously published collection Schwanengesang (Swan Song, 1828). Longer narrative songs may be through-composed, with new music for each stanza, like the ballad Erlkönig (The Erlking, 1815), or combine declamatory and arioso styles as in an operatic scene, like Der Wanderer (The Wanderer, 1816); in either case, recurring themes and a carefully planned tonal scheme lend unity.

Schubert had a gift for creating beautiful melodies that perfectly capture a poem's character, mood, and situation. Many songs use the simple, seemingly artless quality of folk song to suggest a rural setting or uncomplicated feelings, as in Heidenröslein and Das Wandern, shown in Example 25.1a–b. Others are suffused with sweetness and melancholy, as is Ständchen, Example 25.1c, or are declamatory and dramatic, like Der Atlas, Example 25.1d.

The excerpts in Example 25.1 only begin to illustrate the variety of Schubert's accompaniments. The figuration always fits the poem's mood and the personality of its protagonist, from a simple alternation of bass note and chord in Heidenröslein to dramatic tremolos and octaves in Der Atlas. The accompaniment often reflects an image in the poem, especially an image of movement, like the walking motion of Das Wandern or a serenader plucking a guitar in Ständchen.

In Gretchen am Spinnrade (Gretchen at the Spinning Wheel, 1814; N.A.W.M 132), on an excerpt from Goethe's famous play Faust, the piano suggests the spinning wheel by having a constant rising and falling sixteenth-note figure in the right hand, and the motion of the treadle by using repeated notes in the left hand, as shown in Example 25.2. These figures also convey Gretchen's agitation as she thinks of her beloved. Often, as here, the piano introduces the song's mood and central image in a short prelude before the voice enters. When Gretchen recalls her beloved's kiss, the accompaniment suddenly stops, then haltingly restarts. Although the words do not indicate her actions, we know from the music that she stops the wheel when she is overcome by emotion, then gradually returns to spinning as she regains her composure.

The harmony also reinforces the poetry. The simple Das Wandern uses only five different chords. The sweet melancholy of Ständchen is evoked by alternating minor and major forms of a key or triad, an effect that is almost a trademark of Schubert's style. In other songs, he underlines the poem's dramatic qualities powerfully through complex modulations. In Der Atlas, he uses a diminished seventh chord to move abruptly from G minor to the distant key of B major, then gradually works his way back through E minor to G minor. This extraordinary key scheme illustrates Schubert's fondness for modulation.

GESELLSCHART DER MUSIK FREUNDE, VIENNA, AUSTRIA. PHOTO: ERICH LESSING/ART RESOURCE, NY

HISTORISCHES MUSEUM DERSTADTWIEN. PHOTO: ERICH LESSING/ART RESOURCE, NY

FIGURE 25.8 Sepia drawing by Schubert's friend Moritz von Schwind (1868), showing Schubert at the piano accompanying the singer Johann Michael Vogl, sitting to his right. The occasion is a Schubertiad, a gathering in a private home during which Schubert would play piano and either sing his own songs or accompany a singer.

Example 25.1 Franz Schubert Songs

Figure 25.1 summary: A musical score depicting three distinct excerpts from songs: "Heidenröslein" in the first panel, a section with the lyrics "Gently my songs through the night implore you" in the second, and "Der Atlas" in the third. Each excerpt includes a vocal line with German lyrics and a piano accompaniment consisting of treble and bass staves. The purpose of the figure is to present examples of musical compositions.

Image summary: A musical score for a piece titled "Das Wandern," featuring a vocal line with lyrics in German and a piano accompaniment. The music is written in 2/4 time and consists of a melodic vocal part supported by rhythmic chords and a bass line in the piano. The excerpt depicts the opening measures of a song focused on the joy of wandering.

: Figure 25.2 summary: A musical score excerpt from Schubert's Gretchen am Spinnrade, featuring a vocal line and piano accompaniment. The piano performs a repetitive rhythmic pattern marked as both sempre legato and sempre staccato, while the voice sings the phrase "Meine Ruh' ist hin" (My peace is gone). The composition illustrates the musical depiction of a spinning wheel and the character's emotional distress.

by third rather than by fifth, a trait also found in his instrumental music, as we will see. His predilection for unusual harmonic relationships reflects his use of harmony as an expressive device, since the unconventional generally carries more expressive potential than the conventional, and both aspects of his harmonic practice greatly influenced later composers.

Schubert's ability to capture the mood and character of a poem and to make the music its equal in emotive and descriptive power, along with the sheer beauty of his music and the pleasure it gives to those who perform it, have endeared Schubert's songs both to his contemporaries and to generations of singers, pianists, and listeners. His songs set the standard that later song composers strove to match.

Robert and Clara Shoomann Schubert's first important successor as a Lieder composer was Robert Schumann (1810 to 1856), also renowned for his piano music, symphonies, and chamber music (discussed on pages 603 to 5 and in Chapter 26). He wrote over 120 songs in 1840, which he called his"Lieder year." He focused on love songs, including the song cycles Dichterliebe (A Poet's Love) and Frauenliebe und -leben (Woman's Love and Life). He was inspired in part by his impending marriage to Clara Wieck, a renowned pianist and composer (see their joint biography and Figure 25.9). He turned to song to express the passions and frustrations of love, to make money from a lucrative genre, and to synthesize music and poetry, his two great interests.

Figure 25.9 summary: A series of musical notation excerpts for piano. The first section shows a lyrical melody marked dolce con grazia with alternating hands, while the subsequent sections depict a climax and cadenza featuring rapid scales, complex chords, and performance markings such as accel. and presto. The figure illustrates a transition from a graceful melodic passage to a highly technical and virtuosic sequence.

Robert Schumann thought that music should capture a poem's essence in its own terms and that voice and piano should be equal partners. He often gave the piano relatively long preludes, interludes, or postludes, showing that the instrument is no mere accompaniment. He typically used a single figuration throughout to convey the central emotion or idea of the poem.

His song cycle Dichterliebe (excerpts in N.A.W.M 133) exemplifies these precepts. He chose sixteen poems from Heinrich Heine's Lyrical Intermezzo and arranged them to suggest the course of a relationship as recalled after it has ended, from longing to initial fulfillment, abandonment, and resignation.

In the first song, Im wunderschönen Monat Mai (In the marvelous month of May; N.A.W.M 133a), the poet remembers the blossoming of newborn love in springtime. His tentative feelings are expressed in the harmonic ambiguity

Robert Schumann (1810 to 1856)

A boy saw a rosebud standing, a rosebud on the heath.

Wandering is the miller's pleasure!

I, the unlucky Atlas!

Clara Schumann

(1819 to 1896)

One of the most significant marriages in the history of music was that of Robert and Clara Schumann. He was an influential music critic and outstanding composer, especially of piano music, songs, chamber music, and symphonies, and she was among the foremost pianists of her day and a distinguished composer and teacher. Their careers intertwined, so that one is difficult to describe without the other.

Robert Schumann studied piano from age seven and soon began to compose. Son of a writer and book dealer, he had an intense interest in literature, especially Romantic writers such as freed-rick Schlegel, Jean Paul, and E. T. A. Hoffmann. After university studies in law, Schumann devoted himself to becoming a concert pianist, studying in Leipzig with freed-rick Wieck, his future father-in-law. When an injury to Schumann's right hand cut short his performing career, he turned to composition and criticism, founding and editing the Leipzig Neue Zeitschrift für Musik (New Journal of Music) from 1834 to 1844. In his essays and reviews, he opposed empty virtuosity, promoted the study of older music, and was among the first and strongest of the opening, shown in Example 25.3, and his “longing and desire” through suspensions and appoggiaturas. The music signals that his love may remain unrequited by refusing to settle into a key and by ending on a dominant seventh. The hint of unfulfillment is not explicit in Heine's poetry, but is Schumann's creation, revealing his success in making the piano as important as the voice, the music the equal partner of the words in conveying meaning and emotions, and the composer the cocreator with the poet. The lack advocates of Chopin, Brahms, and the instrumental music of Schubert.

Figure 25.3 summary: A snippet of musical notation from Robert Schumann's "Im wunderschönen Monat Mai," featuring two staves for piano with a treble clef and bass clef. The music is marked "Langsam, zart" and "p" (piano), using chromatic harmonies and tied notes across measures to create a fluid, lyrical quality. The purpose is to provide a musical example of Schumann's compositional style.

In his career as a composer, Schumann often focused on one medium at a time: piano music until 1840, then songs that year, symphonies in 1841, chamber music in 1842 to 43, oratorio in 1843, dramatic music in 1847 to 48, and church music in 1852.

Meanwhile, freed-rick Wieck was training his daughter Clara to become a concert pianist. Recognized as a child prodigy from her first public appearance at age nine, she toured Europe and earned the praise of Goethe, Mendelssohn, Chopin, Liszt, and Paganini. By the age of twenty, she was one of the leading pianists in Europe and had many published works to her credit. She was renowned for playing from memory, performing music from Bach to the present, and adhering scrupulously to the composer's text rather than adding embellishments, all traits that were new in her time. She and Robert became engaged, but Wieck opposed the relationship, and it took a lawsuit to permit their wedding in 1840.

The Schumanns concertized throughout Germany, Austria-Hungary, Russia, and the Netherlands, with Robert conducting and Clara at the piano. In 1850, Robert became municipal music director in Düsseldorf, his only salaried position as a musician, but increasing signs of mental instability forced him to resign in 1853. Syphilis, contracted early in his life, and depression, which ran in his family, doubtless contributed to episodes of strange behavior and aural hallucinations that climaxed in a suicide attempt in February 1854. He was confined to an asylum near Bonn, where he died in July 1856.

Although Clara Schumann curbed her concert touring after marrying Robert and while raising eight children, she continued to perform, teach, and write music. Robert encouraged her composing, including in larger forms such as her Piano Sonata and her Piano Trio (discussed in Chapter 26), and almost all her works were published to favorable reviews. After his death, she resumed concert tours across Europe, from Russia to England, and was a sought-after teacher, becoming the primary piano instructor at the Hoch Conservatory in Frankfurt in 1878. However, she ceased composing, turning instead to promoting and editing her husband's music, including the edition of his complete works, and often advised Brahms on his compositions. She continued to concertize until 1891 and to teach until her death in 1896.

Major Works (Robert Schumann) Over 300 piano works, including Papillons, Carnaval, Fantasiestücke, Kreisleriana, and Album for the Young; about 300 songs; 75 partsongs for mixed, mens', or womens' voices; 4 symphonies; piano concerto; 3 piano trios; about 15 other chamber works; various works for orchestra, solo with orchestra, or voices with orchestra

Major Works (Clara Schumann) Piano Trio, Op. 17; piano concerto; many piano pieces; and several collections of Lieder of resolution at the end of the first song renders it a fragment, paralleling in music the literary fragments cultivated by Schlegel and other early Romantics, who regarded the complete expression of an idea as impossible and a fragment as the nearest one can get to expressing a truth.

The next song in the cycle, Aus meinen Tränen sprießen (From my tears sprout; N.A.W.M 133b) resolves some of the ambiguities of the first, asserting the key of A major. Yet the tentativeness remains, as the voice never cadences on the tonic. The cycle continues with songs suggesting mutual love and contentment. In song 7, Ich grolle nicht (I am not resentful; N.A.W.M 133c), the budding relationship turns sour; the poet says though his heart is breaking he bears no resentment, while the music's pounding bass line, throbbing chords, and sharp dissonances ironically contradict his words and make clear his true feelings of anger. There follow songs expressing his sorrow and pain. But in song 12, Am leuchtenden Sommermorgen (On a brilliant summer morning; N.A.W.M 133d), the story takes another turn: whispering flowers tell him not to be angry, and descending arpeggios suggest the beginnings of acceptance and resignation. reinforced in an extended piano postlude. In the last of the sixteen songs, Die alten, bösen Lieder (The old, angry songs; N.A.W.M 133e), he imagins putting his love, his anger, and the songs they inspired into a huge casket and sinking it into the sea. The resigned piano postlude from song 12 returns, and the cycle concludes on the same chord as the first song with the unresolved seventh removed. These and other links between songs unify the cycle, enhancing the expressive power of each song by making it part of a larger narrative.

Clara Schumann also wrote several collections of Lieder, including one coauthored with Robert. Her approach to song parallels her husband's, with long preludes and postludes, similar figuration throughout each song, and voice and piano as equals in conveying the images and feelings of the poem. For example, in Geheimes Flüstern (Secret Whispers, 1853), from her last song cycle, the poem is dominated by an image of the forest whispering to the poet. A continuous sixteenth-note arpeggiation establishes a backdrop of rustling leaves and branches, helping to express the poet's reliance on the forest as a refuge and a communicator of life's secrets.

The German Lied had numerous other exponents, including Felix Mendelssohn, Fanny Hensel, and Franz Liszt, whose piano music is discussed later in this chapter; Johannes Brahms, Hugo Wolf, Gustav Mahler, Richard Strauss, and Arnold Schoenberg, whom we will encounter in subsequent chapters; and specialists in song, such as Louise Reichardt (1779 to 1826), Carl Loewe (1796 to 1869), Josephine Lang (1815 to 1880), Robert Franz (1815 to 1892), and Peter Cornelius (1824 to 1874).

The songs of Schubert became known in France in the 1830s and helped to stimulate the development of the romance into a French counterpart of the Lied, the mélodie. Hector Berlioz (discussed in the next two chapters) wrote several, but the high point of the genre came in the later nineteenth century with composers such as Jules Massenet, Gabriel Fauré, and Claude Debussy (see Chapters 28, 30, and 32). The German Lied also influenced song traditions in Bohemia, Poland, Russia, Scandinavia, and elsewhere.

British and North American Song A separate tradition grew in Great Britain, where songs for home performance were called ballads or drawing-room ballads, and in the United States and Canada, where they were called parlor songs. As the names indicate, such songs held an important place in home music-making, but they were also sung in musical theater productions and public concerts. Songs of this type are usually strophic or in verse-refrain form, with piano preludes and postludes based on phrases from the tune.

Their expressivity lies almost entirely in the vocal melody. The piano typically supports the singer with conventional figureation, rather than dramatizing or interpreting the text as it does in many German Lieder. Like much Baroque music (see Chapter 13), this type of song tended not to be treated as unalterable; rather, it served as a vehicle for the performers, who were free to adorn the melody and reshape the accompaniment.

The most famous drawing-room ballad, and probably the best-known song of the nineteenth century, was Home! Sweet Home! (1823) by the English composer Henry R. Bishop (1786 to 1855). Bishop was a renowned composer of theatrical music who is remembered today for this one song, from his opera Clari. It has a sentimental text in verse-refrain form, regular four-measure phrases, and the characteristic melodic style of the genre: simple, mostly diatonic, stepwise, and triadic, but also tuneful, charming, and expressive, with opportunities for embellishment.

Hundreds of composers all over the English-speaking world wrote parlor songs. The most notable song composer in Canada was Scottish-born church musician James P. Clarke (1807/8 to 1877), the first person to earn a Bachelor of Music degree from a North American university, whose song cycle Lays of the Maple Leaf (1853) was the most substantial work yet published by a Canadian.

The leading American song composer of the nineteenth century was Stephen Foster (1826 to 1864). Growing up in Pittsburgh, he heard German, Italian, and Irish music. He taught himself to play several instruments but had no formal training in composition. After his 1848 song Oh! Susanna achieved great success, he signed a contract with a New York publisher and became the first American to earn a living solely as a composer. Like Bishop, he wrote for the stage as well as the parlor; his songs for minstrel shows are treated in Chapter 27. He typically wrote his own texts, which are mostly sentimental, sometimes comic.

Foster combined elements of British ballads, American minstrel songs, German Lieder, Italian opera, and Irish folk songs. Seeking—and finding—wide popularity, he made his music easy to perform and remember. His melodies are almost wholly diatonic, mostly stepwise or pentatonic (a feature of both Irish and minstrel tunes), and in four-measure phrases.

The harmony and accompaniment are deliberately simple, although the figuration often changes with each phrase to demarcate the form. Jeanie with the Light Brown Hair (1853; N.A.W.M 134), one of his best-known songs, illustrates all these features. In the last phrase of the first verse, shown in Example 25.4, the harmonic and melodic simplicity makes the dissonances on “Jeanie,” “floating,”

MUSÉE D'ORSAY, PARIS, FRANCE. PHOTO: HERVE LEWANDOWSKI/ RÉUINION DES MUSÉES NATIONAUX/ART RESOURCE, NY

Example 25.4 Stephen Foster, Jeanie with the Light Brown Hair

Figure 25.4 summary: A musical score containing a vocal line and piano accompaniment. The lyrics describe a dream of Jeanie with light brown hair floating on the summer air, accompanied by an ostinato pattern in the piano. The purpose of the figure is to provide the notation for a specific musical passage.

and “summer” more piquant and the faster progression at the end of phrase more expressive. There is even a touch of opera in the brief cadenza.

Today, nineteenth-century parlor songs are thought of as popular music, but they were written for the same middle-class market as German Lieder and share many of the same characteristics. The Lieder of Schubert and the Schumanns have an appeal to connoisseurs that was recognized at the time and led to their canonization as art songs by later generations. Yet in the early nineteenth century, the chasm between popular and serious music so typical of later eras had not yet opened, and all these songs coexisted on a continuum in which popular appeal and interest to the learned did not necessarily exclude one another.

Music for Piano

If song was the most popular medium of the nineteenth century, piano music ran a close second. Piano works served three overlapping purposes: teaching, amateur enjoyment, and public performance. The first category includes graded studies such as Muzio Clementi's Gradus ad Parnassum (Steps to Parnassus, 1817 to 26), consisting of one hundred exercises of increasing difficulty, and the numerous études (studies) and method books by Beethoven's student Carl Czerny (1791 to 1857), many of which are still in use today.

The second category includes dances, lyrical pieces modeled on song, character pieces, and sonatas. The third category features bravura pieces for virtuosos. It is typical of the age that many pieces have more than one function; for example, amateur pieces were used in teaching, Chopin and Liszt pioneered the étude worthy of concert performance, and many concert artists included sonatas and small lyrical works on their programs alongside virtuosos vehicles.

Our look at piano music will include Franz Schubert and Robert and Clara Schumann, composers whose songs we have already encountered, and Felix Mendelssohn and his sister Fanny Hensel, all representing the German tradition. But we will also look further afield, because it was in piano music that the first internationally famous composers from Poland, Hungary, and the United States made their mark: Fryderyk Chopin, Franz Liszt, and Louis Moreau Gottschalk.

Shooburt Among works suitable for the amateur market, Schubert wrote dozens of marches, waltzes, and other dances. His six Moments musicaux (Musical Moments, 1823 to 28) and eight Impromptus (1827) are models of the short lyrical piece that creates a distinctive mood. The Impromptu in G-flat Major, Op. 90, No. 3 (N.A.W.M 135) features a songlike melody over a slowly moving bass and gently murmuring accompaniment, flowing from serene elegance to a more turbulent middle section in the relative minor and back to radiant beauty, like a return to contentment. Such pieces appealed to amateurs by combining attractive sonorities, interesting harmonies, emotional expressivity, and performance challenges that were rewarding to master. Of Schubert's numerous works for piano duet, several challenge the most advanced amateurs, including the sublimely beautiful and moving Fantasy in F Minor (1828).

Schubert's most important larger works for the piano are his eleven completed piano sonatas and the Wanderer Fantasy (1822), whose virtuosity and unusual form fascinated later composers. The fantasy's four movements are played without breaks between them, and they combine the general shape of a four-movement sonata—fast movement in a truncated sonata form without recapitulation, slow theme and variations, scherzo and trio, and brilliant finale—with constant variation of a rhythmic figure taken from a phrase in his song Der Wanderer, which is quoted explicitly at the beginning of the second movement. Drawing the movements together through musical continuity and common material lent the work an organic unity. The overall key scheme reflects Schubert's interest in harmonic relationships of a third: the movements are in C, E, A♭, and C major respectively (though the second movement begins in the relative minor, C♭). Schubert was the first to use such a complete circle of major thirds around the octave, an idea later adopted by Liszt (see p. 615) and many other composers.

In his sonatas, Schubert wrestled with contradictions between his song-inspired style and the demands of the sonata, with its multiple movements and extended forms. His themes typically are expansive melodies that do not lend themselves to motivic development; instead, they recur in different environments that suggest new meanings. His sonata-form movements often use three keys in the exposition rather than two (for example, tonic for the first theme, median for the second, and dominant for the closing theme).

Some slow movements are particularly songful and resemble impromptus. His last three sonatas, in C minor, A major, and B major, show a strong awareness of Beethoven, as in the stormy first movement of the C-minor sonata. But Schubert's lyrical style is ever present. The sonata in B opens with a long singing melody, which returns throughout the movement in various guises, major and minor, complete and fragmented, as if set to new words in conflict with those of before. Schubert's approach to sonata form (discussed further in Chapter 26) had a notable influence on later composers.

Felix Mendelsohn One of the leading German Romantic composers was Felix Mendelssohn (1809 to 1847; see biography and Figure 25.10). He blended influences from Bach, Handel, Mozart, Beethoven, and his own contemporaries in music that combined contrapuntal skill and formal clarity with Romantic expression, beautiful melodies, and interesting, often unpredictable rhythms. A virtuoso performer on both piano and organ, Mendelssohn emphasized fluent technique over bravura display, preferring the older style of virtuosity typical of Mozart and Clementi to the new virtuosity of his own day, which he viewed as a kind of acrobatics without substance. His larger piano works include three sonatas, variations, and fantasias. His Seven Character Pieces, published in 1827, helped to popularize that term and define the genre.

Mendelssohn's best-known piano works are his Lieder ohne Worte (Songs without Words), forty-eight short pieces grouped in eight books. (Mendelssohn also displayed his melodic gift in more than one hundred songs with words.) In the first"song" (1830), shown in Example 25.5, the similarity to the Lied is immediately apparent. It could be written on three staves, the bass for the pianist's left hand, the arpeggiations for the right, and the melody for a singer. Having to cover all three lines with two hands produces

Felix Mendelssohn

(1809 to 1847)

Mendelssohn's precocious musical talent equaled or even surpassed that of Mozart. A renowned pianist, organist, and conductor, and one of the most prominent composers of his generation, Mendelssohn wrote music that combines Romantic expressivity with Classical forms and techniques.

Mendelssohn was the grandson of Moses Mendelssohn, the leading Jewish philosopher of the Enlightenment in Germany. The family also had strong connections to Romanticism in literature; the writer freed-rick Schlegel married Felix's aunt Dorothea Mendelssohn, who was a novelist and an important figure in literary circles. Although Jews were slowly gaining legal rights as a spillover from the French Revolution, Felix's banker father, Abraham, had his children baptized as Lutherans when they were still young and then converted to Christianity himself, adding Bartholdy to the family's surname. Abraham and his wife, an amateur pianist, encouraged their children's musical interests, and both Felix and his sister Fanny were trained from an early age by excellent teachers. Thus Felix and Fanny were born into a family that was at the center of Berlin's intellectual life and received every advantage that their parents' money and position could provide.

Mendelssohn began composing seriously at age eleven. At sixteen he composed his Octet for Strings, Op. 20, and at seventeen the magical Overture to Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream. He continued to compose at an astonishing rate throughout his life, marked by frequent travel, concert tours as pianist and conductor, and positions as music director in Düsseldorf, music director and conductor of the Gewandhaus Orchestra in Leipzig, and in various capacities in Berlin. He married Cécile Jeanrenaud in 1837, and they had five children. In 1843, he founded the Leipzig Conservatory, whose faculty included both Robert and Clara Schumann. He died at the age of thirty-eight, after a series of strokes.

Major Works Oratorios St. Paul and Elijah; 5 symphonies, including symphony-cantata Lobgesang; violin concerto; 2 piano concertos; 4 overtures; incidental music to 7 plays, including A Midsummer Night's Dream; numerous chamber works, including 6 string quartets, 2 piano trios, 2 cello sonatas; numerous pieces for piano and for organ; choral works; and over 100 songs interesting pianistic problems: how to bring out the melody and bass in a smooth legato while using mainly the weaker fourth and fifth fingers, and how to share the sixteenth-note figuration evenly between the two hands. The piece exploits the piano's ability to respond to the player's varying touch, louder for the melody and bass, softer for the accompaniment, even when they are played by fingers of the same hand. Beyond these technical matters, the piece presents an engaging melody and interesting accompaniment that convey a distinct mood, like a well-crafted song. The Songs without Words exemplify Mendelssohn's belief that music can express feelings that words cannot (see Source Reading), reflecting the idealist philosophy that underpins Romantic thought.

Mendelssohn on the Meaning of Music

Mendelssohn regarded his Songs without Words as complete in themselves, needing neither lyrics nor titles to convey their meaning. When an admirer wrote to ask what some of the individual pieces meant, Mendelssohn responded with this famous statement that argues for music's ability to express thoughts that cannot be expressed in words.

People usually complain that music is so ambiguous, and what they are supposed to think when they hear it is so unclear, while words are understood by everyone. But for me it is exactly the opposite—and not just with entire discourses, but also with individual words; these, too, seem to be so ambiguous, so indefinite, in comparison with good music, which fills one's soul with a thousand better things than words. What the music I love expresses to me are thoughts not too indefinite for words, but rather too definite.

Thus, I find in all attempts to put these thoughts into words something correct, but also always something insufficient, something not universal. . . . If you ask me what I was thinking of, I will say: just the song as it stands there. And if I happen to have had a specific word or specific words in mind for one or another of these songs, I can never divulge them to anyone, because the same word means one thing to one person and something else to another, because only the song can say the same thing, can arouse the same feelings in one person as in another—a feeling which is not, however, expressed by the same words.

Letter to Marc-André Souchay, October 15, 1842, trans. John Michael Cooper, in S.R 161 (6:14), p. 1201.

Figure 25.5 summary: A musical score depicting the opening measures of Felix Mendelssohn's Song without Words, Op. 19, No. 1. The notation specifies a tempo of Allegro con moto and includes dynamic markings such as pianissimo and piano, along with performance directions like legato and cantabile. It is a musical example provided for study or reference.

Robert Shoomann Robert Schumann's publications up to 1840 were all for solo piano, and they include his principal music for that instrument. Aside from a few longer works, the bulk of his piano compositions are short character pieces, often grouped in colorfully named sets such as Papillons (Butterflies), Carnaval, Fantasiestücke (Fantasy Pieces), Kinderszenen (Scenes from Childhood), and Kreisleriana. Attractive little pieces for children are gathered in the Album für die Jugend (Album for the Young).

His titles are evocative, meant to stimulate the player's and the listener's imaginations and to suggest possible meanings for the unusual effects and striking contrasts in his music. In Carnaval (1834 to 35), for instance, he conjures up a masquerade ball in carnival season through twenty short pieces in dance rhythms, each named for a dance, a costumed figure or acquaintance at the ball (including Clara), or an interaction between revelers, such as flirtation or recognition. Among the guests are characters he had used in his own literary writings to embody different facets of his personality: the impulsive revolutionary Florestan (named after the hero of Beethoven's Fidelio) and the visionary dreamer Eusebius (after a fourth-century pope). The movement titles evoke strongly contrasting visual and emotional images that are paralleled in the music.

Eusebius (N.A.W.M 136a), shown in Example 25.6a, is a dreamy fantasy with a slow, undancelike, chromatic bass under a curving melody in septuplets. By contrast, Florestan (N.A.W.M 136b), in Example 25.6b, is a fast, impassioned waltz full of angular melodies, pulsating dissonances, and offbeat sforzandos. The waltz rapidly shifts ideas but always returns to the opening figure, never finding a satisfactory cadence. Each of these movements remains a fragment, like many of Schumann's songs and piano pieces: lacking a clear harmonic conclusion, each piece remains open to extension, as if it captured a momentary thought or experience while implying that there may be more to the story.

The next movement, Coquette (N.A.W.M 136c), is almost as strong a contrast, still a waltz but now all lilt and charm.

One could view the music of Carnaval as fulfilling a program suggested by the titles. But it is truer to Schumann's intent to see the titles as a way to encourage close attention to the special features of each piece and make each one more intriguing and memorable. Indeed, he claimed that he did not

STAATSBIBLIOTHENKZU BERLIN, BERLIN, GERMANY. PHOTO: B.P.K./ART RESOURCE, NY

Example 25.6 Excerpts from Robert Schumann's Carnaval

a. Eusebius

Figure 25.6 summary: Two musical score excerpts for piano. The first is marked Adagio and sotto voce, featuring a lyrical melody in the treble clef over sustained bass notes. The second is marked Passionato, characterized by denser chords, sforzando markings, and dynamic swells. The figure contrasts two different emotional moods and technical approaches within a musical composition.

b. Florestan

always know the title of a piece until the music was written, making clear that the title is itself part of the composition, one that can be decided at any stage from initial conception to final polish. The main function of titles for character pieces was not to specify meanings but to indicate possible avenues for exploration, inviting the player and listener to enter the composer's musical world and become in one sense co-creators of that world by devising their own narratives to explain how the music justifies the title and vice versa. Is it any wonder that such music and such titles were so popular?

Another window into meaning is Schumann's interest in musical ciphers, representing names through notes. In Carnaval, many of the movements feature melodies based on motives that spell Asch, the home town of Schumann's then-fiancée Ernestine von Fricken: A–E♭–C–B♭ (in German note names, A–Es–C–H) and A♭–C–B♭ (As–C–H). The first of these is prominent in Florestan and Coquette and is more subtly present in Eusebius, as shown in Example 25.6. While inviting extramusical interpretation, these motives also give unity to the entire work, an organic connection between movements that underlies their surface diversity.

Clara Shoomann and Fanny Hensel The contrasting careers of Clara Schumann and Fanny Mendelssohn Hensel (1805 to 1847), who was Felix Mendelssohn's sister, illustrate the prospects for and limitations on women composers in the early nineteenth century. Both women were highly skilled pianist-composers, yet Schumann played public concerts and published much of her music, while Hensel, shown in Figure 25.11, confined her music-making almost entirely to the domestic sphere.

Clara Schumann won fame as a pianist at a young age and was at first better known than her husband, Robert. In an era when the score was often only a starting point for a performer's embellishment, she played what was written.

thus focusing attention on the composer rather than the performer. In her day, this idea was pathbreaking. Her performances also provided opportunities for improvisation, a staple of nineteenth-century concerts, and for showcasing her own music and that of her husband. Her piano compositions include polonaises, waltzes, variations, preludes and fugues, character pieces, and a Sonata in G Minor (1841 to 42).

Fanny Mendelssohn had equally thorough training, but for the most part performed and composed in private and semiprivate settings. She studied piano from a young age, and theory and composition in her teens. She was as talented and almost as precocious musically as her brother Felix, who solicited her advice on his compositions and considered her his most reliable and helpful critic.

Yet a musical career was considered inappropriate for a woman of her wealth and class. Both Felix and their father Abraham Mendelssohn opposed her performing in public or publishing her music, although Felix did publish some of her songs under his

Women and the Music Profession

In the nineteenth century, opportunities expanded for women as professional musicians, within limits. Many women were professional singers, and several made careers as pianists. Some were recognized as performers on other instruments, and a few composed works in large “public” genres such as symphony and opera, previously considered the exclusive preserve of male composers. Yet women were excluded from most orchestras, and men continued to dominate the field of composition. For every Clara Schumann who enjoyed the support of her father and husband in her professional career, there were scores of women who faced daunting and often insurable obstacles.

Even Fanny Hensel, despite having virtually the same education as her brother Felix Mendelssohn, was constrained by the social mores of the time to confine her musical activities within the home, as host of an important salon. Her first published pieces were songs that appeared under Felix's name, and she waited until she was forty (the year before her death) to accept an offer from a Berlin publisher to publish her music in her own right. This minimized her impact outside her circle and limited her compositions mostly to genres appropriate for home music-making, along with a few chamber works and cantatas. Yet these circumstances, combined with the high quality of her music, have made her a focus of recent efforts to rediscover the music women composed in the face of the constraints they encountered.

The rigorous childhood training that Clara Schumann and Fanny Hensel received was exceptional. Because women were expected to be amateur musicians rather than professionals, most found it difficult or impossible to obtain a musical education comparable to that available to men. The Leipzig Conservatory, which Mendelssohn founded in 1843 (and where both Clara and Robert Schumann were on the faculty), restricted women to a two-year course in music theory “especially organized for their requirements.” The Paris Conservatoire barred its doors to women composers altogether until the 1870s; singer-composer Pauline Viardot (1821 to 1910) studied privately with its renowned professor of counterpoint and fugue, Antoine Reicha. In most music schools, male students outnumbered women by lopsided margins. The Hoch Conservatory in Frankfurt, where Clara Schumann taught in the last years of her life, was unusual in enrolling more than twice as many women as men.

name as a way of getting them into print; when he asked Queen Victoria which of his songs she liked best, she chose Italien, and he had to admit that it was by his sister.

After marrying Prussian court painter Wilhelm Hensel, Fanny led a salon, a regular gathering of friends and invited guests, where she played piano, conducted choral and orchestral works, and presented her compositions. The salon met in their home in a large music room that could accommodate up to two hundred people, ranging from bankers, merchants, and politicians to writers, artists, and musicians such as Liszt and Clara Schumann. She wrote more than four hundred works, mostly in the small genres appropriate for home music-making, including at least 250 songs and 125 piano pieces. Her husband encouraged her to publish her music, but she died unexpectedly of a stroke less than a year after the publication in 1846 of her Op. 1, six songs. Only in the past fifty years or so has she become more than “Mendelssohn's sister,” as scholars have discovered a trove of her works and realized the importance of her salons.

Marriage or child-rearing often interrupted even the most promising careers. The Schumanns' marriage was more equal than most, though Clara deferred to Robert by refraining from practicing while he was composing. When work and family came into conflict, it was almost always the woman who stayed home. Rare was the husband who subordinated his own career to his wife's, as Pauline Viardot's did; one of Europe's reigning opera divas, she probably earned considerably more than Louis Viardot did as director of the Théâtre Italien.

Few women, no matter how talented or ambitious, were willing to forgo the status and security of marriage for the sake of a public career. The pianist-composer Marie Pleyel (1811 to 1875) may have acted capriciously in jilting the up-and-coming Hector Berlioz at age twenty to marry the wealthy piano manufacturer Camille Pleyel, but it took both pluck and self-confidence to leave Pleyel four years later and strike out on her own. The Polish pianist-composer Maria Szymanowska (1789 to 1831) likewise launched a highly successful international career after separating from her husband.

For women who did compose, their horizons were often limited to genres associated with domestic music-making, such as songs and piano pieces. Only a few women attempted to compose symphonies, operas, and other large-scale works meant to be performed in public concert halls and theaters, which required the cooperation of many professionals to perform. The three symphonies that Louise Farrenc (1804 to 1875) wrote in the 1840s were played in public, but only her piano and chamber music made it into print. Farrenc had a privileged position as professor of piano at the Paris Conservatoire—the only woman to hold such an exalted post in the nineteenth century—and was the wife of music publisher Aristide Farrenc. Many of her contemporaries lacked the professional and political connections needed to secure performances and publication of their works. Others lowered their sights, unable or unwilling to compete in a man's world. Louise Bertin (1805 to 1877) virtually retired from composing after the failure of her fourth opera, Esmerelda, at the Paris Opéra in 1836.

Despite these difficulties, more women were active as professional musicians and more music by women was performed and published in the nineteenth century than in any previous era. The last fifty years have seen increasing attempts by scholars and performers to discover, edit, perform, and record their works and to gain a better sense of the roles women played as composers, performers, and patrons of music.

Hensel's masterpiece for piano is Das Jahr (The Year, 1841), a cycle of character pieces on the twelve months from January through December plus a postlude. The piece embodies the contradictions of Hensel's career. It is a grand conception, taking over fifty minutes to perform, featuring cyclic links between movements, and incorporating chorales relevant to the seasons: an Easter chorale in March, a Christmas chorale in December, and a New Year's chorale in the postlude. The large scale and ambitious scope of the cycle elevate the genre of the character piece, associated with domestic music-making, to a more universal and public level. The first version of the piece included virtuosic passages that only players of Hensel's ability could master, but she scaled back the difficulty, rewriting the end of December and all of June to make the cycle playable for a wider range of amateurs. These changes suggest that she intended to publish it. But the final copy, neatly written out in an elegant hand, looks like a one-of-a-kind manuscript: each month is on a different color of paper and begins with a hand-drawn illustration by her husband Wilhelm Hensel. Was it intended as a private treasure

Fryderyk Chopin

(1810 to 1849)

Chopin was the Romantic composer most closely identified with the piano. His solo piano music won him enormous popularity and has been central to the repertoire ever since.

He was born near Warsaw to a French father and a Polish mother in a section of Poland that was then under Russian domination. His talent as pianist, improviser, and composer showed early, and at age seven he published his first piece and played his first public concert, as a concerto soloist. After studies at the Warsaw Conservatory, he performed in Vienna and toured Germany and Italy. His pieces with a strong Polish character were especially successful, encouraging him to write more. The national flavor of his music and its brilliant virtuosity won him a strong following in Poland. Seeking an international reputation, he returned to Vienna and to Germany in 1830. When he heard of the failed Polish revolt against Russia that November, he continued on to Paris, where he settled in 1831, never to see Poland again.

Chopin soon met the leading musicians in Paris, including Rossini, Meyerbeer, Berlioz, and Liszt, and entered the highest social circles. He became the most fashionable piano teacher for wealthy students. Their fees meant he could give up public performance and play only at private concerts and at salons hosted by the leading women of the city. In turn, the rarity of his appearances increased his cachet and allowed him to charge very high fees for lessons. He also earned considerable sums from publications. He never married, but had a tempestuous nine-year affair with the novelist Aurore Dudevant, known by her pseudonym George Sand. The 1848 revolutions in Paris disrupted his teaching and forced a grueling tour of England and Scotland. By then, he was ravaged by tuberculosis, and he died in Paris in 1849.

Major Works 2 piano concertos, 3 piano sonatas, 4 ballades, 4 scherzos, 21 nocturnes, 27 études, 27 preludes, 57 mazurkas, 17 waltzes, 15 polonaises, 4 chamber works with piano, 20 songs for the two of them, or as an exemplar from which a publication could be engraved or lithographed, complete with illustrations? We may never know, but the revival of the piece since the 1980s has deepened our experience of Fanny Hensel as a composer and our awareness of the potentially rich legacy of nineteenth-century music we have yet to discover.

Frederek Shopin Fryderyk Chopin (1810 to 1849) composed almost exclusively for piano (see biography and Figure 25.12). His entire output comprises about two hundred solo piano pieces, six works for piano and orchestra composed for his concert appearances as a young virtuoso, some twenty songs, and four chamber works. He is revered for idiomatic writing that opened new possibilities for the piano and appealed to amateurs and connoisseurs alike.

The genres he cultivated range from the étude and prelude, associated with teaching, and types suitable for amateurs, such as dances and nocturnes, to longer and more challenging works for his own performances and for other advanced players, including ballades, scherzos, and sonatas.

Chopin wrote twenty-seven études in all—twelve each in Opp. 10 (1829 to 32) and 25 (1832 to 37) and three without opus number. Because études are intended to develop technique, each one as a rule addresses a specific skill and develops a single figure. Among the problems addressed in Op. 25 are parallel diatonic and chromatic thirds (No. 6) and parallel sixths (No. 8) in the right hand, chromatic octaves in both hands (No. 10), and sixteenth-note filigree in the right hand above a vigorous march in the left (No. 11). Chopin's études were among the first with significant artistic content and as such were often played in concert, inaugurating the genre of the concert étude.

Chopin's twenty-four preludes of Op. 28 (1836 to 39), like the preludes in Bach's Well-Tempered Clavier, cover all the major and minor keys. They are brief mood pictures, less challenging than his études but like them in posing specific performance problems. They also illustrate the astounding inventiveness of his figuration. As shown in Example 25.7, No. 1 wraps arpeggiated chords, each sustained by the sustaining pedal, around a tenor-range melody echoed an octave above; No. 2 alternates wide two-note intervals in the left

THE LOUVE, PARIS, FRANCE. PHOTO: ERICH LESSING/ART RESOUBCE, NY

Example 25.7 Fryderyk Chopin, Preludes, Op. 28

a. No. 1 in C Major hand; No. 3 has a sweeping sixteenth-note pattern; and No. 4 features pulsating chords that sink chromatically through nonfunctional sonorities on their way to more stable chords. Such rich chromatic harmonies influenced many later composers, as did the varied textures of Chopin's piano writing.

Chopin's waltzes, mazurkas, and polonaises are all stylized dances, often composed for his students and dedicated to them when published. All are extremely idiomatic for piano in their figuration and fingerings. The waltzes and mazurkas, although only moderately difficult, show off an amateur's ability through brilliant passagework and expression of a mood. Part of Chopin's genius was finding ways to write music that even players of limited skill could perform with satisfaction and feelings of accomplishment.

His waltzes evoke the ballrooms of Vienna, but his mazurkas and polonaises are suffused with the spirit of Poland. The polonaise is a courtly, aristocratic dance in 3 over 4 meter often marked by a rhythmic figure of an eighth and two sixteenths on the first beat. Chopin's go beyond the stylized polonaise of Bach's time to assert a vigorous, at times militaristic, national identity.

The mazurka was a Polish folk dance that by Chopin's time had become an urban ballroom dance popular among high society in Paris as well as in Poland. The Mazurka in B-flat Major, Op. 7, No. 1 (1831; N.A.W.M 138), shown in Example 25.8, illustrates the genre: 3 over 4 meter with frequent accents on the second or third beat and often a dotted figure on the first beat; simple accompaniment; and four-measure phrases combined in periods that alternate, here in A B.A C.A form. The melody, which is instrumental rather than vocal in style, displays elements meant to suggest the exoticism of Polish folk music, including trills, grace notes, large leaps, and slurs beginning

d. No. 4 in E Minor

Example 25.8 Chopin, Mazurka in B-Flat Major, Op. 7, No. 1

on the last sixteenth of a beat to imitate folk bowing. When played properly, the tempo is uneven, passing quickly through the opening ascent and then allowing extra time for the sforzando, trills, and grace notes in order to suggest the longer time required for dancers to execute a turn or a lift than to take quick steps. In the third section, shown in Example 25.8b, Chopin creates an exotic sound with drone fifths, unusual harmonies, and augmented seconds while keeping the sustaining pedal on to add an unusual blur. The marking rubato indicates a slight anticipation or delay of the right-hand melody while the accompaniment continues in strict time, or a departure from the regular pulse in both hands at once. Like the sustaining pedal, rubato can be used in places where it is not marked, and nineteenth-century performers used both techniques freely as expressive devices.

A nocturne (French for “night-piece”) is a short mood piece evoking night, usually with a beautiful, embellished melody above a sonorous accompaniment. Fascination with night is linked to other aspects of Romanticism, such as interest in dreams, emotions, and the irrational. Chopin's initial conception of the nocturne owed much to the nocturnes by Irish pianist-composer John Field (1782 to 1837), who invented the genre, and Polish pianist-composer Maria Szymanowska (1789 to 1831), both of whom toured widely and were active in St. Petersburg, the capital of Russia. All three composers also drew inspiration from the vocal nocturne for two or more voices with piano or harp accompaniment, so that the nocturne for piano was essentially a song without words.

The style of Chopin's nocturnes draws on the bel canto vocal style of Bellini's opera arias (see Chapter 27 and N.A.W.M 150). The Nocturne in D-flat Major, Op. 27, No. 2 (1835; N.A.W.M 139), has an angular melody and a notably expansive accompaniment of arpeggiating chords left sounding by the sustaining pedal. It also includes virtuoso elements, such as parallel thirds and sixths (a texture characteristic of the vocal nocturne) in the right hand; wide leaps; and triplets, quintuplets, septuplets, and cadenza-like passagework in the right hand against steady sixteenths in the left.

Chopin's ballades and scherzos are longer and more demanding than his other one-movement piano works. Chopin was one of the first (along with Clara Schumann) to use the name ballade for an instrumental piece. His ballades capture the charm and fire of Polish narrative ballads, combining these qualities with constantly fresh turns in harmony and form.

His scherzos are not joking or playful, as the name of the genre implies, but serious and passionate. Yet they are tricky and quirky, which the term also implies, particularly in their rhythm and thematic material.

Chopin's three piano sonatas all have four movements: sonata form, minuet or scherzo, slow movement, and finale. Sonata No. 2 in B-flat Minor, Op. 35, includes as its third movement the funeral march that has become Chopin's most famous piece; orchestrated, the march was played at Chopin's funeral and has been heard by millions since.

The distinctive characteristics of Chopin's music stem from his life and career: Polish nationalism, the concentration on piano music, virtuosity for public performance blended with elegant lyricism for the parlor, and originality in melody, harmony, and pianism encouraged equally by the values of the salon and by competition in the marketplace. His works were shaped by the demand for amateur compositions yet spoke to connoisseurs as well, giving his music broad and enduring appeal. His pieces are as gratifying to play as they are to hear. His greatest achievement was to liberate the piano from imitations of choral or ensemble textures and make it sound the way only a piano could sound, producing a whole new repertory of idiomatic sounds and figurations.

Franz LISZT Franz Liszt (1811 to 1886) was the most electrifying piano virtuoso of his era and one of its most important composers (see biography and Figure 25.13). Already a child prodigy in Hungary and Vienna, Liszt came with his family to Paris in 1823 at age twelve. There piano manufacturer Sébastien Erard gave him a seven-octave grand piano with the new double-escapement action that allowed quick repetition, opening possibilities for virtuosity that Liszt was among the first to exploit.

Figure 25.13 summary: An illustration from an 1842 book depicting a Franz Liszt piano recital in Berlin, showing an enthusiastic and adoring crowd gathered around the performer. While the image captures the audience's admiration, the caption notes it is misleading because Liszt typically played from memory rather than a score and required silence from his audience during performances.

As a young man, Liszt frequented the salons that formed the core of Parisian intellectual and artistic life. There he met many of the most notable writers, painters, and musicians of the day. He and Countess Marie d'Agoult became lovers and lived together in Switzerland and Italy from 1835 to 1839. He recorded impressions of both countries in piano pieces collected in Album d'un voyageur (Album of a Traveler, 1837 to 38) and Années de pélerinage (Years of Pilgrimage, Books 1 and 2 composed 1838 to 61, Book 3, 1877 to 82). In many of these pieces Liszt responded to a poem (three on sonnets of Petrarch, one on Dante) or work of art (a Raphael painting, a Michelangelo sculpture).

Between 1839 and 1847 Liszt gave over one thousand solo concerts, touring Europe from Portugal and Ireland in the west to Turkey, Romania, and Russia in the east. He was the first pianist to give solo concerts in large halls, for which he pioneered the term recital, still used today. He was also the first to play a range of music from Bach to his contemporaries and to play entirely from memory, two innovations that are now long-standing traditions.

His reception at times rivaled the hysteria afforded rock superstars of the twentieth century, but he insisted on quiet while he played. In 1848, Liszt ceased touring and concentrated on composition, essentially beginning a second career. His music after 1848 is described in Chapter 29.

Liszt's music reflects many diverse influences. Although he did not speak Hungarian, he grew up in Hungary and wrote numerous works based on or inspired by Hungarian or Romani (Gypsy) melodies, including nineteen Hungarian Rhapsodies for piano. His piano style drew on the playing styles of Viennese and Parisian virtuosos, and then added his own stunning effects. After Chopin moved to Paris in 1831, Liszt adopted Chopin's melodic lyricism, rubato, rhythmic license, and harmonic innovations.

Perhaps Liszt's most important influence was not a pianist but the great Italian violinist Nicolò Paganini (1782 to 1840), one of the most hypnotic artists of the era, who raised both the technique and the mystique of the virtuoso to unprecedented heights. Stimulated by Paganini's stunning technical prowess, Liszt resolved to accomplish similar miracles with the piano. He pushed the instrument's technique to its limits both in his own playing and in his compositions.

Un sospiro, the third of his Three Concert Études (1845 to 49), illustrates Liszt's virtuosic technique. It addresses the technical problem of how to project a slower-moving melody outside or within rapid

Franz Liszt (1811 to 1886)

Liszt had an enormous impact on music, in a variety of roles. As the foremost piano virtuoso of his time, Liszt devised new playing techniques and textures for piano music. As a composer, he introduced innovations in form and harmony and invented the symphonic poem. As a conductor, he championed Bach, Beethoven, and other composers from the past, alongside Berlioz, Wagner, and other contemporaries. As a teacher, he invented the master class, in which students play for each other as well as for the teacher, and other approaches that remain standard practice today.

Liszt was born in a German-speaking region of western Hungary, now in Austria. His father, an official for Prince Nikolaus Esterhazy and an amateur musician, taught him piano from the age of six, then moved the family to Vienna so the boy could study piano further with Carl Czerny and theory and counterpoint with Antonio Salieri. At the age of eleven Liszt played several public concerts, inaugurating a dazzling career as a virtuoso. The next year the family moved to Paris, where Liszt studied theory and composition with private teachers.

After his father's death in 1827, Liszt earned a regular income teaching piano to children of the well-to-do. For the next two decades he pursued a brilliant career as a concert virtuoso. He left the concert stage in 1848 and devoted the rest of his career to composing, conducting, and teaching. From 1848 to 1861, he was court music director at Weimar, where he encouraged new music by conducting performances of many important works, among them the premiere of Wagner's Lohengrin in 1850. Several well-publicized love affairs with women of elevated social status—and honors showered upon him all over Europe—added glamour to his fame as pianist, conductor, and composer. From 1861 until about 1870, Liszt resided chiefly in Rome, where, his love affairs notwithstanding, he took minor orders in the Catholic Church. The remainder of his life was divided between Rome, Weimar, and Budapest.

Major Works Album d'un voyageur, Années de pèlerinage, 19 Hungarian Rhapsodies, Funerailles, Sonata in B Minor, and hundreds of other piano pieces; Mazeppa, Les préludes, and 10 other symphonic poems; Faust Symphony; chamber music, choral music, and songs broken-chord configurations. At the beginning, shown in Example 25.9a, the pedal sustains harmonies while the two hands brave treacherous leaps over each other to pick out a pentatonic tune. The notation makes it look as though the pianist requires three hands, but the bottom staff is taken by the left hand, the middle by the right, and the top by whichever hand is free at the time, indicating left hand by a downward stem and right by an upward stem. Later on, the melody appears in the right hand in the middle of the texture, while the left arpeggiates below and above it. At the climax, in Example 25.9b, difficult

MARKISCHES MUSEUM, BERLIN, PHOTO: LEBRECHT MUSIC & ARTS PHOTO LIBRARY

Example 25.9 Franz Liszt. Un sospiro

a. Melody at opening

Harmony

leaps and stretches show the size of Liszt's hands (he could easily span a tenth) and lead to a chromatic cadenza in parallel sixths.

The last example also illustrates Liszt's use of chromatic harmony. Here a diminished seventh chord on the fourth beat of measure 36 moves to an augmented triad created by a suspension (D-F Sharp-A Sharp), then the following major triad moves chromatically to an augmented sixth chord (A-C Sharp-E-F*). Chromatic movement from one chord to the next is a characteristic we already noticed in Chopin (see Example 25.7d), and it became a common element in the music of Liszt and later composers. The ensuing chromatic cadenza repeatedly decorates C Sharp, E, and G (Fx) with their neighbor notes B Sharp, D Sharp, F Sharp, and A, and at the end of the cadenza those neighbor notes sound together as a diminished seventh that resolves to the augmented sixth, showing that the entire cadenza served to prolong the latter chord. Such elaborate harmonic and melodic decoration of a dissonant sonority became a typical feature in late Romantic harmony and ultimately led Liszt to experiments that virtually abandon traditional tonality by prolonging dissonant sonorities without resolving to consonance.

Liszt's harmony is also marked by his interest in third relationships, equal divisions of the octave, and nondiatonic scales. Un sospiro does not move from the tonic to the dominant and back, as most tonal pieces do, but instead modulates around a circle of major thirds. D♭–F–A–D♭, dividing the octave into three equal parts, a harmonic technique pioneered by Schubert in his Wanderer Fantasy and other works (see p. 601). Liszt often used augmented triads and diminished seventh chords, which divide the octave equally, and scales based on them, such as the whole-tone and octatonic scales (discussed in Chapter 28).

Liszt's technical innovations served both to display his skill and to allow him a vast range of expression and pictorial effects. The breadth of his poetic imagination is displayed in numerous character pieces and Lieder, often inspired by the same poetic texts. His Sonata in B Minor (1853), modeled on Schubert's Wanderer Fantasy, is a masterpiece of formal innovation, using four main themes in one extended sonata-form movement subdivided into three large sections analogous to the movements of a Classic-era sonata. Such a combination of single-movement and multimovement structures is known as double-function form. The themes are transformed and combined in a free rhapsodic order, but one that is perfectly suited to the thematic material.

Much of Liszt's piano music consists of arrangements, of two types. His operatic paraphrases (some of which he called reminiscences) are free fantasies on excerpts from popular operas by Mozart, Bellini, Donizetti, and Verdi, often retelling the story by varying and combining the borrowed themes. His transcriptions of Schubert songs, Berlioz and Beethoven symphonies, Bach organ fugues, and excerpts from Wagner operas are re-creations that brought important works to audiences who were either unacquainted with the originals or pleased to hear a familiar work transformed into a brilliant virtuoso vehicle.

Liszt had a profound influence on performers and composers. As a piano virtuoso, he established most of the traditions of the modern recital, developed new playing techniques, and provided a model for others to emulate. His contributions as a composer were equally important, opening new possibilities in harmony and form while offering deeply felt music on subjects as varied as looking at an artwork or remembering an opera. Liszt may have embodied more of the characteristics—and contradictions—of the Romantic era than any other musician.

Louis Moro Gotschalk Another pianist and composer celebrated for his audacity and showmanship was the globe-trotting American Louis Moreau Gottschalk (1829 to 1869), the first American composer with an international reputation. Born in New Orleans, he showed talent at a young age and studied piano and organ from the age of five. He went to Paris in 1841 for more training, and toured France, Switzerland, and Spain in 1845 to 52. Chopin heard him in 1845 and predicted he would become “the king of pianists.” The publication of pieces based on melodies and rhythms from his mother's Caribbean heritage made Gottschalk's reputation. His incorporation of American sounds and rhythms into piano works for the European market parallels Chopin's mazurkas and Liszt's Hungarian rhapsodies, bringing elements from the peripheries of western European culture into the mainstream of piano music for virtuosos, salons, and home music-making. Through Gottschalk's music, composers from Bizet, Offenbach, and Borodin to Debussy and Ravel came to know—and at times to imitate—the dance rhythms and syncopations of the New World. Gottschalk gave his New York debut in 1853 to wildly enthusiastic reviews, playing mostly his own compositions, and spent the rest of his life touring the United States, the Caribbean islands, and South America.

During a Caribbean tour in 1857 to 58, Gottschalk wrote Souvenir de Porto Rico (N.A.W.M 141), which uses a theme derived from a Puerto Rican song and features Afro-Caribbean rhythms such as the habanera, tresillo, and cinquillo. The piece starts soft and simple, builds to a climax full of extraordinary syncopations, and fades away, depicting a band of musicians gradually approaching, passing by, and marching off into the distance. It is a perfect example of nineteenth-century piano music designed to appeal to the middle-class audience, combining an extramusical program, an exotic subject, novel melodic and rhythmic material, virtuosic showmanship, and rewards for the amateur performer.

The Romantic Legacy

Home music-making, the engine that drove composers to produce a constant stream of songs and piano pieces, declined in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, victim of new recreations for women like bicycling and of new technologies like radio and the phonograph. Fewer young people today study piano, and family gatherings to make music have now all but died out, so that Lieder, parlor songs, and piano pieces rarely serve their original function. Some pieces disappeared with that change, others were established as art music, and a few became old favorites of popular music.

The Lieder of Schubert and Robert Schumann formed the core of the art song repertoire, paralleling the Bach fugues, Handel oratorios, Haydn string quartets, and Beethoven symphonies as works that define a genre and serve as models for later composers. Foster's songs played a similar role for American parlor and popular song. Songs of all three composers have been sung in an unbroken tradition from their time to ours, preserving the genres they represented and opening the door for modern performers and listeners to explore music by their less-well-known contemporaries.

By the 1820s, some works were already regarded as classics of piano music, including Bach's Well-Tempered Clavier (now played on piano rather than harpsichord) and the sonatas of Mozart and Beethoven. The Romantic generation created piano music in new genres and idioms that contrasted with earlier classics, but some of it has proven equally enduring, including Schubert's impromptus and other short lyric pieces; Mendelssohn's Songs without Words;

Robert Schumann's character pieces; Chopin's études, preludes, dances, nocturnes, and ballades; and Liszt's études and character pieces. Together these works redefined piano music and became central to the repertoire of permanent classics for the piano. This generation still valued the sonata and fugue as prestige genres in which composers could demonstrate their mastery of a historically important form, and the sonatas of Schubert, Chopin, and Liszt have claimed a prominent place in the repertoire. Of course, the music of the composers discussed here comprises only a small part of the piano music written for the home market or for virtuoso display during the nineteenth century.

Pieces by dozens of others are also played and heard today. Yet so much was written for piano that most of it long ago fell out of fashion, as performers, critics, and historians focused on composers and works they considered to be the greatest and dismissed pieces they judged merely entertaining.

Music by women was treated differently in a century that expected musical genius only from men and regarded music as no more than a pleasing adornment for women. As these attitudes were challenged in the last decades of the twentieth century, scholars sought to unearth music by women, especially music that met the highest standards. Clara Schumann and Fanny Hensel have emerged as key figures because of their family ties to composers central to the tradition; their compositions and descriptions of their playing make clear they would have been great musicians even if Robert Schumann and Felix Mendelssohn had never been born, and their stories function almost as parables about how social attitudes nurture and hinder talent. They are far from the only women composers of interest from the period; Louise Reichardt, Josephine Lang, Pauline Viardot, Marie Pleyel, Maria Szymanowska, Louise Farrenc, and Louise Bertin have been mentioned, and others include Emilie Zumsteeg (1796 to 1857), Johanna Kinkel (1810 to 1858), and Augusta Browne (1820 to 1882). Current research is bringing to light music by many other talented women composers of the nineteenth century.

The melody-centered style of song and piano music affected every other genre of the nineteenth century. Never before or since were symphonies, chamber works, and choral music so full of songlike melodies. Opera composers used them too, as witnessed by, for example, Senta's ballad in Wagner's Der fliegende Holländer (The Flying Dutchman).

The Romantic view of music has been even more influential. We no longer view composers as artisans writing music to suit their patrons, as most earlier composers saw themselves, but regard them as artists expressing their own ideas and feelings. Originality, fostered by competition in the marketplace and inscribed by Romantic views of individual genius, became a requirement for all later composers, encouraging an ever more rapid pace of change in musical style for the next two centuries, in popular and art music alike. Romantic concepts of absolute music and of musical works as autonomous and organic remained influential throughout the twentieth century, underlying many works and innovations that were far from Romantic in style. Indeed, most of our attitudes about music, especially those we barely question, are those of the Romantic era.

26

Choral Music 619

Chamber Music 627

Orchestral Music 631

Romanticism and the

Classical Tradition 645

Romanticism in Classical Forms: Choral, Chamber, and Orchestral Music

华

Alongside the fashion for home music-making explored in the previous chapter, the nineteenth century saw phenomenal growth in public concerts. Amateur choral societies and orchestras carried amateur performance into the public sphere, and new professional orchestras, touring virtuosos, concert societies, and entrepreneurs helped to create a vibrant concert life based on ticket sales to all classes of society. Chamber music, once primarily intended for the enjoyment of the players themselves, was now often performed as concert music.

These changes were accompanied by the gradual emergence of musical classics, pieces that continued to be performed regularly long after the composer's death. From the 1780s through the 1870s, classical repertoires formed first in choral music, starting with the oratorios of Handel and Haydn, and then in chamber and orchestral music, beginning with string quartets and symphonies of Beethoven, Haydn, and Mozart. Instead of falling out of fashion after a generation, as music had always done, some pieces attained a permanent place in musical life, akin to the classics of literature or art. Living composers in these genres could aspire to similar permanence for their own music.

In part because older music for chorus, chamber ensemble, and orchestra was still being performed, nineteenth-century composers mixed retrospective genres and forms with new musical styles. They held on to their Romantic ideals—expressing feelings sincerely and projecting a distinctive personality. But composing in genres with long traditions stretching back generations, such as oratorio, string quartet, and symphony, and in traditional forms such as sonata form and fugue, prompted a more acute sense of historical awareness than is evident in the newer genres of song and piano music discussed in the previous chapter.

Composers sought to balance tradition and individuality, some leaning toward innovation, others toward emulating the past. The result is a rich tension in much of this music between Romantic content and Classical genres and forms.

Choral Music

Most nineteenth-century choral music was composed with amateur rather than professional singers in mind. Church choirs were increasingly made up of amateurs, and most choruses outside of church were organized primarily for the enjoyment of the singers themselves. In part because of their amateur status, choruses were less prestigious than orchestras and opera houses, and much of the music written for them has been neglected. The choral repertory was one of the first to be dominated by music of the past, and as a result nineteenth-century choral music is often retrospective in genre and format, though not necessarily in style.

There were three main types of choral music in the nineteenth century:

• short choral works on secular texts, usually homophonic with the melody in the upper voice, with or without accompaniment by a piano or organ;

- oratorios and similar works for large chorus and orchestra, often with one or more solo vocalists, on dramatic, narrative, or sacred texts but intended for concert rather than stage performance;

• liturgical works, anthems, hymns, and other sacred pieces written for church choirs, congregations, or home performance.

Choral music was a particularly lucrative field for publishers, since each choir member needed a separate copy of the music for every piece, and most works were also suitable for home music-making with one or two singers on each vocal part. Publishers recognized the potential of the market and issued great quantities of music for amateur and church choirs at low prices.

Amateur Choirs Amateur choruses were typically organized as choral societies, with members paying dues to purchase music, pay the conductor, and meet other expenses. One of the first, the Berlin Singakademie, began as a singing class for wealthy women. In 1791 men were accepted as well, and the group gave its first concert. By 1800, under the direction of Carl freed-rick Zelter (1758 to 1832, who later was Felix and Fanny Mendelssohn's teacher), the chorus had quintupled in size to almost 150 members. Zelter added an orchestra to allow the group to sing oratorios, and by his death in 1832 the chorus had over 350 singers.

Similar organizations sprang up in Leipzig, Dresden, Zurich, Liverpool, Manchester, Boston, and other cities all over Germany, Switzerland, England, and the United States. All-male choruses, often composed of working-class men, were especially popular in Germany and American cities with large German populations. The choral movement in France was inspired by Guillaume Wilhelm (1781 to 1842), who devised a system for teaching sight-singing in schools; the Parisian chorus he founded in 1833 spawned over 1,700 choral societies called orpheions, which became a central institution for middle-class music-making throughout France. Choral singing was seen as a way to occupy leisure time, develop a sense of unity, elevate musical tastes, and encourage spiritual and ethical values (see Source Reading). In addition, choral societies were often self-governing with elected managing boards, providing practice in democratic processes—one reason they were forbidden in autocratic Austria until later in the century.

The Value of Amateur Choirs

The choral society movement was encouraged not only by a love of music but by the belief that the right kind of music promoted ethical values, a view that goes back to Plato. Richard Wagner commented that for the English “an evening spent listening to an oratorio may be regarded as a sort of service and is almost as good as going to church.” George Hogarth, secretary of the London Philharmonic Society, praised choral singing as an instrument of moral reform.

Chinese text

The cultivation of a taste for music furnishes to the rich a refined and intellectual pursuit, which excludes the indulgence of frivolous and vicious amusements, and to the poor, a laborem dulce lenimen sweet solace of labor, a relaxation from toil, more attractive than the haunts of intemperance.... In the densely populated districts of Yorkshire, Lancashire, and Derbyshire, music is cultivated among the working classes to an extent unparalleled in any other part of the kingdom.

Festivals

Every town has its choral society, supported by the amateurs of the place and its neighbourhood, where the works of Handel, and the more modern masters, are performed with precision and effect, by a vocal and instrumental orchestra consisting of mechanics and workpeople. . . . Their employers promote and encourage so salutary a recreation by countenancing, and contributing to defray the expenses, of their musical associations; and some provide regular musical instruction for such of their workpeople as show a disposition for it. . . . Wherever the working classes are taught to prefer the pleasures of the intellect, and even of taste, to the gratification of sense, a great and favorable change takes place in their character and manners. . . . Sentiments are awakened in them which makes them love their families and homes; their wages are not squandered in intemperance, and they become happier as well as better.

George Hogarth, Musical History, Biography and Criticism, 430 to 31, as quoted by Henry Raynor, Music and Society Since 1815, 98.

Large amateur choruses also played a central role at music festivals, where singers from across a region gathered to perform. The first such festivals centered on Handel's works, beginning in England in 1759, the year of his death. Festivals were held in France during the Revolutionary era, and in the nineteenth century the tradition spread across Germany, Austria, and North America. Among the most prominent and long-running festivals were the Birmingham (England) Musical Festival (founded 1784) and the Lower Rhensh Music Festival (founded 1818) in Düsseldorf. Festival choruses were even larger than local choral societies. Figure 26.1 shows the Handel Festival in London's Crystal Palace in 1857, with an immense choir and orchestra in a huge performing space. Not to be outdone, bandleader Patrick S. Gilmore organized the World Peace Jubilee (1872) in Boston with an orchestra numbering two thousand and a chorus of twenty thousand.

Partsongs The staple of smaller mixed, men's, and women's choirs was the partsong, the choral parallel to the Lied or parlor song. Partsongs were scored for two or more voice parts and sung unaccompanied, or with the voices simply doubled on piano or organ. They could be sung by any number of voices from one on a part to a large choir, making them suitable for domestic music-making as well as public performance. Like Lieder and parlor songs, partsongs were mostly syllabic and were closely attuned to the poetry. Schubert, Mendelssohn, Hensel, Robert Schumann, Liszt, and nearly every other composer in central and northern Europe produced partsongs and choruses on patriotic, sentimental, convivial, and other kinds of verse. Nature was a favorite subject.

Figure 26.1 summary: An illustration from The Illustrated London News depicting the Handel Festival at the Crystal Palace in London in 1857. The image shows a massive assembly, including an orchestra of over three hundred and a chorus of nearly two thousand performers, filling a vast architectural space. The purpose of the image is to document the immense scale of this musical event.

Schubert's Die Nacht (N.A.W.M 142) for male voices in four parts (two tenor and two bass) is typical in using as a text a strophic, lyric poem that would serve equally well for a Lied. The poem expresses awe at the beauty of the night stars shining over the flowering fields of spring. Schubert's music captures the tranquil scene and a sense of wonder with quiet, slowly moving chords, mostly resonant major triads with occasional diminished, augmented, and seventh chords that create color and intensity. He carefully sets the text, emphasizing important words with melodic peaks and changes of dynamics. The music is perfectly suited for amateurs performing for their own pleasure. It is relatively simple and easy to sing while offering intriguing challenges, the melodies are attractive, and the lower parts also have melodic interests.

Schubert wrote about one hundred partsongs and other pieces for male voices, some accompanied by piano or guitar, making this the most common medium in his output after solo songs and piano works. Yet two centuries later his partsongs and other small choral works are little known, and the same is true for other composers. Although the most popular partsongs were sung and reprinted for decades, the amateur choruses and home music-making that supported the genre declined after the nineteenth century, and no permanent repertoire of classics developed for the partsong as there did for oratorios and Lieder. This music, however beautiful, served its immediate purpose and has been largely forgotten.

Oratorios and Other Large Works The core of the repertory for large choruses was formed by the oratorios of Handel and Haydn, a pairing immortalized in the name of the Handel and Haydn Society, founded in Boston in 1815 and one of the oldest music organizations in the United States that is still active. Another composer was added to the repertoire in 1829, when the twenty-year-old Felix Mendelssohn conducted the Berlin Singakademie in the first performance of J. S. Bach's St. Matthew Passion since the eighteenth century. Bach's St. John Passion and Mass in B Minor followed in 1833 and 1834. These performances began the revival of Bach's vocal music, although they converted pieces Bach wrote for performance in church by eight to twelve singers and an orchestra of about fifteen into concert works for large chorus and orchestra.

While performing music of the past, the choral societies and festivals also encouraged the composition of new works in the same mold. The most successful new oratorios were Felix Mendelssohn's St. Paul (1836), premiered at the Lower Rhenish Festival, and Elijah (1846), premiered at the Birmingham Festival, which themselves became standards of the choral repertory. Both treated biblical subjects and received great acclaim in Europe and North America. In both Mendelssohn employed a wide variety of styles and textures for choral movements, as Handel had done in his oratorios; evoked the style of chorales, which Bach had used in his Passions; and used links between movements to integrate each work into a cohesive whole, following the practice of his own time. In these ways, Mendelssohn rooted his oratorios in Baroque tradition while creating something new and up-to-date.

The excerpt from St. Paul in N.A.W.M 143 centers on the event that precipitated Paul's conversion to Christianity, when in the midst of persecuting Christians he is stopped by a blinding light and the voice of Jesus asking, "why do you persecute me?" (Acts 9:1 to 6). We saw in Chapter 15 how Heinrich Schütz dramatized this moment in Saul, Saul, was verfolgst du mich (N.A.W.M 81), setting only the words of Christ himself. Mendelssohn probably did not know Schütz's piece, but followed the precedent of Bach's Passions by framing the biblical narrative with movements that comment on the story and interpret its meaning for a modern audience. After an alto soloist narrates in recitative, she sings a brief aria in Lieder style, assuring the faithful that the Lord remembers his own (N.A.W.M 143a). The flash of light is recounted by a tenor in recitative over string tremolos, and Jesus's words are set for women's chorus joined by winds and brass to suggest a heavenly sound (N.A.W.M 143b). There follow two choral movements that reflect on the encounter. The first proclaims in majestic homophony the rising of the Lord and the coming of the light, contrasted with a long central fugue portraying darkness covering the earth (N.A.W.M 143c). Then comes a chorale in four-part harmony, punctuated by brass fanfares (N.A.W.M 143d). The recitatives, chorale, and fugue breathe the spirit of Bach; the interweaving of homophonic and fugal textures evokes Handel's choruses (compare N.A.W.M 108c); setting Jesus's words for chorus recalls the opening of Haydn's Creation (N.A.W.M 123); and the melodies, orchestration, and dramatic effects are of Mendelssohn's own time and style. The combination of new elements with familiar ones helped to make this work a phenomenal success, Mendelssohn's most popular piece during his lifetime.

Hector Berlioz on His Requiem

In his musical biography, Berlioz bares his Romantic soul while settling many an old score. Here he describes the qualities that made his choral music by turns overpowering and confounding to his contemporaries.

COLLECTION MICHAEL BURDEN/BRIDGEMAN IMAGES

Japanese text

The prevailing characteristics of my music are passionate expression, intense ardour, rhythmical animation, and unexpected turns. When I say passionate expression, I mean an expression determined on enforcing the inner meaning of its subject, even when that subject is the contrary of passion, and when the feeling to be expressed is gentle and tender, or even profoundly calm. This is the sort of expression that has been discovered in L'Enfance du Christ, the Ciel scene in the Damnation de Faust, and the Sanctus of the Requiem....

The musical problems I have tried to solve in these works . . . are exceptional, and require exceptional methods. In the Requiem, for example, I employ four distinct brass orchestras, answering each other at certain distances round the main orchestra and chorus. In the Te Deum, the organ at the end of the church answers the orchestra and two choirs, whilst a third large choir represents the mass of the people, taking part from time to time in a vast sacred concert. But it is more especially the form of the pieces, the breadth of style, and the deliberateness of certain progressions, the goal of which is not at once perceived, that give those works their strange gigantic physiognomy and colossal aspect.

The result of this immensity of form is, that either one entirely misses the drift of the whole, or is crushed by a tremendous emotion. At many performances of the Requiem I have seen one man listening in terror, shaken to the very depths of his soul, while his next neighbor could not catch an idea, though trying with all his might to do so.

From Memoirs of Hector Berlioz, translated by Rachel (Scott Russell) Holmes and Eleanor Holmes; annotated and the translation revised, by Ernest Newman, 488 to 89.

The availability of large forces encouraged a grandiosity that reached a pinnacle in two choral works by French composer Hector Berlioz, his Requiem (Grande Messe des morts, 1837) and Te Deum (1855). They belong not to an ecclesiastical but to a patriotic tradition inspired by the massive music festivals of the French Revolution. Both works are of huge dimensions, not only in length and number of performers but also in grandeur of conception. The Requiem requires an orchestra of 140 players, four brass choirs distributed around the performance space, four tam-tams, ten pairs of cymbals, and sixteen kettledrums, all used to achieve brilliant musical effects from representing the thunderous clamor of the Day of Judgment to the pianissimo strokes of bass drum and cymbals that punctuate the Sanctus (see Source Reading). Berlioz also composed several large choral works on secular themes, notably The Damnation of Faust (1845 to 46), on scenes from Goethe's play, and Lélio (1831 to 32), a sequel to his Symphony fantastique.

Music for Religious Services Church music remained a vehicle for worship, but in some areas it also served as music for amateur singers at home and in public gatherings.

Instead of using amateur choirs for services, Catholic churches tended Berlioz's Requiem and Te Deum Chinese text

1802 St. Petersburg

Philharmonic Society founded

1813 London Philharmonic Society founded

1815 Handel and Haydn

Society founded in Boston

1815 End of Napoleonic Wars

1818 First steamship crosses the Atlantic circa 1822 Franz Schubert,

Die Nacht

1828 Schubert, String Quintet in C Major

1829 Felix Mendelssohn conducts Bach's St.

Matthew Passion in Berlin

1830 Hector Berlioz,

Symphonie fantastique

1830 Revolutions in France and Belgium

1834 Victor Hugo, The Hunchback of Notre Dame

1836 Mendelssohn, St. Paul

1837 Berlioz, Requiem

1838 Photography developed

1841 Robert Schumann, Symphony No. 1

1842 Founding of New York

Philharmonic and Vienna

Philharmonic

1844 Mendelssohn, Violin Concerto

1844 First intercity telegraph between Baltimore and Washington

1844 First edition of The Sacred Harp

1846 Clara Schumann, Piano Trio in G Minor

1856 Lowell Mason, Bethany to employ clerics and choirboys; women were normally excluded from performing in church, as had been true for centuries. Catholic composers continued to produce concerted liturgical music. Schubert's masses in Ab and E Flat are exemplary settings of the Ordinary. Elaborate works like Gioachino Rossini's Stabat mater (1832, revised 1841) brought up-to-date operatic styles into church.

But in the second quarter of the century, renewed interest in music of the past brought about a revival of the sixteenth-century choral style of Palestrina's masses and motets. The phrase a cappella had been used since the seventeenth century to denote the old contrapuntal style known as stile antico, but in the nineteenth century it came to mean "unaccompanied," because of the mistaken belief that it referred to the lack of any instrumental accompaniment in the papal chapel where Palestrina worked. By the mid-nineteenth century, the Catholic Church was actively promoting the composition of unaccompanied choral music in a Palestrina-inspired style. In German-speaking areas especially, the Cecilian movement, named after St. Cecilia, the patron saint of music, encouraged a cappella performances of older music and of new works in similar styles.

Protestant churches also saw new developments building on music of the past. The performances of Bach's Passions at the Berlin Singakademie took place during a general revival of Lutheran music. Lutheran composers produced a flood of new music for services or home devotions that often used Bach as a model, as in numerous psalm settings by Mendelssohn. In England, Anglican musicians recovered classics from their tradition. Among new works, the anthems of Samuel Sebastian Wesley (1810 to 1876) were especially acclaimed. Women, encouraged by their participation in choral societies, began to sing in church choirs, and some served as professional church organizers, such as Elizabeth Stirling (1819 to 1895), a renowned organist and composer in London. Yet in some corners of the church the Oxford Movement, begun in 1841, sought to restore all-male choirs of boys and men and to revive sixteenth-century unaccompanied polyphony.

Music in Jewish synagogues was transformed by the Reform movement in Judaism that emerged in the early nineteenth century, when Jewish leaders influenced by the Enlightenment revised traditional beliefs, customs, and religious services. Many synagogues in Germany and elsewhere adopted practices from Protestantism, singing congregational hymns (often borrowing the melodies from Lutheran chorales) and introducing organs and choirs. The first influential composer of the movement was Salomon Sulzer (1804 to 1890), cantor at the Reform synagogue in Vienna, who updated traditional chants and wrote service music in modern styles for soloist and for choir. He also commissioned music from other composers, including Schubert's choral setting of Psalm 92 (1828), which used the Hebrew text.

In the United States, church music divided not only by sect but by race. African American churches developed their own styles. of music that would later have enormous influence. In the 1790s, Reverend Richard Allen organized the first congregation of the African Methodist Episcopal Church and published a hymnbook designed specifically for his all-black congregation. In the predominantly white churches, choirs sang music like their European brethren. Congregational singing continued to be central, fostering a market for hymns in a variety of styles. Two divergent trends in American hymnody were especially notable: the shape-note tradition in the rural South, and the European-influenced style of Lowell Mason.

.Figure 26.2 summary: A musical score for the hymn tune New Britain set to the lyrics of Amazing Grace, as printed in The Sacred Harp, 3rd edition (1859). The figure displays multiple vocal parts and stanzas of text, depicting the formal notation and harmony of this traditional shape-note hymn.

Singing masters spread the music of the Yankee tunesmiths throughout the South, composed new tunes and harmonizations in a similar style, and published both old and new songs in collections such as Kentucky Harmony (1816), The Southern Harmony (1835), and The Sacred Harp (1844). The last, the most popular of its kind, included spiritual songs used in Southern revival meetings. The tradition of singing this music is known as shape-note singing after the notation used in these collections, in which the shape of the noteheads indicates solmization syllables, allowing for easy sight-reading in parts without instrumental accompaniment. This notational system is an inventive American reconception of the syllables introduced by Guido of Arezzo. Figure 26.2 shows a song from The Sacred Harp, which uses four syllables and shapes.

The major scale is sung to the syllables fa-sol-la-fa-sol-la-mi-fa, using fa (shown with a triangle) for the notes just above a half step and sol (round), la (square), and mi (diamond) for the following whole steps. Ordinary folks sang from these collections in church and in local and regional gatherings, with roughly equal numbers of singers reading each part, using the solmization syllables the first time through each song and then singing all the verses.

In shape-note harmonizations, the tune is usually in the tenor (the second line from the bottom), as in Figure 26.2. Nineteenth-century hymn tunes could be used with any hymn text that featured the same pattern of lines, syllables, and accents, and so the tunes themselves were given names to identify them, often drawn from place names. Here the tune is New Britain, a melody of unknown origin most often sung to John Newton's poem "Amazing Grace." The harmonization is typical of the shape-note songbooks, with many open fifths (as in measures 1, 5, and 8), dissonant fourths above the bass (measures 4, 7, and 10 to 11), and parallel fifths and octaves (measures 4 to 5, 6 to 7, 7 to 8, 9, 11, and 13 to 14) that give this music its characteristic sound.

The style of the Yankee tunesmiths and shape-note singers was considered crude and primitive by musicians who knew European music. Especially significant was Lowell Mason (1792 to 1872), born in Massachusetts and trained in harmony and composition by a German emigrant musician in Savannah, Georgia. Mason returned to Boston in 1827, became president of the Handel and Haydn Society, and helped found the Boston Academy of Music to provide musical instruction for children. As superintendent of music for the Boston public schools, he introduced music into the regular curriculum, prompting other cities to follow suit and thereby establishing the American tradition of music education in schools. He deplored what he regarded as the crude music of the Yankee tunesmiths and championed a correct, modest European style, in which he composed some 1,200 original hymn tunes and arranged many others. Even today, many Protestant hymnals contain several of his melodies and arrangements. Among his most famous tunes is Bethany (1856), set to Sarah Flower Adams's 1841 poem"Nearer, My God, to Thee," shown in Example 26.1. The melody is largely pentatonic and in modified aaba form, like New Britain, but the harmony follows the rules of proper European music of the time.

the Tradition of Choral Music From Gregorian chant through the oratorios of Handel, music for choirs often led stylistic development in music.

Example 26.1 Lowell Mason, Bethany

Figure 26.1 summary: A musical score for a hymn featuring four verses of lyrics set to a melodic line and bass accompaniment. The composition consists of repetitive melodic phrases and harmonic structures across three staves. The point is to provide the musical notation and lyrics for the hymn "Nearer, My God, to Thee."

But choral music in the nineteenth century either looked back to previous eras or emulated other genres of the time, such as solo song. In histories of music that focus on the evolution of musical style, nineteenth-century choral music need hardly be mentioned. But enormous numbers of people participated in or heard choral music in concert or church, and it has exercised a significant and enduring influence on musical tastes.

Chamber Music

In chamber music, the masterpieces of the past proved inescapable for nineteenth-century composers. Music for small instrumental ensembles continued to serve as a form of home music-making for the enjoyment of the players. Chamber music intended for home performance, called Hausmusik (house music) in German, was typically aimed at middle-class amateurs.

Music for a variety of ensembles was also played in salons, home concerts, and other private gatherings across Europe and the Americas, serving as entertainment for guests and at times including professional performers as well as amateurs. But string quartets and other chamber works were increasingly played in public concerts by professional ensembles such as the Joachim Quartet, shown in Figure 26.3. Composers often treated chamber music as seriously as symphonies, especially in genres that were identified with Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven, like the string quartet, violin sonata, and piano trio. These came to be seen as classical genres that required an engagement with the past, and composers increasingly aspired to match the individuality of Beethoven's middle quartets, taking his works as a defining model as much in chamber music as in the symphony and concerto.

Figure 26.3 summary: A musical notation excerpt depicting a "second theme," showing two staves for different instruments. The top staff features a melody for Oboe 1 and Clarinet 1, and the bottom staff features a melody for Cello, with both marked pianissimo. The score includes labels x, y, and z marking recurring melodic motifs and phrases across the lines. The purpose of the figure is to illustrate the rhythmic and melodic structure and motifs of the composition's second theme.

Shooburt In his teens, Schubert wrote numerous string quartets for his friends and family to play, modeling them on works by Mozart and Haydn. He achieved an individual and appealing style in the five-movement Quintet for piano, violin, viola, cello, and bass (1819), known as the Trout Quintet because the fourth movement presents variations on his song Die Forelle (The Trout). But his most important chamber works came in his last five years of life, as he undertook what John Gingerich has called"Schubert's Beethoven Project." This was his attempt to go beyond the songs, partsongs, and pieces for piano solo and piano duet that had brought him success with the Viennese public, and to master the genres that Beethoven had raised to unprecedented prestige, from string quartet to symphony, meeting—and trying to best—the elder composer on his own turf. The products of this project include Schubert's String Quartets in A Minor (1824), D Minor (1824, nicknamed Death and the Maiden), and G Major (1826), and the String Quintet in C Major (1828). Schubert composed them hoping that Ignaz Schuppanzigh (who had premiered most of Beethoven's quartets) would play them on his series of"classical" chamber music concerts in Vienna, where the string quartets of Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven made up over 80 percent of the repertoire, and that they would achieve a similar prestige and immortality. All four attain the"heavenly length" Robert Schumann admired in Schubert's C-Major Symphony. In mood, difficulty, style, and conception, Schubert's late chamber works are intended more as dramatic pieces of concert music than as entertaining diversions for amateur players.

The String Quintet in C Major (first movement in N.A.W.M 144), which Schubert composed just two months before his death, is often considered his chamber music masterpiece. To the standard four instruments of the quartet, he added a second cello, whose rich sound appealed to Romantic sensibilities. Schubert obtains exquisite effects and constantly varying textures from this combination. He treats all five instruments as equals and groups them in ever-changing ways, often with one instrument pitted against two pairs.

For example, the beautiful E▶-major melody of the second theme in the first movement, shown in Example 26.2, appears first in the cellos in parallel thirds, with the viola providing a pizzicato bass line and violins an offbeat accompaniment. Later the parts exchange ideas, with the melody in the violins, and in the recapitulation, the melody appears in the first cello and viola.

There are strong contrasts of mood and of style within and between movements, from the profound slow movement to the playful finale, and from learned counterpoint to rustic vernacular styles. In the first movement (N.A.W.M 144), the opening theme sets up oppositions between C major and minor, and between a slow, dramatic first idea and a lilting continuation, that take the entire movement to resolve. The early emphasis on C minor foreshadows the three main keys of the exposition: C, E, and G major, the notes of the C-minor triad. The second theme moves between E, G, and B major, keys whose tonics divide the octave into equal major thirds; such a key scheme is a typical device of Schubert's, which was later emulated by Robert Schumann, Liszt, Brahms, and other composers. Unusual key relationships and stylistic juxtapositions also figure in the other movements. The slow ternary second movement contrasts an ethereal E-major melody with an impassioned F-minor middle section in a style Schubert associated with Hungarian Roma (Gypsies). In the third movement, an antic C-major scherzo passes through numerous distant keys and surrounds a slow D-major trio that is like a calm, sweet song. The sonata-rondo finale contrasts a rustic dance with a more refined urban one and with pianissimo cascades that suggest a transcendent vision. Throughout, Schubert integrates the drama of Beethoven's style with the lyricism of his own, proving himself a worthy successor to Beethoven.

Figure 26.2 summary: A musical score for a string ensemble consisting of two violins, a viola, and two cellos. The music is marked pianissimo throughout and features synchronized rhythmic patterns across the instruments, with the viola indicated as playing pizzicato. The purpose of the image is to provide a specific excerpt of musical notation for study or performance.

Mendelsohn Felix Mendelssohn wrote a large amount of chamber music, and in it we can trace his evolution from a talented boy, to a maturing composer testing his skill against Beethoven, to mastery on his own terms. He wrote numerous chamber works in his youth, using Haydn, Mozart, and Bach as his principal models. His first published compositions, written in 1822 to 25, were three piano quartets and a violin sonata. His earliest recognized masterpiece, written at the age of sixteen, was his Octet in E-flat Major for strings, Op. 20 (1825), remarkable for its symphonic conception, independent treatment of all eight instruments, and demanding string techniques; its character as a piece conceived for concert performance contrasts greatly with earlier chamber works intended primarily for the enjoyment of the players, such as Haydn's baryton trios. The Octet's scherzo, inspired by a passage from Goethe's Faust, anticipated the light, sprightly style he used to depict the fairies in his overture A Midsummer Night's Dream, written the following year. After the appearance of Beethoven's late quartets, Mendelssohn absorbed their influence in his String Quartets in A Minor, Op. 13 (1827), and E-flat Major, Op. 12 (1829). Following Beethoven's lead, Mendelssohn integrated the movements through thematic connections, while giving each movement a distinctive, highly contrasting character.

Mendelssohn's most characteristic chamber works are the Piano Trios in D Minor, Op. 49, and C Minor, Op. 66. Both are full of tuneful, attractive themes and idiomatic writing, and both feature slow movements in the manner of his Songs without Words and scherzos in his typical pixieish style.

In pieces like these, the classical genre and forms serve as vessels for the Romantic material, emphasizing expressive melody over the motivic economy and taut development typical of Beethoven.

Robert and Clara Shoomann Robert Schumann followed his "Lieder year" in 1840 and "symphony year" in 1841 with a "chamber music year" in 1842 to 43. After studying the quartets of Haydn and Mozart, he composed three string quartets, published together as Op. 41, followed by a piano quintet and a piano quartet. In his critical writings, he had argued that string quartets should resemble a four-way conversation, and his own quartets meet this ideal, with fluid interchange among the parts. He also insisted that quartet composers should build on the tradition of Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven without simply imitating them, and indeed Schumann's quartets reflect the influence of these three composers more strongly than his works in other genres yet still project his own distinctive style.

Influenced by his study of Bach, Schumann introduced a new, more polyphonic approach to chamber music in 1847 with his Piano Trios No. 1 in D Minor, Op. 63, and No. 2 in F Major, Op. 80. The two contrast markedly in mood, the first somber, the second warm and cheerful, but both balance intellectual rigor in form and counterpoint with expressive depth and originality in the themes and their development. This combination of elements made them his most influential chamber works, especially for Brahms and other German composers.

Clara Schumann composed what she regarded as her best work, the Piano Trio in G Minor, in 1846, and it may have inspired her husband's trios of the following year. The first and last movements, in sonata form, combine traits from Baroque, Classic, and Romantic models: memorable songlike themes, rich polyphonic treatment, development through motivic fragmentation and imitation, fugue (in the finale's development), and rousing codas. Schumann specified minuet tempo for the second movement but labeled it Scherzo to highlight its subtle rhythmic tricks, such as Scotch snaps and syncopations.

The slow third movement (N.A.W.M 145) is outwardly simple in form, a modified aba with a nocturne-like, somewhat melancholy first section and a more animated B section. But the effect is enriched by constantly changing textures. The opening melody appears three times, each time in a different instrument and with ever more complex accompanying figuration: alone in the piano over alternating bass notes and chords; in the violin, surrounded by flowing piano arpeggios above a bass line shared by piano and pizzicato cello; and finally in the cello, with a new arpeggio figure in the piano and pizzicato chords in the violin.

Chamber Music and the Classical Tradition By midcentury, chamber music was regarded as a conservative medium strongly linked to classical models, cultivated by those who saw themselves as continuing the classical tradition but shunned by more radical composers such as Berlioz and Liszt. Yet in creating new twists on classical forms and expressing Romantic passions in genres long associated with private music-making and intimate listening, chamber music composers in the first half of the nineteenth century offered something new and distinctive.

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Orchestral Music

the Nineteenth-century Orchestra The orchestra was central to public concert life in the nineteenth century. The number of orchestras multiplied many times over, and concert societies played an increasingly significant role, from the St. Petersburg Philharmonic Society in Russia (founded 1802) to the Musical Fund Society in Philadelphia (founded 1820). Some orchestras, such as the Society of the Friends of Music in Vienna, were made up primarily of amateurs, while others were organized and staffed by professional musicians, including the London Philharmonic (founded 1813), New York Philharmonic (1842), and Vienna Philharmonic (also 1842). Playing in an orchestra gradually became a profession, as it remains today. By the end of the century, most major cities in Europe and the Americas had professional orchestras that provided regular concert series, though not necessarily full-time work for the musicians.

In addition to concert orchestras (the main subject of this section), there were orchestras in opera houses, theaters, cafés, and dance halls, like the famous Viennese dance orchestras led by Joseph Lanner (1801 to 1843) and Johann Strauss the elder (1804 to 1849).

Most wind and brass instruments were redesigned in the nineteenth century, and several new ones were invented. Flutes, oboes, clarinets, and bassoons acquired elaborate systems of keys by midcentury (see pages 584 to 85), making the instruments easier to finger quickly and play in tune in most keys. Wind instruments with extended ranges, notably piccolo, English horn, bass clarinet, and contrabassoon, were occasionally used in orchestras, as was the tuba, invented in the 1830s. Valves were added to horns and trumpets, allowing players to reach all chromatic notes throughout the instruments' ranges, although natural horns and trumpets remained more common in orchestras until late in the century.

The greater variety of instruments provided a much wider range of colors and color combinations. Composers could now treat the winds and brass more as equals to the strings, often contrasting one section with another. In some works, bass drum, triangle, or other percussion instruments joined the timpani.

The new, fully chromatic pedal harp was sometimes added, often played by a woman because of the harp's long association with domestic music-making. Otherwise, orchestral players were usually men, and with rare exceptions—including a handful of all-women orchestras—that situation did not begin to change until the mid-twentieth century, after women had won some equal rights and become more integrated generally in the workforces of Europe and the Americas.

Orchestras grew in size from about forty players in 1800 to around fifty at midcentury, and as many as ninety by 1900. The main increase was in the number of strings, in part to fill larger concert spaces, which in turn affected the balance between strings and other instruments. Mendelssohn, Robert Schumann, and others of their generation typically wrote for an orchestra with pairs of flutes, oboes, clarinets, bassoons, and trumpets; two or four horns; alto, tenor, and bass trombone; timpani and an optional second percussionist; and around thirty strings (about eight each of violins 1 and 2 and four each of violas, cellos, and basses).

Figure 26.4 summary: An illustration depicting a crowded concert hall where an orchestra is performing under the direction of a conductor. The scene shows musicians in the pit and tiered seating filled with an audience, capturing the atmosphere of a large-scale public musical performance.

Conductors Eighteenth-century orchestras were led from the harpsichord or by the leader of the violins, who might sometimes beat time with a violin bow or roll of music paper. In the nineteenth century, this role was gradually taken over by a conductor who used a baton to beat time and cue entrances. The practice of conducting developed first at the Paris Opéra, where since the seventeenth century performances had been led by beating time with a stick, sometimes audibly; by the late eighteenth century, this had evolved into silent gestures with a baton by the chef d'orchestre (leader of the orchestra), who not only indicated the tempo and coordinated the performers on stage and in the pit but also shaped the music's phrasing and character.

German composer, violinist, and conductor Louis Spohr (1784 to 1859) is said to have introduced conducting with a baton into orchestral music while rehearsing the London Philharmonic in 1820, and the baton was soon adopted by Carl Maria von Weber (1786 to 1826), Felix Mendelssohn, and others. Although at first the conductor simply kept the orchestra together, by the 1840s conductors were drawing attention to themselves as interpreters of the music, exploiting the Romantic cult of the individual. Conductors like Louis Jullien (1812 to 1860), shown in Figure 26.4, formed their own orchestras and became stars on the same order as the instrumental virtuosos.

Audiences and Concerts Court orchestras in the eighteenth century had played to mixed audiences of nobility and city people. The new orchestras drew a primarily middle-class audience, often the same people whose enthusiasm for home music-making sustained the market for songs, piano music, and Hausmusik. Many orchestral pieces were available in piano transcriptions for home performance, which is often how people got to know them; the experience of hearing an orchestra was still a relatively rare event. Yet orchestral music carried a special prestige, in part because of the lasting impression of Beethoven's symphonies. The prominence given to orchestral music in this book and in most histories of music is out of proportion to the place it occupied in the activities of most musicians and all but the elite public during the nineteenth century, but the emphasis is justified by the importance accorded to it by audiences, patrons, critics, and the composers themselves.

Nineteenth-century concert programs offered a diversity of works and ensembles. For example, a concert by the London Philharmonic before 1850 typically featured a symphony, an aria or choral composition, a concerto, an instrumental solo or chamber work, another vocal piece, and a closing symphony or overture. Jullien's Promenade Concerts in London, less formal and aimed at a larger audience, included quadrilles and other dances (often performed jointly with military bands), choral music, and a symphony. The variety of performing forces and the alternation of instrumental and vocal music continued a tradition that went back to the first public concerts (see Chapters 16 and 20). The concert of music for a single medium, inaugurated by Liszt's solo piano recitals in 1839, did not become the rule until quite late in the century.

Balancing the taste for diverse concert programs with concerns for length, orchestras often programmed one-movement works alongside or instead of complete symphonies or concertos. Opera overtures were a perennial favorite, as were overtures to plays, such as Beethoven's Egmont Overture. Mendelssohn's A Midsummer Night's Dream (1826, discussed on pages 642 to 43) helped to popularize the new genre of the concert overture, typically a sonata-form movement with a descriptive title that was reflected in the music, and composers from Berlioz and Schumann through Brahms and Tchaikovsky followed suit. Carl Maria von Weber pioneered the concertino or Konzertstück ("concert piece"), a one-movement concerto that fused sonata form with the traditional three contrasting movements of concertos, in his Concertino for Clarinet and Orchestra (1811) and Konzertstück in F Minor for piano and orchestra (1821), and his approach was emulated by Schumann, Liszt, and others.

the Rise of the Classical Repertoire One of the most remarkable developments in the entire history of music is the emergence in the nineteenth century of a repertoire of musical classics by composers of the past. This process happened at different times for different genres; we have seen it already for oratorios, string quartets, and other chamber works, and it is also evident in the programs of the major European orchestras. In concerts of the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra, for example, about 85 percent of the pieces performed in the 1780s were by living composers; by 1820, the percentage had dropped to about 75 percent. Over the next fifty years, the situation reversed completely, so that by 1870, three-quarters of the repertoire was by composers of past generations, chiefly Beethoven, Mozart, Haydn, and the early Romantics.

Several factors lay behind this change. Haydn and Beethoven achieved such popularity during their lifetimes that their music continued to be performed after their deaths, as did some works by other composers. Music by these earlier composers was often cheaper (and thus more profitable) to publish, more readily available, and easier for amateurs to perform than the newer music. Perhaps most important, influential musicians and critics actively promoted the music of the past as a counterweight to that of the present.

Virtuoso performer-composers of the 1820s to 1840s, such as Paganini and Gottschalk, gained mass appeal through spectacular showmanship and heightened expressivity, often at the expense of the musical values esteemed by connoisseurs. By contrast, Bach, Handel, Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven had aimed their music at all listeners, seeking to provide something of value for every taste. Serious musicians now championed their works as musical classics, masterpieces that combined compositional craft with emotional depth, and immediate appeal with lasting interest.

The new seriousness of the repertoire was matched by a new seriousness in concert behavior. Increasingly, audiences were expected to be quiet and listen attentively to the music rather than be free to converse and socialize as was typical of eighteenth-century concerts. The silent audience became one of the defining traits of classical music concerts and remains so today.

The movement to establish a classical repertoire was aided by conductors like Jullien, who saw that they could star as interpreters of the classics, and by younger virtuosos such as violinist Joseph Joachim (1831 to 1907) and pianist Anton Rubinstein (1829 to 1894), who helped to popularize the concertos of Beethoven, Mozart, and other older composers. Although most of these conductors and virtuosos also composed, the primary way to prove themselves as performers gradually shifted from performing their own music to playing the classics. This was a profound change that permanently altered the nature of performers' work and training.

These changes were gradual. Orchestral concerts in the first half of the nineteenth century included much more new and recent music than is typical today. The rise of the permanent classical repertoire was just beginning in the 1820s, and its fullest effects were felt by composers in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries, as we will see in later chapters.

Yet even before 1850, composers of orchestral music strongly felt the presence of the old masterpieces. Most important was Beethoven, whose orchestral works were construed as artistic statements by the composer, not merely diverting entertainments, as most music had been regarded in earlier eras. All later composers for orchestra labored in his shadow, knowing that their works would be compared to his and thus must meet a similar standard while offering something distinctive.

Indeed, the history of orchestral music in the nineteenth century can be seen as a series of varied responses to Beethoven's example, as each composer explored ways to say something new and individual within the forms Beethoven had cultivated.

the New Romantic Style: Shooburt One response, pioneered by Schubert in the 1820s, was to maintain the outward form of the symphony while infusing it with content derived from the new Romantic style developed in Lieder and piano pieces. This style included a greater focus on songlike melodies, adventurous harmonic excursions, innovative textures, enchanting instrumental colors, strong contrasts, and heightened emotions. For the

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FIGURE 26.4 Concert at Covent Garden Theatre in London, showing Louis Jullien (in the center of the picture) conducting his orchestra (in front) and four military bands (on risers in back). In the middle of the musicians, who are surrounded on three sides by the audience, Jullien conducts without a score, turning as needed to give cues—as much the virtuoso (and center of attention) as any opera star.

Example 26.3 Schubert, Unfinished Symphony, First Movement

a. First theme mature Schubert and his fellow Romantics, themes were the most important element in any form, rather than the phrase structure and harmonic structure emphasized in eighteenth-century descriptions of form (see Chapter 22). While Classic-era symphonists demonstrated their originality through the ways they treated conventional material, Schubert and his successors sought to make both their thematic material and their treatment of it as individual and memorable as possible.

Schubert wrote several symphonies in his teens and early twenties, but his first attempt at a large-scale symphony came in 1822 with the two movements now called the Unfinished Symphony, originally planned as a four-movement work in B minor. After a brief, mysterious introductory subject played by the strings without accompaniment, the first movement presents a soulful, undulating, singable melody, shown in Example 26.3a, that is quite different from the typical first themes of his predecessors and less easily fragmented into motives for symphonic development. Its soaring extension, full of anguish and longing, was also a departure. The second theme, shown in Example 26.3b, is a relaxed, graceful melody in the style of the Ländler, an Austrian country dance. These two themes share three rhythmic ideas—marked x, gamma , and z in the example—which dominate the extensions that follow each theme and thus unify the entire exposition into an organic whole.

Instead of centering the development section and coda on these two themes, as Haydn or Beethoven might have done, Schubert focuses on the introductory subject, revealing the almost demonic potential latent in its initial mysterious appearance. In this way, Schubert was following the custom for symphonic development while devoting the main thematic areas to the presentation of memorable, lyrical melodies like those of his songs and piano works.

In his Symphony No. 9 in C Major (1825), known as the Great, Schubert blended his Romantic lyricism and Beethovenian drama within an expanded Classical form. The first movement opens with an unaccompanied melody in C major played softly in the horns, shown in Example 26.4. This melody

Example 26.4 Schubert, Great Symphony in C Major, Opening of First Movement

Figure 26.4 summary: A musical score snippet depicting the second theme for horns 1 and 2. The passage features a melodic line with varied dynamics, starting at piano and ending at pianissimo, characterized by rhythmic patterns of dotted notes and accents. Its purpose is to provide the notation for a specific thematic section of a musical composition.

repeats several times with varied accompaniments as in a set of variations, alternating with melodically related ideas that depart from tonic harmonies. Only in retrospect do we discover that this lyrical section is a long, slow introduction to a sonata-form Allegro, whose rhythmically charged, easily fragmented first theme shows the influence of Haydn and Beethoven. Typical of Schubert's approach to sonata form is the three-key exposition, in which the second theme begins in E minor before settling into the dominant, G major. This tonal plan combines Schubert's long-standing interest in key relationships of a third with the traditional polarity of tonic and dominant. Elements of the opening horn melody return during the second and closing themes, development, and coda, binding together the lyrical introduction and the more motivic, constantly developing Allegro.

Robert Schumann praised the C-Major Symphony's "heavenly length" (see Source Reading), appreciating the expansion of the form of all four movements to accommodate Schubert's beautiful melodies and orchestral effects.

Source Reading

Robert Schumann on Schubert's Symphony in C Major

When he visited Schubert's brother Ferdinand in 1839, Robert Schumann discovered the manuscript of Schubert's Great Symphony in C Major, which had never been performed in public. Through Schumann's intercession it was performed that same year at the Gewandhaus Concerts in Leipzig under the direction of Mendelssohn. In a review of the piece the following year, Schumann praised it as revealing both an unknown aspect of Schubert and a new approach to the symphony.

Chinese text

I must say at once that anyone who is not yet acquainted with this symphony knows very little about Schubert. When we consider all that he has given to art, this praise may strike many as exaggerated, partly, no doubt, because composers have so often been advised, to their chagrin, that it is better for them—after Beethoven—"to abstain from the symphonic form."

On hearing Schubert's symphony and its bright, flowery, romantic life, the city Vienna crystallizes before me, and I realize how such works could be born in these very surroundings..... Everyone must acknowledge that the outer world—sparkling today, gloomy tomorrow—often deeply stirs the feeling of the poet or the musician; and all must recognize, while listening to this symphony, that it reveals to us something more than mere beautiful song, mere joy and sorrow, such as music has ever expressed in a hundred ways, leading us into regions that, to our best recollection, we had never before explored. To understand this, one must hear this symphony. Here we find, besides the most masterly technicalities of musical composition, life in every vein, coloring down to the finest gradation, meaning everywhere, sharp expression in detail, and in the whole, a suffusing romanticism that other works by Franz Schubert have already made known to us.

And then the heavenly length of the symphony, like that of a thick novel in four volumes (perhaps by Jean Paul, who was also never able to reach a conclusion), and for the best reason—to permit readers to think it out for themselves. How this refreshes, this feeling of abundance, so contrary to our experience with others when we always dread to be disillusioned at the end and are often saddened through disappointment.

From Neue Zeitschrift für Musik 12 (1840): 82 to 83, after the translation by Paul Rosenfeld in Robert Schumann, On Music and Musicians, ed. Konrad Wolff, 108 to 11.

Schubert had found an orchestral voice that could stand any comparison. Unfortunately, neither the Unfinished Symphony nor the Great C-Major Symphony was publicly performed until many years after the composer's death. Yet this gave them a special cachet: the story of their posthumous discovery, first performances, and ultimate success was touchingly Romantic in itself, fitting Schubert's image as a composer who died too young and spurring the notion that his life was itself an "unfinished symphony"—which later became the title of a book and a movie about his life.

Programmatic Romanticism: Berleeohz An approach different from Schubert's was reconceiving the symphony as a programmatic work and allowing it to assume an unconventional form to suit the program. Following Beethoven's lead in his Fifth and Sixth Symphonies, Hector Berlioz (1803 to 1869; see biography and Figure 26.5) shaped his symphonies around a series of emotions that tell a story.

In the Symphonie fantastique (Fantasy Symphony), which Berlioz wrote in 1830 while still a conservatory student and revised before its publication in 1845 (finale in N.A.W.M 146), the composer dwells on the passions aroused by his thoughts and fantasies about a woman whose love he hopes to win. He based the story on his own infatuation with the Irish actress Harriet Smithson. Beethoven had subjected the main theme in both his Third and Fifth Symphonies to a series of exciting adventures (see Chapter 24). Berlioz followed this precedent in his device of the idée fixe (fixed idea or obsession, a term he borrowed from psychology). This was a melody that he used in each movement to represent the obsessive image of the hero's beloved, transforming it to suit the mood and situation at each point in the story.

To ensure that his listeners would understand the feelings and experiences that inspired the symphony, Berlioz originally titled it Episode in the Life of an Artist: Fantasy Symphony in Five Movements and provided it with an autobiographical program (see N.A.W.M 146 for the program and complete idée fixe). The work is thus a musical drama whose words are not spoken or sung, but read silently; Berlioz wanted listeners to regard the program"in the same way as the spoken words of an opera, serving to introduce the musical numbers by describing the situation that evokes the particular mood and expressive character of each." The situations are depicted in the passionate prose of a young and sensitive artist. Literary influences in the program include Goethe's Faust and Thomas De Quincey's Confessions of an English Opium Eater. Musical influences, besides Beethoven, are from the opera theater: Gluck, Spontini, Rossini, Weber, and Meyerbeer (see Chapters 21 and 27). Berlioz also borrowed from himself, drawing the symphony's main theme from his cantata Herminie (1828), the opening melody of the slow introduction from an early song, part of the third movement from his Messe solennelle (Solemn Mass, 1824), the fourth movement from his opera Les francs-juges (1826), and perhaps also parts of the second and fifth movements from other unfinished projects.

The first movement, “Dreams and Passions,” features a slow introduction followed by an Allegro that has the outward characteristics of sonata form, including contrasting themes and a repeated exposition. The idée fixe, a melody with the long, arching line of an operatic aria, serves as the first theme,

Hector Berlioz

(1803 to 1869)

Berlioz, who created more than a dozen works that have gained the status of musical classics and who wrote the nineteenth-century "bible" on orchestration, played flute and guitar but never learned how to play piano. Born in southeastern France, he developed a fascination for music, taught himself harmony from textbooks, and began composing in his teens. His father sent him to medical school in Paris, but Berlioz frequented the opera, studied composition at the Paris Conservatoire, and eventually abandoned medicine for a career as a composer.

After several attempts, Berlioz won the Prix de Rome in 1830, a composition prize that paid a stipend for him to live and work in Rome. By then he had become enchanted with Beethoven's symphonies, Shakespeare's plays, and the Irish actress Harriet Smithson, whom he saw play Ophelia in Hamlet. His obsession for her inspired his Symphonie fantastique, an attempt to express his feelings in the context of a Beethovenian symphony. Its premiere in 1830 established Berlioz as a leader of the radical wing of composers in France.

Smithson spurned Berlioz for good reason: they had never met, and practically all she knew of him were mad love letters he sent her. Berlioz then became engaged to a nineteen-year-old piano teacher, Camille Marie Moke, but he had hardly begun his required residence in Rome when she turned around and married piano maker Camille Pleyel. In his autobiography, Berlioz recalls his response: "I must at once proceed to Paris and kill Camille and her mother. After that, of course, I would have to commit suicide."

He made it as far as Nice, then wisely relented and returned to Italy. Back in Paris in 1832, he courted Smithson again and they married the following year. The ideal Ophelia, however, turned into an alcoholic, and their marriage fell apart after a few years and the birth of a son.

Although Berlioz won a few fervent advocates for his compositions, his music was too radical to win steady support from the musical institutions in Paris. He turned to music criticism as his chief profession, as Robert Schumann did around the same time. He got his music played by putting on concerts himself, working as his own impresario, and produced a flood of important compositions.

In addition to being a brilliant prose writer, Berlioz was one of the most literary of composers. Many of his compositions were inspired by his reading of Virgil (his opera Les Troyens, The Trojans), Shakespeare (Romeo and Juliet, King Lear Overture, Beatrice and Benedict, and other works), Goethe (La damnation de Faust), and other writers.

In 1835 he began to conduct, and soon he became one of the first to make a career of orchestral conducting, touring across Europe presenting his own works and music by other composers.

After Smithson died in 1854, he married the singer Marie Recio, with whom he had long had an affair. In his final years, Berlioz grew ill and felt bitter at the lack of recognition for his music in France. He died at sixty-five, having outlived two wives, his son, and most of his family and friends.

Major Works 3 operas: Benvenuto Cellini, Les Troyens, and Béatrice et Bénédict; 4 symphonies, including Symphonie fantastique, Harold en Italie (with viola solo), and Roméo et Juliette (with soloists and chorus); 4 concert overtures; over 30 choral works, including Requiem, La damnation de Faust, Te Deum, and L'enfance du Christ; orchestral song cycle Les nuits d'été and other songs with orchestra or piano accompanied by an irregularly throbbing figure that imitates the artist's racing heartbeat at first sight of the woman. Example 26.5a shows the first phrase of the theme in its original form. The development presents a series of dramatic episodes, including a full statement of the main theme in the dominant, and culminates in a triumphant tutti fortissimo statement of the theme in the tonic that is more a resplentant apotheosis than a recapitulation. For the second movement, "A Ball," Berlioz replaced the classical minuet with a waltz, enacting a scene at a ball where the artist catches a glimpse of his beloved, embodied by the waltzlike version of her theme shown in Example 26.5b. The slow third movement, "In the Country," is a pastorale in F major with piping shepherds, birdcalls reminiscent of Beethoven's Pastoral Symphony (see Chapter 24), and distant thunder.

As the artist walks in the country, he suddenly thinks of his beloved, interweaving phrases of her theme as in Example 26.5c—its rhythms subtly at odds with the pastoral § meter—with ominous instrumental recitatives that suggest his worries about her feelings for him. In the fourth movement, "March to the Scaffold," he dreams of his own execution in a macabre orchestral tour de force. Only the opening of her motive appears, just before he is guillotined at the end. The fifth and final movement (N.A.W.M 146) depicts a "Dream of a Witches' Sabbath," presenting transformations of the idée fixe and two other themes, first singly, then in combination. The new

Example 26.5 Hector Berlioz, Symphonyie fantastique, comparing first phrase of the idée fixe in its various transformations a. First movement. “Dreams and Passions” b. Second movement. "A Ball" c. Third movement. “In the Country” d. Fifth movement, “Dream of a Witches' Sabbath” form of the idée fixe, in Example 26.3d, is a grotesque caricature, implying that the beloved's depravity has been revealed. One of the other themes is the chant sequence Dies irae (N.A.W.M 6b), part of the Mass for the Dead; this movement inaugurated a long tradition of using the Dies irae, especially its opening phrase, as a symbol of death, the macabre, or the diabolical.

The outlines of a traditional symphony are still here, in movements that resemble (or perhaps allude to) a sonata with slow introduction, a dance in minuet-and-trio form, a slow quasi-rondo form, and a fast finale. But the material is constantly developing, seldom repeated exactly, and the sequence of events is so unusual that it would suggest a narrative even if none were provided. Throughout, the transformations of the main theme help to tell the story, as it assumes a wide range of contrasting characters.

Symphonie fantastique is original not only in bending the symphony to serve narrative and autobiographical purposes but also in Berlioz's astounding ability to express the emotional content of his drama in music of great communicative power. Berlioz unified the symphony by introducing a recurring theme and by developing the dramatic idea through the five movements, extending procedures Beethoven had used in his Fifth, Sixth, and Ninth Symphonies. Multimovement works in which one or more themes recur or are recollected in later movements are said to be in cyclic form, and Berlioz helped to establish a precedent that was followed by many later composers from Robert Schumann to Charles Ives. Equally important is the variety he created by transforming his themes and using an astonishing array of instrumental colors, which lend a distinctive character to each passage. These include muted strings to suggest dreaming, harps for the ball, English horn and an offstage oboe imitating shepherds' pipes, snare drum and cymbals for the march to the scaffold, church bells, and violins played with the wood of the bow (col legno) in the witches' dance, creating a brittle sound evocative of skeletons rattling. Berlioz's vivid aural imagination and his inventive orchestral sonorities shine through in nearly every measure.

For his second symphony, Harold en Italie (Harold in Italy, 1834), Berlioz drew the title from Lord Byron's poem Childe Harold's Pilgrimage and the substance from recollections of the composer's sojourn in Italy. The piece features a solo viola, though less prominently than in a concerto—one reason why Paganini, who commissioned the work as a showpiece for viola, refused to play it. A recurring theme in the viola appears in each movement and is combined contrapuntally with the other themes. The finale sums up the themes of the preceding movements, as in Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, but does not end with a triumphant chorale. Indeed, the viola, like Byron's antihero protagonist Harold, remains a largely passive observer—at least until he flings himself into the final"Orgy of the Brigands"—so that the work inverts the heroism of Beethoven's symphonies.

In his later symphonies, Berlioz departed even further from the traditional model. In Roméo et Juliette (Romeo and Juliet, 1839, revised circa 1847), which he called a “dramatic symphony,” he combined orchestra, soloists, and chorus in an unstaged concert drama, building in its conception on the precedent set by Beethoven's Ninth Symphony. The Grande symphonie funèbre et triomphale (Grand Funeral and Triumphant Symphony, 1840) for military band with optional strings and chorus is one of the early masterpieces of band music.

In addition to his symphonies, Berlioz composed concert overtures following the precedent of Beethoven's overtures and Mendelssohn's A Midsummer Night's Dream. The two earliest, Waverley (1828) and King Lear (1831), are based on English literature, capturing the overall mood of a novel by Walter Scott and a Shakespeare play. The Roman Carnival (1844) is a brilliant showpiece that has become a concert favorite, and The Corsair (1844) depicts a fast sailing vessel at sea and conveys a sense of independence that appealed to Romantic sensibilities.

Berlioz's Symphony fantastique and other symphonic works made him the leader of the Romantic movement's radical wing. All subsequent composers of program music would be indebted to him. He enriched orchestral music with new resources of harmony, color, expression, and form. The idée fixe and his use of cyclic form gave impetus to the cyclical symphony of the later nineteenth century (see Chapter 30). His orchestration initiated a new era in which instrumental color rivaled harmony and melody as an expressive tool for composers. He codified his practice in the first book on the subject, his Treatise on Instrumentation and Orchestration (1843).

Classical Romanticism: Mendelsohn Felix Mendelssohn's works, compared with those of Berlioz written during the same period, have a much more Classic sound. For one thing, Mendelssohn was rigorously trained in classical genres and forms in his youth, writing thirteen string symphonies that gave him a mastery of form, counterpoint, and fugue and helped to determine his personal style. For another, his mature symphonies (which are numbered by date of publication rather than composition) follow classical models, although with departures that show the strong impact of Romanticism. In line with Romantic interest in the past, he wrote his Symphony No. 5 in D Minor (Reformation, 1830, revised 1832) to celebrate the Protestant Reformation and concluded it with a movement based on Luther's chorale Ein feste Burg. In his Symphony No. 2 in B-flat Major, titled Lobgesang (Song of Praise, 1840), he adds solo voices, chorus, and organ, following Beethoven's Ninth Symphony in incorporating voices while blending the genres of symphony and cantata. Mendelssohn's two most frequently performed symphonies both carry geographical nicknames: No. 3 in A Minor, the Scottish (1829 to 42), and No. 4 in A Major, the Italian (composed 1833 and published posthumously; a revised version of 1834 was left incomplete). They preserve impressions he gained of sounds and landscapes on trips to Italy and the British Isles, which he also recorded in drawings and paintings like the one in Figure 26.6.

The Italian Symphony celebrates the sunny and vibrant south, with a slow movement suggesting a procession of chanting pilgrims and a finale suggesting people dancing a spirited saltarello and tarantella. Mendelssohn opens the first movement with a melody, shown in Example 26.6, whose sighing lurches, sequences, and repeated postponement of closure are inspired by Italian opera, although its wide range and many leaps lend it an instrumental rather than vocal character. The second theme is similarly constructed, giving both thematic areas more the quality of well-shaped tunes than of material for future development.

Perhaps as a consequence, the development section dwells on a new melodic idea, a motive that gradually builds to a new theme in combination with the opening figure of the first theme. All three themes are

VILLA MEDICI, ROME, ITALY. PHOTO: SCALA/ART RESOURCE. NY

Figure 26.6

recalled in the recapitulation, binding the movement together. In this way, Mendelssohn neatly accommodates his tuneful themes within the developmental structure of sonata form.

Mendelssohn's genius for musical landscapes is evident in his concert overtures The Hebrides (also called Fingal's Cave, 1832), on another Scottish topic, and Meeresstille und glückliche Fahrt (Becalmed at Sea and Prosperous Voyage, 1828 to 32), on two poems by Goethe. His masterpiece in the genre is A Midsummer Night's Dream, inspired by Shakespeare's play. Written in 1826 when he was seventeen, it set the standard for all subsequent concert overtures. It opens with a series of magical chords, as if to say"once upon a time," then depicts the fairies fluttering and dancing in a brilliant example of perpetual motion for a full orchestra trained to tiptoe like a chamber ensemble. The light, bustling string texture of this passage became a trademark of Mendelssohn's scherzos. The classical overture structure of sonata form without repeats is perfectly clear, but the listener's attention is drawn to Mendelssohn's imaginative use of musical figuration and orchestral color to evoke everything from fairy dust to the braying of the character Bottom after his head is magically transformed into that of a jackass. Seventeen years later, Mendelssohn wrote additional incidental music, including the famous Wedding March, for a production of the play.

A virtuoso pianist, Mendelssohn wrote four concertos for his own performances, the last two of which were published in his lifetime: No. 1 in G Minor (1831) and No. 2 in D Minor (1837). Although the showpieces composed by most virtuosos of the time revel in startling effects and technical display—more for their own sakes than for their musical inspiration—Mendelssohn emphasized the musical content, seeking to achieve the same balance of audience appeal and lasting value that connoisseurs praised in the concertos of Mozart and Beethoven. For Mendelssohn as for Beethoven, the virtuosic display of the soloist was a vehicle for the composer's expression, not a purpose in itself.

The same could be said for Mendelssohn's Violin Concerto in E Minor (1844; first movement in N.A.W.M 147). The three movements, played without pause, are linked by thematic content and connecting passages: a transition leads from the opening Allegro molto appassionato to the lyrical Andante, and an introduction to the last movement alludes to the first movement's opening theme. In the first movement, Mendelssohn has the soloist state the main theme at the outset, skipping the usual orchestral exposition, and places the cadenza just before rather than after the recapitulation. Essentially, he reworked concerto form into a variant of sonata form with a featured soloist, a reformulation that is typical of Mendelssohn and of his age in finding new ways to reinterpret yet continue tradition.

The middle movement, in aba' form, is a romance for violin and orchestra driven by a slowly unfolding melody. The finale, in sonata or sonata-rondo form, has the lightness of a scherzo. Throughout the concerto, the music for the soloist is at times lyrical and expressive, at times highly virtuosic, exhibiting the full range of what a violin can do. The violin and orchestra are partners, and the leading melodies move seamlessly from soloist to orchestra and back. Although there are plenty of opportunities for the soloist to dazzle, as was expected in a Romantic showpiece, the concerto always seems motivated by a greater poetic purpose, as Mendelssohn uses the contrasts of virtuosity with lyric expression and of solo with orchestra to delineate the form, create variety, and convey deep feelings. The resulting concerto has become one of the most popular in the repertoire.

Romantic Reconceptions: Robert Shoomann In the eyes of many composers and listeners, the prestigious status that Beethoven had conferred on the symphony made it a rite of passage to full recognition. For example, Clara Schumann believed that composers were judged by their symphonies and operas, and she wrote in her diary, "My greatest wish is that Robert should compose for orchestra." When he did so, Robert Schumann applied the same lofty idealism as in his piano music and music criticism. His primary orchestral models were Schubert's Great C-Major Symphony and the symphonies and concertos of Mendelssohn, which showed how songlike themes could be integrated into developmental forms.

Schumann completed his First Symphony in B-flat Major in the spring of 1841 and drafted another that same year—his “symphony year,” following the “Lieder year” of 1840. The music of the First, known as the Spring Symphony, is fresh and spontaneous and is driven by inexhaustible rhythmic energy. Reflecting his absorption in poetry during the previous year, Schumann took inspiration from a poem about spring whose every line uses the same accentual rhythm. That rhythm is echoed in the opening motto of the first movement (N.A.W.M 148), first heard in trumpets and horns in the slow introduction, that becomes the principal figure of the first theme and pervades the development and coda.

At the recapitulation, Schumann replaces the first theme with a powerful restatement of the slow introduction's opening passage, and in the coda he remakes the motto rhythm into a new, lyrical theme; both moments upend listeners' expectations and make the movement a continual adventure while drawing it into a tighter whole. The symphony was an immediate success and established Schumann as a composer of large instrumental forms.

The other symphony from 1841, in D minor, had a mixed reception at its premiere that December, and Schumann laid it aside. After completing two more symphonies in 1846 and 1850, Schumann returned to the D minor in 1851, revising it as Symphony No. 4. It represents his most radical rethinking of symphonic form. The four movements are played without a break, joined by harmonic links and transitional passages. Moreover, many of the themes are variations of each other, unifying the work as an extended development of a small number of ideas. The whole symphony can be heard as one large sonata form, in which the first movement serves as slow introduction, exposition, and beginning of an extensive development section; the slow movement and scherzo are episodes within the development; and the finale serves as recapitulation and coda. This double-function form recalls the succession of linked movements in Schumann's Carnaval (see Chapter 25), yet with much stronger connections to the forms, genres, and procedures of the Classic period.

the Romantic Legacy Schubert, Berlioz, Mendelssohn, and Robert Schumann each found a distinctive solution to the problem of how to write symphonic music after Beethoven. But while they won a place beside Beethoven in the repertory, they did not displace him, and orchestral composers in the second half of the century continued to struggle against his potentially overwhelming influence (see Chapters 29 and 30). New genres like the symphonic poem, pioneered by Liszt, offered one path, while composers like Brahms and Bruckner engaged the symphony tradition directly. All these later composers drew on models in the Romantic generation, finding in them a rich treasure of new possibilities: Berlioz's symphonies and Mendelssohn's overtures for programmatic and descriptive music, Mendelssohn and Schumann for links and continuities between movements, Berlioz and Schumann for transformation of themes, and all of them for ways to integrate the Romantic emphasis on melody, surprising harmonies, and novel orchestral effects into the symphonic tradition.

Romanticism and the Classical Tradition

The first half of the nineteenth century was a paradoxical age in music. The period saw extraordinary growth in concert life, music publishing, instrument manufacture, amateur music-making, touring virtuosos, and professional orchestras and chamber ensembles, all of which reinforced each other and spurred composers to produce a torrent of new music. These same factors also helped to establish a repertoire of classical masterpieces from Handel and Bach through Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven. Composers of music for large chorus, chamber ensemble, or symphony orchestra could see this process at work and aspired to similar greatness. They competed for performances, recognition, and sales with the masters of the past—and with their contemporaries—by introducing something new and individual into genres and forms that were hallowed by tradition. In varying degrees, they blended elements of Romanticism into classical frameworks from the eighteenth century.

Many of the works they produced—including Schubert's late chamber works and Unfinished and Great C-Major Symphonies; Berlioz's Requiem and Symphony fiantastique; Mendelssohn's St. Paul and Elijah, Italian and Scottish Symphony, and Violin Concerto; and Robert Schumann's piano quintet, piano trios, and symphonies—won wide popularity and became classics in their own right. Pieces by these and other composers of their time have become staples of the repertoire. For many of these works in eighteenth-century genres and forms, the relationship to past music is an important aspect of their meaning, part of what makes the music interesting, distinctive, and worth hearing many times over. In other compositions, the tension between new and old is no less strong, but what is innovative seems more significant than the references to tradition. As we will see in later chapters, composers defining themselves in relation to the classical tradition is a theme that grew stronger for at least the next century and produced a remarkable variety of responses.

Of course, few pieces attained a permanent place in the repertoire during their composer's lifetime. Most works were printed, performed, and eventually eclipsed by newer works, the typical fate of music in earlier centuries. But with music of the past playing an increasing role, some composers were lucky enough to find performers or critics to champion their works after their deaths, as Mendelssohn had done for Bach, Robert Schumann for Schubert, and Clara Schumann for her husband. Berlioz, for example, had to wait until the second half of the twentieth century for full acceptance, aided by recordings of his monumental works.

Meanwhile, some of the utilitarian music of the day won a surprising permanence. The orchestral waltzes and other dances of Joseph Lanner and Johann Strauss the elder, numerous hymns by Lowell Mason and his contemporaries, and the music of The Sacred Harp have all been performed continuously since they first appeared, sustained by living traditions in which their music is useful and even revered. As we will see in later chapters, the nineteenth and twentieth centuries spawned many such repertoires of classic works from the past, even while new styles and types of music emerged at a dizzying pace.

27

The Roles of

Opera 646

Italy 649

France 659

Germany 663

Russia 665

The United States 666

Opera as High

Culture 670

Romantic Opera And Musical Theater To Midcentury

华

While purely instrumental music gained prestige, opera continued to be a central part of musical life, especially in Italy and France. Opera served as elite entertainment and also as the source of music that was popular with audiences of all classes and professions. Composers followed national trends, even while they developed new forms and approaches and borrowed ideas across national boundaries. Nationalism, both political and musical, brought new themes into opera. Italian bel canto opera dominated the field, but new types of opera were cultivated in France and Germany that exercised a lasting influence, and Russian opera gained independence after a century of absorbing foreign styles. In addition, a lively operatic life emerged in the Americas, centered on the performance of European operas. At the same time, a new form of musical theater—the minstrel show—sprang up in the United States and became the first musical export from North America to Europe.

Watercolor painting by Felix Mendelssohn, titled Amalfi in May 1831. A talented amateur artist, Mendelssohn sketched, drew, and painted throughout his journeys in Italy and Britain. This is a view of the Gulf of Salerno from Amalfi, near Naples, in southern Italy.

HIP/ART RESOUBCE, NY

The Roles of Opera

The first half of the nineteenth century was in many ways a golden age for opera. New opera theaters were erected all over western Europe. The craze even jumped the Atlantic and took root in the New World. Most opera theaters were run for profit by an impresario, usually backed by government subsidies or private support. Members of the upper and middle classes attended fully staged opera, and for some people, being seen at the opera asserted their social status even more than their love of music. Opera was and remains big business, as the poster for the Paris premiere of Meyerbeer's Les Huguenots in Figure 27.1 makes clear in announcing that free passes, or entrées de faveur, would not be honored. Publishers such as Ricordi in Italy and Escudier in France even started their own newspapers (the Gazetta musicale di Milano and La France musicale) that mixed advertising with substantive articles about new works and reviews of important performances.

Figure 27.1 summary: Three musical notation grids comparing the original score with an ornamented version of music from Rossini's The Barber of Seville. The ornamented versions replace simple, long-held notes or basic melodic lines with dense, rapid sequences of notes and complex melodic flourishes. The point is to demonstrate the significant increase in melodic complexity and technical virtuosity in the ornamented version compared to the original.

Academie Royale de Musique

Aujourd'hui Lundi 29 Fevrier 1836, La Première Représentation Des

Opéra en 5 actes.

Chant: Mrs A. Nourrit, Levasseur, Prevot, Ferdinand-Prevost, Massol. Dérivis, Wartel, Serda, Trévaux, Bernadet, Charpentier, Alizard, Mossel, Gosselin, Dorus-Gras, Facon, Flécheux, Laurent.

Danse: M superscript rs Mazillier, Simon, Quérieau, Desplaces, Montessu, Roland, Forster, Maria, Blangy, Albertine, Florentine.

Toutes les Entrées de faveur sont suspendues.

(On commencera à 7 heures précises.)

Toutes les Places ayant été louées d'avance, les Bureaux ne seront pas ouverts.

Sadresser, pour l'alocation des loges, au Bureau de la location de l'Académie Royale de Musique, rue Grange-Batelitre, Hôtel Choiseu

le Bureau de Location est Ouvert, Tous Les Jours, de 11 Heures À 4 Heures.

Outside the opera house, excerpts from opera cropped up everywhere, comprising an important part of popular as well as elite culture. Individual numbers and complete scores were published in versions for voices and piano and were performed in salons and by amateurs at home; selections from operas were transcribed for piano; overtures and arias appeared on concert programs in original form or arrangements; operas were abridged and parodied in burlesques, puppet shows, and other forms of popular theater; and melodies from opera arias became staples of café orchestras and even barrel organs. All types of opera from the period embody this dual appeal to the elite and to the public at large.

Early in the century, the balance of interest in Italian opera remained focused on beautiful singing. In French and German opera, the orchestra played an increasingly significant role in depicting scenes, conveying emotions, portraying the dramatic situation, and carrying the musical continuity, and beginning in the 1840s Italian composers followed suit. Star singers were still paid more than composers, no doubt because their reputations sold tickets, as suggested by the advertisement in Figure 27.1 for Les Huguenots, which lists the principal singers and dancers with nary a mention of the composer.

Often the composer's score was only the starting point for a performance, subject to cuts and substitutions at the insistence of the singers, the impresario, or state censors. But over the course of the century, the composer gradually became the most prominent figure in the collaborative effort of creating an opera, instead of ranking behind the librettist and singers as was typical in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. New operas by the leading composers became major events, and successful ones were performed numerous times and restaged in many cities.

By 1850, a permanent repertory of operas began to emerge, paralleling the classical repertoire in the concert hall. At the center of this repertory were operas by Rossini, Bellini, Donizetti, Meyerbeer, and Weber, alongside the late Mozart operas and the early operas of Verdi (discussed in Chapter 28).

1814 to 24 Reign of Louis the eighteenth as king of France

1816 Gioachino Rossini, The Barber of Seville

1819 Théâtre d'Orléans opens in New Orleans

1821 New Paris Opéra opens

1821 Carl Maria von Weber, Der Freischütz

1824 to 30 Reign of Charles the tenth as king of France

1825 First Italian opera season in New York

1829 Rossini, Guillaume Tell

1830 “July Revolution” in France puts Louis Philippe on throne

1831 Vincenzo Bellini, Norma

1835 Gaetano Donizetti, Lucia di Lammermoor

1836 Giacomo Meyerbeer, Les Huguenots

1836 Mikhail Glinka, A Life for the Tsar

1841 Adolphe Adam, Giselle

1842 Giuseppe Verdi, Nabucco

1843 Richard Wagner, The Flying Dutchman

1843 Michael Balfe, The Bohemian Girl

1843 Virginia Minstrels debut

1845 William Henry Fry, Leonora

1848 Second Republic declared in France

1848 to 49 Gold Rush in California

1850 to 52 Jenny Lind tours United States

1854 Academy of Music opens in New York

1856 to 58 Hector Berlioz composes Les Troyens

Like composers in earlier eras, opera composers in the first half of the nineteenth century aimed to capture in their music the drama, emotions, and personalities on stage. Naturally, they (and the impresarios they worked for) preferred librettos with strong plots, interesting characters, and wide audience appeal. Subjects and settings for operas varied widely, from grand historical epics to folktales, and from plots with strong political overtones to stories that centered on private emotions and personal relationships. Distant lands and long-ago times had a special attraction. Like movies today, many operas were adapted from recent literary works, such as the novels of Sir Walter Scott and the plays of freed-rick Schiller and Victor Hugo, or from venerable literary masterpieces such as Shakespeare's plays. Librettists sought to reflect the concerns of the broader audience that was now attending operas, not so much by putting middle-class characters on stage—although that would become more common over the course of the century—as by addressing issues that spoke to them: how to balance love with loyalty to family (as in Meyerbeer's Les Huguenots) or nation (Bellini's Norma), women's growing desire for independence (Rossini's Barber of Seville and Donizetti's Lucia di Lammermoor), the struggle for freedom (Rossini's Guillaume Tell and Auber's La muette de Portici), and the fear of evil (Weber's Der Freischütz).

Nationalism Among the new themes were issues of national identity. The French Revolution and Napoleonic Wars had helped to spread the concept of a nation as a group of citizens with a common heritage rather than as subjects of a ruler. The influence of this idea grew throughout the nineteenth century. Nationalism in the political realm was the attempt to unify a group of people by creating a national identity through characteristics such as a common language, shared culture, historical traditions, and national institutions and rituals.

Not all of these elements had to be present: the Swiss achieved a sense of nationhood through shared history and institutions despite speaking four different languages, while elsewhere people sought to create a sense of commonality based on language and culture that crossed existing political boundaries. Although later generations would take it as a given, national identity was in almost every case intentionally created and channeled to achieve social and political goals.

Nationalism could be used to support the status quo or to challenge it. In France and Russia, which had long been unified states, expressions of nationalism could rally support for the government. But Germany and Italy had been divided since the Middle Ages, and in both regions nationalist sentiment supported unification. That was not to come until the third quarter of the century, despite struggles in Italy as early as the 1820s during the Risorgimento (resurgence), which sought to unify Italy and reclaim the leading role it played in Roman antiquity and the Renaissance. The foundation for unification could be laid by creating a shared national culture through a common language, literature, music, and the other arts. Such cultural nationalism became a strong element in many, though not all, nineteenth-century operas, as well as in much other music. As we will see, opera—an expensive art form that usually relied on government support—was frequently staged within a political context and could carry political meanings on many levels, whether put there by the librettist and composer, prompted by the government itself, or imputed to the work by those who heard it.

The presence of national elements in opera and other forms of music could serve different purposes, depending on the audience. Representing the history, culture, or musical styles of a people could reinforce their group identity as a nation. For Italians, their identification with Italian opera as a national art form was so strong that making the plot or music deliberately Italian was beside the point, and librettists and composers instead relied on analogies to suggest nationalist ideas, as in Bellini's Norma. But for Germans, Weber's Der Freischütz—an opera based on German folklore, focused on German peasants as characters, and filled with references to the styles of German dances and folk songs—became a symbol of the nation that was yet to be, and thus an inspiration for nation-building as well as for many later operas.

People are curious about each other, not only about themselves, and thus the use of national elements attracted audiences from other nations. This was evident in the popularity in western Europe of Chopin's Polish dances and Gottschalk's pieces on American and Caribbean themes, tunes, and rhythms (see Chapter 25). And it was evident again in the reception of Der Freischütz outside Germany and of Glinka's operas outside Russia. Such interest in far-away places and peoples was part of Romanticism, and it was also reflected in the many plots set in distant lands and times and the occasional use of exoticism, the evocation of a foreign land or culture. Nationalism and exoticism became more prominent in the second half of the century, as we will see in the next chapter.

FIGURE 27.1 Poster for the premiere of Les Huguenots by Giacomo Meyerbeer.

Italy

Opera had been invented and popularized in Italy, which was still home to more opera houses than any other region. Forty or more new operas were produced every year in the early nineteenth century, and dozens of composers were writing operas. Within constraints imposed by politics, state or religious censorship, the business of opera production and music publishing, and poetic and operatic traditions, librettists and composers sought to create operas with engaging plots and attractive music that appealed to listeners, moved their emotions, and conveyed the drama. Amid this ferment, Rossini, Donizetti, and Bellini created a new Italian tradition in opera, later extended by Verdi and others, and composed works that have been performed across Europe and in the New World almost every year since their first performances.

Joeakeeno Rossini If asked who was the most famous and important living composer, most people in Europe around 1825 would have answered not Beethoven but rather Gioachino Rossini (1792 to 1868; see biography and Figure 27.2). He is best known today for his comic operas such as L'italiana in Algeri (The Italian Woman in Algiers; Venice, 1813) and Il barbiere di Siviglia (The Barber of Seville; Rome, 1816). Yet Rossini's reputation during his lifetime rested as much on his serious operas such as Otello (Naples, 1816), Mosè

Gioachino Rossini

}}Figure 27.2 summary: A musical score snippet labeled as quasi-recitative, featuring a vocal line and accompanying strings. The vocal part carries the text "Una voce poco fa qui nel cor mi risuonò" over a rhythmic accompaniment indicated by pizzicato strings. The structure is designed to mimic the style of a recitative, allowing the music to follow the natural inflection and pace of the spoken text.

(1792 to 1868)

Rossini had a brilliant career as a composer of opera, producing some of the most popular ever written.

Born in Pesaro on the Adriatic coast of Italy, Rossini was the son of a horn and trumpet player and an operatic singer. He studied music as a child and performed professionally as a violist, singer, and pianist. In 1806, he enrolled in the Bologna Conservatory, where his studies of the music of Haydn and Mozart had a permanent impact on his style.

Rossini was commissioned to write his first opera in 1810, at age eighteen, and the great success three years later of Tancredi and L'italiana in Algeri established his international reputation. In 1815, he was appointed musical director of the Teatro San Carlo in Naples, and a year later his most successful opera, The Barber of Seville, was produced in Rome. For the next eight years, Rossini composed numerous operas for Naples and other cities. Because copyright protection did not exist in Italy, he could earn money from operas only when he participated in the performances.

As a result, he constantly had to produce new works, composing very rapidly (sometimes writing an opera in a month or less), often borrowing or reworking overtures and arias from his own previous works. He always wrote for particular singers, creating music to suit their talents.

In 1822, Rossini married the soprano Isabella Colbran, with whom he had worked since coming to Naples. After Semiramide (1823), Rossini's last opera for Italy, they traveled to London, then settled in Paris, where he became director of the Théâtre Italien. He reworked some of his Italian operas to French librettos translated or adapted from the Italian and wrote one entirely new opera in French, Guillaume Tell, in 1829. Then, a rich man and not yet forty years old, he retired from writing operas.

His remaining forty years of life were marred by illness, but he was financially comfortable, entertaining every Saturday night in his villa outside Paris, eating to excess, and inventing recipes that he exchanged with some of the most famous chefs in Europe. He began an affair with Olympus Pélissier in the 1830s and married her in 1846 after his first wife's death. He composed music for church and salons but published little. In his last decade, he produced witty piano pieces and songs—often parodies of other music—that influenced Saint-Saëns, Satie, and others and anticipate French neoclassicism of the twentieth century. He died in 1868, known best for music written four to six decades earlier.

Major Works 39 operas, including Tancredi, L'italiana in Algeri, Il barbiere di Siviglia, Otello, La Cenerentola, Mosè in Egitto, Semiramide, and Guillaume Tell; Stabat mater, Petite messe solennelle, and other sacred vocal works; and smaller vocal and instrumental pieces collected in Soirées musicales and Péchés de vieillesse (Sins of Old Age)

in Egitto (Moses in Egypt; Naples, 1818), and Guillaume Tell (William Tell; Paris, 1829). He was the most popular and influential opera composer of his generation, in part because he blended aspects of opera buffa and opera seria into both his comic and his serious operas, making them all more varied, more appealing, and more true to human character. The new conventions he established for Italian opera would endure for over half a century and influence operas in France, Germany, and other nations.

In Rossini's operas, the most important element is the voice, even more than the story, orchestra, costumes, and scenery. He called for an elegant style of singing characterized by seemingly effortless technique, an equally beautiful tone throughout a singer's entire range, agility, flexibility, and control of every type of melody from long lyrical lines through florid embellishment, much of it improvised. This style is today known as bel canto-literally, "beautiful singing"—a term that Rossini and others used only in retrospect in order to contrast the Italian singing style of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries with the heavier dramatic style that dominated by midcentury (see In Performance: The Bel Canto Diva, pages 652 to 53).

Rossini's operas are known for their irrepressible tunefulness combining catchy melodies with snappy rhythms and clear phrases. His melodies are laced with coloratura that combines vocal display with expressivity and perceptive depiction of each character. He often repeats ideas, usually with a new twist, and shows an impeccable sense of theatrical timing.

His spare orchestration supports rather than competes with the singers, while featuring individual instruments, especially winds, for color. His harmonic schemes are not complex but are often original, and he shares with other early-nineteenth-century composers a fondness for juxtaposing third-related keys. One of his characteristic devices, both simple and effective, became known as the “Rossini crescendo”—building up excitement by repeating a phrase, louder each time and often at a higher pitch, sometimes giving the effect of a world about to spin out of control.

The action in earlier operas was mostly confined to dry recitative dialogue, while arias were dramatically static, expressing only one or two moods. Rossini continued to use simple recitative in his comedies, but in his serious operas and some parts of comic operas Rossini and his librettists developed a scene structure that distributed the story more evenly and integrated new plot developments or changes of mood within an aria or ensemble. A continuous succession of orchestrally accompanied recitatives, solo arias, duets, ensembles, and choruses all contributed to advancing the plot, with both orchestra and chorus playing more significant roles than they had in previous Italian operas.

As shown in Figure 27.3, a typical scene begins with an instrumental introduction and a recitative section called a scena (Italian for “scene”) that

Figure 27.3: Row 1: Aria (solo or with chorus). Row 2: Orchestral introduction, Scena recitative, Cantabile usually slow, Tempo di mezzo (middle section) changes tempo, modulates; may be transition, ensemble, or chorus, Cabaletta usually fast. Row 3: Duet or ensemble. Row 4: Orchestral introduction, Scena, Tempo d'attacco (opening section), Cantabile, Tempo di mezzo, Cabaletta.

A. DAGLI ORTI/BRIDGEMAN IMAGES

The Bel Canto Diva

The art of bel canto fostered the rise of a new breed of opera singers in the first half of the nineteenth century. Like today's pop superstars, female virtuosos like Giuditta Pasta, Angelica Catalani, Giulia Grisi, Henriette Sontag, and Jenny Lind were more than mere singers; they were larger-than-life cultural icons. The term used to describe them, diva (Italian for "goddess"), reflects the semidivine status ascribed to them by their legions of admirers.

The Spanish mezzo-soprano Maria Malibran (1808 to 1836), shown in Figure 27.4, epitomizes the dazzling aura of the bel canto diva. Born into a celebrated musical family, she made her London debut in 1825 as Rosina in The Barber of Seville, the first of many Rossini roles with which she would be closely identified. She repeated her success a few months later in New York City, appearing with a touring company organized by her father, the tenor Manuel Garcia, and went on to take France and Italy by storm in works by Rossini, Bellini, Mozart, Meyerbeer, Donizetti, and other composers.

Malibran's exceptional vocal range of nearly three octaves was matched by her dramatic powers. She was at the height of her fame when she died at the age of twenty-eight as a result of a riding accident in Birmingham, England, shortly after her marriage to the Belgian violinist Charles de Bériot.

Malibran was also remarkable for her versatility, being equally at home in Rossini's frothy comedies and in tragic roles like Bellini's Norma. Both kinds of music allowed her to show off her prowess in adorning melodies with improvised embellishments, a practice that was as intrinsic to bel canto idiom as it was in eighteenth-century opera (see Chapter 21). Malibran and other divas often wrote down their ornamented versions of popular arias, both for teaching purposes and for sale as sheet music. Not all of their elaborations bore the composer's stamp of approval, however. Once, after suffering through an overwrought performance of Rosina's aria Una voce poco fa by the soprano Adelina Patti, Rossini remarked cattily: "Very nice, my dear, and who wrote the piece you have just performed?"

It was to guard against such excesses that Rossini and other composers began, in the second decade of the century, to notate ornaments is accompanied by the orchestra. The ensuing aria has two main sections, a slow, lyrical cantabile and a lively and brilliant cabaletta. The cantabile expresses relatively calm moods such as pensiveness, sadness, or hope, and the cabaletta more active feelings such as anger or joy. Part or all of the cabaletta is repeated, perhaps with improvised embellishments. Some arias, like Una voce poco fa from The Barber of Seville (N.A.W.M 149), have these two sections only, but in most arias, we also find a middle section between the cantabile and the cabaletta called the tempo di mezzo (middle movement), which even more painstakingly in their scores. Although these written-out embellishments were meant as suggestions rather than prescriptions, there is evidence that many singers followed them faithfully, if not slavishly. One such manuscript, preserved in the library of the Conservatory "Giuseppe Verdi" in Milan, contains a tastefully ornamented version of Rosina's Una voce poco fa in Rossini's hand, excerpted in Example 27.1 (compare with the unadorned melody shown in Example 27.2d, which comes between the passages shown here). Although penned many years after the 1816 premiere of The Barber of Seville, and tailored for another singer's voice, the soaring cadenza, liquid runs, and pert grace notes in the final cabaletta section of the aria convey a sense of pyrotechnics that seventeen-year-old Maria Malibran displayed in New York's Park Theater on November 29, 1825.

is usually some kind of transition or interruption by other characters and in which something happens to alter the situation or the character's mood. A duet or ensemble has a similar form (as in the duet from Verdi's La traviata in N.A.W.M 154), but the cantabile is usually preceded by an opening section called tempo d'attacco in which the characters trade melodic phrases. The finale of an act is normally an action piece that brings together most or all of the characters and is organized in many sections, employing shifts in tempo, meter, and key to accommodate the rapid changes of situation and emotion.

Example 27.2 Changes of style in Una voce poco fa, from Rossini's The Barber of Seville

THE ART ARCHIVE/MUSEO TEATRALE ALLASCALA MILIAN/COLLECTION DAGLI ORTI

A voice a short while ago here in my heart resounded.

b. Patter song

Image summary: A musical score for a quasi-recitative featuring a vocal line and piano accompaniment. The text, in Italian, translates to "The guardian will refuse, I shall sharpen my wits," with a sparse vocal melody supported by repetitive rhythmic chords in the piano. The figure serves to illustrate a specific musical passage and its corresponding dramatic text.

taking place on stage. The action often culminates in a fast stretta corresponding to the cabaletta in an aria or ensemble.

Rossini's basic format could be flexibly applied to suit almost any dramatic situation, and his structure created a dramatic progression from one mood or idea to another while allowing more than two contrasting moods to be presented within a coherent form. In line with the continued role of Italian opera as a vehicle for virtuoso singing, this structure also provided singers with an opportunity to show a wide range of emotions and vocal effects, from lyric beauty to sparkling pyrotechnics.

Considered today Rossini's most popular opera, The Barber of Seville combines features of opera buffa with bel canto tradition. The main character, the town's barber and resident schemer, helps a count (disguised as Lindoro, a poor soldier) to win the hand of the beautiful and wealthy Rosina, who has been locked away by her guardian, Dr. Bartolo—a man intent on marrying her for her inheritance. Secret messages, drunken brawls, and mistaken identities are all part of the chaotic plot.

: Image summary: A musical score depicting the lyrical opening of a Cabaletta. The excerpt includes a vocal line with the Italian lyrics "Io sono docile, son rispetto sa" accompanied by strings and flute. The composition is marked Moderato and begins piano, establishing a gentle and docile character.

>'Image summary: A snippet of a musical score for voice and piano, including lyrics in Italian. The voice part features a melody with a rhythmic leap and dotted notes, while the piano provides a steady, pizzicato string accompaniment in a soft dynamic. The combined elements create a contrasting, comic style to underscore the lyrics about being a viper if touched on a weaker side.'

}Image summary: A musical score snippet featuring a vocal line and keyboard accompaniment. The lyrics, in Italian, translate to "I will be a viper," with the vocal line consisting of descending sixteenth-note runs. The point is to illustrate the musical setting of this specific lyrical phrase.

Rosina's justly famous aria Una voce poco fa (N.A.W.M 149) conveys her character through changes of style, as shown in Example 27.2. The orchestral introduction presents ideas that will reappear later. There is no opening recitative, but the first part of her cantabile—as she narrates being serenaded by and falling in love with Lindoro—is broken into small phrases punctuated by orchestral chords, a style appropriate to narration (Example 27.2a). When she swears to outwit her guardian, the style briefly changes to a comic patter song (Example 27.2b), which is preceded and followed by elaborate embellishments and runs as she vows to marry Lindoro. Rossini proceeds directly to the cabaletta, where the music reveals Rosina's true nature. She claims to be both docile and obedient—singing a winning, lyrical melody (Example 27.2c)—as well as a viper and trickster—showing off her sudden vocal leaps and rapid passagework in opera buffa style (Example 27.2d). The aria is a cunning portrayal of the different facets of Rosina's character and a masterful combination of bel canto melody, wit, and comic description.

The lasting appeal of Rossini's comic operas has overshadowed his serious ones, but they were equally significant in his day. Many of the serious operas have enjoyed successful revivals in recent decades, showing that his style and approach have a far wider range in delineating characters, capturing situations, and conveying emotions than are represented in the comic operas alone.

The best known of his serious operas was his last, Guillaume Tell, which was written for the Paris Opéra in 1829 and had five hundred performances there during the composer's lifetime. The libretto, based on freed-rick Schiller's play Wilhelm Tell (1804), celebrates a folk hero who led a rebellion of three Swiss cantons against an Austrian governor. The theme was timely—revolution and struggles for national unity were in the air—but it also subjected the work to censorship in Milan, London, Berlin, and St. Petersburg. While continuing the conventions he had helped to establish in Italian opera, Rossini's setting includes many choruses, ensembles, dances, processions, and atmospheric instrumental interludes, all of which drew on French operatic traditions. This combination of elements, along with its large scale and dramatic power, made Guillaume Tell one of the founding examples of French grand opera (see pages 660 to 62). Rossini's role in creating a new genre of French opera invites comparison to Lully, another Italian, who originated the French operatic tradition in the seventeenth century (see Chapter 16).

Given Rossini's devotion to the bel canto style of singing, it is ironic that his Guillaume Tell provided the occasion for a new kind of tenor voice that would come to dominate by midcentury and foster a more dramatic, less lyrical style of singing. At the Italian premiere of the opera at Lucca in 1831, tenor Gilbert Duprez (1806 to 1896) sang for the first time on the operatic stage a high C in full voice (known among singers as chest voice), not in falsetto as had been the tradition for centuries. After great success in Italy, Duprez returned to his native Paris in 1837 and triumphed at the Opéra in Guillaume Tell. His new style of singing was enormously popular with audiences (though not with Rossini, who compared his high notes to a squawking chicken). Other tenors adopted his approach, and composers from Donizetti and Berlioz to Verdi and Wagner wrote for his type of voice.

Rossini's opera overtures have found a second career in the concert hall, as gems of the orchestral repertoire. Most are in two parts: a long, slow introduction with a lyrical melody for wind instruments followed by a fast binary form without repeats, shaped like the exposition and recapitulation of a sonata form. The fast section focuses almost exclusively on the themes, with minimal transitions and a rousing Rossini crescendo at the end of each half. This formula, combining attractive melodies with a rising sense of excited anticipation, makes Rossini's overtures the perfect curtain-raisers at the opera and tasty appetizers on concert programs.

The most famous is the overture to Guillaume Tell. Written for Paris, it has a different shape from the Italian overtures, with four sections that present a series of genre scenes taken from the opera: a slow pastoral introduction; a musical depiction of a storm; another slow section featuring a ranz des vaches—a Swiss cowherd's call—played by an English horn (and later repeated throughout the opera); and a galloping allegro (used in the twentieth century as the theme for the radio and television show The Lone Ranger). Combining simplicity in melody, harmony, and form with vivacious rhythms, exciting dynamics, and unusual orchestral effects has made Rossini's overtures perennial favorites.

Vinchenzo Bellini Vincenzo Bellini (1801 to 1835) was a younger contemporary of Rossini's who came to prominence after Rossini had retired from opera composition. Bellini preferred dramas of passion, with fast, gripping action. His favorite librettist, Felice Romani, did not limit action to recitative passages but built it into the arias and provided opportunities for lyrical moments within the recitatives. Of Bellini's ten operas—all serious—the most important are La sonnambula (The Sleepwalker, 1831), Norma (1831), and I puritani (The Puritans, 1835).

Bellini is known for long, sweeping, highly embellished, intensely emotional melodies. Among the most famous is the cantabile section of Norma's cavatina, or entrance aria, Casta diva (Chaste goddess) from Norma (N.A.W.M 150), shown in Example 27.3. The choice of subject for the opera, set in ancient Gaul after its conquest by the Romans, reflected both the Romantic fascination with distant times and places and Italian yearnings for freedom from foreign domination, especially acute after the Austrians suppressed revolts in northern Italy in 1830 to 31. When Norma, high priestess of the Druids, prays to the moon for peace with the Romans, her vocal line seems to be in constant motion, creating a deeply expressive and unpredictable melody. The secret of such melodies is that an underlying simple structure, often stepwise motion (A–G–F in the first phrase, A–B▶ in the second), is embellished with ever-changing figureation that draws our attention and plays with our expectations. The scene follows Rossini's typical pattern, beginning with orchestrally accompanied recitative, followed by the cantabile section, a declamatory tempo di mezzo, and a brilliant cabaletta. In each section, the chorus plays an important role, responding to Norma's pleas for peace. The constant interaction of the principal protagonists with subordinate characters and the chorus creates a sense of continuous action, which Bellini reinforces through frequent changes of style, texture, and figuration.

Figure 27.3 summary: A musical score excerpt from Vincenzo Bellini's opera Norma, specifically the aria Casta diva. It shows a vocal line supported by accompaniment from violins, viola, and pizzicato cello and double bass, featuring melodic phrasing and harmonic accompaniment. The purpose is to provide a musical example of this specific operatic piece.

Gaetano Donizetti One of the most prolific Italian composers during the second quarter of the century was Gaetano Donizetti (1797 to 1848), who composed oratorios, cantatas, chamber and church music, about one hundred songs, and several symphonies in addition to some seventy operas. His most enduring works were the serious operas Anna Bolena (Milan, 1830) and Lucia di Lammermoor (Naples, 1835); the comic operas Lelisir d'amore (The Elixir of Love; Milan, 1832) and Don Pasquale (Paris, 1843); and the opéra comique La fille du regiment (The Daughter of the Regiment; Paris, 1840).

Donizetti, like Rossini, had an instinct for the theater and for melody that effectively captures a character, situation, or feeling. His comic operas often mix sentimentality with comedy. In his serious operas, Donizetti constantly moves the drama forward, occasionally averting cadences that would entice applause and thus sustaining dramatic tension until a major scene is finished. The beginnings and endings of the formal components of a scene, such as the orchestral introduction, cantabile, and cabaletta, are sometimes disguised by choral or recitative episodes so that the music seems to possess an almost seamless continuity.

One of Donizetti's most famous operas, Lucia di Lammermoor, offers a prime example of this kind of transparent continuity. Based on a novel by Sir Walter Scott (1771 to 1832), the most popular novelist of his generation, the opera is set among the lonely cliffs and ancient feuds of the Scottish highlands, a distant place whose land, people, and culture fascinated the public and captured the imagination of Romantic writers and composers. Lucia is tricked by her brother into thinking that the man she loves, Edgardo, has been unfaithful.

She reluctantly agrees to marry someone else, but on her wedding night, she murders him on their nuptial bed. Lucia then begins to hallucinate, imagining she hears Edgardo's voice calling to her. Her "mad scene" in the last act creates an unbroken flow of events through numerous entrances and tempo changes.

The scene begins with a short chorus that comments on Lucia's deathly and disheveled appearance as she enters after murdering her husband. We then hear foreboding music that first appeared in the opera's prelude, played by a quartet of horns. Against this and a syncopated flute motive, Lucia begins an impassioned recitative, calling out to Edgardo. The flutes and clarinets recollect the theme of her love duet with him from Act 1; such hearkening back to an earlier theme or motive became known as a reminiscence motive. Lucia's recitative continues through several tempo changes and overlaps the introduction to her cantabile, the blurring of boundaries serving as a sign of her madness.

Lucia's tutor, a captain of the guards, and her brother, having learned of the murder, break in to pray for the Lord's mercy. At the tempo di mezzo, she is joined by her brother and tutor and later the chorus. After a pause and orchestral introduction, Lucia begins the cabaletta. But before she can sing the anticipated repetition, the chorus and other characters break in, joining her again as she brings the repetition to a close and faints. Such flexible adaptation of Rossini's standard scene structure to suit the course of the drama is typical of Donizetti and served as a model for Giuseppe Verdi in the next generation (see Chapter 28).

Classics of Italian Opera The most successful operas of Rossini, Bellini, and Donizetti were performed in opera houses all over Italy and at theaters in other nations that specialized in Italian opera or presented Italian operas in translation. Their most famous arias became popular tunes heard by large segments of the public, as operatic excerpts were performed widely outside the opera house and disseminated through all manner of arrangements for voice and piano, piano alone, band, and other ensembles. By midcentury, these operas were becoming part of a core repertory, staged repeatedly wherever opera was performed. Rossini's The Barber of Seville, Bellini's Norma, and Donizetti's Lucia di Lammermoor were among the first operas ever to reach the status of permanent classics, akin to Handel's Messiah or Beethoven's symphonies. In part due to the phenomenal success of these operas, Italian musical life was dominated by opera for several more generations, during which the most noted composers specialized in opera, while instrumental genres, choral music, and even solo song were overshadowed.

France

Throughout the nineteenth century, opera remained the most prestigious musical genre in France, whose musical culture was second only to Italy's in its focus on the genre.

From its founding by Lully in the late seventeenth century, French opera was centered in Paris and shaped by politics. The French Revolution had ended aristocratic patronage, bringing new laws that allowed anyone to open a public theater. But Napoleon again restricted theaters, allowing only three to present operas. The Opéra, which focused on tragedy, was the most prestigious, staging new works, revivals by Gluck and others, and French versions of foreign operas by composers such as Mozart. The Opéra-Comique gave operas with spoken dialogue instead of recitative; despite the name, many of these opéras comiques had serious plots.

The Théâtre Italien presented operas in Italian, including works composed for Paris and older operas by Mozart and others. Other Paris theaters featured a variety of stage works that included music, from plays and comedies with incidental music to vaudevilles (comedies with songs interspersed), pantomimes (scenes acted out silently with musical accompaniment), and ballets. Although Paris was the center for producing new works, theaters and opera houses in other French cities were also active.

Following the defeat of Napoleon, the French monarchy was restored under Louis the eighteenth (r. 1814 to 24), brother of Louis the sixteenth. Government sponsorship for the Opéra continued as before, and a new theater, shown in Figure 27.5, was built for it in 1821. Gas lighting was introduced the next year, allowing much more spectacular and subtle stage effects. The Théâtre Italien mounted operas by Rossini, who became the director there in 1824. But Charles the tenth (r. 1824 to 30) failed to gain the support of the growing and powerful middle class, and the "July Revolution" of 1830, which reduced the power of the French monarch, put his distant cousin Louis Philippe on the throne as a constitutional monarch. The government continued to subsidize opera and concerts, but now the royal family contributed informally to opera and benefit concerts rather than sponsoring them directly. The Opéra theater was leased to a businessman, Louis Véron, who found wealthy sponsors. Anyone could purchase tickets, but the boxes were rented at high prices.

Figure 27.5 summary: An illustration of a grand, multi-tiered opera house or theater filled with an audience, featuring a stage with a scenic backdrop. The image depicts the scale and architectural opulence of a classic performance venue.

Grand Opera With the decline of royal patronage, a new kind of opera came into being, designed to appeal to the newly well-to-do middle-class audiences who thronged the opera theaters looking for excitement and entertainment. Grand opera, as this type came to be called, was as much spectacle as music, consistent with the fashion that had prevailed in France ever since Lully. Writers created librettos that focused on romantic love in the context of historical conflicts and exploited every possible occasion for ballets, stage machinery, choruses, and crowd scenes. Two early examples of grand opera, both on themes of rebellion against foreign domination, were Rossini's Guillaume Tell (1829), featuring an onstage lake across which Tell rows to safety, and La muette de Portici (The Mute Woman of Portici, 1828) by Daniel-Francois-Esprit Auber (1782 to 1871), which ends with a battle during an eruption of the volcano Vesuvius—and ironically has a title role that is danced, not sung, since she is a mute.

Along with Véron, the director of the Paris Opéra, the leaders of grand opera were the librettist Eugène Scribe (1791 to 1861) and the composer Giacomo Meyerbeer (1791 to 1864), shown in Figure 27.6. Scribe, who coauthored the libretto to La muette de Portici, created the mix of formality, spectacle, and historical, political, or religious themes that defined the new genre. Meyerbeer's Robert le diable (Robert the Devil, 1831, shown in Figure 27.5) and Les Huguenots (1836), both on Scribe librettos, set the pattern for the musical treatment, using every available technique to dramatize the action and please the public. Meyerbeer had a command of varied musical styles forged from his earlier experiences: born to a German-Jewish family in Berlin, he was a child prodigy as a pianist, then spent nine successful years as an opera composer in Italy, where he Italianized his first name (originally Jakob).

Les Huguenots is typical of French grand opera in having five acts, an enormous cast, a ballet, and dramatic scenery and lighting effects. The plot centers on events leading to the St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre of 1572, in which Catholics slaughtered hundreds of Protestants (Huguenots) in Paris. The subject was of current interest due to concerns about religious freedom and the influence of the Catholic Church on the government. Unlike earlier historical dramas that showed rulers in control, Les Huguenots represents a new view of history, influenced by the revolutions of 1789 and 1830, that regarded competition between groups as the principal engine driving events, beyond the control of individuals. This perspective is poignantly exemplified in the closing scene of Act 2 (N.A.W.M 151), which illustrates Meyerbeer's ability to integrate the expression of deep personal feelings with crowd scenes, public ceremonies, and confrontations, using a variety of styles and gestures to convey the emotional and psychological import of events on stage. Reflecting Rossini's influence on grand opera and Meyerbeer's earlier experiences in Italy, the scene is structured like an Italian opera finale, with an orchestral introduction, opening section, slow movement (akin to a cantabile), dialogue in accompanied recitative, and fast stretta at the end.

Queen Marguerite de Valois tries to reconcile the two factions through a peacemaking marriage of a Catholic noblewoman, Valentine, to the Protestant nobleman Raoul. Before introducing the couple to each other, she asks the Protestant and Catholic gentlemen of her court to swear eternal friendship. She sings her request in an ingratiating Italianate style marked by Rossinian embellishment, far briefer than an Italian aria but long enough to convey her charming personality and happy mood. In the following slow movement, the main protagonists on each side sing an oath of peace in unison, softly, solemnly, and without accompaniment, lending it a sacred, chantlike aura.

The male chorus, representing the rival groups, loudly affirms their vow, accompanied by the orchestra. Then the leaders hail the benefits of harmony among all people, in a soft unaccompanied ensemble of four voices whose texture recalls the a cappella singing of a church choir or of a partsong for men's chorus, both associated with good feelings and social harmony. Only the militant Protestant Marcel defies the others, quietly vowing to make war on Catholics.

But then Marguerite's plan goes awry. When Raoul sees Valentine, he angrily refuses to marry her in a dramatic accompanied recitative. This is heartbreaking on a personal level, because we know from Act 1 that they love each other and that his reaction is the result of a misunderstanding—ironically, one that resulted from Marguerite's own actions in executing her plan, since she sent Valentine on an errand that led Raoul to conclude mistakenly that Valentine was another man's mistress.

Raoul's refusal ignites a firestorm, captured in the final stretta. The Catholics are inflamed to vengeance, Marguerite is furious at Raoul's disobedience, Valentine asks plaintively what she has done to merit such an insult, and Marcel, pleased with the turn of events, sings the Lutheran chorale Ein feste Burg, an emblem of the Protestant struggle. Except for the chorale, Meyerbeer has everyone sing the same musical ideas, expressing disbelief, fury, anguish, vengeance, and despair in turn, thereby showing that the characters on stage are experiencing similar feelings, each from their unique perspective, all powerless to resist the coming conflict. Meyerbeer keeps the tumult fresh by continually introducing new ideas and combinations, building repeatedly to powerful climaxes. This scene exemplifies the conception of grand opera as a combination of entertaining spectacle and glorious singing with a serious artistic statement.

Meyerbeer's approach to grand opera was admired and emulated by later composers. Other grand operas, like La Juive (The Jewess, 1835) by Fromental Halévy (1799 to 1862) with a libretto by Scribe, follow a similar formula. Donizetti's La favorite (1840) was a grand opera written for Paris, as were Verdi's Les vépres siciliennes (1855) and Don Carlos (1867). The genre spread, with productions in Germany, London, and elsewhere. Particularly significant is Meyerbeer's profound influence on Richard Wagner, whose Rienzi (1842) is grand opera pure and simple, and whose later operas were heavily influenced by Les Huguenots.

Hector Berlioz's great five-act opera Les Troyens (1856 to 58, partial premiere in 1863) drew on grand opera but also on the older French opera tradition of Lully, Rameau, and Gluck. The text, by Berlioz himself, is based on the second and fourth books of Virgil's Aeneid. Berlioz condensed the narrative in a series of powerful scenes and used appropriate occasions to introduce ballets, processions, and other musical numbers. Like Meyerbeer's Huguenots, Les Troyens can be classified as an"epic opera"—a work in which the story of a nation competes with the passions and emotions of individual characters.

Opera Comique Side by side with grand opera, opéra comique continued to be fashionable. As in the eighteenth century (see Chapter 21), the technical difference between the two was that opéra comique used spoken dialogue instead of recitative. Apart from this, the differences were primarily questions of size and subject matter. Opéra comique was less pretentious than grand opera and required fewer singers and players. Its plots, as a rule, presented straightforward comedy or semiserious drama instead of the historical pageantry typical of grand opera. Two kinds of opéra comique existed in the early part of the nineteenth century, the romantic and the comic, although many works shared characteristics of both types.

Ballet Another form of musical theater popular in France was the ballet. French operas since the seventeenth century had often included ballets, but in the late eighteenth century dance troupes began to present independent ballets that had a series of dance scenes linked together by a narrative. A new style, now known as Romantic ballet and still common in modern performances, was introduced by Marie Taglioni (1804 to 1884), shown in Figure 27.7. In this style ballerinas became preeminent, moving with a new lightness and freedom, marked by gestures and positions that were more extended and elevated, including sprightly leaps and delicate landings. Their graceful elevation was enhanced by shoes that allowed them to rise up on their toes ("on point") and by sheer costumes that seemed to float in the air. Having triumphed in Paris and London, Taglioni performed for many years. in St. Petersburg with the Imperial Ballet, where she helped to establish a lasting ballet tradition in Russia.

Figure 27.7 summary: A lithograph from the 1830s depicting Marie Taglioni in a Romantic ballerina costume, featuring a close-fitting bodice and a sheer, translucent skirt. She is shown rising on point, a position using special shoes to create a light and airy effect. The image illustrates the characteristic attire and poise of the Romantic era's ballet aesthetic.

Composers typically wrote music for ballets after the dance had already been choreographed, so they had to fit their music to the timing, rhythms, movements, and mood of the dance. One of the highlights of Romantic ballet was Giselle, premiered at the Paris Opéra in 1841, with music by Adolphe Adam (1803 to 1856) that used recurring motives and recollection of earlier material to highlight the progress of the drama, as in an opera.

FIGURE 27.5 The new Paris Opéra building on Rue Le Peletier, which opened August 16, 1821. The illustration shows its interior during a performance in the 1840s of Meyerbeer's Robert le diable. The stage scenery is of a new kind, with a curved backdrop shell designed to look more realistic than previous flat canvasses could. Lithograph by Jules Arnout.

MUSÉE DE LA VILLE DE PARIS, MUSÉE CARNAVALET, PARIS, FRANCE/ARCHIVES CHARMET/BRIDGEMAN IMAGES

BRINGMAN IMAGES

Germany

The interaction between music and literature, so typical of nineteenth-century Romanticism, was developed most fully by composers in the German-speaking lands, in opera as well as song and instrumental music. At the root of German opera was the Singspiel, whose composers in the early nineteenth century soaked up Romantic elements from French opera while intensifying the genre's specific national features.

Carl Maria Von Weber The work that established German Romantic opera was Der Freischütz (The Free Shooter, first performed in Berlin in 1821), by Carl Maria von Weber, depicted in Figure 27.8. What made Der Freischütz so daring for its time was not only Weber's unusual orchestration and harmonies, but also his idea of putting ordinary people center stage, talking and singing about their concerns, their loves, and their fears.

The libretto of Der Freischütz exemplifies the characteristics of German Romantic opera. Plots are drawn from medieval history, legend, or fairy tale. The story involves supernatural beings and happenings set against a background of wilderness and mystery, but scenes of humble village or country life are frequently introduced. Supernatural incidents and the natural setting are intertwined with the fate of the human protagonists. Mortal characters act not merely as individuals but as agents or representatives of superhuman forces, whether good or evil. The triumph of good is a form of salvation or redemption, a vaguely religious concept of deliverance from sin and error through suffering, conversion, or revelation. In giving such importance to the physical and spiritual background, German opera differs sharply from contemporary French and Italian opera. But its musical styles and forms draw directly from those of other countries, while the use of simple folklike melodies introduces a distinctly German national element. German opera also displays increasingly chromatic harmony, the use of orchestral color for dramatic expression, and a more equal role for the orchestra, in contrast to the Italian emphasis on beautiful singing.

All these facets are illustrated in Der Freischütz. Rustic choruses, marches, dances, and airs mingle in the score with multisectorial arias in a format adapted from Rossini that exhibit many of the florid vocal characteristics of the Italian style. The somber forest background is depicted idyllically by the horns at the beginning of the overture and diabolically in the eerie midnight scene in the Wolf's Glen, shown in Figure 27.9.

Figure 27.9 summary: An illustration depicting a rocky, cavernous landscape with figures on horseback and a person kneeling over a small fire below. The image uses surreal, distorted rock formations to create a dramatic and mysterious atmosphere. It is an artistic illustration with no data or analytical result to report.

In a story line derived from folklore, Max, a young ranger, loves Agathe, but in order to win her hand in marriage, he must pass a test of marksmanship. He has had bad luck for a few days, failing target practice. Caspar, a fellow ranger, persuades Max that he can obtain some magic bullets, which will guarantee that Max will win the trial. In the dead of night, the two men meet in the Wolf's Glen, where Caspar casts the magic bullets. But unbeknownst to Max, Caspar is working in league with the devil, Samiel, who controls the final bullet cast and has destined it to kill Agathe. By the time of the fateful shooting trial, six of the bullets have been used and Max has only one left—that guided by Samiel. Agathe unexpectedly appears in the line of fire as Max shoots, but she is protected by an old hermit's magical wreath, and the bullet kills Caspar instead.

The Wolf's Glen Scene (finale of Act 2; N.A.W.M 152), during which the seven bullets are cast, incorporates elements of the melodrama, a genre of musical theater that combined spoken dialogue with background music. Melodramas had been popular in France and in German-speaking areas. since the 1770s, and scenes in melodrama had appeared in operas by Mozart, Beethoven, and others. Speaking his lines over continuous orchestral music, Caspar first invokes Samuel. Then, as he casts each bullet, with Max cowering beside him, Caspar counts one, two, three, and so on, while the mountains echo each count. For each casting, Weber paints a different picture of the terrifying dark forest.

Throughout, he ingeniously exploits the resources of the orchestra: timpani, trombones, clarinets, and horns in the foreground, often against string tremolos. Diminished and augmented intervals and daring chromaticism depict evil, and an offstage chorus reinforces the shadowy and supernatural elements of the plot.

The entire scene centers on the notes of a diminished seventh chord, E♭-F♯-A-C. Scored in the dark lower ranges of the oboes, clarinets, and upper strings over a repeated A in the bass, this chord is a reminiscence motive linked to Samiel, first heard in the overture. The same chord recurs often in other forms throughout the scene, and its notes are the principal keynotes: F♭ minor at beginning and end; C minor through most of the rest of the scene, especially identified with Caspar; E♭ major at Max's entrance; and A minor for several supernatural visions.

Weber's association of motives and keys with particular characters or events exercised an enormous influence on later composers of opera. These ideas were especially important to Wagner (see Chapter 28), who also found in this scene a model for a continuous, through-composed musical drama based on German legend. More generally, Weber's use of tritone-related and third-related harmonies, diminished seventh chords, and string tremolos to evoke mystery, danger, and the supernatural contributed to the establishment of these associations as conventions followed by countless Romantic composers and still used by composers for film and television.

Weber apparently did not intend to send a nationalist message or found a national school of opera with Der Freischütz, and his other dramatic works are quite varied in subject, including Euryanthe (1823), about a troubadour in medieval France, and Oberon (1826), which combines the supernatural world of elves and fairies, medieval knights, and the Islamic courts of Baghdad and Tunis, portrayed with authentic Turkish and Egyptian melodies. These are exoticist rather than nationalist, though equally Romantic in their appeal to distant places and times and to the supernatural. But the national sentiment in Der Freischütz made it Weber's most popular work.

VICTORIA & ALBERT MUSEUM / ART RESOURE, NY

UNIVERSAL HISTORY ARCHIVE/GETTY IMAGES

FIGURE 27.9 Setting by Carl Wilhelm Holdermann for the Wolf's Glen Scene in Weber's Der Freischütz as performed at Weimar in 1822. In the magic circle, Caspar casts the magic bullets, while Max looks around with growing alarm at the frightening apparitions aroused by each bullet cast.

STAATLICHE KUNSTSAMMLUNGEN, SCHLOSSMUSEUM, WEIMAR. PHOTO: LEBRECHT MUSIC & ARTS PHOTO LIBRARY

Russia

When nationalism began to affect Russian artists, opera proved valuable as a genre in which a distinctive Russian identity could be proclaimed through subject matter, set design, costumes, and music. Ironically, while nationalism was a force for unification in Germany and Italy and for liberation struggles in Austria-Hungary, in Russia it was primarily a tool of propaganda for the absolutist government under the tsar.

The first Russian composer recognized both by Russians and internationally as an equal of his western European contemporaries was Mikhail Glinka (1804 to 1857). He established his reputation in 1836 with the patriotic, pro-government historical drama A Life for the Tsar, the first Russian opera to gain an international audience. The plot centers on a peasant who sacrifices his own life to save the tsar from Polish invaders. Glinka drew on the major Western operatic traditions, blending Italianate melody, French drama and spectacle, and German counterpoint and idealization of peasant life and culture. Some of the melodic writing has a distinctive Russian character, attributable to modal scales, quotation or paraphrasing of folk songs, and a folklike idiom.

The Poles are depicted through Polish dance rhythms, creating a strong contrast in style that reinforces the nationalist oppositions of the plot. Glinka based his second opera, Ruslan and Lyudmila (1842), on a poem by Russia's leading poet, Aleksander Pushkin (1799 to 1837). It has a magical plot, justifying Glinka's many imaginative uses of chromaticism, dissonance, and the whole-tone scale to portray his supernatural characters, which established a Russian tradition that lasted through Rimsky-Korsakov and Stravinsky.

Glinka is valued in western Europe for the Russian flavor of these operas, which satisfied tastes for both the national and the exotic. But he was more important to Russians as the first to claim a place for their country in the international musical world. The Russian operas that preceded him were suitable for consumption at home, and many featured Russian folk styles, but they could not represent Russia on the world stage because they did not aspire to the same level, musically or dramatically, as Western operas. Glinka's operas could and did, because they incorporated the best of the Western tradition together with a special Russian flavor, treating the peasants as fully rounded, heroic characters and their music as the equal of any. This paradox pervades the reception of Russian music: foreign audiences and critics often prize what is recognizably national in it above all other characteristics, which is often not what the composers themselves or their compatriots most esteemed.

The United States

If the history of opera composition in the first half of the nineteenth century focuses on Italy, Paris, Germany, and St. Petersburg, the history of opera performance must include London, Spain, eastern Europe, and the Americas, where opera became an important part of musical life. In London, for example, operas by Continental composers were staged both in the original language and in English adaptations. Yet the British public's long-standing preference for spoken plays with interpolated music made it difficult to establish a native tradition of opera in English, despite attempts by critics, impresarios, and composers to create one, and the only British opera to win an international reputation in the nineteenth century was The Bohemian Girl (1843) by Irish composer Michael Balfe (1808 to 1870).

In North America, theater companies in major cities and touring troupes that traveled across the continent performed not only spoken plays but also ballad operas such as John Gay's The Beggar's Opera (see Chapter 21) and English versions of foreign-language operas, which typically replaced recitative with spoken dialogue and simplified the ensembles and arias. These companies presented operas as entertainment accessible to all, in a time before the gulf had opened up between high and low (popular) culture.

Opera in foreign languages took hold more slowly. In New Orleans, formerly a French colonial city, French operas helped to preserve a distinctive cultural identity. Active between 1819 and 1866, the Théâtre d'Orléans performed primarily French and Italian operas in the original languages, giving many American premieres and touring the East Coast several times. In New York, a European troupe presented a season of Italian operas in 1825 to 26, including Rossini's Barber of Seville (see In Performance: The Bel Canto Divap, pages 652 to 53) and Mozart's Don Giovanni. Several attempts were made to establish a permanent Italian opera house; one in 1833 involved Mozart's librettist Lorenzo da Ponte, then professor of Italian at Columbia University. The first opera company to last more than a few years was the Academy of Music, which opened in 1854 with Norma and presented regular opera seasons until 1886. By the 1850s, opera in Italian and English was also established in San Francisco, newly wealthy with Gold Rush money.

While foreign-language operas attracted a relatively small, elite audience, a much wider public heard the music of opera. Overtures, arias, and other excerpts were arranged and published as sheet music, performed in parlors, and included in concerts. When Swedish soprano Jenny Lind toured the United States in 1850 to 52, singing before tens of thousands of people, her programs included opera overtures and Italian arias (especially Bellini's Casta diva) as well as familiar songs such as *Home! Sweet Home!* There were also homegrown star singers such as Elizabeth Greenfield (1824 to 1876), born into slavery in Mississippi but emancipated as an infant and adopted by a Philadelphia Quaker: she toured the United States and England in the 1850s singing arias by Handel, Bellini, and Donizetti alongside *Home! Sweet Home!* and Stephen Foster; became the first African American to perform for royalty when she sang before Queen Victoria in 1854; and founded an opera troupe in the 1860s. Operatic excerpts and arrangements were also widely performed by orchestras, bands, and choruses. The music and plots of operas were so well known that operatic parodies had a ready audience; for example, New York's Olympic Theater offered opera burlesques like Mrs. Normer (on Norma) and Fried Shots (on Der Freischütz). Thus, although relatively few Americans saw operas in their original form, operatic music was widespread as popular entertainment.

American Opera American audiences that supported opera in Italian, French, or German were attracted in part by its prestige as a European art form. There was virtually no demand for American composers to produce opera on a similar scale because no local product carried the same cachet. Two ambitious attempts illustrate the difficulties of creating a native opera.

William Henry Fry (1813 to 1864) believed that the English and American tradition of mixing spoken dialogue with arias and ensembles was a corruption of the operatic ideal. His *Leonora* (Philadelphia, 1845) was sung throughout, the first such opera by an American-born composer to be staged. Fry based his style on that of European composers, especially Bellini. There were several successful performances, but his opera soon vanished; why is the listen to an imitator of Bellini when one could hear the real thing? George Frederick Bristow (1825 to 1898) took up an American subject in his opera *Rip Van Winkle* (New York, 1855), but the style again was European, primarily influenced by Mendelssohn, and again the opera had only a few performances.

Not until the twentieth century did American operas find a more secure audience.

Minstrel Shows The most popular form of musical theater in the United States from the 1830s through the 1870s was minstrelsy, in which white performers blackened their faces with burnt cork and impersonated African Americans in jokes, skits, songs, and dances. Figure 27.10 illustrates scenes from a typical minstrel show by one of the most successful troupes, Christy's Minstrels. These shows propagated offensive racial stereotypes, and their history is linked with the shameful history of slavery, segregation, and enduring racial inequality in the United States. Yet minstrelsy is also an early example of what Christopher J. Smith has called "the creolization of American culture," the interweaving of strands across divides of race, ethnicity, and class that have made American culture, art, literature, and music unique. Minstrelsy was the first of many forms of entertainment in which white musicians borrowed from the music of African Americans, a recurring theme in American music. The combination of minstrelsy's mixed pedigree with its popularity and its very offensiveness makes it a fascinating and even necessary subject.

Figure 27.10 summary: An illustrated promotional poster for the original Christy Minstrels, featuring a central portrait of Edwin S. Christy at the top and several scenes of performers in blackface below. The depictions include couples dancing, individual performers, and a row of six musicians playing instruments. The image serves as historical documentation of nineteenth-century minstrelsy and its role in popular entertainment in the United States.

Smith traces the development of minstrelsy to the boat decks, wharves, and bars along America's rivers and coasts, the main transportation routes before railroads and highways. In these areas, men from different backgrounds, including Irish,

German, and African American, worked close by each other, heard each other sing and play, and absorbed aspects of each other's musical traditions, developing a common language that crossed racial lines. Smith cites the sketches and paintings of William Sidney Mount (1807 to 1868), which show people of both races playing music or dancing to it in ways that became identified with minstrelsy. Other scholars have drawn attention to working-class neighborhoods in urban areas such as New York, arguing that early minstrelsy owed more to European styles. Although minstrel songs were not direct imitations of African American music, performers did borrow elements characteristic of African and African American traditions, from the banjo (a folk instrument based on African predecessors) to call-and-response, in which a lead singer alternates with a chorus or with instruments.

As stage entertainment, minstrelsy grew from the solo comic performances of Thomas Dartmouth ("Daddy") Rice (1808 to 1860) as Jim Crow, a naive plantation slave, and of George Washington Dixon (1808 to 1861) as Zip Coon, a boastful black urban dandy. Their theme songs were among the best sellers of their day: Rice's Jump Jim Crow (1829) was the first American piece of music to be a hit overseas, and Zip Coon (later adapted as Turkey in the Straw) was almost as popular. Rice developed a genre he called"Ethiopian opera," interspersing sketch comedy with songs, performed between or after the acts of a play. His act included imitating a cakewalk, a dance developed by blacks as a parody of the quadrilles and grand marches danced by the whites who held them in slavery; his parody of a parody is an example of the ironic blends produced by imitation across lines of race, class, and power.

The first full independent minstrel shows, consisting of dialogue, songs, banjo and fiddle playing, and dances loosely strung together, were given in 1843 by the Virginia Minstrels in New York, who then continued their shows throughout the East Coast and the British Isles. This group gave their name to the genre and made minstrelsy the first musical export from the United States to Europe, where it remained popular for over a century; “The Black and White Minstrel Show,” featuring white singers in blackface, ran on British television from 1958 to 1978.

What was the attraction of minstrelsy? Smith suggests that minstrel shows were popular because the blended styles of music and dance they presented were already familiar from the informal performances he documents. Other scholars have argued that the portrayal of black men as uneducated but clever, free from social constraints, and ready to indulge in singing, dancing, drinking, gambling, and sex, entertained white audiences while reassuring them of their superiority. Still others have pointed to the social satire that was intrinsic to blackface. Like drag shows today, in which men dress as women and mock gendered expectations, or eighteenth-century comic operas in which servants got the better of their masters, minstrel shows explored issues of social and political power and of proper and improper behavior through inversions of normal social roles. White performers playing black characters had license to behave outside accepted norms and to comment candidly on social, political, and economic conditions.

As minstrelsy became broadly popular, it lost many of these subversive tendencies and increasingly served to reinforce stereotypes that underlie attitudes of white supremacy. Indeed, the very name “Jim Crow” was applied to laws passed between the 1870s and the 1950s to deprive African Americans of the vote and other legal rights and render them second-class citizens. Yet there were also African Americans who were part of the minstrelsy tradition, most notably James A. Bland (1854 to 1911), who made a very successful career in the United States and in England and is best known for Oh, Dem Golden Slippers and Carry Me Back to Old Virginity, later named the state song of Virginia.

Although minstrel shows long ago passed out of fashion, some of the songs written for them have proven remarkably durable. The Virginia Minstrels' violinist, Dan Emmett (1815 to 1902), was the composer of Dixie (1860), whose theme of longing for the South is common in minstrel songs. Many of Stephen Foster's best-known songs were written for Christy's Minstrels, including Oh! Susanna (1848), Camptown Races (1850), Old Folks at Home (1851), and My Old Kentucky Home (1853). The first two are fast comic numbers, the latter two are slow, sentimental plantation ballads, and most share the black dialect, pentatonic melodies, and occasional syncopation that were typical of minstrel songs.

My Old Kentucky Home is especially poignant; inspired by Harriet Beecher Stowe's antislavery novel Uncle Tom's Cabin (1852), Foster wrote a lament of an enslaved servant born in Kentucky who has been sold to a sugar plantation owner further south, where conditions were even more cruel. The abolitionist Frederick Douglass, who assailed minstrel shows for their demeaning portrayal of African Americans, hailed this song for awakening “sympathies for the slave in which antislavery principles take root and flourish.” All of these were songs almost everyone in the United States knew for over a century, and they are still well known and widely sung. They are part of the heritage of minstrelsy; so too, unfortunately, are the stereotypes minstrels shows embodied and promoted.

NATIONAL PORTRAIT GALLERY, SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION/ART RESOURCE, NY

FIGURE 27.10 Cover of a collection of music sung in shows by Christy's Minstrels. The troupe's founder and leader, Edwin P. Christy (1815–1862), is at top, followed by scenes in which white actors, singers, and musicians made up in blackface and dressed as stylish urban blacks or as plantation slaves imitate the dances, songs, and dialogue of African Americans.

Opera as High Culture

Most musical theater in the early 1800s was aimed at mixed tastes. Composers and producers of all kinds of opera in every country could assume that their audience included wealthy elites, educated connoisseurs, musical amateurs, and the public at large. The librettists and composers of The Barber of Seville, Norma, Lucia di Lammermoor, Les Huguenots, and Der Freischütz sought to include elements that would appeal to all possible listeners.

By the middle of the nineteenth century, these and other works had become part of a repertory of operas that were performed repeatedly. In the later nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, new operas were staged less frequently, and the standard repertory came to predominate worldwide. Over time, the works that survived, and opera itself as a medium, have become increasingly associated with high culture; perhaps only in Italy, where some audience members still sing along with their favorite arias and choruses, has opera kept one foot in the world of popular music. Meanwhile, the vaudevilles, pantomimes, musical comedies, minstrel shows, and other lighter forms of musical theater from the period have been almost completely forgotten, yet their descendants—variety shows, cabarets, musicals, and the like—have formed a vital part of musical life for the last two centuries.

Opera today is a very expensive art form that depends on government support and wealthy private donors. Yet it continues to attract devoted fans from all classes of society. Nineteenth-century operas have continued to flourish in part because of their resonance and engagement with elements of twentieth-and twenty-first-century popular culture. The recording industry, television, and movie theaters have brought opera to new listeners, using technologies from wax cylinder recordings to the latest digital media, and have helped to make stars of singers whose celebrity status has transcended the confines of the opera house, from Enrico Caruso (1873 to 1921) to Maria Callas (1923 to 1977) to Anna Netrebko (b. 1971). Attending live opera still serves as an elite status symbol for some, but millions of people experience opera through radio and television broadcasts, H.D simulcasts in movie theaters, performances at universities and schools of music, and programs for opera in primary and secondary schools. Institutions like the Metropolitan Opera in New York use such broadcasts and outreach programs, along with a dose of glamour and celebrity, to draw in new audiences, while using ever more sophisticated production techniques, including stage projections and digital imagery developed for film, to enhance the spectacle intrinsic to Romantic opera. Wherever opera is heard and seen, most of the operas that are performed come from the nineteenth century, eclipsing all earlier periods, and the composers discussed in this chapter are well represented.

Opera and Musical Theater in the Later Nineteenth Century

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The second half of the nineteenth century saw a continuation of strong national traditions in German, Italian, and French opera, the rise of a vibrant Russian school in opera and ballet, and growing traditions of musical theater in other lands. Nationalism was an increasingly important force, linking opera to broader political and cultural currents. Exoticism and realism were also significant trends. Sources for plots ranged from mythology to modern love affairs, and from European history to exotic tales in foreign lands. As the market for theatrical music grew larger and more diverse, elite and popular audiences diverged and new forms of comic opera and musical theater emerged to satisfy popular tastes. Wagner and Verdi dominated German and Italian opera respectively, while composers in France, Spain, Bohemia, Russia, and elsewhere developed new national styles. The rise in status of the composer and the operatic "work" corresponded with a decline in the centrality of singers and in the arts of improvisation and embellishment.

Technology, Politics, and the Arts

Europe and the United States became industrial powerhouses during the later nineteenth century. Railroads spread across both continents, transporting people and goods more rapidly. New products and technologies such as chemical soaps and dyes, steel manufacture, the electric lightbulb, and the telephone spawned new industries and altered daily life.

Workers streamed to the cities to work in factories, and labor unions formed to represent their interests. With improved agriculture, sanitation, and medicine, life expectancy and population rose dramatically. Literacy also increased, and newspapers and magazines proliferated, made cheaper by advertising. With new laws that limited investors' risk to the amount they owned in stock, the modern corporation emerged, employing legions of office workers and middle 28 managers. Mass consumption became a driving force for the economy, evident in the new institutions of the brand name, the department store, and the mail-order catalogue.

A growing movement for political reform in the 1840s culminated in a series of popular uprisings that swept Europe in 1848 to 49. The first revolution, pictured in Figure 28.1, was in France, toppling King Louis Philippe and establishing the Second French Republic. Its gains were short-lived, since the desire for order overcame the push for reform. Napoleon's nephew was elected president and in 1852 made himself Emperor Napoleon the third (1852 to 70). Similar revolts in German, Italian, and Austro-Hungarian cities failed to produce permanent changes, due in part to disunity among revolutionary leaders and lack of support from peasants.

Figure 28.1 summary: A musical score excerpt featuring two staves for "Winds" and "Wellgunde," containing vocal lines and instrumentation. The lyrics describe how the person who can fashion a ring from the Rhine gold would win inheritance of the world, illustrating the musical setting of this narrative theme.

Over the next half century, however, most European governments granted more political rights to their people, including constitutional limits on the monarch, direct election of parliamentary assemblies, greater freedom of the press, and voting rights for most men. Russia abolished serfdom in 1861, and in the United States the Civil War of 1861 to 65 brought the abolition of slavery. France established its Third Republic in 1875. In the 1880s, Germany granted workers national health care, limits on the length of the working day, and old-age pensions that formed a model for other countries. Beginning in 1848 with the Seneca Falls Convention in upstate New York, women began pushing for equal treatment under the law, including the rights to make contracts, get a divorce, and cast a vote. Although women in most areas would not win the vote until the twentieth century, they made substantial gains by the end of the nineteenth. But improved rights for the many coincided with exploitation of others, as expropriation of Native American lands continued in the Americas, the Russian Empire expanded south and east, and the European powers divided up Africa and much of Asia into colonies.

The struggles for national unification in Germany and in Italy finally came to fruition. The 1848 revolutionaries in Germany tried to unify through negotiation, but failed. Then, between 1864 and 1871, Prussia under prime minister Otto Bismarck forged the German Empire through a combination of war and diplomacy. In Italy, building on earlier efforts of the Risorgimento, the 1848 revolts against foreign rule and for democratic reforms were initially successful, but by summer 1849 all the changes had been decisively reversed. Unification came in 1859 to 61: after the armies of Sardinia expelled Austrian rulers from northern Italy and conquered most of the papal states in central Italy, revolutionaries under Giuseppe Garibaldi overthrew the Bourbon monarchy in Sicily and southern Italy and then acknowledged the king of Sardinia, Victor Emmanuel 2, as king of united Italy.

Nationalism, Exoticism, Realism, and Fantasy Literature, music, and the other arts played important roles in promoting nationalism, and in turn nationalism had a profound influence on the arts. In both Germany and Italy, cultural nationalism—teaching a national language in the schools rather than local dialects, creating national newspapers and journals, and cultivating a national identity through the arts—was crucial in forging a new sense of nationhood. By contrast, in Austria-Hungary, cultural nationalism worked against political unity, for the empire encompassed ethnic Germans, Czechs, Slovaks, Poles, Hungarians, Romanians, Serbs, Croats, Slovenians, and Italians, and those promoting independence for their people could buttress their case by speaking their own language, emphasizing their distinctive traditions, and creating nationalist art and music.

In part because of these political forces, nationalism in music became more prominent during the second half of the nineteenth century. Many composers cultivated melodic and harmonic styles or chose subjects that carried associations with their own ethnic group. Sometimes this involved using native folk songs and dances or imitating their traits, but composers also invented “national” styles by introducing novel sounds or by deliberately shunning the conventions of the common international musical language. The point was dramatic effect, not authenticity. In a similar way, artists and architects looked to native handicrafts, ornamentation, and building styles to develop a distinctive national style, as in the onion domes and intricate decoration on the Russian church in Figure 28.2. Built in the late nineteenth century, the church was designed to look centuries old and specifically Russian, although both the building and its “traditional” style were newly manufactured.

Although musical nationalism began in Germany, the search for an independent native voice was especially keen in Russia and eastern Europe, where the dominance of Austro-German instrumental music and Italian opera was felt as a threat to homegrown musical creativity. For many, composing in a recognizably national style was a sign of authenticity, part of an artist's core personality. Norwegian composer Edvard Grieg gave voice to this view when he insisted that “the spirit of my native land, which has long found a voice in the traditional songs of its people, is a living presence in all I give forth.” Ironically, composers from lands outside the traditional musical powers of Italy, France, and Germany were boxed in by this viewpoint: their music had to be nationalist or risk being considered inauthentic, yet no merely national music could rival the claim to universality that had been part of the Austro-German tradition since the eighteenth century.

Figure 28.2 summary: A photograph of Saint Basil's Cathedral in Moscow, featuring its iconic colorful onion domes and intricate brick architecture against a clear blue sky. It is a representative image of a landmark, with no data or analytical result to report.

Exoticism, the evocation of foreign lands and cultures, also grew more common in the later nineteenth century. Many composers wrote music associated with a nation or region not their own, as when French and Russian composers wrote music on Spanish or Middle Eastern topics. As was true for nationalist music, some works borrowed actual melodies, instruments, or stylistic features in pursuit of a realistic portrayal of another culture, but authenticity was not required. More important was creating a sense of difference that combined strangeness and allure.

Musical exoticism has a long history. Rameau's opera-ballet Les Indes galantes (1735; see p. 421) featured scenes in Persia, among the Incas in Peru, and in a forest with American Indians, and in the late 1700s Turkish-style sounds and instruments were all the rage (see Chapter 23). Exoticism reached new heights in nineteenth-century opera. The opening of Japan to Westerners in 1854 and a series of world's fairs beginning in the 1880s inspired a stream of stage works set in Japan and China, including Gilbert and Sullivan's The Mikado and Puccini's Madama Butterfly and Turandot (see pages 695 to 96).

The political and economic conditions in the nineteenth century stimulated another dichotomy in the arts, between realism and fantasy.

: Figure 28.3 summary: An oil painting by Gustave Courbet titled A Burial at Ornans, depicting a large gathering of over fifty life-size village residents, including clergy and pallbearers, at a funeral. The work uses a realistic style to present ordinary people with the scale and importance typically reserved for royal subjects.

Realism (sometimes called social realism) developed first in literature and art, critiquing modern society by showing the reality of everyday life, the real suffering of the poor, and the hypocrisies of the elite and well-to-do, as in the novels of Charles Dickens, Victor Hugo, Gustave Flaubert, and Feodor Dostoevsky, the plays of Henrik Ibsen, and the paintings and illustrations of Honoré Daumier (see Figure 28.1) and Gustave Courbet. Courbet's life-size painting A Burial at Ornans, in Figure 28.3, treats a commonplace subject on a scale usually reserved for state ceremonies, historical figures, or heroes, showing that he considered this village funeral as important as the burial of a monarch. Realism influenced music as well, especially opera, as in Verdi's La traviata and Italian verismo operas (see pages 690 to 91 and 694). But artists also offered escape from gritty reality and from modern city life through fantasy and the distant past in works by Pre-Raphaelites such as English poet and painter Dante Gabriel Rossetti, or enjoyment of the outdoors in paintings by Claude Monet, John Singer Sargent, and other impressionists. Operas likewise explored myth, fantasy, and nature, as in Wagner's Ring cycle and Rimsky-Korsakov's fairy-tale operas (see pages 680 to 84 and 706 to 7).

FIGURE 28.1 The Uprising (1848) by French artist Honoré Daumier. Renowned for his satirical drawings that lampooned those in power, Daumier here paints an arresting portrait of the passion that united workers (in shirt-sleeves) and middle class (in top hat) and brought together men, women, and children in the 1848 Paris revolution.

THE PHILLIPS COLLECTION, WASHINGTON, DC/ACQUIRED 1925/BRIDGEMAN IMAGES

FIGURE 28.2 Church of the Resurrection in St. Petersburg, built 1883–1907.

DAVID BALL/CORBIS DOCUMENTARY/GETTY IMAGES

Realism and fantasy

Opera

Throughout the later nineteenth century, opera became increasingly associated with nationalism as an ideology, whether intentionally or by circumstance. But just as many composers blended traditions.

Especially significant was a growing tendency to stage operas that had already been successful rather than gambling on new works. Improved communications and increasing intercity commerce meant that theater managers and listeners quickly learned about operas premiered elsewhere, and operas that did well in one city were often produced across Europe and the Americas. The public began to demand that popular operas be repeated, and audiences were eager to hear their favorite singers in particular roles. As in the choral, chamber, and orchestral repertoires (explored in Chapter 26), a core repertory of operas gradually emerged, varying in each country, and the number of new operas produced each year declined.

Rather than working only for impresarios, as Rossini had done, composers increasingly worked for themselves, in collaboration with publishers, hoping to earn royalties from productions around the globe. No longer contracted to produce a fixed number of works in a season, composers could take more time to write each opera. With greater financial independence came new artistic freedom and new challenges; instead of following tried and true formulas, it became more important to create something individual that would stand out against the competition and be produced again and again.

As the audience for opera grew, so did the performing spaces. Orchestras became larger and louder, and singers now needed more powerful and intense voices to be heard, rather than the flexibility prized in earlier generations (see In Performance: An Original Verdi Baritone: Victor Maurel, pages 692 to 93). Composers adapted to the new type of singer, writing melodies that were more syllabic and less ornamented. Perhaps seeking to contribute something new to the repertory, composers set ever more varied plots. Greater realism in many operas, focusing on the private emotional lives of common people, was balanced by stories based on exoticism, legend, fairy tales, or the supernatural. New genres of light opera emerged, including opéra bouffe in France and operetta in Austria, England, and the United States. Late in the century, electric lighting replaced gas, allowing new lighting effects. When electricity made it possible to dim the house lights almost completely, the traditional convivial atmosphere of opera, in which conversation was acceptable between and even during arias, was gradually replaced by dark and reverberated silence. These changes, especially the creation of the permanent repertory, made the world of opera in the late nineteenth century very similar to what it is today.

Richard Wagner

The outstanding composer of German opera, and one of the crucial figures in nineteenth-century culture, was Richard Wagner (1813 to 1883; see biography and Figure 28.4). Several of his ideas had an enormous impact on all of the arts, notably his belief in the interrelationships between the arts and his view of art as a kind of religion. All of his important compositions are for the stage and set to his own libettos. After bringing German Romantic opera to a new height, he reconceived the very nature of opera as a drama based in music but

Richard Wagner

(1813 to 1883)

Wagner was one of the most influential musicians of all time. His emphasis on music as the servant of drama, his use of leitmotives as an organizing principle, and his creative manipulation of chromatic harmony had a profound and far-reaching impact on many later composers.

Wagner was born in Leipzig, Germany, the ninth child of a police actuary. Soon after Richard's birth his father died, and his mother married Ludwig Geyer, an actor and playwright whom Wagner suspected was his real father. Geyer evidently encouraged Richard's intellectual interests.

His early passions were theater and music, and he was particularly inspired by Weber's operas and Beethoven's symphonies. He studied music in Dresden and Leipzig, having begun formal study in his teens, later than most composers. His student works include piano pieces, overtures, and a symphony that show a firm grasp of compositional technique and a devotion to Beethoven.

In the early 1830s, Wagner began writing operas and held positions with regional opera companies in southern Germany and Latvia. By then, he had met the soprano Minna Planer, whom he married in 1836. incorporating all the other arts. In his later works, he developed a rich chromatic idiom and a system of conveying meanings through motivic associations, later termed leitmotives, which influenced composers for generations.

Writings and Ideas Wagner held strong and in some ways revolutionary views about how operatic music could serve the drama. He presented his ideas in a series of essays, including The Artwork of the Future (1850) and Opera and Drama (1851, revised 1868). He believed that Beethoven had done everything that could be done in instrumental music and had shown in his Ninth Symphony the path to the future by joining music to words (see Source Reading, p. 678). Wagner saw himself—not the composers of symphonies and string quartets—as Beethoven's true successor.

Wagner believed in the absolute oneness of drama and music—that the two are organically connected expressions of a single dramatic idea. Poetry, scenic design, staging, action, and music work together to form what he called a Gesamtkunstwerk (total or collective artwork). His vision of a new union of music and dramatic text has been called music drama, although he rejected that term; instead he called his works opera, drama, or Bühnenfestspiel (festival stage play), and in one essay suggested the phrase “acts of music made visible.”

They spent 1839 to 42 in Paris, where Wagner worked as a music journalist while trying to secure performances for his operas, with no success despite support from Meyerbeer. In 1842, Wagner moved back to Dresden, where his Rienzi was a great success, followed by Der fliegende Holländer (The Flying Dutchman) in early 1843. That year he was appointed second Kapellmeister for the king of Saxony in Dresden, directing the opera, conducting the orchestra, and composing for occasions at court.

Wagner supported the 1848 to 49 insurrection and had to flee Germany after a warrant was issued for his arrest. He settled in Switzerland, where he wrote his most important essays and began his massive cycle of four operas, Der Ring des Nibelungen. He was supported by a stipend from two wealthy female patrons. After several years of travel, in 1864 he found a new patron and devoted fan in the young King Ludwig the second of Bavaria, who paid his debts (Wagner was a habitual gambler), granted him an annual pension, and sponsored the production of his operas Tristan und Isolde and Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg and the first two operas in the Ring cycle.

Although Wagner would stay married to Minna until her death in 1866, he maintained relationships with numerous other women. He channeled the energy from his affair with Mathilde Wesendonck, the wife of one of his patrons—he set five of her poems for his Wesendonck-Lieder—into his sensuous opera about Tristan and Isolde, whose forbidden love could not be fully consummated in life. He later formed a new union with Cosima von Bülow, daughter of Liszt and wife of the conductor Hans von Bülow, another of Wagner's ardent admirers and promoters (see Chapter 29). Wagner had three children with Cosima, but she did not marry him until 1870, after her marriage to von Bülow was annulled.

Wagner dreamed of a permanent festival of his operas, and in 1872 he began to build the festival theater at Bayreuth. The first festival was held in 1876, with the premiere of the complete Ring cycle, and the second in 1882, with performances of his last opera, Parsifal. He died the next year of a heart attack and was buried at his beloved Bayreuth, where his operas are still performed every summer.

Major Works 13 operas, notably Der fliegende Holländer, Tannhäuser, Lohengrin, the four-opera cycle Der Ring des Nibelungen (Das Rheingold, Die Walküre, Siegfried, Götterdämmerung), Tristan und Isolde, Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg, and Parsifal

LEBRECHT MUSIC & ARTS PHOTO LIBRARY

The Artwork of the Future

In The Artwork of the Future (1850), Richard Wagner argued that Beethoven strove to discover the full potential of music and found it in his Ninth Symphony by rooting his music in the word. Thus for Wagner purely instrumental music after Beethoven was sterile ("the last symphony had already been written"), and only the artwork that combined all the arts was worthwhile.

Chinese text

This last symphony of Beethoven's is the redemption of music out of its own element as a universal art. It is the human gospel of the art of the future. Beyond it there can be no progress, for there can follow on it immediately only the completed artwork of the future, the universal drama, to which Beethoven has forged for us the artistic key.

Thus from within itself music accomplished what no one of the other arts was capable of in isolation. Each of these arts, in its barren independence, helped itself only by taking and egoistic borrowing: not one was capable of being itself and of weaving from within itself the all-uniting bond. The art of tone, by being wholly itself and by moving from within its own primeval element, attained strength for the most tremendous and most generous of all self-sacrifices—that of self-control, indeed of self-denial—thus to offer to its sister arts a redeeming hand....

Man as artist can be fully satisfied only in the union of all the art varieties in the collective artwork Gesamtkunstwerk; in every individualization of his artistic capacities he is unfree, not wholly that which he can be; in the collective artwork he is free, wholly that which he can be.

The true aim of art is accordingly all-embracing; everyone animated by the true artistic impulse seeks to attain, through the full development of his particular capacity, not the glorification of this particular capacity, but the glorification in art of mankind in general.

The highest collective artwork is the drama; it is present in its ultimate completeness only when each art variety, in its ultimate completeness, is present in it.

True drama can be conceived only as resulting from the collective impulse of all the arts to communicate in the most immediate way with a collective public; each individual art variety can reveal itself as fully understandable to this collective public only through collective communication, together with the other art varieties, in the drama, for the aim of each individual art variety is fully attained only in the mutually understanding and understandable cooperation of all the art varieties.

From Das Kunstwerk der Zukunft: Sämtliche Schriften und Dichtungen, 6th ed. (Leipzig, 1912 to 14). Trans. Oliver Strunk, in S.R 153 (6:6), pages 1108 to 9 and 1112.

The last of these terms is revealing, because for Wagner the core of the drama is really in the music, and the other arts make that drama apparent. The orchestra conveys the inner aspect of the drama, while the sung words articulate the outer aspect—the events and situations that further the action and give names to the feelings and experiences suggested by the music. In a similar way, the traditional hierarchy of voice and orchestra is reversed. The orchestral web is the chief factor in the music, and the vocal lines are part of the musical texture.

In a traditional opera, the voices lead and the orchestra supports, punctuates, and comments; in a Wagner drama, the dramatic thread is in the music itself, led by the orchestra, and the voices give it definition and precision through words. As he wrote in Opera and Drama, the dramatic singer's verse-melody is like a boat borne upon the sounding surges of the orchestra.

Wagner, Nationalism, and Anti-Semitism

Wagner was a musical and philosophical nationalist, claiming that German art was pure, true, spiritual, and profound, as opposed to the superficial appeal of Italian and French music. He expressed his most radical nationalism in his abhorrent anti-Semitic tract Das Judentum in der Musik (Judaism in Music), which appeared under a pseudonym in 1850 and under Wagner's name in 1869.

What drove him to write this essay, he explained to Liszt, was his antipathy toward Meyerbeer, whose music he once admired and who had used his influence to help Wagner. But Wagner turned against the elder composer when critics wrote how much Meyerbeer influenced his own music. Seeking to establish his independence, Wagner attacked Meyerbeer's music, arguing that it was weak because he was Jewish and therefore lacked national roots, without which a composer could not have an authentic style.

Wagner implied that the same problem affected Mendelssohn, whom he had revered in his younger days, despite Mendelssohn's conversion to Christianity. Wagner's essay drew on and strengthened an anti-Semitic strain in German culture, while attempting to obscure his deep debt to both Meyerbeer and Mendelssohn, without whose music his own would have been impossible.

In this essay, Wagner applied to music a new view of nationalism that was beginning to emerge at the time: the idea that only people who shared the same ethnicity could truly be part of a nation—for example, that Jews could never be German, no matter how many generations their families had lived in Germany, spoken German, and participated in German culture.

Whether or how Wagner's anti-Semitic views should affect our reception of his music has been debated since his own time, particularly after the National Socialists (Nazis) who ruled Germany in 1933 to 45 appropriated Wagner's music as a symbol of the best of German culture. Several critics have found anti-Semitic undercurrents in the operas themselves, and for decades his music was not welcome in Israel. Yet among his greatest advocates have been Jewish musicians, including conductors Hermann Levi (who conducted the premiere of Parsifal at Bayreuth), Gustav Mahler, and Daniel Barenboim.

Wagner's published writings address not only music but also literature, drama, and even political and moral topics. He believed that the Gesamtkunstwerk could help reform society and that art should not be undertaken for profit. He argued for vegetarianism and against animal experimentation. Most controversial were his views on nationalism, including anti-Semitism (see Music in Context: Wagner, Nationalism, and Anti-Semitism).

Early Operas Before formulating his conception of the Gesamtkunstwerk, Wagner composed several operas that drew directly on his predecessors. His first triumph came with Rienzi, a grand opera in the Meyerbeer mold, performed at Dresden in 1842. The following year Dresden saw a production of Derfliegende Holländer (The Flying Dutchman), a Romantic opera in the tradition of Weber.

Characteristics that became typical of Wagner's later music were established in The Flying Dutchman. The libretto—written, like those of all his operas, by the composer himself—is based on a Germanic legend, and the hero is redeemed through the unselfish love of a heroine (in this case, Santa), a common theme in Romantic literature as well as for Wagner. Themes from Senta's ballad, the central number of the opera, appear in the overture and recur throughout the opera, functioning like reminiscence motives in Meyerbeer, Weber, Donizetti, and Verdi. Also like Weber is Wagner's use of musical mimicry to portray nature, here especially in depicting a powerful storm at sea.

In Tannhäuser (Dresden, 1845), Wagner again adapted a Germanic legend about sin and redemption. For Tannhäuser's narrative in Act 3, Wagner introduced a new kind of flexible, semi-declamatory vocal line that became his normal method of setting text. Lohengrin, first performed under Liszt's direction at Weimar in 1850, embodies several other elements that foreshadow the dramas that followed. In this work, Wagner's treatment of medieval legend and German folklore is both moralizing and symbolic, suffused with nationalism while aspiring to universality. Wagner's new style of declamatory melody appears more often, and the technique of recurring themes is further developed.

the Ring Cycle From 1848 to 1852, around the time he was formulating and publishing his ideas on music and drama, Wagner wrote the verse librettos for his most colossal achievement: a cycle of four dramas with the collective title Der Ring des Nibelungen (The Ring of the Nibelung). The music of the first two—Das Rheingold (The Rhine Gold) and Die Walküre (The Valkyrie)—and part of the third, Siegfried, was finished by 1857, and the entire cycle was completed with Götterdämmerung (The Twilight of the Gods) in 1874. The first complete performance, over four evenings, took place two years later in a theater built in Bayreuth according to Wagner's specifications, shown in Figure 28.5. The large orchestra pit was hidden from view and extended beneath the stage, so that the sound seemed to be coming from under and around the singers, and the hall lights were dimmed to focus the audience's attention on the action. The stage effects were state-of-the-art, as in Figure 28.6. After Wagner's death, his widow Cosima established a permanent summer festival at the Bayreuth theater, devoted to productions of Wagner's operas.

Figure 28.6 summary: Two musical staff examples illustrating chord types. The first shows an augmented triad and its variations, and the second depicts diminished seventh chords using ascending pitch sequences. The figure serves to visually define these specific harmonic structures through musical notation.

The four dramas, a kind of German national epic, are woven out of stories from medieval German epic poems and Nordic legends and linked by common characters and musical motives. The cycle is largely about the value of love and people's willingness to abandon it for worldly ends. The “ring” of the title refers to a ring that the gnome Alberich fashions out of the gold he stole from the river Rhine, where it was guarded by three Rhine maidens. The ring gives its wearer limitless power.

Wotan, ruler of the gods, tricks Alberich out of the ring and a hoard of gold, using both to pay two giants for building his new castle, Valhalla. Furious, Alberich puts a curse on the ring that will bring its wearer misery and death. In the course of the four dramas—about nineteen hours of music—the curse is fulfilled: Wotan's doomed empire comes to a fiery end, and the Rhine maidens reclaim the ring. Despite its fantastical setting, the themes of the Ring cycle—love, greed, power, innocence, passion, and betrayal, to name a few—are universal and as relevant now as then.

For the librettos, Wagner devised a kind of poetry based on the style of the medieval Nibelungenlied, his source for the story of the hero Siegfried. Instead of regular meter and rhymes that fall at the end of each line, as used in traditional opera (see N.A.W.M 149 to 152), his poetry features vigorous, changing speech rhythms marked by Stabreim (alliteration), the repetition of speech sounds. For example, Alberich's curse on the ring in Scene 4 of Das Rheingold moves rapidly through a series of repeated consonants, g, m, n, z (pronounced ts), t, and d:

Gab sein Gold mir Macht ohne Mass.

nun zeug' sein Zauber

Tod dem, der ihn trägt!

Its gold gave me power without measure.

now its magic will beget death for him who wears it!

Such poetry is already rich with sound, and well suited for setting to music.

Each of Wagner's later dramas—and indeed the entire Ring cycle as a group—is organized around numerous themes and motives that are each associated with a particular character, thing, event, or emotion. Wagner referred to these ideas as the work's principal themes, the same terminology one would use in describing a symphony. But analysts since Wagner's time have called such a theme or motive a {Leitmotiv} (leading motive), often rendered as {leitmotive} or {leitmotif} in English. The association is established by sounding the leitmotive (usually in the orchestra) at the first appearance or mention of the subject, and by its repetition during subsequent appearances or citations. Often the significance of a leitmotive can be recognized from the words to which it is first sung. Thus the leitmotive is a musical label, but it becomes much more than that through its symphonic treatment in the music drama: it accumulates significance as it recurs in new contexts; it may recall an object in situations where the object itself is not present; it may be varied, developed, or transformed as the plot develops; similar motives may suggest a connection between the things to which they refer, especially if one leitmotive morphs into another; motives may be contrapuntally combined; and, through their repetition, motives unify a scene or opera as recurrent themes unify a symphony. Leitmotives are often characterized by particular instruments, registers, harmonies, or keys, which may also suggest meanings or associations. In principle, there is a complete correspondence between the symphonic web of leitmotives and the dramatic web of the action.

The creation of leitmotives, their dramatic role, and the development of one leitmotive into another can be illustrated through examples from the Ring cycle. Near the beginning of Das Rheingold, the Rhine maiden Wellgunde tells Alberich that he who fashions the Rhine gold into a ring can gain limitless power. At this, the first mention of the ring around which the whole four-opera cycle revolves, she and the reed instruments that accompany her trace a melodic outline, shown in Example 28.1a, that descends by thirds through a half-diminished seventh chord (E–C–A–F Sharp) and rises again. This idea seems to grow seamlessly from what comes before, but through repetition it emerges as a distinctive motive whose identification with the ring is reinforced several times in the text. By the time it is recalled in the orchestral interlude between the first and second scenes, in the new rhythmic form shown in Example 28.1b, the motive calls to mind its association with the ring, as it will continue to do throughout the entire cycle.

As the morning fog clears at the beginning of the second scene, we see Valhalla, the new castle of the gods, accompanied by a long, majestic theme that begins as in Example 28.1c. We recognize that this melody identified with Valhalla begins with a diatonic variant of the ring leitmotive. This links the

BETTM ANN/CONTRIBUTOR/GETTY IMAGES

Example 28.1 Leitmotives from Richard Wagner's Das Rheingold

a. The ring leitmotive's first appearance, as Wellgunde refers to the ring ring and Valhalla in our minds even before we learn that their fates are intertwined: the ring will help to pay for the castle, which will ultimately be doomed by Alberich's curse on the ring. The melodic relationship simultaneously suggests a parallel between Alberich and Wotan, both of whom aim for absolute power, and the difference between them, with Alberich's aspiration—a power marked as evil by the dissonant, unstable harmony outlined by the ring leitmotive and its emphasis on the tritone C-F—contrasting with Wotan's nobler concept of divine power, conveyed by the diatonic melody and major triads played by brass instruments. Thus the future course of the drama is suggested by the music, exemplifying Wagner's concept that the drama is in the music and that the words, scenery, and stage action make it visible.

—Image summary: A snippet of musical notation for bass clarinet (Bs. Cl.) featuring a series of chords and melodic fragments. The passage begins with a piano (p) dynamic that quickly fades to pianissimo (pp), incorporating chromatic movements and a triplet figure. This musical sequence represents the first appearance of the curse leitmotif.

>'Image summary: A musical score for Tubas showing a few bars of the Valhalla leitmotif. The piece is written in 3/4 time with a key signature of four flats, featuring harmonic movement between the upper and lower staves. The music depicts the beginning of a specific thematic motive associated with the Valhalla leitmotif.'

In the fourth scene of the opera, after Wotan tricks him into surrendering the ring, Alberich curses it using the notes of the ring leitmotive but in reverse order (F Sharp-A-C-E), as if negating the ring. His curse leitmotive, shown in Example 28.1d, ends with E, C, and G, all notes that are dissonant over the F Sharp pedal-tone that rolls in the timpani. This high level of dissonance intensifies the sense of threat and foreboding associated with the curse motive. The melodic relationships between the motives make the dramatic point that the ring, the castle, and the curse are bound up with each other.

At the same time, they are part of a web of dozens of such motives that bind the operas into a unified whole. As Wagner wrote to a friend in 1854 after completing Das Rheingold, “It has worked up to a perfect unity; there is scarcely a bar in the orchestral part which is not developed out of preceding motives.”

The mutability of Wagner's leitmotives distinguishes them from the reminiscence motives appearing in operas by Weber, Meyerbeer, and Donizetti and in his own earlier operas. Moreover, his leitmotives are the basic thematic material of the score. He uses them not once in a while but constantly, in intimate alliance with every step of the action.

Most are short and open-ended, making it possible to combine them in succession or simultaneously, in whatever ways best suit the drama. They also serve as elements for forming melodies, replacing the four-square phrases set off by rests and cadences of earlier composers. The leitmotives, their development, their restatements and variants, and the connective tissue linking these, form the stuff of "musical prose"

Wagner used to replace the "poetic" rhythms of symmetrical phrases. The impression of "endless melody" observed by many commentators results from the continuity of line, unbroken by the stops and restarts of Classic musical syntax.

Contrasts like those we have seen here, between consonance and dissonance, major and minor or diminished harmonies, diatonic and chromatic music, tonally stable and unstable passages, and timbres of different instruments, were basic elements of Wagner's expressive palette. Such oppositions have long histories, depending on codes of meaning that stretch back to Renaissance madrigals and Baroque operas, and they make Wagner's music dramatically apt and immediately comprehensible on first hearing. His formulation of these oppositions was particularly powerful, even elemental.

In an instant, we understand from the ponderous descending tritone identified with Alberich's son Hagen that he is evil and to be feared, from Siegfried's triadic and diatonic horn call that he is a hero, and from the undulating pentatonic leitmotive of the Rhine maidens that they are benign water creatures, embodiments of the beauty of nature. Equally elemental and compelling are Wagner's depictions of nature in its various guises throughout the Ring cycle, from the slow, powerful welling up of the river Rhine that opens Das Rheingold, represented by a gradual rise in range, rhythmic activity, dynamic level, figuration, density of layers, and turbulence while arpeggiating a single E Flat-major chord over a steady E Flat drone in the lowest reaches of the orchestra, through the violent storm at the start of Die Walküre and the "Forest murmurs" in Siegfried, to the flames rising toward the heavens at the end of Götterdämmerung, captured in swirling waves of chromatic motion. The same can be said of his representations of the supernatural, such as the storm swirls and galloping rhythms in the famous "Ride of the Valkyries" that begins Act 3 of Die Walküre, and the shimmering strings and colorfully unpredictable harmonies in the "Magic Fire Music" that ends the opera. Such stark and effective use of music to depict character, mood, and scene has had an enduring influence on later opera and on film and television scores, as has the concept of the leitmotive itself.

Later Operas During two long breaks from composing Siegfried, Wagner wrote Tristan und Isolde (1857 to 59) and Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg (The Meistersingers of Nuremberg, 1862 to 67). In contrast to the high seriousness of the Ring cycle and Tristan, both based on medieval German legends, Die Meistersinger is a sunny human comedy centered on the historical figure of Hans Sachs, most famous of the Meistersingers (see p. 224). Its predominantly diatonic music contrasts markedly with the chromaticism that suffuses Wagner's other late operas, even as its evocations of an old German tradition of song serve similar nationalist ends. His final work was Parsifal (1882), based on the legend of the Holy Grail, which uses the opposition between diatonic and chromatic music to suggest the polarity of redemption and corruption.

Beginning in the later 1850s with Tristan und Isolde, Wagner's dramas were influenced by the philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer (1788 to 1860), whose pessimistic views gained influence after the failed revolutions of 1848. In The World as Will and Representation, Schopenhauer argued that music was the one art that embodied the deepest reality of all human experience—our emotions and drives—and could, therefore, give immediate expression to these universal feelings and impulses in concrete, definite form without the intervention of words. Words and ideas were the product of reason, which governed only “Appearance,” whereas emotions resided in the “Will,” which Schopenhauer deemed the dominant and ultimate reality.

Wagner embraced these views, but rejected Schopenhauer's insistence upon seeking release from the Will through contemplation. In Tristan und Isolde, adapted from a thirteenth-century romance by Gottfried von Strassburg, Wagner depicts the raw, vital force of the Will in the passion of two lovers whose ardor can be consummated only in death, a tragedy that serves as the gateway to the highest ecstatic fulfillment.

Desire is evoked in Tristan und Isolde from the very beginning of the Prelude (N.A.W.M 153a), shown in Example 28.2, as Wagner uses chromatic harmony and delayed resolutions to convey an almost inexpressible yearning. Tonal music is based on our desire for dissonance to resolve to consonance.

Figure 28.2 summary: A musical score excerpt showing the opening of the Prelude to Wagner's Tristan und Isolde, marked Langsam und schmachtend. The notation features two staves with interlocking melodic lines for winds and cello, utilizing long ties, chromaticism, and dynamic markings such as pp, p, and sf. The piece is characterized by these evolving, suspended harmonies that create a sense of longing.

1848 Seneca Falls

Convention, beginning of women's suffrage movement

1848 to 49 Revolutions throughout Europe

1852 to 70 Second French Empire under Napoleon the third

1853 Giuseppe Verdi, Il trovatore and La traviata

1857 to 59 Richard Wagner,

Tristan und Isolde

1858 Jacques Offenbach, Orpheus in the Underworld

1859 Charles Gounod, Faust

1861 Victor Emmanuel crowned king of Italy

1861 Russia bans serfdom

1861 to 65 American Civil War

1866 Bedřich Smetana, The Bartered Bride

1871 German Empire unites German states outside Austria

1874 Premiere of Modest

Musorgsky's Boris Godunov

1874 Francisco Asenjo

Barbieri, El barberillo de

Lavapiés

1875 Georges Bizet, Carmen

1876 Wagner, premiere of complete Ring cycle

1879 Piotr Il'yich Tchaikovsky, Eugene Onegin

1879 Thomas Edison perfects the electric lightbulb

1879 W. S. Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan, The Pirates of Penzance

1887 Verdi, premiere of Otello

1903 to 6 Giacomo Puccini,

Madama Butterfly and for the dominant to resolve to the tonic. That desire is intensified when resolution is delayed, cadences are evaded, or the moment of resolution introduces a new dissonance, all of which Wagner does here.

The opening motive, a rising sixth followed by a chromatic descent, suggests longing. The first chord, F–B–D Sharp–G Sharp, is a striking sonority whose resolution is at first uncertain, given the lack of harmonic context; used throughout the opera and instantly recognizable whenever it appears, this chord has become known as “the Tristan chord.” When the top note rises to A, we understand the chord in retrospect as an augmented sixth chord in A minor with a very long chromatic appoggiatura on G Sharp. The resolution to the dominant seventh of A minor in measure 3 is inflected by a piquant chromatic passing tone (A Sharp) in the melody, so that we hear four dissonant sonorities in a row, each of which “resolves” the previous one without itself resolving to consonance. It is hard to imagine a three-measure phrase more effective in creating a sense of yearning in the listener.

Nor does the dominant seventh resolve to A minor. After a rest, the opening phrase repeats a minor third higher and then repeats again, varied. Desire is not attenuated by granting resolution to a tonic; instead, the keys of A, C, and E (the three notes of the A minor triad) are suggested through their respective dominant chords, each left hanging in the air. We expect to hear more of all three keys, and eventually we do: A and E in the Prelude itself, and C minor and major as the keys that begin and end Act 1. Yet the harmony is constantly churning, shifting keys, altering chords chromatically, and blurring progressions by means of nonchord tones. Desire and yearning are communicated unmistakably by repeatedly evoking yet evading traditional harmonic expectations.

Throughout Act 1, motives and extended passages from the Prelude return and acquire significance as leitmotives through association with the words. The act takes place aboard a ship on which the knight Tristan is transporting the reluctant Isolde from Ireland to Cornwall, where she will become King Marke's bride. We learn that she is both secretly in love with Tristan and angry at him for having slain her former fiancé. In the final scene of the act (conclusion in N.A.W.M 153b), she asks him to share a drink of atonement, intending to give them both poison.

But her companion Brangane has substituted a magical love potion. After they drink, we hear the opening section of the Prelude again, as they stare at each other, trembling, then call out to each other with longing. Here the yearning so cunningly expressed in the Prelude finds its parallel on stage, as they surrender to passionate love.

But meanwhile the ship has arrived in Cornwall, and the sailors hail King Marke. Their celebratory music competes for attention with the rapture of the lovers until the curtain falls at the end of the act. Throughout, Wagner strings together his open-ended leitmotives in whatever sequence best conveys the actions and emotions of the drama. while constantly varying them to suggest the developing dramatic situation and the fluid feelings of the characters.

This scene exemplifies the intertwining of action, scenery, and music typical of Wagner's Gesamtkunstwerk. The deck, railings, sails, ropes, and backdrop onstage join with wave-gestures in the music and the songs of the sailors to convey the ship's journey into port. The realistic shouts of the chorus interrupt the sometimes speechlike, sometimes lyrical and passionate declamation of Tristan and Isolde. The large orchestra maintains continuity, elaborating motives that illustrate the content of the words or the underlying emotions and associations. Thus action, dialogue, musical scene-painting, and lyrical expression are not parวeled out to different moments, as in traditional opera, but all constantly mingle and reinforce one another.

Tristan und Isolde is an extraordinary opera, focused almost entirely on the two main characters and their psychological journey. The outward activity of the plot serves largely as a backdrop to the musical manifestation of the characters' inner emotions. In this sense, this opera most completely embodies Wagner's concept of a drama in which music is the leading element: the words and action on stage are much more a representation of the music than the other way around, which had been typical of opera since its origins. Tristan und Isolde has become a monument of music as secular religion, a notion Wagner endorsed and one that pervades much musical activity in the later nineteenth century, from the pilgrimages Wagnerites made to hear his music at Bayreuth to the worshipful attention given to the music of the masters at concerts.

Wagner's Influence Wagner's music and ideas were enormously influential. His operas from The Flying Dutchman to Parsifal quickly became central to the worldwide operatic repertoire, and excerpts from the Ring cycle, Tannhäuser, and Lohengrin were played so often by orchestras and bands and in keyboard transcriptions that they became among the most familiar and popular pieces on the planet. More has been written about Wagner than about any other musician.

His writings, and the success of his operas, regained for dramatic and representational music the prestige that some had argued belonged to absolute music alone. His ideal of opera as a drama with music, words, staging, and action all intimately linked affected virtually all later opera. Almost as important was his method of minimizing divisions within an act and charging the orchestra with maintaining continuity by developing pregnant musical motives while the voices sang in free, arioso lines rather than in the balanced phrases of the traditional aria.

His use of leitmotives was imitated by many other composers of opera and later became a standard practice for film and television music. Wagner was a master of orchestral color, and here also his example bore fruit. Many musicians became Wagnerians, while others kept their distance or opposed his ideas, but few escaped his influence.

Wagner also had a tremendous impact on the other arts and on culture at large. So great was his influence that “Wagnerism” became a term for interest in his ideas in a number of fields, from politics to aesthetics. Many found in Wagner support for their own idealistic beliefs, and his unique mix of mythology and philosophy, and of the erotic with the spiritual, appealed to a wide range of followers. Paul Verlaine, Stéphane Mallarmé, and other poets associated with the symbolist movement drew on Wagner's use of leitmotives and symbols, an influence that carried over to many writers of the early twentieth century. Visual artists including Gustav Klimt and Aubrey Beardsley transferred to their realm Wagner's interest in legends and symbols, and his re-creations of national legends inspired imitators everywhere.

Giuseppe Verdi (1813 to 1901; see biography and Figure 28.7) was the dominant figure in Italian music for the fifty years after Donizetti, as central to Italian opera as Wagner was to German opera. The first of his twenty-six operas was produced in 1839 when he was twenty-six, the last in 1893 when he was eighty.

As the most popular Italian composer of his generation, Verdi came to be identified with the Italian Risorgimento. Like other opera composers, he devised ways to sidestep the ever-present threat of government censorship by camouflaging political messages in historical dramas. Italians under foreign rule found relevance in the oppressed characters and tyrants who populated Verdi's operas of the 1840s, including Nabucco (Nebuchadnezzar, 1842), Giovanni d'Arco (Joan of Arc, 1845), and Attila (1846). By 1859, his name had become a nationalist rallying cry:"Viva Verdi!" to Italian patriots stood for"Viva Vittorio Emanuele Re d'Italia!"—Long live Victor Emmanuel, king of Italy. Even after unification, Verdi never abandoned his interest in politics as a theme. Rather, he approached it more deeply in Simon Boccanegra (1857, revised 1881), Don Carlos (1867, revised 1884), and Otello (1887), which explore complex rulers and the personal consequences of ego and power.

Approach to Opera Verdi's operas are first and foremost works of theater, whose impact depends on vivid characterization, sharp contrasts, and a fluid and concise dramatic and musical structure. One of his most effective tools, and a prime reason for his enduring popularity, was his ability to capture character, feeling, and situation in memorable melodies that sound both fresh and familiar. Many use a simple form such as aaba, making them easy to follow, and combine regular phrasing and plain harmony with an intriguing rhythmic and melodic motive that catches the listener's attention.

So aware was Verdi of the appeal of his melodies that he strove to keep a new opera's best tunes from being leaked to the public before the premiere. But his craft did not stop at melody. He had comprehensive training in harmony and counterpoint, a wide knowledge of the music of his predecessors, and a keen ear for orchestration that adds color, atmosphere, and drama without overpowering the singers.

Verdi usually chose the opera's subject himself. He preferred stories that had succeeded as spoken dramas, drawing on plays by authors like Shakespeare, freed-rick Schiller, and Victor Hugo. Mirroring contemporary developments in spoken theater, he expected fast action, striking contrasts, unusual characters, and strong emotional situations from his librettos. Verdi focused on tragic plots and shied away from comedy; after the failure of his first comic opera, Un giorno di regno (1840), which followed the deaths of his young children and wife Margherita, it was more than fifty years before he wrote another comedy, Falstaff (1893).

(1813 to 1901)

Verdi's music has been called the epitome of Romantic drama and passion. He worked within the traditions of his predecessors but during his long life continually refined his techniques.

The son of an innkeeper in a village near Busseto in northern Italy, Verdi studied music as a child, and by age nine was a church organist. After studying privately in Milan, he returned home and took a position as music director in Busseto, where he married Margherita Barezzi in 1836.

He soon returned to Milan, aiming for a career composing operas. The success of his first, Oberto, won him a contract for three more operas. When his two children died in infancy, followed by Margherita's early death in 1840 and the failure of his second opera, he nearly gave up composition in despair. But his next opera, Nabucco (1842), was a triumph and launched Verdi as a star composer. The next eleven years were the busiest of his career, and he wrote one or two new operas each year for houses in Milan, Venice, Rome, Naples, Florence, London, Paris, and Trieste. This period culminated in Rigoletto (1851), Il trovatore (1853), and La traviata (1853), which quickly became mainstays of the permanent opera repertory.

During these years he met soprano Giuseppe Strepponi, who became his life partner. After spending most of 1847 to 49 in Paris, he acquired land near Busseto and moved back there with Strepponi, where he and his lover put up with much gossip about their unsanctioned union. In 1851, they settled on a nearby farm, where they lived for the rest of their lives, with frequent sojourns to Paris, Milan, and other cities. They married in secret in 1859.

After La traviata, Verdi slowed his production of new operas, writing only six in the sixteen years from Les vèpres siciliennes (1855) to Aida (1871). Then he retired from the stage, focusing on his farm and living off royalties from his music, until he was persuaded to write two last operas, Otello (1887) and Falstaff (1893). Strepponi died in 1897, and Verdi followed in early 1901. A month later, escorted by a procession of thousands of admirers, his remains—along with Strepponi's—were interred in Milan at the home for retired musicians he had helped to found. According to his wishes, the funeral was a very quiet affair, “without music or singing.”

Major Works 26 operas, including Nabucco, Macbeth, Luisa Miller, Rigoletto, Il trovatore, La traviata, Les vêtres siciliennes, Simon Boccanegra, Un ballo in maschera, La forza del destino, Don Carlos, Aida, Otello, and Falstaff; Requiem and other Latin sacred choral works

Verdi always wrote with specific singers in mind, suiting his music to their voices in order to create the best possible effect, yet unlike composers of the bel canto era he demanded that singers remain subordinate to the composer and the work (see In Performance: An Original Verdi Baritone: Victor Maurel, pages 692 to 93). Collaborating closely with his librettist, Verdi planned the sequence of musical forms to make sure each singer had opportunities for arias, dramatic duets, and larger ensembles. Once the libretto was complete,

Working methods Verdi wrote out a draft with the vocal melodies and essential accompaniment, then a skeleton score with more of the elements filled in. The final step was the orchestration, usually completed after rehearsals had begun and he heard how the singers sounded in the theater. Verdi could afford to take more time to compose than his predecessors because he was better paid for each new opera and, thanks to improved copyright laws, could count on royalty income from later productions and from sales of the published scores. He used that time to calculate the most effective setting to enhance the opera's dramatic impact on the audience, increasing its chances for a successful first run and a permanent place in the repertory. His strategy worked: although he wrote fewer operas than Rossini or Donizetti, Verdi's have been far more frequently performed than theirs ever since.

Style Verdi's early operas built on the conventions of Rossini, Bellini, and especially Donizetti. His first great success was Nabucco (Milan, 1842), on the biblical story of Nebuchadnezzar; the Hebrew slaves' unison chorus Va pensiero became an emblem of Italian opposition to foreign oppression. After the failure of the revolutions and reforms of 1848 to 49, Verdi turned from historical subjects to dramas centered on interpersonal conflict and finer psychological portrayal of character, beginning with Luisa Miller (Naples, 1849).

Musical characterization, dramatic unity, and melodic invention unite in Rigoletto (Venice, 1851), in which the central characters are delineated by their contrasting styles of singing and relation to musical convention. Rigoletto, a hunchback court jester at odds with the courtiers around him, sings in a declamatory arioso style and lacks a real aria, while the superficiality of his employer the Duke of Mantua is shown in tuneful arias that stick to predictable formal conventions, and Gilda—Rigoletto's daughter, who is in love with the Duke—moves between the two extremes. In the final act, Verdi captures the Duke's charming but shameless nature in the aria La donna è mobile, where his claim that women are fickle rings truer about himself, yet his captivating melody in a carefree waltz rhythm makes him seem irresistible.

A high point of the opera is the quartet from Act 3, where four characters sing, each in a different style to convey their individual personalities and moods. In a seductive, lyrical song the Duke romances a new lover, Maddalena, who coquettishly laughs at his insincerity; meanwhile, listening outside the tavern walls, Gilda sings in dramatic style of her pain at his betrayal, while Rigoletto, bent on revenge, asks in arioso if she has heard enough.

In Rigoletto and his next two operas, Il trovatore (The Troubadour; Rome, 1853) and La traviata (The Fallen Woman; Venice, 1853), Verdi reached new heights of dramatic compression, and all three have remained among the most popular operas ever composed. Verdi often uses reminiscence motives, as Donizetti had done in Lucia di Lammermoor, recalling at crucial points in the drama distinctive themes from earlier scenes in order to reinforce connections and deepen the dramatic impact. In several operas, including Il trovatore and La traviata, Verdi replaced the overture with a briefer prelude that sets the scene and introduces important themes to come.

Many features of Verdi's mature works are embodied in La traviata. This was one of the first tragic operas to be set in the present rather than in the historical past. Both its setting and its subject—a woman trapped between her livelihood as a courtesan, her desire to escape that life and be loved as an equal, the social mores that keep her in her place, and the tuberculosis that threatens her life—link the opera to the contemporary trend of realism in literature and art.

The resources Verdi commanded are evident in the scene of the final act in which Violetta, the “fallen woman” of the title, and her lover Alfredo reconcile after she had left him to save his family's reputation (N.A.W.M 154). The scene follows the structure Rossini had standardized for duets—scena (accompanied recitative), tempo d'attacco (opening section), slow cantabile, tempo di mezzo (contrasting dramatic section), and fast cabaletta—yet each element is in a new style characteristic of Verdi. Instead of recitative punctuated by the orchestra, the scena presents a complete musical texture in the orchestra, a skipping melody in four-measure phrases, over which Violetta and her maid engage in recitative-like dialogue. When Alfredo enters, their conversation is set not as recitative but as a tuneful song (the tempo d'attacco) in which they alternate phrases. The following cantabile, in which Alfredo and Violetta look forward to life together as she recovers her health, is almost as simple and direct as a popular song, both in its form (A.A B.B with coda) and in the tunefulness of its A section, shown in Example 28.3. The cantabile lyricism and the light background accompaniment are familiar, but the style of the vocal line is worlds away from Rossini or Bellini (compare Examples 27.2 and 27.3, pages 654 to 57). The tempo di mezzo offers a series of startling contrasts in mood and style as Violetta collapses, insists nothing is wrong, collapses again, and finally despairs that her illness will overtake her just as happiness is so near. These emotions intensify in the cabaletta, where Violetta bewails her ironic misfortune and Alfredo begs her to calm herself. This final section follows a common form for Verdi, aaba' with coda, which allows him to introduce contrast and end on an emotional climax.

As in earlier Italian opera, the focus is on the singing, but here the drama is most important and the composer is in control. The singers are not free to embellish and improvise as they would be in a Rossini opera of a generation earlier, and Verdi wrote out even the cadenzas. The orchestra remains subordinate to the singers, yet Verdi often uses contrasting colors of winds or brass to heighten the effect, doubling a vocal melody, providing punctuation, highlighting a dramatic moment onstage, or building momentum to a climax. Throughout the scene, Verdi takes every opportunity for stark contrasts, strong emotions, and catchy melodies while keeping the action moving in an almost perfect marriage of drama and music.

।Figure 28.3 summary: A musical score excerpt from Act III of Verdi's La traviata. It features a vocal line marked Andante mosso and dolcissimo a mezza voce, accompanied by pizzicato strings in the lower staves. The figure serves as a musical example of a specific operatic passage.

An Original Verdi Baritone: Victor Maurel

In the second half of the nineteenth century, the relationship between composers and singers shifted as composers like Verdi and Wagner asserted control over every aspect of opera performance and production, rejected the bel canto tradition of improvisation and embellishment, and insisted that the music be performed as written. At the same time, the growing ease of travel and communication gave leading singers unprecedented opportunities to build international careers. Increasingly, this enabled them to act as free agents, independent of both composers and opera-house managements.

A good example of this trend is the French baritone Victor Maurel (1848 to 1923), shown in Figure 28.8 in costume for Verdi's Falstaff. Early in the course of a career that spanned some four decades, he joined a select group of singers who were in demand throughout Europe and the United States. His repertoire centered on operas by Verdi, Wagner, and other

Later Operas Now famous and well off, Verdi could afford to work even more carefully, writing only six new operas in the next two decades. In these operas, the action is more continuous; solos, ensembles, and choruses are more freely combined; harmonies become more daring; and the orchestra is treated with great originality. Verdi still used traditional forms but often reshaped them to suit the dramatic situation.

Figure 28.8 summary: A black and white illustration depicting French baritone Victor Maurel in the role of Falstaff, portrayed as a stout man in period clothing sitting at a table with a glass of wine. It is a character portrait intended to show the performer in costume.

An important influence was French grand opera, especially Meyerbeer. Verdi wrote Les vépres siciliennes (The Sicilian Vespers, 1855) as a grand opera, for Paris, to a libretto by Meyerbeer's collaborator Eugène Scribe, blending French and Italian elements. This also signaled a return to historical subjects with political ramifications, coinciding with renewed interest in Italian unification. He introduced comic roles in Un ballo in maschera (A Masked Ball; Rome, 1859) and in La forza del destino (The Force of Destiny, 1862, revised 1869), composed for the imperial Russian opera in St. Petersburg. All the traits of his mature style appear in Aida (1871), which unites the heroic quality of grand opera with vivid character delineation, pathos, and a wealth of melodic, harmonic, and orchestral color. Commissioned for the Cairo opera, Aida was on an Egyptian subject, giving Verdi opportunity to introduce exotic color and spectacle. contemporary composers, but he was also a notable interpreter of Mozart's Don Giovanni. Verdi chose him to premiere the roles of the villain lago in Otello (1887) and of the comic title character in Falstaff (1893), showing his appreciation for Maurel's superior abilities and range as an actor, and he shaped the music to suit the singer's voice. Maurel also created the roles of the Indian chief Cacico in Gomes's II Guarany (1870, see p. 708) and of the clown Tonio in Leoncavallo's Pagliacci (1892, see p. 694).

After graduating from the Paris Conservatoire in 1867, Maurel made his obligatory debut at the Opéra, singing leading roles in Meyerbeer's Les Huguenots and Verdi's Il trovatore (in French). But he quickly grew frustrated by the old guard's dominance at France's premier opera house and struck out for Italy, where he became a favorite of audiences in Florence, Rome, Naples, and Venice. He returned to Paris as an international star and later also sang at London's Royal Opera House and Covent Garden and at New York's Metropolitan Opera. His commanding portrayal of the Ethiopian king Amonasro in Aida, under Verdi's baton, prompted the composer to cast him in the title role of the revised version of Simon Boccanegra at Milan's La Scala in 1881.

Maurel shared Verdi and Wagner's conviction that the old-style bel canto singer was obsolete. He argued that modern singers needed to be accomplished actors and versed, as he was, in contemporary theater and dramatic techniques. In the old days, Maurel wrote in an essay on vocal instruction, “the singer was not expected to portray characters' emotions realistically; he was only required to produce beautiful bel canto sounds. Today, the public wants true theater and lifelike emotions; these demands have given rise to vocal difficulties that are insurmountable for students and that masters can only teach them to overcome when they themselves have learned to do so.” ^{*}

Verdi declared that “there is no better singer and actor than Maurel,” and particularly admired the Frenchman's clear and expressive diction. But Maurel's ego often put him into conflict with Verdi, who, by his own account, was something of a “bear” in his dealings with singers. Tensions came to a head when Maurel demanded the exclusive right to perform the title role in Falstaff. The composer politely but firmly demurred. Undeterred, Maurel went on to publish a staging manual for Otello and an essay on Falstaff in which he took exception with Verdi's express instructions.

Victor Maurel, Dix ans de carrière (Paris, 1897), 171. Translation by Harry Haskell.

Verdi wrote only two more operas after Aida, highly individual master-pieces based on plays by his favorite dramatist, Shakespeare. Both feature librettos by poet and composer Arrigo Boito (1842 to 1918).

In 1879, Verdi's publisher Giulio Ricordi, eager for another opera, proposed adapting Shakespeare's Othello. Verdi began Otello in 1884, and it was finally produced in Milan in 1887. Like Donizetti before him, Verdi often sought continuity in music and action, and here he realized it most completely, through reminiscence motives in the orchestra and in the unbroken flow of music within each act. The traditional scheme of declamatory and lyrical solos, duets, ensembles, and choruses is still present, but the units are arranged in larger scene-complexes, and the orchestra develops themes in a more symphonic manner, often independent of the voices.

Two years after the premiere of Otello, Boito suggested an opera on scenes from Shakespeare's The Merry Wives of Windsor and Henry the fourth involving the character Falstaff, shown in Figure 28.8. If Otello was the consummation of Italian tragic opera, Falstaff (Milan, 1893) holds a parallel place in comic opera. While Verdi reshaped dramatic lyrical melody for Otello, for Falstaff he transformed that characteristic element of opera buffa, the ensemble.

Otello and Falstaff Carried along over a nimble, endlessly varied orchestral background, the comedy speeds to its climaxes in the finales of the second and third acts, culminating in a fugue for the entire cast on the words “All the world's a joke. We are all born fools.”

Verdi's Reception Verdi experienced phenomenal success in his own lifetime. By the 1850s, his operas were performed more often than those of any other Italian composer. In the twentieth century, even his operas that had not been performed in decades were revived, and in recent decades there have been more operas in the permanent repertory by Verdi than by any other composer.

GALLERIA NAZIONALED'ARTE MODERNA, ROME. PHOTO: LEBRECHT MUSIC & ARTS PHOTO LIBRARY

Paris, my dear, we shall forsake; our life, united, we shall pass together.

APIC/GETTY IMAGES

FIGURE 28.9 Giacomo Puccini in 1900.

Figure 2.8 summary: A musical score excerpt showing the vocal part for Alberich and a timpani part, illustrating the first appearance of the curse leitmotif. The notation includes specific dynamics and textual cues corresponding to the lyrics, capturing the dramatic introduction of this recurring musical theme.

Later Italian Opera

Verdi was such a central figure that later Italian opera composers struggled to escape his shadow. As opera houses increasingly performed works already in the repertory rather than new ones, few operas by composers after Verdi found a permanent place there.

Two works that did enter the repertory are the one-act operas Cavalieria rusticana (Rustic Chivalry, 1890) by Pietro Mascagni (1863 to 1945) and Pagliacci (Clowns, 1892) by Ruggero Leoncavallo (1858 to 1919), often paired with each other in performance. Both are examples of verismo (from Italian vero, “true”), an operatic parallel to realism in literature. Instead of treating historical figures or faraway places, these operas present everyday people, especially the lower classes, in familiar situations, often depicting events that are brutal or sordid. In their realism and in other respects, these composers were strongly influenced not only by Verdi's La traviata but also by Bizet's Carmen (see pages 697 to 98). The music responds directly to the text, driven by vocal melody rather than by earlier operatic conventions. Although now the term “verismo” is often restricted to operas like these, in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries it was used more broadly for artworks, including operas, that reacted against Romantic idealism and turned away from a reliance on conventions. In this broader sense, the term embraces a wide range of operas from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries that introduce novel elements, whether realistic plots, unconventional scene structures, multidimensional characters, irregular versification, use of everyday language, coloristic harmony, nontraditional accompaniment, or declamatory melodic styles. By this definition, verismo includes Verdi's late operas, Arrigo Boito's Mefistofele (1868, revised 1875 to 76), Alfredo Catalani's La Wally (1892), and the operas of Puccini (below), among many others.

Jakomo Poocheeni The most successful Italian opera composer after Verdi was Giacomo Puccini (1858 to 1924), shown in Figure 28.9. The son of a church organist and composer, he was slated to follow in his father's footsteps but chose instead to focus on opera. After studying at the conservatory in Milan, Puccini attracted attention with his first opera, Le villi, in 1884. His third opera, Manon Lescaut (1893), catapulted him to international fame. Over the next three decades he produced nine more operas, all of which have found enthusiastic audiences around the world.

Puccini's letters show a continual search for dramatic conceptions that evoke"the spirit behind the words." He was interested in realism, embodied by diverse characters, authentic local color, lifelike stage action, and engaging visual effects. To provide these elements, he chose plots set in a place and time that inspired him, whether that be Florence in 1299 (Gianni Schicchi, 1918), Rome in 1800 (Tosca, 1900), California during the Gold Rush (La fanciulla del West, The Girl of the Golden West, 1910), Nagasaki at the turn of the twentieth century (Madama Butterfly, 1903 to 6), or ancient China (Turandot, 1926). For him, the exoticism of America, Japan, or China was just another form of realism, with the added appeal of the unfamiliar and far away.

Puccini created a highly individual personal style by blending Verdi's focus on vocal melody with elements of Wagner's approach, notably the use of recurring melodies or leitmotives, freedom from conventional operatic forms, and a greater role for the orchestra in creating musical continuity. In Puccini's operas, arias, choruses, and ensembles are usually part of a continuous flow rather than set off.

as independent numbers. The standard scene structure pioneered by Rossini and observed in most of Verdi's operas is replaced by a fluid succession of sections that differ in tempo, mood, and character. Musical ideas grow out of the dramatic action, blurring the distinction between recitative and aria. Puccini often juxtaposes different styles and harmonic idioms in order to suggest the diverse people in the drama, such as impoverished artists and other residents of the Parisian Latin Quarter in La bohème (1896); the idealistic singer Tosca and the evil Scarpia in Tosca; a Japanese woman and her American lover in Madama Butterfly; or various levels of an imaginary ancient Chinese society in Turandot.

All of these characteristics are evident in the scene of Butterfly's marriage to Pinkerton in Madama Butterfly (N.A.W.M 155). The music moves seamlessly between dialogue and brief aria-like moments. The main continuity and many of the most important melodies are in the orchestra, which nonetheless always supports the singers. In a private dialogue before the ceremony, Pinkerton speaks in the Romantic tones of Puccini's usual style, but Butterfly moves among several different styles to present different personas to Pinkerton: conforming to Western expectations of exotic charm with a Westernized Japanese style, joining in his Western style as an equal, and at one point inadvertently letting him see a darker side of Japanese culture and of her own personal history: her father's ritual suicide. Puccini's music balances exoticism with a very human portrait of Butterfly, captured in her Act 2 aria Un bel di, expressing her faith that Pinkerton will return to her, and also on the cover of a vocal score, shown in Figure 28.10. Through very simple means, Puccini responds directly to the text and the situation. His melody-centered, colorful, and emotionally direct style has won his operas a permanent place in the repertory and has exercised a strong influence on scoring for film and television.

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France

In France, no one figure was as dominant as Wagner and Verdi were in their respective lands, but Paris remained the main center for the production of new works. State subsidies for the main opera houses brought with them occasional attempts to dictate policy, including an insistence on performing new works by French composers. Although these efforts to support French music have nationalist origins, few operas had overtly nationalist plots.

Particularly notable is the variety of offerings in the Parisian musical theaters, ranging from old genres to new ones and from serious to light entertainment.

Grand Opera, Ballet, and Lyric Opera Grand opera continued its prominence through Meyerbeer's L'Africaine (1865) and Verdi's Don Carlos (1867) —written for the Paris Opéra—then began to fade in importance and to blend with other types of serious opera. But ballet, long a part of grand opera, grew in popularity as an independent art. The leading ballet composer was Leo Delibes (1836 to 1891), whose Coppélia (1870) and Sylvia (1876) were premiered at the Opéra and became standards of the ballet repertoire. Both are in three acts and constitute an evening's entertainment, like an opera, with mimed actions and solo, duet, and grouped dances linked by a romantic plot.

The romantic type of opéra comique developed into a genre that might best be termed lyric opera, after the Théâtre Lyrique founded in 1851. Lyric opera lies somewhere between light opéra comique and grand opera. Like opéra comique, its main appeal is through melody. The subject matter is usually romantic drama or fantasy, and the scale is larger than that of the opéra comique, although not so huge as that of the typical grand opera.

The most famous lyric opera is Faust by Charles Gounod (1818 to 1893), the most frequently performed opera in the last third of the nineteenth century. First staged at the Théâtre Lyrique in 1859 as an opéra comique (that is, with spoken dialogue), it was later arranged by the composer in its now familiar form with recitatives. Gounod restricted himself to Part 1 of Goethe's drama, which focuses on the tragic love affair of Faust and Gretchen. The result is a well-proportioned work in an elegant lyric style, with melodies that balance clarity with expressivity.

Other popular lyric operas include Gounod's Roméo et Juliette (1867), Mignon (1866) by Ambroise Thomas (1811 to 1896), and the many successful operas of Jules Massenet (1842 to 1912). Massenet's Manon (1884), Werther (1892), and Thaïs (1894) made him the most famous French composer of the time. Both Massenet and Gounod shaped their melodies around the natural speech rhythms of the French language, often resulting in asymmetrical phrases and novel contours. The suave, sensuous impression they create has come to seem characteristic of French musical style.

French Exoticism Several French operas exploited an interest in exoticism, including Les pécheurs de perles (The Pearl Fishers, 1863) by Georges Bizet (1838 to 1875), set in ancient Ceylon; the biblical opera Samson et Dalila (1877) by Camille Saint-Saëns (1835 to 1921); and Delibes's Lakmé (1883), on the doomed relationship between an Indian priestess of Brahma and an officer in the English army occupying India.

Exoticism and realism combine in Bizet's Carmen, premiered at the Opéra-Comique in 1875. It was set not in Asia but in Spain, considered as exotic by Parisians despite its proximity. Originally classified as an opéra comique (although Bizet never called it that) because it contained spoken dialogue (later set in recitative by Ernest Guiraud), it was a stark, realistic drama ending with a murder. That such an opera could be called “comique” shows that the distinction between opera and opéra comique had become a mere technicality.

The Spanish flavor was embodied especially in the character of Carmen, shown in Figure 28.11 as portrayed by the singer who created the role. Carmen is a Romani (Gypsy) who works in a cigarette factory and lives only for pleasures of the moment. Her suggestive costume and behavior, her provocative sexuality and language, and Bizet's music all characterize her as outside of normal society, making her both dangerous and enticing. Bizet borrowed three authentic Spanish melodies, including Carmen's famous habanera Lamour est un oiseau rebelle (Love is a rebellious bird), set to the rhythm of a Cuban dance. But most of the

Spanish-sounding music is Bizet's own invention, blending elements associated with Romani or Spanish music with the modern French style. As shown in Example 28.4, a motive linked to Carmen's fate emphasizes augmented

Figure 28.11 summary: An illustration of Célestine Galli-Marié as the first Carmen, depicting her in an ornate, layered costume with expressive gestures, paired with a snippet of musical notation marked Andante moderato and fortissimo. Together, the visual and musical elements are used to evoke the exotic allure of the character as a Spanish Romani woman.

Example 28.4 Augmented Second Motives from Georges Bizet's Carmen

a. Motive associated with Carmen's fate

b. Carmen's entrance motive

: Image summary: A musical score for a piano piece marked Allegro moderato, featuring two staves with treble and bass clefs and a 6/8 time signature. The music is marked with a forte-fortissimo dynamic (ff) and consists of rhythmic patterns with dotted notes and fast runs. The overall composition is intended to evoke the exotic allure of the character Carmen.

seconds, considered a trademark of Romani music, and a variant of the same motive accompanies Carmen's first entrance. She seduces Don José, an upright army corporal, by singing a seguidilla (N.A.W.M 156), a type of Spanish song in fast triple meter. The accompaniment pattern imitates the strumming of a guitar, the vocal melody features melismas and grace notes, and the harmony includes Phrygian cadences, all features conventionally linked to Spanish music. The plot provoked outrage among some at the premiere—one critic wrote that Bizet "had sunk to the sewers of society" to create his heroine—but the opera won success and has become one of the most popular of all time.

Bizet, pictured in Figure 28.12, might have become the leading opera composer in France, with numerous other projects already underway, but died at 36 just three months after the premiere of Carmen. Even so, he was among the most influential of opera com- posers, as his blend of exoticism and gritty realism in his most famous opera had a strong impact on later composers in Italy and France and across Europe.

Lighter Fare While the serious theaters were controlled by the government, the opéra bouffe could satirize French society more freely. This new genre emerged in the 1850s during the Second Empire and emphasized the smart, witty, and satirical elements of comic opera. Its founder was Jacques Offenbach (1819 to 1880), who even managed to introduce a can-can dance for the gods in his Orphée aux enfers (Orpheus in the Underworld, 1858). His work influenced developments in comic opera in England, Vienna, the United States, and elsewhere (see pages 708 to 9). The perennial charm of Offenbach's music owes much to its appealing melody and rhythm, simple textures and harmonies, and conventional formal patterns. But the deceptively naive quality of opéra bouffe often clothes a rapier wit, satirizing operatic as well as social conventions.

Paris was also famous for its popular musical theaters. Cabarets like Chat Noir (Black Cat, opened 1881) were nightclubs that offered serious or comic sketches, dances, songs, and poetry, often with the intent to foster innovation and draw together artists and the public. A café-concert, as pictured in Figure 28.13, joined the food and beverage service of a café with musical entertainment, usually songs on sentimental, comic, or political topics. The Folies-Bergère, Moulin Rouge, and other large music halls offered various kinds of entertainment including revues, shows that strung together dances, songs, comedy, and other acts, often united by a common theme. From grand opera to music halls, the range of offerings in Paris was vast, and listeners with broad tastes might sample the Opéra, a cabaret, and the Moulin Rouge, all in the same weekend.

BRIDGEMAN IMAGES

BIBLIOTHEQUE NATIONALE, PARIS, FRANCE/DE AGOSTINI PICTURE LIBRARY/BRIDGEMAN IMAGES

LYON, MUSÉE DES BEAUX-ARTS/ERICH LESSING/ART RESOURCE, NY

Spain

While French writers and composers treated Spain as exotic, Spanish artists sought to create distinctive national traditions of their own.

The zarzuela, a theatrical genre alternating spoken dialogue with musical numbers, was already two centuries old (see Chapter 16), yet the Spanish royalty and aristocracy supported Italian opera instead. That changed in mid-century, as a new generation of composers revitalized the zarzuela.

Central in the search for a national musical tradition was Francisco Asenjo Barbieri (1823 to 1894), shown in Figure 28.14, the most influential figure in Spanish music during the second half of the nineteenth century. Trained at the Madrid Conservatory, he sang in Italian operas and composed an Italian opera buffa before turning to zarzuelas. His first two zarzuelas, Gloria y peluca (Wigs and Glory) and jTramoya! (both 1850) were a great success with audiences and critics alike. The next year he cofounded a company to present zarzuelas.

His Jugar con fuego (Playing with Fire, 1851) was the first in three acts, inaugurating the new genre of the zarzuela grande (large zarzuela), and was so popular that it won the support of the queen's mother, María Cristina, and other aristocrats. In 1856 Barbieri's company built a new venue, the Teatro de la Zarzuela, presenting concert series as well as zarzuelas. Some of his zarzuelas are serious dramas, notably his national epic Pan y toros (Bread and Bulls, 1864), a sharp political critique. Besides his work as a composer, Barbieri was a conductor, founding a concert society and conducting the first full performances of Beethoven symphonies in Spain; a critic and musicologist, supporting Spanish music through articles and books; and an editor of early Spanish music, in the pathbreaking Cancionero musical de los siglos XV y X.V.I (Musical Songbook of the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries, 1890).

At the height of his career, Barbieri wrote his comic zarzuela grande El barberillo de Lavapiés, whose title puns on his own name and on Rossini's The Barber of Seville. Set in 1770s Madrid, it interweaves political intrigue with the romance of two couples: one comic and middle class, the barber Lamparilla and his dressmaker girlfriend Paloma, and the other noble, the Marquesita of Bierzo and her fiancé Don Luis. The king's chief minister is Italian—historically true, but also a symbol of Barbieri's campaign against Italian influence and for an independent Spanish operatic tradition—and is suppressing dissent with night patrols by the Walloon Guards, foreigners recruited from Spain's possessions in the Low Countries. The Marquesita is part of a conspiracy against the minister, and Lamparilla and Paloma, whose shops are near her house, help to protect her. Near the end of Act 2, Lamparilla delays the Guards from storming her house by singing and dancing a seguidilla (N.A.W.M 157a), assisted by young men from the neighborhood. The seguidilla, one of the genres most identified with Spanish culture, contrasts with the Italian opera buffa style of the Guards, and the scene embodies Barbieri's struggle to promote a distinctly Spanish style. In the finale (N.A.W.M 157b), the Guards enter the house while Lamparilla and his friends help the conspirators escape through the cellar, then distract the Guards by smashing the hated Italian-style street lamps the minister has imposed on the city, allowing the conspirators to get away in the dark.

The continuous music of the finale underscores dialogue between all the principal characters and the chorus, creating a rousing end to the act. The roots of such finales lie in eighteenth-century opera buffa (see Chapter 21), but by the mid-nineteenth century they were part of the international operatic tradition, also common in Spain and France (see N.A.W.M 151). Ultimately Barbieri is for Spanish music what Glinka was for Russia (see Chapter 27): foreigners value his distinctly national style, while for his compatriots he is important also for achieving a level of artistry that can represent Spain on the world stage.

The revitalized zarzuela spread to the remaining Spanish colonies (such as Cuba) and throughout Latin America, which developed its own very strong zarzuela tradition. In Spain, composers in the generation after Barbieri maintained the fashion for zarzuelas, but some also wrote operas sung throughout. Felipe Pedrell (1841 to 1922) continued the nationalist revival with his editions of sixteenth-century Spanish composers (including the editions of Victoria's music in N.A.W.M 64) and his operas, chief among them Los Pirineos (The Pyrenees, 1891).

FIGURE 28.14 Francisco Asenjo Barbieri.

Bohemia

In Bohemia (now the Czech Republic), opera was a specifically nationalist project. Bohemia had for centuries been an Austrian crown land and in the mainstream of European music. Education was in German, the official state language and the primary language of the middle and upper classes and of city-dwellers. Opera had long been heard in the capital, Prague, but in Italian (Mozart's Don Giovanni was premiered there) or in German. In the 1860s, in an attempt to foster a national tradition of stage works in Czech, the provincial government established a Czech national theater, and a nobleman sponsored a contest for the best historical and comic operas in Czech.

The contest was won by the national theater's conductor, Bedrich Smetana (1824 to 1884), whose eight operas form the core of the Czech operatic repertory and whose comic opera The Bartered Bride (1866) secured his international reputation. Smetana chose Czech subjects, and the sets and costumes drew on national traditions. Within a personal idiom heavily influenced by Liszt, Smetana created a Czech national style by using folklike tunes and popular dance rhythms like the polka and by avoiding many of the stylistic conventions of Italian and German opera.

Smetana was succeeded by Antonín Dvořák (1841 to 1904), whose twelve operas include plots based on Czech village life, Czech fairy tales, and Slavic history. Most important are Dmitrij (1882, revised 1894), a historical opera influenced by Meyerbeer and Wagner, and Rusalka (1900), a lyric fairy-tale opera. Both Smetana and Dvořák are better known in western Europe and the Americas for their instrumental music, discussed in Chapter

Russia

When Russian Tsar Alexander the second emancipated the serfs in 1861, he did so as part of a broader effort to modernize Russia and catch up to western Europe. There were two main approaches to modernization: the nationalists, or “Slavophiles,” idealized Russia's distinctiveness, while the internationalists, or “westernizers,” sought to adapt western European technology and education. This dichotomy has often been applied to schools of Russian composers, but it is misleading, because all who composed operas, ballets, symphonies, or sonatas were adopting Western genres and approaches, whatever their style. Rather, a distinction might be made between composers who pursued professional training in the western European mode and those who opposed academic study as a threat to their originality.

Among the former, a key figure was Anton Rubinstein (1829 to 1894), virtuoso pianist and prolific composer, who founded the St. Petersburg Conservatory in 1862 with a program of training on the Western model. His pianist brother Nikolay Rubinstein (1835 to 1881) founded the Moscow Conservatory in 1866 on similar lines. Their work raised the standards of musicianship all over Russia and led to a strong tradition of Russian pianists, violinists, composers, and other musicians that continues today.

PIOTR Ilyich Chaykovsky The leading Russian composer of the nineteenth century was Piotr Il'ych Tchaikovsky (1840 to 1893; see biography in Chapter 30). Tchaikovsky sought to reconcile the nationalist and internationalist tendencies in Russian music, drawing models from Beethoven, Schubert, Schumann, and other western European composers as well as from Russian folk and popular music. He wrote a great deal of music for the stage, including incidental music, ballets, and operas. His other works are discussed in Chapter 30.

Tchaikovsky's two most important operas were both based on novels by Aleksander Pushkin. Eugene Onegin (1879) is notable for penetrating the passions of its characters and for the way numerous themes are generated from a germative first announced in the orchestral prelude. The opera includes folklike music for the peasant chorus, but also features another kind of national music: its main characters are landed gentry, and they sing in a style modeled on the domestic music-making of that class of Russian society. In The Queen of Spades (1890), Tchaikovsky matched the ghoulish atmosphere of Pushkin's story and re-created the spirit of the eighteenth-century Russia of Catherine the Great by borrowing musical ideas from that period. These operas show that the styles and materials composers used in order to provide national flavor were not limited to folk music, although listeners outside Russia may not recognize the allusions to other kinds of Russian music.

Tchaikovsky won spectacular success with his ballets Swan Lake (1876), The Sleeping Beauty (1889), and The Nutcracker (1892), the most famous and Mily Balakirev and César Cui frequently performed ballets in the permanent repertory. Each is a full-length ballet in two or more acts, and together they established Tchaikovsky as the most important composer in the history of ballet. For his ballets, Tchaikovsky found a style that combined hummable melodies with colorful orchestration perfectly suited to the fairy-tale atmosphere of the stories and to the gestures of classical ballet. His collaborations with choreographers Marius Petipa and Lev Ivanov set a high standard for the integration of music and movement within a dramatic framework.

the Mighty Five Standing against the professionalism of the conservatories were five composers dubbed moguchaya kuchka (mighty little bunch), usually translated as the Mighty Five: Mily Balakirev (1837 to 1910), Aleksander Borodin (1833 to 1887), César Cui (1835 to 1918), Modest Musorgsky (1839 to 1881), and Nikolay Rimsky-Korsakov (1844 to 1908). Only Balakirev had conventional training in music, but it would be wrong to call the others amateurs. They admired recent music from western Europe but studied it on their own (see Source Reading), outside the academic musical establishment whose exercises and prizes they scorned. It was because of their enthusiasm for Robert Schumann, Chopin, Liszt, Berlioz, and other progressive composers in western Europe that they sought a fresh approach in their own music.

As part of that new approach they incorporated aspects of Russian folk song, modal and exotic scales, and folk polyphony, but they also extended traits from the western European composers they most admired. Their theatrical music is covered here; their songs and instrumental works are treated in Chapter 30.

Balakirev was the leader of their circle and an informal teacher for the others, but wrote little for the stage. He published two collections of folk songs.

The Mighty Five

Source Reading

In a 1909 memoir, critic and composer César Cui recalled the gatherings almost fifty years earlier when the circle around Mily Balakirev met to pore over scores and argue about music. They opposed academic correctness, prized the most progressive composers of western Europe, and saw themselves as part of that international current.

Japanese text

We formed a close-knit circle of young composers. And since there was nowhere to study (the conservatory didn't exist) our self-education began. It consisted of playing through everything that had been written by all the greatest composers, and all works were subjected to criticism and analysis in all their technical and creative aspects. We were young and our judgments were harsh. We were very disrespectful in our attitude toward Mozart and Mendelssohn; to the latter we opposed Schumann, who was then ignored by everyone. We were very enthusiastic about Liszt and Berlioz. We worshipped Chopin and Glinka. We carried on heated debates (in the course of which we would down as many as four or five glasses of tea with jam), we discussed musical form, program music, vocal music, and especially operatic form.

From César Cui,"Perviye kompozitorskiye shagi Ts. A. Kyui," in Izbranniye stat'i, 544. Trans. Richard Taruskin in Defining Russia Musically: Historical and Hermeneutical Essays, 15. in his own arrangements (1866 and 1899) that were sources for many later composers. Cui completed fourteen operas, including four for children, but none entered the permanent repertory.

Borodin, though devoted to music from a young age, was a chemist by profession and had difficulty finding time to compose. He left many works unfinished, including Prince Igor (1869 to 87), a four-act opera in the French grand opera tradition. It was completed after his death by Rimsky-Korsakov and Aleksander Glazunov and premiered in 1890. In it Borodin contrasted two musical styles to evoke the two ethnic groups, depicting his Russian characters with melodies modeled on Russian folk song and providing the Polovtsians, a central Asian people, with an exotic style laced with vocal melismas, melodic chromaticism and augmented seconds, double-reed instruments, and other signifiers Europeans associated with Asian music. The Polovtsian Dances in Act 2 are often performed separately. Already viewed as exotic in western Europe, Russian composers often found as much success at home and abroad with exoticist works as with nationalist ones.

Modest Mussorgsky Widely considered the most original of the Mighty Five, Musorgsky earned a living as a clerk in the civil service and received most of his musical training from Balakirev. His principal stage works were the operas Boris Godunov (1868 to 69, revised 1871 to 74), based on a Pushkin play, and Khovanshchina (The Khovansky Affair, 1872 to 80, completed after Musorgsky's death by Rimsky-Korsakov). The realism so prominent in nineteenth-century Russian literature echoes especially in Boris Godunov, in the way Musorgsky imitated Russian speech, in his lifelike musical depiction of gestures, and in the sound and stir of the crowds in the choral scenes. Both realism and nationalism are reflected in the composer's famous portrait, shown in Figure 28.15.

Musorgsky's individuality shines through every aspect of his music, as illustrated by the famous Coronation Scene from Boris Godunov (N.A.W.M 158), shown in Figure 28.16 as it was staged for the opera's 1874 premiere in St. Petersburg. Example 28.5a shows Boris's first statement in the scene, after he is hailed as the new tsar. The vocal melody exemplifies Musorgsky's approach. He set words naturalistically, following the rhythm and pacing of speech as closely as possible: almost always syllabic, with accented syllables on strong beats, often higher and louder than the surrounding notes. As a result, his vocal music tends to lack lyrical melodic lines and symmetrical phrasing, but at the same time he avoided the conventions of recitative. He sought a melodic profile closer to Russian folk songs, which typically move in a relatively narrow range, rise at the beginning of phrases and sink to cadences, and often repeat one or two melodic or rhythmic motives. All of these characteristics are apparent here.

Figure 28.16 summary: An oil painting depicting a crowded public square with historic architecture and cathedral domes under a cloudy sky, framed at the top by a red curtain. The scene suggests a theatrical stage production or a dramatic historical tableau.

Musorgsky's harmony is essentially tonal, projecting a clear sense of the key, but in many respects it is highly original, even revolutionary. Some passages seem more modal than tonal, and dissonances may be left hanging or resolve in unconventional ways. He often juxtaposes distantly related or coloristic harmonies, usually joined by a common tone. One example is the sequence of C minor, A↓ minor, and G major in Example 28.5a, which includes two pairings that became staples of eerie or gloomy movie music in the twentieth century: two minor triads whose roots are a major third apart (C and A↓ minor, which share E♭), and a minor and a major triad with a common third degree (A↓ minor and G major share C♭/B). Other examples, shown in Example 28.5b and c, are the Coronation Scene's opening chords, two dominant seventh chords that have roots a tritone apart (A↓ and D) and two notes in common (C and G♭/F♯), and three major triads related by thirds (E, C, and A major) that share the common tone E and are used in succession to harmonize it. These types of chord progression are not the result of naive experimentation, as some have imputed to Musorgsky, but show his intellectual approach to composition and his familiarity with Liszt, Glinka, and other composers who had used such progressions.

Another trait that is characteristic of Musorgsky and of much Russian music is composition in large blocks of material. This is true of the opera as a whole: rather than continuously developed action, Boris Godunov is a series of episodes held together by the central figure of the tsar. Because the story was well known, Musorgsky could condense Pushkin's play into a series of relatively unconnected tableaux and thereby focus more intensely on the title character. Juxtaposition of blocks is also evident in the Coronation Scene. The opening section elaborates the two chords shown in Example 28.5b, twice building to a peak of activity and intensity.

Then Example 28.5c begins a section of rapid juxtapositions in which every few measures Musorgsky changes figuration and apparent key, until the chorus sings a folk song in C major accompanied by the first traditional harmony in the scene. Musorgsky rarely uses actual folk melodies; this tune adds an element of realism, as do the bells that ring constantly up to this point, like the church bells of Moscow.

FIGURE 28.16 Set design by Mikhail Il'yich Bocharov for the Coronation Scene from Musorgsky's Boris Godunov in its first production at the Mariinsky Theater in St. Petersburg in early 1874.

STATE MUSEUM OF THEATERAND MUSIC, ST. PETERSBURG, RUSSIA. PHOTO: LEBRECHT MUSIC & ARTS PHOTO LIBRARY

Example 28.5 Excerpts from the Coronation Scene from Modest Musorgsky's Boris Godunov

a. Boris's speech

Figure 28.5 summary: A collection of musical excerpts from an opera score, illustrating the use of third-related triads to harmonize repeated notes. The examples show orchestral and vocal lines where harmonic shifts, such as between C minor, A-flat minor, and G major, accompany the vocal melody to convey dramatic tension and ominous premonitions. The takeaway is that these harmonic progressions serve as a compositional device to heighten the emotional intensity of the vocal narrative.

b. Opening chords (the "Boris" chords)

Nikolay Rimsky-Korsakov Rimsky-Korsakov studied music with private teachers and with Balakirev while pursuing a career in the Russian Navy. In 1871, he became a professor at the St. Petersburg Conservatory, abandoning the anti-academic stance of the Balakirev circle. Quickly realizing how much he still had to learn before he could teach music theory, he burned the midnight oil to keep ahead of his classes; later he joked that he was one of the Conservatory's best students. He also became an active orchestral conductor and a master of orchestration.

Ironically, Rimsky-Korsakov's professionalism guaranteed the continuation of a distinctively Russian school. He edited, completed, and orchestrated works by Glinka, Musorgsky, Borodin, and others, helping to ensure their survival. As a conductor at home and in western Europe, he championed Russian music. He wrote the harmony text most frequently used in Russia and a manual on orchestration, and he taught some of the most important composers of the next generation, including Aleksander Glazunov and Igor Stravinsky.

Rimsky-Korsakov proved his abiding interest in national music by arranging and editing two collections of folk songs (1875 to 82) and by incorporating folk tunes and their melodic characteristics into his own compositions. Although best known outside Russia for his orchestral works, he was primarily an opera composer. Several of his fifteen operas draw on Russian history, plays, epics, or folk tales. In many of them, including the epic Sadko (1895 to 97) and the fairy-tale operas Tsar Saltan (1899 to 1900) and The Golden Cockerel (1906 to 7), he alternated a diatonic, often modal style used for the everyday world with a lightly chromatic, “fantastic” style that suggested the world of supernatural beings and magical occurrences.

A key element of the fantastic style was the use of scales or pitch collections in which the same sequence of intervals occurs several times, so that there is more than one possible tone center. The simplest such scale is the whole-tone scale (or whole-tone collection), consisting of only whole steps; another is the octatonic scale (or octatonic collection), which alternates whole and half steps. Both are shown in Example 28.6. While each of the twelve major scales contains a unique collection of seven notes, there are only two whole-tone collections and three octatonic collections, shown in the example; any other transposition of these scales will simply reproduce the same notes as one of the scales shown here (assuming enharmonic equivalence). Because they lack the strong gravitation toward a tonic that is characteristic of diatonic

Example 28.6 Scales Based on Equal Divisions of the Octave

a. Whole-tone scales

b. Octatonic scales

Table: ∅, ⊕, ⊖, #, nl.

scales, the whole-tone and octatonic scales create a sense of floating or other-worldliness. Their secret is to divide the octave in equal units; as the example shows, the whole-tone scale comprises two augmented triads (which divide the octave into three major thirds), and the octatonic scale contains two diminished seventh chords (which divide the octave into four minor thirds). These scales are found already in the music of Liszt and other western European composers, deriving from their use of harmonic relationships around the circle of major or minor thirds. Such scales and harmonic relationships became trademarks of Russian music in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

Example 28.7 shows an example from the second scene of Sadko, depicting a fantastic realm under the sea. The rising octatonic scale in the bass is harmonized by the major triads and dominant seventh chords available in the scale, whose roots are related by minor thirds (A, C, E, and F). The floating harmonies here contrast strongly with the diatonic, folklike song Sadko has just sung, marking him as a human amid the magical surroundings.

Russian Influence Tchaikovsky and the Mighty Five developed musical styles that were strongly individual, markedly national, yet suffused with elements from western Europe. In turn, they influenced western European composers of the very late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, who were especially drawn to the Russians' block construction, orchestral colors, use of modality, and artificial scales. In less than half a century, Russian music went from being peripheral to being a major current in Western music.

Other Nations

Opera continued to spread to other nations, often—though not always—allied with nationalist movements. The shape that opera took in each nation depended on its individual circumstances. In Poland, which was divided between Russia, Austria-Hungary, and Germany, opera was part of a national cultural revival.

Stanisław Moniuszko (1819 to 1872) inaugurated a tradition of Polish national opera with Halka (1848, revised 1858). Britain was dominated by foreign opera, despite repeated attempts to create a national opera tradition in the vernacular. Among the most important British operas were the six of Ethel Smyth (1858 to 1944), best known for The Wreckers (1904); like most of her operas, it was first performed in Germany (where she had studied) before being staged in England. In New York, the Metropolitan Opera Company opened in 1883, performing the entire range of European opera, but almost no native composers attempted opera. The first internationally recognized composer of opera from the New World was Antônio Carlos Gomes (1836 to 1896) of Brazil, who had early success with two operas in Portuguese, although neither entered the permanent repertoire. His later operas were written in Italy and in Italian. His masterpiece is Il Guarany (1870), on a Brazilian subject centering on reconciliation between the native Indians and the Portuguese colonists, but the style is essentially Italian.

Operetta Lighter forms of musical theater flourished in nearly every country. Operetta, a new kind of light opera with spoken dialogue, was manifestly an entertainment, in which nationalism was beside the point. It could be both funny and romantic, spoofing the conventions of opera yet using them sincerely when appropriate.

Offenbach had used the term operetta for his one-act satirical works of the 1850s, then expanded the concept to a full evening's entertainment in his opéras bouffes, which became the models for operettas in other lands. The great masters of operetta in the generation after Offenbach were the Viennese Johann Strauss the younger (1825 to 1899), known for Die Fledermaus (The Bat, 1874), and, in England, the team of W. S. Gilbert (librettist) and Arthur Sullivan (composer, 1842 to 1900). Sullivan, shown in Figure 28.17, wanted to be known as a serious composer, but his opera on Sir Walter Scott's Ivanhoe (1891) was nowhere near as successful as his collaborations with Gilbert, especially H.M.S Pinafore (1878), The Pirates of Penzance (1879), and The Mikado (1885).

The chorus and ensemble When the foeman bares his steel from The Pirates of Penzance (N.A.W.M 159) illustrates the humor of Gilbert and Sullivan. Everything follows convention yet goes oddly wrong. As the policemen prepare to march on a band of pirates, they sing a rousing chorus set in a martial dotted rhythm. The men, however, freely admit they are terrified at the prospect of battle and are simply covering up their fears.

Mabel—a beautiful young woman—and a women's chorus, singing a stirring melody, urge the policemen to suffer death for glory's sake. The police are not happy with this message, but decide it would be too impolite to protest. At the climax, the two choruses sing their melodies in counterpoint, a hilarious juxtaposition of opposing styles and a send-up of the conventions of opera ensembles in which everyone on stage sings together. Indeed, the structure of the scene closely imitates the opening of Act 3 of Les Huguenots, turning Meyerbeer's dramatic opposition of militant Huguenot soldiers and pious Catholic women into farce.

When the police continue to sing about marching off to the fray, the Major General notes that they have not left yet ("Yes, but you don't go!," he observes with some irritation). The standard roles of men and women in opera, appeals to glory, the tendency to sing at length about taking action before doing it, and other familiar traits are all mocked mercilessly. Throughout, Sullivan matches style and gesture to the text in a satire that shows his command of a wide range of styles.

the Variety of Musical Theater In addition to opera and related forms, other kinds of musical theater flourished throughout Europe and the Americas. Ballet in France and Russia has already been mentioned, along with the cabarets, cafés, and nightclubs of Paris.

The particular forms of entertainment varied from place to place, but the variety of musical theater may be illustrated with a snapshot of the United States in the second half of the nineteenth century. European opera was heard in several major cities, both in the original languages and in English translation, and touring companies brought operas to smaller cities across the nation. Minstrel shows continued, now including all-black troupes as well as white entertainers in blackface. Operettas were imported from Europe—indeed, The Pirates of Penzance was premiered in New York—and homegrown composers wrote their own, including El capitan (1896) by John Philip Sousa (1854 to 1932). A pastiche called The Black Crook (1866) combined a melodrama with a visiting French ballet troupe to score a tremendous financial success, and it toured for years, constantly interpolating new material to keep up with fashion.

Another great success was Evangeline (1874), with music by Edward E. Rice, the first “musical comedy” and an ancestor to the modern musical (see Chapter 31). Singing comics Ned Harrigan (1844 to 1911) and Tony Hart (1855 to 1891) collaborated with composer David Braham on comic sketches and musical plays, often focused on Irish, Italian, or other ethnic characters. By bringing variety shows out of the saloons and into music halls that respectable women could attend, New York theater impresario Tony Pastor (1837 to 1908) invented what became known as vaudeville, the major form of theatrical entertainment in the United States until talking movies took over in the late 1920s. denyed the opportunity to perform in opera houses because of segregation, Sissieretta Jones (1868/9 to 1933) toured the United States and the world singing opera arias and led the Black Patti Troubadours, a traveling variety show that included minstrelsy and vaudeville alongside her excerpts from opera and operetta, making her the highest paid African American performer of her day.

In all these endeavors, the focus was on pleasing the audience and making as much money as possible. In that respect, if in few others, these forms of musical theater could trace their heritage back to the public opera theaters of seventeenth-century Venice (see Chapter 14).

FIGURE 28.17 Arthur Sullivan.

Music for the Stage and Its Audiences

Wagner and Verdi brought the opera of their nations to a peak never surpassed. Even in their lifetimes, they achieved a permanence and centrality in the opera repertory akin to Handel's for oratorio and Beethoven's for the symphony. Since World War 2, the works of both Wagner and Verdi have inspired exceptionally innovative and avant-garde stagings, from Wieland Wagner's austerely minimalist productions of his grandfather's operas at Bayreuth in the years 1951 to 66, which had a profound influence on opera staging in general, to Michael Mayer's 2013 Metropolitan Opera production of Verdi's Rigoletto, set in a Las Vegas casino in the 1960s with characterizations based on entertainers from that era. Outside the opera house, excerpts from Wagner operas also became staples of orchestral and band concerts, beginning during his lifetime when full productions were still rare, and several excerpts are still best known in that form.

Of the Italians after Verdi, only Puccini holds a major place in the international opera repertory. Opera composers in other lands found room in their national traditions, and some of their works also entered the permanent international repertory, most notably Gounod's Faust, Massenet's Manon, Bizet's Carmen, Tchaikovsky's Eugene Onegin and The Queen of Spades, Musorgsky's Boris Godunov, and Smetana's The Bartered Bride.

Nationalism was a major concern in nineteenth-century opera, and it continues to affect the reception of much of this music in both positive and negative ways. The most nationalist of nineteenth-century composers, Wagner, obscured his nationalism by a claim to universality, and the enthusiastic response of German, English, and even French critics has made it seem that nationalism can be heard only when composers deliberately depart from the German “mainstream.” Composers from “peripheral” countries, from Russia to Latin America, are expected to write national music, and those who do are rewarded with an international audience; yet in some respects this keeps their products exotic, and it means that they can never be considered as central as composers from Germany, Austria, France, or Italy.

Meanwhile, the split between elite and popular musical theater became irreparable in this period and has continued to widen. Verdi was still capable of attracting connoisseurs while pleasing the public at large, but the high seriousness of Wagner and much other opera did not aim for popular entertainment and instead inspired a kind of reverence that made attending the Ring cycle or Parsifal akin to a religious pilgrimage. The popular genres created in reaction, from operetta to vaudeville, became increasingly important and underlie much of the music of the twentieth century. Yet opera is a constant reference as well, since it was for opera that most of the expressive devices in the musical language were first created, and those devices still carry meaning today in music for film, television, and other media.

The classic Hollywood film score relies on Wagnerian techniques such as nature imagery and leitmotives, an approach brought over in the late 1920s and early 1930s by emigrés from Austria such as Max Steiner and Erich Wolfgang Korngold (see Chapter 34) and renewed in film scores since the 1970s. The modern movie, especially in the epic genre of Star Wars or Lord of the Rings, is in many ways a collaborative Gesamtkunstwerk in which music plays a crucial role. The movie theater itself is conceptually a descendant of the Bayreuth Festival Theater, with its darkened auditorium and invisible orchestra focusing all our attention on the drama. The influence goes both ways, as film directors and designers create new productions for operas.

In these and other ways, the impact of Wagner, Verdi, and other nineteenth-century opera composers has permeated our culture.

Late Romanticism in German Musical Culture

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During the second half of the nineteenth century, the Western musical world diversified as the audience for music broadened and became more segmented. Increasing interest in music of the past was balanced by the emergence of new styles of concert music, and a growing seriousness in the concert hall and new forms of entertainment music widened the gulf between classical and popular music. This chapter focuses on the classical tradition in German-speaking lands, examining how a debate between partisans of Johannes Brahms and of Richard Wagner crystallized divisions within German music. The following chapter treats national traditions in France and eastern and northern Europe and explores the division into classical and popular streams primarily through musical life in the United States.

Dichotomies and Disputes

Music since 1850 may appear more varied than that of earlier eras simply because the historical evidence is more complete and a wider range of music survives. But that greater diversity is not just an illusion. Several factors combined to make the later nineteenth century the most varied period yet, surpassed only by the even more diverse twentieth and twenty-first centuries.

Before the nineteenth century, most music that was performed had been composed in living memory, except for the chants, chorales, and hymns of the church. By 1850, choral, chamber, and orchestral concerts and solo recitals increasingly focused on a repertoire of musical classics, representing a majority of the pieces on most concerts, and with each decade the proportion of older works grew (see Chapter 26). The establishment of a permanent classical repertoire may be the most important fact about music in the late nineteenth century, for it had many effects beyond concert programming.

In tandem with the rise of the classical repertoire, interest in music 29

Dichotomies and

Disputes 711

Johannes Brahms 715

The Wagnerians 722

Reaching the

Audience 730

Chinese text

1848 Frankfurt Assembly votes for parliamentary democracy in Germany

1848 to 1916 Franz Joseph reigns as emperor of Austria

1851 Complete edition of Johann Sebastian Bach's works begun

1854 Franz Liszt, Les préludes

1854 Eduard Hanslick, On the Musically Beautiful

1857 to 59 Richard Wagner,

Tristan und Isolde

1861 Wilhelm I becomes king of Prussia

1862 Otto von Bismarck appointed chancellor of Prussia

1864 Johannes Brahms, Piano Quintet, Op. 34

1867 Austrian Empire reorganized as Austro-Hungarian monarchy

1869 Denkmäler der Tonkunst (Monuments of Musical Art) begins publishing editions of early music

1870 to 71 Franco-Prussian War

1871 German Empire proclaimed, Wilhelm I becomes emperor

1874 to 80 Anton Bruckner,

Fourth Symphony (Romantic)

1885 Brahms, Symphony No. 4 in E Minor

1888 Wilhelm 2, last German emperor, crowned

1889 Hugo Wolf, Mörike

Lieder

1897 Richard Strauss,

Don Quixote of the past intensified. The new field of musicology was created in order to study and make available the music of previous generations. Scholars unearthed and published music by the great composers of past eras, issuing editions of the complete works of Bach, Handel, Palestrina, Mozart, Schütz, and Lassus, as well as the early-nineteenth-century masters Beethoven, Mendelssohn, Chopin, Robert Schumann, and Schubert. These editions and numerous less comprehensive performing editions helped to form a canon of composers whose music comprised the center of the repertoire and the mainstream of music history.

Most of these composers were German, and their editions were issued by German scholars and publishers, linking the revival of past music to national pride. The German editions of Palestrina and Chopin were notable for granting those composers canonic status despite their nationality. Less widely known music of the Renaissance and Baroque was collected in series such as Denkmäler der Tonkunst (Monuments of Musical Art, begun 1869), Denkmäler deutscher Tonkunst (Monuments of German Music, begun 1892), and Denkmäler der Tonkunst in Österreich (Monuments of Music in Austria, begun 1894). Belatedly, scholars and publishers outside German-speaking regions began to produce editions of music by their own historical masters, including Purcell in England and Grétry and Rameau in France.

Thus in the later nineteenth century, performers and audiences had available to them not only new music and works in the standard repertoire but an increasing supply of older music that was new to them and satisfied some of the desire to hear new pieces as well as familiar ones. A choir's repertoire could include music culled from four centuries, and a pianist might perform works ranging from Bach to the present in a single concert. It is safe to say that nothing approaching this variety of styles had ever before been present simultaneously in the performing tradition.

The preponderance of older music on concert programs posed problems for living composers. How do you craft new works to appeal to an audience that is primarily accustomed to hearing music already familiar to them, most of it composed a generation or more ago? Composers responded in varying ways. Some, like Johannes Brahms, competed with the masters of the past on their own ground, writing symphonies and chamber works worthy of a place next to Beethoven and songs and piano pieces that rival the achievements of Schubert, Robert Schumann, and Chopin. Others, like Wagner and Liszt, saw the legacy of Beethoven as pointing in a different direction, toward genres that combined music with words or with a program. In German-speaking lands, the dispute polarized around Brahms and Wagner and around the dichotomies between absolute and program music, between tradition and innovation, and between classical genres and forms and new ones.

To be sure, the two camps were not so far apart as to foreclose the possibility of mutual respect and influence. Brahms and Wagner admired each other, Anton Bruckner was a Wagnerian in spirit. who focused on the traditional genres of the symphony and church music, and both Liszt and Brahms used methods of melodic transformation that derive new musical ideas from existing ones. A number of musicians maintained friendly relations with both sides, including the conductor and pianist Hans von Bülow (see In Performance: Crossing the Divide: Hans von Bülow, p. 714). Moreover, it is clear in retrospect that partisans on both sides shared the common goals of linking themselves to Beethoven, appealing to audiences familiar with the classical masterworks, and securing a place for their own music in the increasingly crowded permanent repertoire.

Although the classical repertoire centered around German-speaking composers, it was performed to varying degrees in concert halls across Europe and the Americas. As a result, composers in other lands also found themselves competing with the classics and addressing issues of national identity.

Nationalism was as strong as a force in instrumental music, song, and choral music as in opera (see Chapters 27 and 28). National flavor was prized as evidence of a composer's authenticity and distinctiveness. Ethnicity mattered more than political boundaries; in the multinational Austrian Empire, composers increasingly identified with their ethnicity rather than with the imperial state, and German-speaking composers such as Brahms tended to identify with an all-encompassing German tradition wherever they resided. The search for a musical past was in part nationalist.

French and German-speaking composers found it in their written tradition as well as in folklore. For example, Brahms drew inspiration from Schütz, Bach, Beethoven, and other German predecessors, but also arranged German folk songs and modeled some melodies on them. Eastern and northern Europeans found a usable past primarily by incorporating aspects of the unwritten tradition of folk music in their own lands (see Chapter 30). Nationalism was not an attempt to break free of the Western tradition, but a way to join it by presenting a distinctive flavor that could be welcomed as part of the international repertoire. Composers everywhere had the choice of whether and how to emphasize their nationality. In the nations farthest from the center, such as Russia and the United States, composers fell at different points on a continuum between nationalist and internationalist orientations, depending on how much they emphasized distinctly national elements in their music.

We saw in Chapter 28 how alongside the venerable tradition of opera, which was growing more expensive and more focused on a standard repertory of operas from the past, lighter forms of theatrical entertainment sprang up, from operetta to cabaret. In instrumental music, song, and choral music, there was likewise a growing gulf between classical music and music intended for popular consumption, both in concert and in publications for music-making at home. The dichotomy has been expressed in various terms, with different shades of meaning: classical versus popular music, serious versus light, cultivated versus vernacular, high versus low. Although at the start of the nineteenth century Beethoven could write both kinds of music—symphonies and string quartets on one side, light rondos and folk-song arrangements on the other—this wide range was rare for composers later in the century, who tended to specialize in one kind of music. While Bruckner was writing his symphonies in Vienna, Johann Strauss the younger, known as “The Waltz King,” was in the same city composing hundreds of waltzes, galops, and other in Performance

Crossing the Divide: Hans von Bülow

Despite heated rhetoric on both sides of the Wagner-Brahms debate, even the most ardent partisans conceded that both composers had a stake in the “music of the future,” and most musicians respected both. No one better represents this middle ground, or did more to promote both composers' music, than conductor and pianist Hans von Bülow (1830 to 1894), shown in Figure 29.1.

Figure 29.1 summary: A musical score excerpt from the first movement of Johannes Brahms's Symphony No. 3, marked Allegro con brio. The notation shows a violin 1 part playing a melody with f passionato intensity, accompanied by a bass line for double bass, trombone, and contrabassoon marked with sforzando accents. This example illustrates the rhythmic and dynamic character of the movement's opening theme.

Bülow studied piano from age nine with freed-rick Wieck, Robert Schumann's teacher and Clara Schumann's father. Bülow fell under Wagner's spell in 1842, when he attended the premiere of Rienzi in Dresden. Convinced that the intense, precociously gifted youth harbored seeds of greatness, Wagner and Liszt took Bülow under their wings. In 1851, he moved to Weimar to study piano with Liszt, and six years later cemented their bond by marrying Liszt's daughter Cosima. His achievements as a pianist were remarkable, including playing the premieres of Liszt's Piano Sonata in B Minor in 1857 and Tchaikovsky's Piano Concerto No. 1 in 1875 and the first complete performance of all thirty-two piano sonatas of Beethoven, all played from memory.

Meanwhile, Bülow had met the twenty-one-year-old Johannes Brahms in 1854 and detected “something really of God's grace, in the best sense, in his talent.” That same year he became the first pianist other than Brahms himself to play the composer's music in public, and for the next four decades he steadfastly championed Brahms's works, at both the keyboard and the podium. Although his devotion to Wagner's music never wavered, Bülow came to view Brahms as Beethoven's true successor and the composer best able to continue the great German tradition running from J. S. Bach through Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, and Schubert to his own time. He coined the phrase “the three Bs,” referring to the trinity of Bach, Beethoven, and Brahms.

Bülow conducted the premieres of Wagner's operas Tristan und Isolde (1865) and Die Meistersinger (1868). These were extraordinarily difficult works, but Bülow was known for his formidable intellect, rigorous rehearsal procedures, and phenomenal memory. He studied the scores for months, supervised the singers' preparation, and conducted both operas from memory.

Even after his wife Cosima deserted him for Wagner in 1869, having already given birth to two of Wagner's children, Bülow remained loyal to the famously egocentric composer. He contributed generously to the Bayreuth Festival and regularly played his own paraphrases and transcriptions of Wagner's operas on piano recitals.

Bülow's friendship with Brahms deepened after he became conductor of the Meiningen court orchestra in 1880 and turned it into one of the most celebrated in Europe. Brahms's works featured prominently on the orchestra's programs, including his two piano concertos (sometimes with Brahms as soloist or with Bülow conducting from the keyboard) and the premiere of the Fourth Symphony in 1885. But when Brahms insisted on conducting his new symphony on tour, Bülow felt upstaged and resigned in a pique. "I have endured all this once before with Wagner," he told Brahms. "I simply cannot go through it all over again, with you." Saddened to lose Bülow, his employer, Duke Georg, wrote to Brahms that "I shall remain eternally grateful to him for the fame and glory he brought to my orchestra." dances to be performed at balls and in concerts, like the open-air concert in Figure 29.2. Popular music was intended purely for entertainment, but classical music was increasingly regarded as a sacred refuge from everyday life. Concerts of classical music became more like going to church; audiences were expected to be quiet and pay reverent attention, and the lights were often dimmed to focus their gaze on the performers—conditions that have prevailed at classical concerts ever since. In contrast to the sacralization of the classical concert hall, audiences for popular music were still allowed to converse, clap during the music or between movements, and pay more or less attention as they wished—in other words, to behave like the audiences who had first heard Haydn's and Mozart's symphonies a century earlier. Classical and popular styles gradually diverged, until there was much less in common between the musical idioms of a symphony and a popular song in the early twentieth century than there had been in Mozart's day.

Figure 29.2: Row 1: ^52 Hn. & Vc.. Row 2: ☐ 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3.

All of these dichotomies—between old and new musical works and styles, absolute and program music, nationalist and internationalist elements, and classical and popular music—were fault lines in the musical landscape. Listeners and amateurs often enjoyed all the possibilities, piling art songs and popular songs or sonatas and marches side by side on their piano racks, but composers had to make choices. The composers treated here and in the next chapter include the most successful of their day and represent a wide range of strategies for meeting the challenges of their time.

ALFREDO DAGLI ORTI/THE ART ARCHIVE AT ART RESOURCE, NY

DE AG OSTINI PICTURE LIBRARY/A. DAGLI ORTI/BRI DGEMAN IMAGES

Johannes Brahms

Johannes Brahms (1833 to 1897; see biography and Figure 29.3) matured as a composer just as the permanent repertoire of musical classics came to dominate concert life. By the time he was twenty, three-fifths of the pieces played

Johannes Brahms

Figure 29.3 summary: A series of four musical notation excerpts (a-d) from Brahms's Piano Quintet in F Minor. Brackets labeled w, x, y, and z identify recurring melodic or rhythmic motifs across different sections, such as the violin and piano parts. The purpose of the figure is to demonstrate developing variation by showing how elements of the opening theme are transformed and integrated into later themes.

(1833 to 1897)

Brahms was the leading German composer of his time in every field except opera and an important influence on twentieth-century music.

He was born in Hamburg to a family of modest means. His father played horn and double bass in dance halls and local ensembles. Brahms studied piano, cello, and horn as a child, and through lessons in piano and music theory developed a love for music of Bach, Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven. In his teens, he earned money playing popular music at restaurants and private parties.

He developed a lifelong taste for folk and popular music. He was especially fond of the Hungarian Romani (Gypsy) style and used it in many compositions.

In 1853, Brahms met the violinist Joseph Joachim and Robert and Clara Schumann, who became his strongest supporters. Robert Schumann praised Brahms in print, launching his career, and helped him secure a publisher. After Robert's suicide attempt and confinement for mental illness, Brahms helped take care of the family while Clara returned to her life as a performer. He often asked for her advice on his compositions and found her a most helpful critic. He fell in love with her, but whether they had more than a platonic relationship, even after Robert's death in 1856, is not known. He had a series of attachments with other women but chose to remain a bachelor, surrounding himself with a close circle of friends.

Brahms made his living by concertizing as a pianist and conductor and from sales of his music to publishers. He conducted the Singakademie in Vienna in 1862 to 63 and settled there permanently in 1868. From 1872 to 1875, he directed the chorus and orchestra of the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde, programming mostly German music from the sixteenth century through his own day. He was also active as an editor for music by C. P. E. Bach, Francois Couperin, Robert Schumann, Schubert, and Chopin. In his last two decades he traveled widely as a conductor, performing mostly his own works, and was awarded numerous honors. He died of liver cancer less than one year after Clara Schumann's death and was buried in Vienna's Central Cemetery near Beethoven and Schubert.

Major Works 4 symphonies, 2 piano concertos, Violin Concerto, 2 overtures, 2 serenades, 3 string quartets, 21 other chamber works, 3 piano sonatas, numerous piano pieces, A German Requiem, choral works, vocal ensembles, and about 200 Lieder in orchestral concerts were works by dead composers, and by the time he was forty, that proportion had risen beyond three-quarters. Brahms fully understood what it meant to compose for audiences whose tastes were formed by the classical masterpieces of the last two centuries: one had to create pieces that were like those already enshrined in the repertoire in function and aesthetic yet were different enough to offer something new and attractive. He worked slowly and was severely self-critical, knowing that his reputation hinged on the high quality of every piece. He was well versed in music of the past, from Beethoven and the early Romantics back to Renaissance and Baroque composers, both German and non-German, and he synthesized elements from their music with current classical and folk idioms to create a unique personal style. Like Schubert before him, Brahms used virtually all musical languages of his time, from church styles to Hungarian Romani (Gypsy) music, and integrated them into his music to achieve a varied and expressive idiom of his own. At the same time, his erudition was combined with a gift for melody and for direct expression of emotion, so that his music appealed at once to listeners who appreciated its lyrical beauty and sincere expressivity and to connoisseurs who admired its integrity and elegant craft.

Orchestral Works Brahms knew that his symphonies would have to match the standards established by Beethoven."I shall never compose a symphony!" he exclaimed in 1870 You have no idea how someone like me feels when he hears such a giant marching behind him all the time." In fact, by his fortieth year, he had completed only four orchestral pieces: two serenades, the Piano Concerto No. 1 in D Minor (1861), and Variations on a Theme of Haydn, Op. 56a (1873). When he did finally produce a symphony, he deliberately invoked Beethoven's model yet carved out a fresh path.

Brahms wrote four symphonies. The first, Symphony No. 1 in C Minor, Op. 68, was completed in 1876, after Brahms worked on it for over twenty years. Its success prompted Brahms immediately to write another, No. 2 in D Major, Op. 73, in 1877. Two more followed: Symphony No. 3 in F Major, Op. 90, in 1883; and Symphony No. 4 in E Minor, Op. 98, in 1885.

Brahms's First Symphony carried the weight and history of the genre, yet for every similarity to Beethoven there is a departure. It has the conventional sequence of movements—fast, slow, a light movement, and fast. Yet the third movement is not a scherzo but a lyrical intermezzo, a substitution Brahms repeated in his other symphonies. Brahms echoes Beethoven's Fifth Symphony by moving from C minor to C major and from struggle to triumph, but the overall key scheme of the four movements—C minor, E major, Ab major, and C minor and major—is characteristic of Schubert and Liszt in defining a circle of major thirds.

The presence in both first and last movements of slow introductions that gradually unfold the principal thematic material before the Allegro begins is unlike any Beethoven model but recalls Schumann's Fourth Symphony. The finale's main theme is a hymnlike melody, which immediately suggests a parallel to the finale of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony. Yet there are no voices, as if to say that for Brahms, Beethoven's recourse to words was not necessary. The symphony fully absorbs Beethoven's influence—the conductor Hans von Bülow dubbed it "Beethoven's Tenth"—but also blends in other models and includes much that is new, as it must in order to stand comparison with Beethoven's constant innovations.

The opening measures of Symphony No. 3 in Example 29.1 illustrate three traits common in Brahms's music: wide melodic spans; cross-relations between major and minor forms of the tonic triad; and metric ambiguity between triple and duplex divisions of the bar. Here rests on the fourth beat invite hearing the theme in 3 over 2 , but the next phrase makes the 6 over 4 meter clear.

The conflict between major and minor recurs in the finale, which begins in F minor and settles in F major only in the coda. The finale's second theme, in Example 29.2, features another metric effect that is virtually a Brahms trademark: the clash of simultaneous triple and duplex divisions of the beat.

The finale of Brahms's Fourth Symphony (N.A.W.M 160), shown in Figure 29.4, is a chaconne, a form that reflects Brahms's fascination with Baroque music. It is a set of variations on a bass ostinato and on a harmonic pattern.

>// Figure 29.4 summary: A image of a handwritten musical score, specifically the second theme of the finale from Brahms's Symphony No. 3. It depicts the orchestral arrangement across multiple staves, showcasing the composer's original notation and handwriting.

Brahms drew the rising bass figure from the final chorus of Bach's cantata Nach dir, Herr, verlanget mich, B.W.V 150, but he may have had other models in mind as well, such as Buxtehude's Ciacona in E Minor. The use of a variation movement to end a symphony recalls Beethoven's Eroica Symphony, one of the few to feature such a finale; like Beethoven, Brahms first presents his bass line as a melody in the upper register and only works it into the bass after several variations. Another possible model is the chaconne finale to Bach's Partita for Unaccompanied Violin in D Minor, which Brahms had transcribed in 1877 as a left-hand exercise for piano; when the ostinato finally reaches the bass, the melodic figuration is a sarabande rhythm exactly like Bach's, and subsequent variations often parallel Bach's, from dotted rhythms to bariolage (rapidly alternating stopped and open strings). All three variation finales are laid out in a broad three-part form with a contrasting middle section, another link between them.

The rich web of allusion is typical of Brahms. To fully understand what he is drawing from the past, we would have to know the music of three centuries as deeply as he did. And yet the Fourth Symphony finale is perfectly clear and coherent without recognizing a single reference to other music. What is most important is that by blending elements from the recent and the more distant past within a contemporary idiom, Brahms was able to create music that sounds wholly original, new, and individual.

Brahms brought the same distinctiveness to his concertos. The Violin Concerto in D Major, Op. 77 (1878), ranks with Beethoven's in scope and popularity. Perhaps his greatest concerto is his Piano Concerto No. 2 in B-flat Major, Op. 83 (1881), whose four movements and close integration between piano and orchestra make it the most symphonic of concertos.

Chamber Music Brahms's twenty-four chamber works include only three string quartets, a genre where comparison to Beethoven was inescapable. The rest are for a variety of other ensembles: two quintets and two sextets for strings; a quintet for clarinet and strings; three violin sonatas, three cello sonatas, and two clarinet (or viola) sonatas; trios for clarinet, cello, and piano and for violin, natural horn, and piano; and seven works for piano with strings, including three piano trios, three piano quartets, and the Quintet for Piano and Strings in F Minor, Op. 34 (1864).

In the Piano Quintet's first movement (N.A.W.M 161), Brahms's treatment of the opening idea illustrates his use of a method, prevalent throughout his works, of continuously building on germinal ideas, a technique modernist composer Arnold Schoenberg would later—and famously—call developing variation (see Chapter 33). The theme itself, shown in Example 29.3a, is a series of variants of its opening measure; each measure varies the previous one, and new figures derive from earlier ones (x and y from w, and z from y). In diminution, the theme becomes a piano figure against string chords, telescoping the first and last figures together (motives w and z in Example 29.3b). A transformation of the theme's second measure (motive y) blossoms into a new lyrical melody (Example 29.3c). Then a slower variant of the second measure (drawing only on motive 10) is introduced by the piano and imitated in the strings (Example 29.3d). The three ideas in Examples 29.3b, c, and d have little in common, yet all derive from a common ancestor.

Piano Music Brahms developed a highly individual piano style characterized by full sonority; broken-chord figuration; frequent doubling of the melodic line in octaves, thirds, or sixths; multiple chordlike appoggiaturas; and frequent use of cross-rhythms. He was extraordinarily imaginative in developing simple ideas into innovative textures, using arpeggiations, repeated notes, contrasting rhythms in different lines, and other means to increase the rhythmic density while maintaining transparent clarity.

As a young man in 1852 to 53, Brahms wrote three large sonatas in the tradition of Beethoven that also incorporate the chromatic harmony of Chopin and Liszt and the songlike style of Schumann's character pieces. In his twenties and thirties, Brahms began to focus on variations, culminating in the Variations and Fugue on a Theme of Handel, Op. 24 (1861) and the difficult, étude-like Variations on a Theme of Paganini, Op. 35 (1863). Brahms did not simply ornament the melody or change the accompanimental figuration but gave each variation a distinctive character. The twenty-five variations on Handel's theme, for instance, include evocations of Chopin and Mozart, canons, études, character pieces, hunting-horn style, a miniature Hungarian rhapsody, a siciliana, a chromatic fantasia, a musette, a scherzo, and a march, alternating styles of the present with references to eighteenth-century styles, all culminating with a Beethovenian fugue. Brahms's Waltzes, Op. 39 (1865) and Hungarian Dances (1872) were intended for home or concert performance, like Chopin's dances, rather than as music for dancing, but they have a strong popular flavor; Brahms admired Johann Strauss's waltzes, and the two were good friends, shown together in Figure 29.5.

Figure 29.5 summary: Three musical notation excerpts showing different orchestral textures. Panel a displays a solo horn melody marked mezzo-forte over quiet strings; panel b shows a louder tutti section with ascending triplet figures in both treble and bass clefs; panel c depicts a detailed string section arrangement with specified bowing techniques like spiccato and pizzicato. These examples illustrate various combinations of instrumentation, dynamics, and articulation used to create different orchestral effects.

In his last two decades, Brahms issued six sets of inter-mezzos, rhapsodies, and other short pieces that are perhaps his finest contribution to keyboard literature. Most are in aba's form and resemble songs without words or other types of character pieces. The varied textures, surprising harmonies, and deft counterpoint show Brahms's familiarity with keyboard music from Bach to his own time, while the pianistic idiom remains within reach of the amateur performer, and the attractive melodies delight the listener.

Songs Brahms used Schubert as his model for songwriting, making the voice the primary partner and the piano rich with supporting figureation. Of his more than 200 Lieder, many follow a strophic or modified strophic form, and some, like the familiar Wiegenlied (Lullaby, 1868), imitate the style of folk songs. Brahms often chose texts that suggest emotional restraint or an introspective, elegiac mood. Yet he still expresses passion, which becomes all the more effective because it is controlled. The piano is usually varied in texture, changing figuration about every two to four measures; this trait distinguishes Brahms's Lieder from those of Schumann or Schubert while recalling Mozart's frequent changes of figure and topic (see Chapter 23). In his songs, as in his piano music, Brahms was one of the rare composers of the late nineteenth century who wrote music that is both accessible for amateur performers and interesting for connoisseurs, in a parallel to the alchemy of Haydn and Mozart a century earlier.

Choral Works The same alchemy pervades Brahms's choral music, which was all composed for amateur performers. He arranged German folk songs for chorus and wrote many short, unaccompanied partsongs for women's, men's, or mixed voices, as well as larger pieces for chorus with orchestra.

His greatest choral work is Ein deutsches Requiem (A German Requiem, 1868), for soprano and baritone soloists, chorus, and orchestra. Performances of this piece across Europe won enthusiastic responses from audiences and critics and established Brahms as a major composer. The text is not the liturgical words of the Latin Requiem (Mass for the Dead), but rather passages in German, chosen by the composer from the Old Testament, Apocrypha, and New Testament, that speak to universal themes of mortality, loss, comfort, and blessing.

Brahms's music draws on Schütz and Bach in its use of counterpoint and expressive text setting. In the German Requiem, solemn thoughts are clothed with opulent colors of nineteenth-century harmony, regulated by spacious formal architecture and guided by Brahms's unerring judgment for choral and orchestral effect.

Brahms'S Place Brahms has often been called conservative, but he was actually a pathbreaker. He was among the first to view the entire range of music of the present and past as material to draw upon in composing his own new and highly individual music—a stance we see repeatedly in composers. of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. By introducing new elements into traditional forms and trying to meet the master composers on their own ground, he was arguably pursuing a more difficult course than those who simply made their mark through innovation. He also developed subtle and complex techniques that were of enormous importance to later composers, from Richard Strauss and Gustav Mahler through Arnold Schoenberg and beyond. Yet he never lost sight of the average listener or musical amateur and succeeded in creating pieces that please on first hearing and continue to engage us after many more.

FIGURE 29.2 Scene outside the coffeehouse at the Volkswagen, a large outdoor pleasure garden in Vienna, in 1898. In the background, Johann Strauss the younger leads his orchestra, heard and enjoyed but not attended to with the concentration a classical concert orchestra would have commanded at the time.

BRICH LESSI NG/ART RESOURCE, NY

FIGURE 29.4 Auto-graph score of the opening of the finale of Brahms's Symphony No. 4.

FIGURE 29.5 Johann Strauss the younger (left), with Brahms in 1894.

THE ART ARCHIVE/MUSEUM DER STADT WIEN/COLLECTION DAGLI ORTI

The Wagnerians

In 1859, music critic Franz Brendel proposed the term “New German School” for the composers he felt were leading the new developments, primarily Wagner, Liszt, and Berlioz and their disciples in the next generation. He acknowledged that neither Liszt nor Berlioz was German, but claimed they were German in spirit because they took Beethoven as their model. The term crystallized the polarization among German composers between Liszt, Wagner, and their followers on one side, who believed that music could be linked to the other arts, and on the other side the advocates of absolute music such as Brahms and music critic Eduard Hanslick (see Source Readings).

Composers identified with the Wagnerian side of the debate include Liszt himself; Anton Bruckner, Brahms's contemporary; and two in the next generation, Hugo Wolf and Richard Strauss. Wagner's view that music should engage in a collective artwork (Gesamtkunstwerk) with drama, poetry, and other arts posed problems for those who composed orchestral music, songs, and choral works. Each of these four composers found individual solutions to this dilemma—and to the more general problem of how to compose for an audience now steeped in the classical tradition.

Franz LISZT In 1848, Liszt retired from his career as a touring pianist (see Chapter 25), became court music director at Weimar, and focused increasingly on composition. From this point on, his music was no longer a vehicle for showing off his virtuosity, and the poetic idea and logical development of the material became more important. Although he still aimed for the stunning immediate effect, he clearly understood the shift toward the classical repertoire (a shift he had aided by including earlier composers in his recitals) and presented himself as a composer worthy of comparison to his peers and predecessors.

Between 1848 and 1858, Liszt composed twelve orchestral works he called symphonic poems, adding a thirteenth in 1881 to 82. Each is a programmatic work in one movement with sections of contrasting character and tempo, presenting a few themes that are developed, repeated, varied, or transformed. These pieces are symphonic in sound, weight, and developmental procedures and are “poems” by analogy to poetry, especially narrative poems. Often the form has vestiges of traditional patterns such as sonata form or the contrasts in mood and tempo found in a four-movement symphony, and some combine the two in a double-function form as in Liszt's Piano Sonata in B Minor (see Chapter 25).

Absolute and Program Music

The most articulate proponent of absolute music was music critic Eduard Hanslick (1825 to 1904). In his book, On the Musically Beautiful (1854), he claimed that music should be understood and appreciated on its own terms rather than for its ties to anything outside music, and that musical content is inseparable from form.

Japanese text

What kind of beauty is the beauty of a musical composition?

It is a specifically musical kind of beauty. By this we understand a beauty that is self-contained and in no need of content from outside itself, that consists simply and solely of tones and their artistic combination....

Nothing could be more misguided and prevalent than the view which distinguishes between beautiful music which possesses ideal content and beautiful music which does not. This view has a much too narrow conception of the beautiful in music, representing both the elaborately constructed form and the ideal content with which the form is filled as self-sufficient. Consequently this view divides all compositions into two categories, the full and the empty, like champagne bottles. Musical champagne, however, has the peculiarity that it grows along with the bottle.

Eduard Hanslick, On the Musically Beautiful, trans. and ed. Geoffrey Payzant, 32, in S.R 162 (6:15), p. 1203.

Liszt, on the other hand, argued in defending Berlioz's Harold in Italy that a program could clarify the composer's intentions.

The program asks only acknowledgment for the possibility of precise definition of the psychological moment which prompts the composer to create his work and of the thought to which he gives outward form. If it is on the one hand childish, idle, sometimes even mistaken, to outline programs after the event, and thus to dispel the magic, to profane the feeling, and to tear to pieces with words the soul's most delicate web, in an attempt to explain the feeling of an instrumental poem which took this shape precisely because its content could not be expressed in words, images, and ideas; so on the other hand the master is also master of his work and can create it under the influence of definite impressions which he wishes to bring to a full and complete realization in the listener. The specifically musical symphonist carries his listeners with him into ideal regions, whose shaping and ornamentation he relinquishes to their individual imaginations; in such cases it is extremely dangerous to wish to impose on one's neighbor the same scenes or successions of ideas into which our imagination feels itself transported. The painter-symphonist, however, setting himself the task of reproducing with equal clarity a picture clearly present in his mind, of developing a series of emotional states which are unequivocally and definitely latent in his consciousness—why may he not, through a program, strive to make himself fully intelligible?...

Through song there have always been combinations of music with literary or quasi-literary works; the present time seeks a union of the two which promises to become a more intimate one than any that have offered themselves thus far.

Franz Liszt (with Carolyne von Sayn-Wittgenstein),"Berlioz und seine Haroldsymphonie," Neue Zeitschrift für Musik 43 (1855): 49 to 50 and 77. Trans. Oliver Strunk, in S.R 158 (6:11), pages 1168 to 69 and 1171.

The content and form of symphonic poems were usually suggested by a picture, statue, play, poem, scene, personality, or something else, identified by the title and usually by a program. Thus Liszt's Prometheus (1850 to 55) relates to a myth and to a poem by Herder, Mazeppa (1852 to 54) to a poem by Victor Hugo, and Orpheus (1853 to 54) to Gluck's opera Orfeo ed Euridice and to an Etruscan vase in the Louvre Museum depicting Orpheus singing to the lyre. The two works that Liszt called symphonies—the Faust Symphony (1854) and Dante Symphony (1856) —are also programmatic but in more than one movement, essentially consisting of a linked series of symphonic poems. Liszt's symphonic poems thus parallel for orchestral music Wagner's concept of the collective artwork, formulated around the same time.

Liszt devised a method of providing unity, variety, and narrative-like logic to a composition by transforming the thematic material to reflect the diverse moods needed to portray a programmatic subject, following the lead of Berlioz's Symphonie fantastique (see Chapter 26 and Example 26.5). In his symphonic poem Les préludes (The Preludes, 1854), he applied this method, known as thematic transformation, with notable artistic success. We can see how this works in Example 29.4. A three-note motive (Example 29.4a) that is initially tentative, like a prelude, is modified and expanded to take on different characters: flowing yet somewhat amorphous (Example 29.4b), resolute (Example 29.4c), lyrical (Example 29.4d), stormy (Example 29.4e).

Example 29.4 Thematic Transformation in Franz Liszt's Les préludes

Figure 29.4 summary: A collection of musical notation excerpts labeled a through i, depicting various tempo markings, dynamics, and instrumentations including violin, horn, trombone, and cello. The excerpts illustrate different musical characters, such as Andante, Allegro tempestuoso, and Molto agitato, serving as examples of diverse musical phrasing and orchestration.

and f), excited (Example 29.4g, an inverted form of the motive), and martial (Example 29.4h). A more distant metamorphosis (Example 29.4i) serves as a contrasting theme and is itself subjected to transformations. Liszt linked Les préludes to a poem of that title by Alfonse-Marie de Lamartine, following the same sequence of moods: introductory, with pizzicato chords and arpeggios in the strings and harp to suggest a poet summoning his Muse with lyre and song; amorous (measures 47 and 55, Example 29.4d); troubled and pessimistic about human destiny (measure 131, Example 29.4f); peaceful and pastoral (measure 200); bellicose (measure 344, Example 29.4h); and a return to the initial mood (measure 405). Liszt also used thematic transformation in works without an overt program. The four movements of his Piano Concerto No. 1 in E-flat Major (completed 1855), for example, are played without pauses and linked by themes that are transformed within and between movements.

Liszt's choral works offer an accommodation between past and present. Most important are the two oratorios, St. Elisabeth (1857 to 62), on St. Elisabeth of Hungary, and Christus (1866 to 72), on the life of Christ. Both derive much of their thematic material from melodies of plainchants related to their subjects, paraphrased and treated in the style of modern times.

Liszt was perhaps even more influential as a composer than he was as a virtuoso. The symphonic poem was taken up by many composers, including Smetana, César Franck, Saint-Saëns, Tchaikovsky, Rimsky-Korsakov, Richard Strauss, Jean Sibelius, and Charles Ives. Liszt's chromatic harmonies helped to form Wagner's style after 1854, and his interest in even divisions of the octave, such as the augmented triad, had a strong impact on Russian and French composers. The process of thematic transformation in Liszt's music has much in common with Berlioz's use of the idée fixe (see Chapter 26) and Wagner's treatment of leitmotives (see Chapter 28), and had many later echoes in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries. There are also parallels with Brahms's technique of developing variation, although Liszt's approach is less subtle, placing greater emphasis on metamorphosis than on an ongoing, incremental process of organic development from which new themes gradually emerge.

Anton Bruckner If Liszt showed how to compose purely orchestral music in a Wagnerian spirit, Anton Bruckner (1824 to 1896), shown in Figure 29.6, tried the more daunting tasks of absorbing Wagner's style and ethos into the traditional symphony and of writing church music that united the technical resources of nineteenth-century music with a reverent, liturgical approach to the sacred texts. A devout Catholic, Bruckner was thoroughly schooled in counterpoint and served as organist of the cathedral at Linz, then as court organist in Vienna from 1867 to his death. He was internationally renowned as an organ virtuoso, taught at the Vienna Conservatory, and later lectured at the University of Vienna.

Figure 29.6 summary: A musical score for a vocal part and piano accompaniment, marked as very slow, heartfelt, and passionate. The music accompanies lyrics expressing the pain of a farewell and the lack of awareness of that pain. It is a musical composition depicting a somber and emotional farewell.

Bruckner wrote nine numbered symphonies and two early unnumbered ones. He frequently revised them. often in response to criticism from friends and colleagues; as a result most exist in two or three versions, and there is ongoing debate among performers and scholars about which version is best. All but the Ninth are in the conventional four movements, and none is explicitly programmatic, though he did at one time furnish descriptive tags for the Fourth (Romantic) Symphony in E-flat Major (1874 to 80). His devotion to the symphony set him apart from Wagner and Liszt, but his works were championed by a younger generation of Wagnerians.

Bruckner looked to Beethoven's Ninth Symphony as a model for procedure, purpose, grandiose proportions, and religious spirit. Beethoven's first movement, in which the theme emerges from inchoate intervals and rhythms, suggested an opening gambit, while Beethoven's fourth-movement hymn served as a model for the chorale-like themes in most of Bruckner's finales, although he never used voices. As in Beethoven's Ninth, Bruckner's finales often recycle subjects from earlier movements.

Bruckner's debt to Wagner is evident in large-scale structures, the great length of the symphonies, lush harmonies, and sequential repetition of entire passages. Bruckner's experience as an organist informed his orchestration, in which instruments or groups are brought in, opposed, and combined, just like the contrasting keyboards of an organ are, and the massive blocks of sound, piled one on top of the other. Suggest an organist's improvisation.

Bruckner's symphonies typically begin, like Beethoven's Ninth, with a vague agitation in the strings out of which a theme gradually coalesces and then builds up in a crescendo, conveying a sense of coming into being. For example, the Fourth Symphony opens with a quiet tonic-triad tremolo in the strings against horn calls with falling and rising fifths (occasionally altered to sixths and octaves) and a triple-dotted rhythm, shown in Example 29.5a. After some striking modulations, the intervals are filled in with scalar passages, and

Example 29.5 Motives from Bruckner, Symphony No. 4 (Romantic), First Movement

the theme in Example 29.5b emerges fortissimo, forcefully proclaiming the tonic with a favorite rhythmic figure that alternates duple and triple divisions. Development of this idea leads to the key of D♭, where a bird call—as Bruckner identified it—is heard in violin 1 against a lyrical melody in the viola, shown in Example 29.5c. The exposition ends in the dominant B♭, creating a three-key exposition like those of Schubert (see Chapters 25 and 26). Both themes are reworked until the development section combines them in a dreamlike sequence resembling Wagner's orchestral interludes. A return to the main key ushers in a recapitulation that reviews material from the exposition in the expected order, with the bird-call section in B major, followed by a long coda. Although we can view this movement in terms of sonata form, the continuous development of musical ideas, characteristic of Beethoven and Wagner, gives the work a monumental dimension.

Bruckner's religious choral music blends modern elements with influences from the Cecilian movement, which promoted a revival of the sixteenth-century a cappella style. His motets for unaccompanied chorus reflect these Cecilian ideals, yet their harmonic palette ranges from the strictly modal Os justi (1879) to the quickly modulating harmonies of Virga Jesse (1885). His Mass No. 2 in E Minor (1866) is a unique neo-medieval work for eight-part chorus and fifteen wind instruments. Bruckner designed his sacred music to function equally well as part of the liturgy or as concert music and to project a sense of timelessness while incorporating up-to-date harmony, balancing these competing requirements perhaps better than any of his contemporaries.

Hugo Wolf Hugo Wolf (1860 to 1903) is best known for adapting Wagner's methods to the German Lied. He also wrote piano pieces, a string quartet, symphonic works, choruses, and an opera, but none shared the success of his songs.

Wolf produced most of his 250 Lieder in short periods of intense creative activity from 1887 until 1897, when he was incapacitated by a mental breakdown, probably caused by syphilis. He published five principal collections of Lieder, each devoted to a single poet or group: Eduard Mörike (1889), Joseph Freiherr von Eichendorff (1889), Goethe (1890), and German translations of Spanish poems (1891) and Italian poems (1892 and 1896). By concentrating on one poet or group at a time and placing the poet's name above his own in the titles of his collections, Wolf indicated a new ideal of equality between words and music, derived from Wagner's approach to opera. Wolf had little use for the folk-song type of melody and strophic structures characteristic of Brahms. Instead, he judiciously applied to the Lied Wagner's notion of a collective artwork (Gesamtkunstwerk), achieving a fusion of poetry and music, and of voice and piano, without subordinating either to the other.

A good illustration of Wolf's approach is Lebe wohl! from the Mörike songbook, shown in Example 29.6. The vocal line adapts Wagner's arioso style, presenting a speechlike rhythm and pitch contour. As in Wagner's operas, continuity is sustained by the instrumental part rather than the voice, which often parallels melodies in the piano. The chromatic voice-leading, appoggiaturas, anticipations, and wandering tonality are clearly inspired by the idiom of Tristan und Isolde (compare N.A.W.M 153). Dissonances resolve to other dissonances, pure triads are rare, and phrases end more often on dissonant than

Example 29.6 Hugo Wolf. Lebe Wohl!

on consonant chords. A measure of the intense chromaticism is that all twelve chromatic notes appear in the first phrase (measures 1 to 4) and again in measures 5 to 6, an effect later termed chromatic saturation (see Chapter 33). The music precisely reflects the text in declamation and in emotion, aptly conveying the despairing feelings of a rejected lover.

Richard Strauss Richard Strauss (1864 to 1949), shown in Figure 29.7, was a dominant figure in German musical life for most of his career. He was celebrated as a conductor, holding positions in the opera houses of Munich, Weimar, Berlin, and Vienna, and conducting most of the world's great orchestras during numerous tours. As a composer, he is remembered especially for his tone poems (his preferred term for symphonic poems), most written before 1900; his operas, all but one of which came later (see Chapter 32); and his Lieder.

Strauss's early compositions emulated Mozart, Beethoven, and Schubert, reflecting the conservative tastes of his father, a renowned horn player. But in his teens, Strauss heard Wagner's operas and studied the score of Tristan und Isolde, as a result of which his style soon changed profoundly. Strauss's chief models for program music were Liszt and Berlioz, drawing on their colorful orchestration, transformation of themes, and types of program. Like theirs, some of Strauss's programs are based on literature, including Don Juan (1888 to 89), after a poem by Nikolaus Lenau; Macbeth (1888, revised 1891), on Shakespeare; Also sprach Zarathustra (Thus Spoke Zoroaster, 1896), after a prose-poem by philosopher-poet freed-rick Nietzsche; and Don Quixote (1897), on the picaresque novel by Miguel Cervantes. Other works drew on his personal experience, as Berlioz had done in his Symphony fantastique. The Symphonyia domestica (1902 to 3) painted an idealized portrait of his domestic life, and Ein Heldenleben (A Hero's Life, 1897 to 98) is openly autobiographical, caricaturing his critics in cacophonous passages while glorifying his own triumphs with citations from his early works.

Program music covers a broad spectrum, from representing specific events, as in Berlioz's Symphonie fantastique, to a more general evocation of ideas and emotional states, as in several of Liszt's symphonic poems. Strauss's tone poems fall at varying places on this spectrum from the representational to the philosophical and typically combine aspects of both.

Don Juan is Strauss's first complete mature work, and its success established his reputation while he was still in his twenties. Events in Don Juan's career as a roving lover are pictured, including wooing a new romantic interest, a rather graphic sexual climax followed by a search for his next conquest, and his death at the end. Yet most of the piece evokes general moods of activity, boldness, and romance, rather than following a specific plot.

If Don Juan falls in the middle of the spectrum, Till Eulenspiegels lustige Streiche (Till Eulenspiegel's Merry Pranks, 1894 to 95) tends toward the representational, telling the comic tale of a trickster's exploits. The realistic details of Till's adventures are specified by marginal notes the composer added to the printed score. Two themes for Till are used and developed like leitmotives, changing to suggest his activities and situation.

Yet the specific events are so thoroughly blended into the musical flow that the work could be heard simply as a character sketch of a particularly appealing rascal, or just as a piece of musical humor. This illustrates an important point about program music in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries: as in opera, the suggestion of events and ideas outside music allows and explains the use of novel musical sounds, gestures, and forms, but in most cases the music still makes sense on its own terms, presenting, developing, and recalling themes and motives in ways that both parallel and diverge from the processes and forms of earlier music. Strauss indicated that the piece is "in rondeau form."

It is not a rondo in the Classic sense, but rondo-like because the two Till themes keep recurring in a variety of guises, enlivened by shrewd touches of instrumentation. Rondo is appropriate for Till, who remains the same fool after each prank.

Also sprach Zarathustra is a musical commentary on Nietzsche's long prose-poem, which proclaimed that the Christian ethic should be replaced by the idea of a superman who is above good and evil. Although the general course of the program is philosophical, moments are directly representational. Zarathustra's address to the rising sun in the poem's prologue inspired the tone poem's splendid opening, with a deep C in the organ pedal and contrabassoon, a rising brass fanfare, opposing C minor and C major triads, thumping timpani, and triumphant orchestral culmination for full orchestra. The passage became one of Strauss's most famous when it was used in the soundtrack of Stanley Kubrick's 1968 film 2001: A Space Odyssey to accompany both the sunrise and a scene meant to suggest the birth of reasoning.

As the rondo suits Till Eulenspiegel, so variation form fits the adventures of the knight Don Quixote and his squire Sancho Panza, whose personalities are shaped by their frustrating experiences. We are no longer in a world of merry pranks but in one of split personalities and double meanings. The wry humor and cleverness in Don Quixote (see excerpt in N.A.W.M 162) lie not so much in the apt depiction of real things as in the play with musical ideas. Much of this work has a chamber-music sound, because it is conceived in contrapuntal lines, and its themes attach to particular solo instruments, notably the cello for Don Quixote and bass clarinet, tenor tuba, and viola for Sancho Panza. "Variations" here does not mean preserving a melody or harmonic progression and its form through a number of statements. Rather, the themes of the two main characters are transformed so that the beginnings of the themes sprout new melodic characters, building on Liszt's technique of thematic transformation.

Reaching the Audience

Each of the composers examined in this chapter pursued a different path, but all succeeded in reaching an audience and securing a permanent place in the classical repertoire. Brahms wrote music in a wide range of traditional forms and genres, and of all late-nineteenth-century composers came closest to achieving the broad appeal to performers, amateurs, listeners, and connoisseurs alike that was characteristic of his great predecessors Bach, Handel, Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven. Brahms was seen first as a conservative opposed to Wagner and Liszt, then as a cerebral composer of demanding music, but by his death in 1897 he was considered the central figure of classical music in his time, outside the field of opera.

The composers of the Wagnerian wing of the German tradition, like Wagner himself, tended to focus more narrowly on a few genres. The symphonic poems of Liszt and especially of Richard Strauss found a ready audience among lovers of classical music because these works offered something essentially new that was both deeply connected to the symphonic tradition, through procedures of thematic presentation, development, and return, and appealing to first-time listeners, through the programs and novel effects. The choral music of Liszt and Bruckner, Bruckner's symphonies, and Wolf's songs had a harder time competing against the well-established classics in these genres, but they too found a devoted audience of connoisseurs—particularly in German-speaking lands—and now have an enduring place in the repertoire.

From our perspective more than a century later, the dispute between the partisans of Brahms and those of the New German School seems like an argument among close relatives, for all traced their heritage back to Beethoven and the early Romantics and sought to add something of their own to an already rich common tradition.

Diverging Traditions in the Later Nineteenth Century

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The fault lines described in the previous chapter between old and new music, absolute and program music, and national and international elements were evident in every corner of the Western classical tradition during the second half of the nineteenth century. We have seen how German-speaking composers responded in different ways to their common heritage and to the gradual development of a permanent repertoire of musical classics, and in the process each created a distinctive personal style. Given the centrality of Bach, Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, and other German composers in the classical repertoire, composers in other lands who sought a place in that repertoire had to engage with the German tradition as well as with the music and cultural traditions of their own nations. Often—but not always—they sought to assert a specifically national style, as well as an individual one. French composers debated whether to assimilate Bach, Beethoven, Mendelssohn, and Wagner or to pursue a more national idiom. In Russia, Bohemia, Scandinavia, and England, nationalist schools emerged in instrumental music as well as in opera. Yet many composers avoided overt nationalism, choosing instead to speak in what they regarded as the universal common language of music.

All these competing currents contributed to the growing diversity of classical music in the later nineteenth century. But classical music was only one of several streams in musical life, alongside entertainment music, popular song, utilitarian music, and folk music. Through a look at trends in the United States, we can gain a sense of the variety of musical traditions at the time.

France

Germans had looked to music and other arts to forge a sense of nationhood before the unification of Germany in 1871. But France had been a unified state for centuries and one of the leading musical nations from 30

France 731

Eastern and

Northern Europe 736

The United States 745

Reception and

Recognition 753

Figure 30.1 summary: A concert program for the first National Concert held at the Theatre de l'Odeon on March 2, 1873, featuring works by Mendelssohn, Schumann, Saint-Saens, Bizet, Schubert, and Guiraud. The document lists the performance schedule, the participating artists including Madame P. Viardot and Camille Saint-Saens, ticket pricing, and locations for purchasing tickets. It serves as a historical record of a specific musical event in 19th-century Paris.

Programme

Figure 30.1 Handbill for the first Concert National, conducted by Edouard Colonne on March 2, 1873. The program is split between German music from earlier generations—Mendelssohn's Italian Symphony, a short Robert Schumann piece, and Schubert's song Erlkönig—and new music by living French composers Saint-Saëns, Bizet, and Ernest Guiraud, all then in their thirties. Many of the seats were so inexpensive (at one franc or less) that almost anyone could afford to attend, and audiences were often very large. the Middle Ages on. In the second half of the nineteenth century, the challenge for French musicians was not to use music to create a nation but to position French music in a changed musical landscape in which classics from the past and the German tradition were both increasing in importance.

In concert music as in opera, Paris was the center of French musical life. Concert-giving institutions balanced increasing interest in German music with concern for France's musical heritage and encouragement of its native composers. Beginning in 1852, an orchestra of the best Paris Conservatoire students gave concerts focused on symphonic music of Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Mendelssohn, and Robert Schumann, and on new French works in the same vein, such as Gounod's symphonies. Other organizations presented a similar repertoire to audiences numbering in the thousands. Figure 30.1 shows the program of the first Concert National (founded 1873), split equally between German classics and new French works. Conductor Edouard Colonne focused his 1885 to 86 concert series on surveying the history of music and introduced explanatory program notes, which became standard in Paris by the end of the century and are now part of classical concerts everywhere.

French music was linked to politics, a tradition that stretched back to royal control of music in the seventeenth century (see Chapter 16). The national government provided significant funding for many musical institutions, from the Opéra to the Conservator.

vatoire, and accordingly these institutions had to respond to political pressure from those in power. Concert series, composers, and even musical styles were often associated with political movements. One notable political effect was an increasing activity in musical life after the Franco-Prussian War of 1870 to 71, when the government and the Parisian elite sought to assert the vibrancy of French culture in the face of an embarrassing defeat. For example, the Société Nationale de Musique (National Society of Music), founded in 1871, gave concerts of works by French composers and sought to revive the great French music of the past through editions and performances of Rameau, Gluck, and sixteenth-century composers. At the same time, somewhat ironically, French composers were increasingly influenced by German music, from the impact of Bach on organ music and of the Germanic tradition on symphonic and chamber works to that of Wagner on vocal and instrumental music alike.

Music schools reflected competing visions. The Conservatoire stressed technical training with an emphasis on opera. It was still the most prestigious school, and a first prize there could guarantee a successful career. The Ecole Niedermeyer, founded in 1853, gave general instruction but focused on church music; by teaching students to sing Gregorian chant and to accompany it with modal chords, the school influenced many French composers to use modal melody and harmony. The Schola Cantorum, founded in 1894 by Vincent d' Indy (1851 to 1931) and others, emphasized broad historical studies in music, including a focus on counterpoint and composition in classical forms.

The growth in concert activity, proliferation of music schools, revival of past traditions, and encouragement of new music created a stimulating climate for French music. Outside the field of opera and musical theater, two main strands can be identified before the emergence of impressionism (discussed in Chapter 32): a cosmopolitan tradition, transmitted through César Franck (1822 to 1890) and his pupils, and a more specifically French tradition, embodied in the music of Gabriel Fauré (1845 to 1924) and passed on to countless twentieth-century composers through his students, especially the famous pedagogue Nadia Boulanger (1887 to 1979).

Sezar Franck Franck, shown in Figure 30.2, was born in Belgium, came to Paris to study at the Conservatoire, and became a professor of organ there in 1871. Working mainly in instrumental genres and oratorio, he achieved a distinctive style by blending traditional counterpoint and classical forms with Liszt's thematic transformation, Wagner's harmony, and the Romantic idea of cyclic unification through thematic return.

Figure 30.2 summary: A musical score for the opening measures of Modest Musorgsky's "The Great Gate of Kiev" from "Pictures at an Exhibition." The piece is marked Allegro alla breve, Maestoso, and Con grandezza, featuring dense, loud chords across both the treble and bass clefs. The purpose of the image is to provide a musical example of this specific composition.

Typical of Franck's approach is the Prelude, Chorale, and Fugue (1884) for piano, which emulates a Baroque toccata in the prelude; introduces a chorale-like melody in distant keys; presents a fugue on a chromatic subject that has been foreshadowed in both previous sections; and closes by combining the opening toccata texture with the chorale melody and fugue subject in counterpoint. It is a piece that could only have been written by someone who had absorbed the thematic and harmonic methods of Liszt and Wagner and also the organ music of Bach and the French Baroque. Franck's organ music took a similar approach, often combining original melodies in chorale style with richly developed fantasias and full chordal finales, as in his Three Chorales (1890). His improvisatory style inaugurated a new type of organ music in France, one dominated by lyrical themes, contrapuntal development, and orchestral color. The design of the organ in France changed completely during this period in order to accommodate this new "symphonic" approach.

Franck's Symphony in D Minor (1888) is probably the most popular French symphony after Berlioz. Like Berlioz's Symphonie fantastique and Harold en Italie (see Chapter 26), it is a model of cyclic form, featuring themes that recur or are transformed in two or more movements. For Berlioz, such thematic links were programmatic, while for Franck they were a fundamental element of his approach to multimovement works, weaving the movements into a unity through continuous development.

Franck has been called the founder of modern French chamber music. His chief chamber works, all cyclic in form, are his Piano Quintet in F Minor (1879), String Quartet in D Major (1889), and Violin Sonata in A Major (1886). The finale of the Violin Sonata (N.A.W.M 163) illustrates Franck's blend of tradition with innovation, from Renaissance and Baroque procedures to Romantic harmony and thematic Japanese text

1852 to 70 Second French Empire under Napoleon the third

1855 to 81 Reign of Czar Alexander the second of Russia

1861 to 65 Civil War in United States

1860s First African American spirituals published

1865 Theodore Thomas Orchestra founded

1870 Third French Republic proclaimed

1870 to 71 Franco-Prussian War circa 1872 to 79 Bedřich

Smetana, Má vlast

1879 Modest Musorgsky, Pictures at an Exhibition

1877 Thomas Edison makes first cylinder recording

1878 Antonín Dvořák,

Slavonic Dances, Op. 46

1880s Tin Pan Alley becomes center for popular song publishers

1886 César Franck, Violin

Sonata in A Major

1887 Emile Berliner invents disc-playing phonograph

1889 Eiffel Tower erected

1892 to 94 Gabriel Fauré,

La bonne chanson

1893 Dvořák, New World Symphony

1893 Piotr Il'yich Tchaikovsky,

Sixth Symphony

(Pathétique)

1894 to 96 Amy Beach, Gaelic Symphony

1897 John Philip Sousa, The Stars and Stripes Forever

1898 Spanish-American War structure. The unique form combines ritornello form, typical of Baroque concertos, with elements of sonata, ternary, and rondo forms. The main theme is marked by an extended canon between violin and piano, thirty-seven measures long at its first appearance, that is reworked in various ways at each later statement of the theme. The harmony meanwhile modulates most often by third, spelling out the tonic triad A–C Sharp–E for the first three presentations of the main theme, then reaches keys as distant as B minor, E minor, and A minor before working its way back to the tonic.

The main theme alternates with themes from the three previous movements. For all this complex interplay, the first impression is of surpassing beauty and emotional power, with songlike themes and expressive climaxes.

Gabriel Fore and the French Tradition The other tendency in French music drew primarily on earlier French composers from Couperin to Gounod and approached music more as sonorous form than as expression. Order and restraint are fundamental. Instead of emotional displays and musical depiction, we hear subtle patterns of tones, rhythms, and colors. The music sounds more lyric or dancelike than epic or dramatic. It is economical, simple, and reserved rather than profuse, complex, or grandiloquent.

The refined music of Gabriel Fauré, who is shown in Figure 30.3, embodies the qualities of this French tradition. He studied under Saint-Saëns at the École Niedermeyer, held various posts as an organist, and was a cofounder of the Société Nationale. Although he was considered a radical who composed in an advanced modern style, he became professor of composition at the Paris Conservatoire in 1896 and was its director from 1905 to 1920. Fauré wrote some music in larger forms, including his best-known work, the Requiem (1887), and two operas. But he was primarily a composer of mélodies (songs); of piano music, chiefly preludes, impromptus, nocturnes, and barcarolles; and of chamber music.

Figure 30.3 summary: A musical score fragment marked Presto and ff, featuring a melody in 3/4 time with several indicated hemiolas. The notation uses ties and accents to shift the rhythmic feel against the standard meter, demonstrating how hemiolas create rhythmic tension and syncopation.

Fauré is recognized today as one of the great masters of French song. He wrote dozens of mélodies over a period of six decades, from the early 1860s to the early 1920s. He began by composing mélodies in the manner of Gounod, and lyrical melody, with no display of virtuosity, remained the basis of his style. But in his maturity, from about 1885, he developed a new language in which melodic lines are fragmented and harmony becomes much less directional.

The song cycle La bonne chanson (The Good Song), Op. 61 (1892 to 94) illustrates these characteristics. The poems are by Paul Verlaine (1844 to 1896), whose focus on suggesting moods through imagery and the sound of language rather than through direct statement became known as symbolism. Fauré's approach is similarly indirect. In the sixth song, Avant que tu ne t'en ailles (N.A.W.M 164), each poetic image is set to a melodic phrase in its own tonal world, a declamatory fragment joined to the other phrases by subtle motivic echoes. Although they are not modal, the melodies have qualities that reflect Fauré's training in Gregorian chant, moving mostly by step or skip in a gentle arc while avoiding the leading tone and clear harmonic implications.

In the passage shown in Example 30.1, the chords consist mainly of dominant sevenths and ninths, but the tension melts as one chord fades into another, linked through common tones. In each of the first three measures, for example, the dominant seventh on G Sharp is succeeded by an E Sharp-major triad, which neutralizes the leading tone B Sharp in the vocal line as the fifth of the new chord and treats the seventh F Sharp as an appoggiatura. Such harmonic successions dilute the need for resolution and undermine the pull of the tonic, creating a sense of repose or even stasis that is the opposite of the emotional unrest in Wagner's music. Here the chromaticism that is the lifeblood of so much expressive music in the nineteenth century becomes instead a means to achieve equilibrium and restraint, attributes that have long been esteemed in French music.

On a larger scale, La bonne chanson exemplifies Fauré's innovative approach to traditional genres. He arranged Verlaine's poems to suggest a narrative, as in earlier song cycles (see Chapter 25), but also used recurring themes to create musical unity across the entire cycle and to recall earlier events or emotions. Similar techniques had appeared in Robert Schumann's piano sets and song cycles (see N.A.W.M 133 and 136) and had long been used in opera and symphonic music, in the form of reminiscence motives, leitmotives, or cyclic recollection of themes, but they were new to French art song. The novel harmony and form, along with the heightened role for the piano in comparison to most mélodies, provoked resistance from France's conservative musical establishment, who regarded Fauré as an outlier. But by the time he died in 1924, his musical language had become the common currency of modern French musicians, setting French music on a very different course from German music.

: Figure 30.1 summary: A musical score excerpt from Gabriel Fauré's "Avant que tu ne t'en ailles," showing a vocal line with French lyrics accompanied by a piano. The piece begins softly with a legato melodic line and fluid piano accompaniment, building in intensity toward a forte section. It is a musical example used to illustrate a specific composition or stylistic element.

BIBLIOTHEQUE DU CONSERVATOIRE DE MUSIQUE, PARIS, FRANCE/BRIDGEMAN IMAGES

What joy among the fields of ripe wheat!

Eastern and Northern Europe

The instrumental repertoire centered on works by German and Austrian composers from Bach to Brahms, but some composers from eastern and northern Europe active in the later nineteenth century were able to secure a place in the classical canon. Inevitably, their works were perceived as offering a different voice, colored as much by their nationality as by their individual character.

Chaykovsky By far the most successful of these composers was Piotr Il'ych Tchaikovsky (see biography and Figure 30.4), a dominant force in Russian music and a cosmopolitan musician renowned all over Europe and North America. Emblematic of his wide appeal was his First Piano Concerto (1875), premiered in Boston under an American-born conductor with German pianist Hans von Bülow (see Chapter 29) as soloist, and now one of the best-known and most frequently played piano concertos. His theatrical works (discussed in Chapter 28) include the three most popular ballets in the world and two of the most regularly staged Russian operas, and his instrumental works are no less important; his piano concertos, Violin Concerto (1878), and symphonies have won a place near the heart of the repertoire. His best-known symphonies, performed almost as often as Beethoven's, are his last three: No. 4 in F Minor (1877 to 78); No. 5 in E Minor (1888); and No. 6 in B Minor, the Pathétique (1893).

Figure 30.4 summary: Two snippets of musical notation for piano. The first is marked Allegro grazioso and features a flowing melody in the right hand with pedal markings and a p dynamic; the second is marked Allegro and features a rhythmic melody with a cresc. marking leading to an ffz dynamic. The purpose of the figure is to display musical excerpts from a composition.

Tchaikovsky wrote his patron Nadezhda von Meck that the Fourth Symphony had a private program in which the horn call from the introduction symbolizes inexorable fate. The horn motive is recalled after the exposition and before the coda of the final movement, unifying the symphony through cyclic return while conveying the program. The outer movements are dramatic, suffused with high emotion; the second movement is wistful, and the third an airy scherzo of a type that became a Russian specialty. Especially novel is the key scheme of the first movement, organized by a circle of minor thirds: the first theme group is in F minor and the second in Ab major, as expected, but the closing theme appears in B major, a tritone from the tonic; then the recapitulation begins in D minor for the first and second themes, modulates to F major for the closing theme, and returns to F minor for the coda. As we saw in Chapter 28, such circles of minor or major thirds were common in Russian music and ultimately derive from the music of Liszt and Schubert. The three-key exposition and the recapitulation that begins away from the tonic also suggest the influence of Schubert.

The Sixth Symphony (Pathétique) also had a private program that Tchaikovsky never specified but whose general outlines can be intuited from its extraordinary sequence of movements. Beginning with a somber slow introduction, the darkly passionate first movement in B minor features a first theme that seems to strive ever upward only to fall back short of the goal, and a consoling, mostly pentatonic second theme. A brief quotation from the

Piotr Il'yich Tchaikovsky

(1840 to 1893)

Tchaikovsky was the most prominent Russian composer of the nineteenth century, in his own country and throughout Europe and the Americas. He combined his Russian heritage with influences from Italian opera, French ballet, and German symphony and song.

Tchaikovsky was born in a distant province of Russia but moved with his family to St. Petersburg, where he graduated from law school at age nineteen, destined for a career in government. After four years as a civil servant, he enrolled at the new St. Petersburg Conservatory, where he studied with its founder Anton Rubinstein and was one of the first students to graduate. He quickly found a position teaching at the new Moscow Conservatory, where he remained for twelve years.

Although Tchaikovsky's professional career was successful, his personal life was in disarray. In addition to bouts of depression and constant worries about money due to overspending, he was troubled by the growing realization of his homosexuality. In 1877, he tried to escape into a hasty marriage to Antonina Milyukova, an attractive and financially independent woman, but it proved disastrous. On the verge of a nervous breakdown and fearing a loss of creativity, he fled back to St. Petersburg after two months, though they never divorced.

Around the same time, Tchaikovsky formed another life-changing relationship. Nadezhda von Meck, a wealthy widow who was enthralled by his music, became his financial supporter and intellectual confidante, although the two took care never to meet. Her patronage for over thirteen years enabled him to resign his teaching position in 1878 and devote himself entirely to composition. Reading their voluminous correspondence allows extraordinary insights into Tchaikovsky's thinking and personality.

Tchaikovsky traveled throughout Europe as a conductor. In the spring of 1891, he made a brief tour of the United States, taking part in the ceremonies inaugurating New York's Carnegie Hall. He was at the peak of his fame when he conducted the premiere of his Sixth Symphony in October 1893. Yet nine days later he died after a brief and unexplained illness, prompting some to see the symphony and other works of his last year as offering a premonition of his death.

Major Works 8 operas, including Eugene Onegin and The Queen of Spades; 3 ballets, Swan Lake, The Sleeping Beauty, and The Nutcracker; 6 symphonies; 2 piano concertos; a violin concerto; symphonic poems and overtures, including Romeo and Juliet and 1812 Overture; chamber music and songs

Russian Orthodox Requiem in the development intensifies the dark mood. The second movement, in D major, is in minuet and trio form, but instead of a minuet uses a dance in 5 over 4 meter, one of the many European dances from Switzerland to Russia that combine waltz patterns with pivots or other duplex-meter steps (here in the order pivot-waltz, two beats then three beats, in every measure). The dance is graceful and fun, but its B-minor trio has descending gestures that suggest sorrow. The third movement (N.A.W.M 165) in G major begins with a light scherzando character and gradually evolves into a triumphant march, as motivic fragments introduced near the beginning coalesce into a main theme that reaches its definitive form only upon its repetition near the end.

So far, the symphony has traced an emotional path from struggle to triumph, familiar from symphonies going back to Beethoven. But Tchaikovsky's Pathétique tells another story: it ends extraordinarily with a despairing slow movement, filled with lamenting figures, that fades away at the end over a low pulse in the strings, like the beating of a dying heart. Although Tchaikovsky's unexpected death nine days after the symphony's premiere has led some listeners to interpret the piece in terms of his biography, linking it to his homosexuality, a premonition of death, or the recent deaths of several friends and colleagues his own age, it is more likely that he conceived it as a kind of drama, capturing in instrumental music the tragic arc of many late-nineteenth-century operas in which seeming triumph ends in tragedy.

Tchaikovsky's symphonies and concertos did not always win immediate or unanimous acclaim from audiences and critics. Listeners only gradually warmed to the Fourth Symphony after its initial cool reception, and the Sixth Symphony was greeted with mixed reactions at its premiere, then praised as a masterpiece when played again soon after the composer's death. Yet both ultimately triumphed because Tchaikovsky met the challenge of his time, blending novel ideas with traditional elements from both the classical tradition and national traditions to create highly individual pieces of music with wide and lasting appeal.

the Mighty Five Tchaikovsky was the most prominent Russian composer of his time, but others also found a place in the repertoire. The composers known as the Mighty Five (see Chapter 28 Balakirev and Cui, as well as Borodin, Musorgsky, and Rimsky-Korsakov (discussed below)—were active in instrumental music as well as in opera, and indeed their instrumental works are more widely known.

Borodin's principal instrumental works are his two string quartets (1874 to 79 and 1881), Symphony No. 2 in B Minor (1869 to 76), and a symphonic sketch, In Central Asia (1880). Alone among the Mighty Five, he was a devotee of chamber music and an admirer of Mendelssohn. Although he seldom quoted folk tunes—as Balakirev and Cui did—his melodies reflect their spirit. His chamber and orchestral works are characterized by song-like themes, transparent instrumental textures, modally tinged harmonies, and his original method of spinning out an entire movement from a single pregnant thematic idea, as in the first movement of the Second Symphony.

Musorgsky's principal nonoperatic works are a symphonic fantasy, Night on Bald Mountain (1867); a set of piano pieces, Pictures at an Exhibition (1874; later orchestrated by Ravel); and the song cycles The Nursery (1872), Sunless (1874), and Songs and Dances of Death (1875). Pictures at an Exhibition is a suite of ten pieces inspired by an exhibition Musorgsky saw of over four hundred sketches, paintings, and designs by his late friend Viktor Hartmann, who shared with the composer an interest in finding a new artistic language that was uniquely Russian. Several of the paintings are rendered in character pieces, sewn together by interludes that vary a theme meant to represent the viewer walking through the gallery. Figure 30.5 shows Hartmann's design for a commemorative gate to be built at Kiev that combined classical columns, capitals, and arches with decoration modeled on Russian folk art. In the opening theme of the climactic final movement, shown in Example 30.2, Musorgsky translates this image into a grand processional hymn that similarly combines western European and Russian elements, blending classical procedures with a melody that resembles a Russian folk song and harmonies that suggest the modality and parallel motion of folk polyphony. Later, he twice states a Russian Orthodox hymn, which adds a prayerful tone and authentic national element to this majestic concluding movement.

Rimsky-Korsakov is best known for his programmatic orchestral works, although he also wrote symphonies, chamber music, choruses, and songs as well as operas. The Capriccio espagnol (1887), the symphonic suite Scheherazade (1888), and the Russian Easter Overture (1888) display his genius for orchestration and musical characterization. The first two typify exoticism, based on Spanish themes and on tales from the Arabian Nights respectively, and the third is nationalist, incorporating Russian Orthodox liturgical melodies. The four movements of Scheherazade, each on a different story, are woven together by the themes of the Sultan and his wife Scheherazade, the storyteller, portrayed by a solo violin. These recurring themes lend the work a thematic unity akin to the cyclic symphonies of Franck and Tchaikovsky.

Through a blend of Russian elements with Western conventions, Borodin, Musorgsky, and Rimsky-Korsakov each succeeded in creating instrumental works with a distinctive personality, and ultimately it was their most individual works that have secured a place in the permanent repertoire.

Rimsky-Korsakov Bohemia: Smetana and Dvorak As part of the multinational Austro-Hungarian Empire, Bohemia (now the Czech Republic) was close to the German musical tradition but also home to a budding nationalism in music. Like the Russians, Czech composers Bedřich Smetana and Antonín Dvořák are better known outside their native land for their instrumental works than for their operas (discussed in Chapter 28), no doubt because instrumental music can leap over the language barrier. Their operas and tone poems were influenced by the innovations of the New German School (see Chapter 29), and in his symphonies and chamber music, Dvořák was deeply indebted to Brahms, who actively promoted Dvořák's music.

Smetana sketched a musical autobiography in his String Quartet No. 1, From My Life (1876), and sought to create a national music in his cycle of six symphonic poems collectively titled Má vlast (My Country, circa 1872 to 79). Of the latter, the best known is The Moldau, a picture of the river that winds through the Czech countryside in an ever-broadening current, through forests (represented by hunting music), past a village wedding (represented by a polka), and over rapids on its way to Prague. But the most stirring is Tábor, named after the city where followers of radical religious reformer Jan Hus (circa 1369 to 1415) built a fortress that became a symbol of Czech resistance to outside oppression. Tábor falls into two sections, like the slow introduction and Allegro of a symphonic first movement. In each half, fragments of a Hussite chorale are presented and developed until the entire chorale theme appears in full for the first time at the end. Smetana uses this process to embody the legend that the Hussite warriors will gather strength and emerge from their stronghold in the Czech people's time of need.

Dvořák wrote nine symphonies; four concertos, of which the most popular is the Cello Concerto in B Minor (1894 to 95); numerous dances and other works for orchestra, including symphonic poems in the Lisztian tradition; and many chamber works, piano pieces, songs, and choral works. Many of his pieces are in an international style. For example, his Symphony No. 6 in D Major (1880), premiered in Vienna, is full of allusions to Beethoven and Brahms symphonies, as Dvořák claimed a place in the Viennese symphonic tradition.

Yet in pieces like the Slavonic Dances for piano four hands or orchestra (1878 and 1886 to 87), the dramatic overture Husitská (1883), and the Dumky Piano Trio (1890 to 91), Dvořák used elements from Czech traditional music to achieve a national idiom. Husitská borrows the same Hussite chorale Smetana used in Tabor to invoke nationalistic sentiments, but most often Dvořák avoided quotation of Czech tunes, preferring to invoke national styles by using dance rhythms and his own folklike melodies. The first of the Slavonic Dances is in the rhythm and style of the furiant, a dance in triple meter that begins with hemiolas, as shown in Example 30.3.

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Example 30.3 Antonín Dvořák, Slavonic Dances, Op. 46, No. 1, Opening Melody

By choosing a furiant for the first dance in the set, Dvořák was highlighting his ethnicity: it was one of the most widely known of Czech dances, popularized by Smetana's opera The Bartered Bride, and the dance starts with its most idiosyncratic and recognizable feature, the hemiolas that play against the triple meter before we are even sure what the meter is. In other works, such as the Symphonies No. 7 in D Minor (1884 to 85) and No. 8 in G Major (1889), Dvořák blended folk and national elements with a more broadly international language that drew on older contemporaries from Wagner to Brahms.

Dvořák's best-known symphony is No. 9 in E Minor (From the New World), which he wrote in 1893 during an extended sojourn in the United States as artistic director of the National Conservatory of Music in New York. That same year, he conducted at the World's Fair in Chicago, as shown in Figure 30.6. He had been hired to direct the Conservatory with the expectation that as a nationalist composer he would show Americans how to create a new national style of art music for the United States. Believing that a truly national music could derive only from folk traditions, Dvořák looked to the music of Native Americans and African Americans (see Source Readings, pages 742 to 43). After studying Native American melodies and hearing an African American student at the Conservatory, Harry T. Burleigh, sing plantation songs and spirituals, Dvořák took the elements of those musical idioms, including pentatonic melodies, syncopated rhythms, drones, and plagal cadences, and applied them to his symphony. Its two middle movements are loosely based on events in Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's epic poem The Song of Hiawatha. Similar sounds also suffuse Dvořák's String Quartet No. 12 in F Major (American), which he wrote in the summer of 1893 while at a Czech settlement in Spillville, Iowa. As we will see, Americans differed on whether Dvořák's approach was the right one.

Norway: Edvard Grieg At the same time that the Mighty Five were forging a distinct Russian idiom, Edvard Grieg (1843 to 1907) was writing songs, short piano pieces, and orchestral suites that emulated the modal melodies and harmonies as well as the dance rhythms of his native Norway. An ethnic character emerges most clearly in his songs on Norwegian texts, his Peer Gynt Suite (1875), and especially the Slätter, Norwegian peasant dances that Grieg arranged for the piano from transcriptions of country fiddle playing. His piano style, with its delicate grace notes and mordents, owes something to Chopin, but the all-pervading influence in his music is that of Norwegian folk songs and dances, reflected in his modal turns of melody and harmony (Lydian raised fourth, Aeolian lowered seventh, alternating major and minor thirds); frequent drones in the bass or middle register (suggested by the drone strings on Norwegian stringed instruments); and the fascinating combination of and rhythm in the Slätter. His ten sets of Lyric Pieces for piano (1867 to 1901) illustrate the range of his style, from the chromaticism of Butterfly in Example 30.4a to the raw folklike Halling in Example 30.4b. The latter is particularly

Dvořák and Paine on an American National Music

Recognized as a nationalist composer, Dvořák was often asked during his sojourn in America about how to create an American national music. This passage is from a magazine article written in 1895, a few months before he returned to Europe, and includes revealing comments about his own situation as well as American music.

FIGURE 30.6 Antonín Dvorák conducting at the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago, in a painting by V. E. Nádherný.

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Chinese text

A while ago I suggested that inspiration for truly national music might be derived from the Negro melodies or Indian chants. I was led to take this view partly by the fact that the so-called plantation songs are indeed the most striking and appealing melodies that have yet been found on this side of the water, but largely by the observation that this seems to be recognized, though often unconsciously, by most Americans. All races have their distinctively national songs, which they at once recognize as their own, even if they have never heard them before....

Undoubtedly the germs for the best in music lie hidden among all the races that are commingled in this great country. The music of the people is like a rare and lovely flower growing amidst encroaching weeds. Thousands pass it, while others trample it under foot, and thus the chances are that it will perish before it is seen by the one discriminating spirit who will prize it above all else. The fact that no one has as yet arisen to make the most of it does not prove that nothing is there.

Not so many years ago Slavic music was not known to the men of other races. A few men like Chopin, Glinka, Moniuszko, Smetana, Rubinstein, and Tchaikovsky, with a few others, were able to create a Slavic school of music. Chopin alone caused the music of Poland to be known and prized by all lovers of music. Smetana did the same for Bohemians. Such national music, I repeat, is not created out of nothing. It is discovered and clothed in new beauty, just as the myths and the legends of a people are brought to light.

Example 30.4 Edvard Grieg, Excerpts from Lyric Pieces

a. Butterfly, Op. 43, No. 1

b. Halling (Norwegian Dance), Op. 47, No. 4 and crystallized in undying verse by the master poets. All that is needed is a delicate ear, a retentive memory, and the power to weld the fragments of former ages together in one harmonious whole. . . . The music of the people, sooner or later, will command attention and creep into the books of composers.

Antonín Dvořák,"Music in America," Harper's 90 (February 1895), as excerpted in Composers on Music: Eight Centuries of Writings, ed. Josiah Fisk, 163.

Several American musicians objected to Dvořák's views, including John Knowles Paine (1839 to 1906), a leading American composer, the first music professor at an American college, and founder of the country's first academic music department, at Harvard.

Japanese text

Even if it be granted that musical style is formed to some extent on popular melodies, the time is past when composers are to be classed according to geographical limits.

It is not a question of nationality, but individuality, and individuality of style is not the result of limitation—whether of folk-songs, negro melodies, the tunes of the heathen Chine[s]e or Digger Indians, but of personal character and inborn originality. During the present century musical art has overstepped all national limits; it is no longer a mere question of Italian, German, French, English, Slavonic or American music, but of world music. Except in opera and church music, the prominent composers of the present day belong to this universal or cosmopolitan school of music, although most of them may express here and there certain characteristics of style, due in part to the influence of airs and dances of their respective countries. The music of Chopin, Grieg and Dvořák, for instance, is distinguished for strong local coloring; on the other hand, the works of Mozart, Mendelssohn, Berlioz, Liszt, Anton Rubinstein and others are far less national than individual and universal in character and style.

... As our civilization is a fusion of various European nationalities, so American music more than any other should be all-embracing and universal.

From “American Music: Dr. Antonin Dvořák Expresses Some Radical Opinions,” Boston Herald, May 28, 1893; reprinted in Adrienne Fried Block, “Boston Talks Back to Dvořák,” Institute for Studies in American Music Newsletter 17, no. 2: 40.

evocative of Norwegian dance music through its imitation of circling melodies with subtle variations, grace notes, open strings, and drone fifths.

Not all of Grieg's music was nationalist. He studied at the Leipzig Conservatory and thoroughly absorbed the tradition of Mendelssohn and Schumann represented there. Among his best-known pieces is the Piano Concerto in A Minor (1868, revised 1907), a bravura work modeled on Robert Schumann's piano concerto in the same key.

Britain: the “English Musical Renaissance” and Elgar The question of a national musical tradition was especially acute in Great Britain. England had long been a centralized state, and now it was the heart of a United Kingdom encompassing all of the British Isles, including Wales, Scotland, and Ireland. An economic powerhouse thanks to its leadership in the Industrial Revolution. Britain was the world's leading naval power and had the most far-flung empire the world had ever seen; the slogan that “the sun never sets on the British Empire” expressed the truth that with Canada, New Zealand, Australia, a stretch of Asia from Malaya through India to Afghanistan, large swaths of Africa, and smaller possessions around the globe, it was always daylight somewhere in Queen Victoria's empire. But despite Britain's economic and military might, British intellectuals felt a sense of inferiority in the realm of music. Since the eighteenth century, foreign-born musicians and foreign styles had dominated opera and concert music in Britain, and homegrown composers had failed to match the achievements of Continental composers.

A movement to create a significant independent British musical tradition emerged in the 1880s, dubbed the “English Musical Renaissance” by London critics Joseph Bennett at The Daily Telegraph and J. A. Fuller Maitland at The Times. They especially praised the music of composers Hubert Parry (1848 to 1918) and Charles Villiers Stanford (1852 to 1924) for offering a distinctive national style. Both Parry and Stanford taught composition at the Royal College of Music, established in 1883 with the goal of training young British musicians at the same professional level as conservatories in Paris, Leipzig, and other European centers, and in 1898 both were cofounders of the Folk-Song Society, devoted to the collection and publication of folk songs in the British Isles. Parry, best known for his choral music and five symphonies, developed an individual style that drew on Brahms, Wagner, and Liszt, especially in techniques of development, thematic transformation, and cyclic form, but with a diatonic sound culled from Anglican church music, British folk song, and English composers of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries such as Tallis and Purcell. The Irish-born Stanford, known for choral music, symphonies, and concertos, similarly blended procedures modeled on Brahms and Mendelssohn with a prevailing diatonic style infused with the flavor of Irish folk tunes, as in his Irish Symphony (No. 3 in F Minor, 1887) and six Irish Rhapsodies for orchestra (1902 to 22). But declarations of a Renaissance were premature; neither Parry nor Stanford found a place in the international classical repertoire, although both taught many significant composers of the next generation, including Ralph Vaughan Williams and Gustav Holst, whose reputations eclipsed their own (see Chapter 32).

Considered outsiders to the “Renaissance” were Arthur Sullivan, tainted by his success as a composer of operettas, and Edward Elgar (1857 to 1934), who had no academic training and whose Catholic religion and humble provincial origins barred him from some social circles. Ironically, these are the two British composers best remembered from that era. Elgar, shown in Figure 30.7, was the first English composer in more than two hundred years to enjoy wide international recognition. Unlike Parry and Stanford, he was not interested in folk music or in English music from the Renaissance and Baroque eras and instead forged a personal style made more individual because he was self-taught.

Elgar derived his harmonic approach from Brahms and Wagner and drew from Wagner the system of leitmotives in his oratorios. The oratorio The Dream of Gerontius (1900), on a Catholic poem by John Henry Newman, influenced by Wagner's Parsifal, gives the orchestra an expressive role as important as the chorus. His symphonic output includes the Enigma Variations (1899), which made his reputation, and two symphonies. Among his most popular works are his Violin Concerto (1910), his Cello Concerto (1918 to 19), now a mainstay of the repertoire, and the five Pomp and Circumstance Marches (1901 to 30), of which the first is familiar to British audiences from its annual performance at the London Promenade Concerts and to every American who ever attended a graduation. Given its primarily Continental influences, if Elgar's music sounds English, it is because it has come to represent British music of his generation.

Finding A NICHE This sampling of a few composers can give only a taste of the variety of national and individual styles in Europe in the second half of the nineteenth century. Composers often first found a neesh for their music within a local, regional, or national performing tradition. A lucky few won a broader audience, often by capitalizing on their national identity, especially when that nation was not yet represented in the international repertoire, or by devising a highly individual musical idiom. This remained true for composers in the early twentieth century, as we will see in Chapters 32, 33, and 35.

FIGURE 30.7 Edward Elgar in about 1901.

The United States

In the United States, national identity was both complicated and enriched by the country's ethnic diversity. Immigrants from many different regions in Europe, Latin America, and Asia, as well as former African American slaves and their descendants, brought their own musical traditions, from folk to classical. American musical life became not exactly a melting pot but perhaps a stewpot, where each group maintained its own music while lending a flavor to the whole.

Superimposed on these ethnic divisions were the rapidly emerging distinctions between classical, popular, and folk music. In theory, these three categories represented different attitudes toward notation, composition, and performance. The classical tradition centered on the composer and the work and required scrupulous adherence to the notated score.

Popular music was written down and sold as a commodity but centered on the performer and the performance, allowing considerable leeway in rearranging the notated music. Folk music was independent of notation, passed on through oral tradition. But in practice, the categories overlapped.

Folk tunes were written down and sold as popular music, arranged for concert performance, or incorporated into classical pieces; classical works were transcribed and altered for performance in popular venues; and some popular songs (such as Turkey in the Straw) became so well known they were passed down orally, like folk songs.

Of all these trends, we will look at four: music in the classical tradition; band music, affected strongly by the growing split between classical and popular music; popular songs; and music of African Americans, drawing on oral traditions but becoming a strand of both popular and classical music.

the Classical Tradition Beginning in the 1840s, crop failures and the 1848 Revolution spurred many Germans to emigrate to the United States, following others who had done so over the previous century. Many of the immigrants were musicians and music teachers with a strong commitment to classical music, and they contributed to an extraordinary growth in performing institutions, music schools, and university departments of music in the second half of the nineteenth century. German musicians performed widely, filled positions in orchestras, taught music at all levels, and—along with Americans who had studied in Germany—dominated the teaching of composition and music theory in conservatories, colleges, and universities. The new immigrants and the institutions they helped to found fostered an increasingly sharp divide between classical music and popular music. Not surprisingly, German tastes and styles dominated American music in the classical tradition until World War 1.

One of the most famous immigrant musicians was Theodore Thomas (1835 to 1905), who came over with his family in 1845, played violin with the New York Philharmonic and the Academy of Music, conducted the Brooklyn Philharmonic, and in 1865 founded his own professional orchestra. Through constant performing and touring, the Theodore Thomas Orchestra became the best and the most financially successful in the United States. Thomas was devoted to the classical masterworks but recognized that there was not a large enough demand for them to pay his musicians' salaries. So his orchestra gave both concert-hall programs centered on works in the classical tradition and outdoor concerts that interspersed dances and lighter music between overtures and symphonic movements, pleasing the public while introducing them to the classics in small doses. In 1890, he became the first conductor of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, one of a new breed of full-time professional orchestras backed by wealthy donors and focused almost entirely on classical music.

As classical music became well established, native-born composers were able to pursue careers that combined composition with performing and teaching, especially in the region from Boston to New York. Among them were John Knowles Paine (1839 to 1906), trained by a German immigrant, who became Harvard's (and North America's) first professor of music; George Whitefield Chadwick (1854 to 1931), who studied at the New England Conservatory in Boston and became its director; Chadwick's student Horatio Parker (1863 to 1919), who taught at Yale and was the first dean of its School of Music; and Edward MacDowell (1860 to 1908), a New Yorker who was the first professor of music at Columbia University in New York. All studied in Germany as well as the United States, and all pursued styles deeply rooted in the German tradition (primarily the Brahms wing for the Boston composers, Wagner and Liszt for MacDowell).

However, these composers had varying attitudes about nationalism. Paine argued that the best composers of the day used a universal language that transcended nationality, and as a melting pot of different nations the United States should embrace that transnational approach. Parker believed American composers should simply write the best music they could; his Latin oratorio Hora novissima (1893), the piece that made his reputation, is in a universal style modeled on German and English oratorios. Chadwick, on the other hand, developed an idiom laced with American traits such as pentatonic melodies and characteristic rhythms from Protestant psalmody and African-Caribbean dances, used in his Symphony No. 2 in B-flat Major (1883 to 85) and Symphonic Sketches (1895 to 1904). MacDowell opposed jingoistic nationalism, but like most Europeans he saw a national identity as an important aspect of any composer's claim to international attention. Among his overtly nationalist works is his Second (Indian) Suite for orchestra (1891 to 95), based on Native American melodies.

Another Boston composer, Amy Beach (1867 to 1944), shown in Figure 30.8, could not study or teach at the top universities because they excluded women. A child prodigy, she studied piano, harmony, and counterpoint privately, then taught herself to compose by studying and playing works of composers she admired. In 1885 she married a wealthy physician who considered a career as a professional pianist inappropriate for a woman of her social standing, so she restricted her public performances to one solo recital each year and occasional orchestral and chamber concerts, with the proceeds donated to charity. Freed of financial concerns and of the demands of performance, and with the strong encouragement of her husband, she devoted herself to composition, publishing her works under her formal married name, Mrs. H. H. A. Beach.

At the time, women were considered incapable of composing in longer forms. As if to prove them wrong, Beach wrote large-scale works such as her Mass in E-flat (1890), Gaelic Symphony (Symphony in E Minor, 1894 to 96), and Piano Concerto (1899), all of them well received. She also wrote about 120 songs and dozens of piano and choral pieces, many of them very popular. After her husband's death in 1910, she resumed her career as a professional performer, while continuing to compose. During a successful three-year residency in Germany in 1911 to 14, she used the name Amy Beach, but on her return to the United States she decided to revert to her married name, by which she was already well known.

Like her Boston colleagues Paine and Chadwick, Beach engaged the tradition of the German classics in her works and maintained a style rooted in Brahms. Some of her music has an ethnic flavor, including her Variations on Balkan Themes for piano (1904) and String Quartet (1929) on American Indian melodies. Her Gaelic Symphony is both ethnic and nationalist, written as a response to Dvořák's New World Symphony and to his view that composers in the United States should draw on African American and Native American melodies to establish a national tradition in classical music. Beach believed that a better source was the folk music of the British Isles, which had been popular in the United States for well over a century and had deeply influenced American music, and accordingly based her symphony on four Irish tunes as well as on one of her own songs. The symphony's second movement begins with an Irish tune in a slow and lilting, then develops it in a fast duplex meter, introducing a kaleidoscopic array of paraphrases, fragments, and variations and modulating around two circles of major thirds before returning at the end to the tonic and the source melody.

Recognized in her day as one of America's leading composers and its most famous woman composer, Beach inspired many women musicians in later generations. Her gender made it harder for her contemporaries to see that she was striving to claim a place on the world stage not only for women but also for American music in the classical tradition.

Band Music While orchestras gradually moved toward greater concentration on the classics, wind and brass bands maintained the mix of serious and popular music that had once been typical for all concerts.

The earliest American bands were attached to military units, but in the nineteenth century local bands became common everywhere. One important factor was the invention of brass instruments with valves, pistons, or keys, allowing these instruments to play melodies throughout their range (instead of just notes from the harmonic series) and making them easier for amateurs to play. Soon the brass were the backbone of the band, either joining or replacing the winds. Amateur bands were formed in communities across the country; some of the earliest are still active, including the Allentown Band (founded 1828) and Repasz Band (1831) in Pennsylvania. Bands played indoors or outdoors, seated or on parade, in concerts but also at dances, holiday celebrations, fairs, picnics, parties, ball games, political rallies, store openings, sales events, weddings, funerals, and other public and private gatherings.

The Civil War was called the most musical war in history because almost every regiment on both sides had its own band, which entertained the troops, led marches, performed in parades, and played during battles to hearten the soldiers. After the war, community bands continued to proliferate, becoming such a fixture of American life that by the 1880s there were some ten thousand bands that performed at every opportunity.

The period between the Civil War and World War 1 was the heyday of professional bands. The Irish-born conductor Patrick S. Gilmore (1829 to 1892) founded his own band in 1858, enlisted together with them in the Union Army, and led them in concerts after the war. Inspired by patriotism, finances, and fame, he organized two mammoth music festivals: a five-day National Peace Jubilee in Boston in 1869, featuring a thousand-piece band and a chorus of ten thousand, and a World Peace Jubilee in 1872 to celebrate the end of the

Franco-Prussian War, with more than twenty thousand performers, including Johann Strauss. Gilmore's Band toured the nation in 1876, traveling from New York to San Francisco, and two years later they made an international tour. His success led to a flood of professional touring bands. The most successful bandmaster was John Philip Sousa (1854 to 1932), whose years conducting the United States Marine Band (1880 to 92) raised it to national prominence through tours and savvy promotion. In 1892, he organized his own band, shown in Figure 30.9, which made annual tours of the United States, several European tours, and a world tour.

Figure 30.9 summary: A black-and-white photograph depicting a uniformed military band performing in an outdoor gazebo or pavilion for a seated audience of men and women in formal period attire. The image captures a public musical performance, illustrating a historical social scene.

The repertory of nineteenth-century bands consisted of marches; quicksteps (fast marches); dances including two-steps, waltzes, polkas, galops, and schottisches; arrangements of opera arias and songs, including medleys; virtuosic display pieces often featuring famous soloists; and transcriptions of pieces by classical composers from Rossini to Wagner. Wagner, Liszt, Bruckner, Brahms, Richard Strauss, and countless other composers encouraged such transcriptions for band, recognizing the value of making their music available to a wider audience through such a popular medium, and some (including Wagner and Strauss) composed original pieces for band. Except for the instrumentation, the band repertory was essentially the same fare played by orchestras in the mid-nineteenth century, such as those conducted by Louis Jullien (see Chapter 26) and Theodore Thomas. Bands, whose first purpose was entertainment, retained this formula far longer. Sousa's programming was especially astute.

After every selection listed on the program, the band played an encore, usually a light, quick piece guaranteed to please. Yet he also performed the European classics from Bach to Richard Strauss, introducing Wagner's music to more Americans than anyone else. The same variety is evident in the music Sousa composed for band, which varies from programmatic fantasias to more than a hundred marches, including his most famous march, The Stars and Stripes Forever (1897; N.A.W.M 168). Not limited to a single genre or medium, Sousa also wrote more than a dozen operettas and some seventy songs.

The staple of the band repertory was and still is the march. Figure 30.10a shows the standard march form at midcentury: a brief introduction, usually of four measures; two strains or periods, each repeated; a trio in a contrasting key, most often in the subdominant, with an optional introduction and two repeated strains; and then a da capo repetition of the march up to the trio. The strains are typically sixteen measures long, and often the second half of a strain varies its first half. The first strain of the trio tends to be soft and lyrical, in contrast to the dynamism of the other strains.

This form was well suited to parades, when the band may be blocks away by the time the first strain returns, but Sousa sensed that concert performance required a more dramatic effect, building to a climax rather than returning to the beginning. So in most of his marches, including The Stars and Stripes Forever, he dropped the da capo repetition and instead alternated the lyrical trio with a more aggressive break strain, producing the form in Figure 30.10b. In performances, if not always in the score, Sousa added countermelodies or increased the instrumentation or dynamic level with each repetition of the trio. As classical composers had been doing for almost a century, Sousa shifted the weight to the end to create a sense of forward progress. This dramatic flair, combined with catchy melodies, lively rhythms, and strong contrasts of instruments and textures, helped to make Sousa marches the most widely known ever throughout Europe and the Americas and to earn him the nickname "The March King" (after Johann Strauss, "The Waltz King").

Popular Song While bands embraced a wide repertoire from marches to classics, the world of song was splintering. Schubert's Lieder and Stephen Foster's parlor songs had served similar purposes, intended primarily for home music-making and occasionally performed in concerts. But in the later nineteenth century, there was a widening gulf between art songs and popular songs. Art songs, such as those of Gabriel Fauré and Hugo Wolf, had precisely notated piano parts, tended to be through-composed rather than strophic, were meant to engage listeners on a high artistic plane, and required high professional standards of both pianist and singer. Composers of popular songs sought instead to entertain their audience, accommodate amateur performers, and sell as many copies of the sheet music as possible, so immediate appeal and stick-in-your-head catchiness were the most important attributes.

Topics for popular songs included love, heartbreak, birth, death, racial and ethnic satire, new inventions like the bicycle and telephone, sentimental thoughts of mother and the old family home, and America's favorite pastime, baseball. Songs were pressed into service for every possible cause: abolition, the Civil War, temperance (the campaign against drunkenness), labor organizing, political campaigns, and evangelism, as in gospel songs such as Joseph P. Webster's In the Sweet By-and-By (1868).

Popular art depends upon the interplay of convention and novelty, and both are evident in the best popular songs. The standard form remained verse and refrain, with a four-or eight-measure introduction for the piano; an eight-, sixteen-, or thirty-two-measure verse; and a refrain of similar size. Often the refrain was scored in parts for chorus (or four solo singers), so that chorus came to be used as a term for refrain. Both verse and refrain typically had internal repetitions, falling into forms such as aaba. In some songs the verse and refrain shared material, and in others the chorus was wholly new, occasionally even in a different meter.

The key to success was creating a catchy phrase, sometimes called the hook, that could grab the listener's attention and then be repeated and varied over the course of the song. The chorus of Charles K. Harris's After the Ball (1892), shown in Example 30.5, begins with a motive that is simple yet has enough unusual features to make it intriguing: it begins and ends away from the tonic note, avoids stepwise motion, twice rocks back and forth on a minor third, and has its high point early in the phrase on an unstressed beat and syllable. Linked with the waltz rhythm, all these features convey a lack of balance, suggesting the intoxication of dancing at a ball. The motive is varied many times in succession, then is replaced by a more stable, stepwise phrase at the close, producing an A.A A B form. The lilting waltz suits the subject of the text, and the move from giddiness to steadiness drives home the lesson the words convey.

Harris's song was enormously popular, selling millions of copies and—

FIGURE 30.9 John Philip Sousa with the Sousa Band at a fashionable outdoor concert.

FIGURE 30.10 March forms.

Figure 30.10: Row 1: A. standard march form. Row 2: March Intro or: A: or: B: or, Trio (Optional Intro) or: C: or: D: or, March (da capo) Intro or: A: or: B: or. Row 3: B. non repetitive march form. Row 4: March Intro or: A: or: B: or, Trio C, Break Strain or: D, Trio C: or.

Example 30.5 Chorus from Charles K. Harris. After the Ball

Image summary: A musical score consisting of four lines of vocal melodies with lyrics. The lyrics describe a melancholic scene following a ball, mentioning dancers leaving, stars disappearing, and hearts aching. The layout presents a traditional melody with accompanying lyrics aligned to the notes, serving as a song composition.

since he had published it himself—making him rich. It typifies the products of Tin Pan Alley, the jocular name for a district on West 28th Street in New York where, beginning in the 1880s, numerous publishers specializing in popular songs were located. Harris's strategy for promoting the song also became typical.

He paid a singer to introduce the song in a show, and when it became a hit with the audiences, people went out in droves to buy a copy of the sheet music. The link between success on stage and in sales of printed music hearkens back to Baroque opera and the minstrel show tunes of Stephen Foster, and remained important in the twentieth century.

Music of African Americans The one immigrant group that came to the United States against their will was Africans. Enslaved and brought over in inhuman conditions, they came from many ethnic groups with different languages and customs. Mixed together on plantations or as domestic servants, they would have had a difficult time maintaining their original languages and cultures even if slaveholders had not actively worked to prevent this. But elements of their music were easier to preserve, because they had been widely shared among African societies and because white slaveholders did not consider singing a threat. Indeed, work songs were actively encouraged as a way to keep up the pace and the spirits, and many slaveholders required the enslaved people in their household or plantation to sing and dance for their entertainment.

Among the many traits of African American music that have been traced back to Africa are these:

- alternating short phrases between a leader and the group, called call and response;

- improvisation, usually based on a simple formula that allows wide-ranging variation;

• syncopation:

• repetition of short rhythmic or melodic patterns;

• multiple layers of rhythm, with beats in some instruments (or hand clapping or foot stomping) and offbeats in others;

• bending pitches or sliding from one pitch to another;

moans, shouts, and other vocalizations; and

• instruments with African roots such as the banjo, based on a West African stringed instrument.

We will see these and other traits in ragtime, blues, jazz, rhythm and blues, and other twentieth-century styles based on African American traditions.

The African American form of music with the greatest impact in the nineteenth century was the spiritual, a religious song of southern slaves, passed down through oral tradition. The texts were usually based on images or stories from the Bible, but they often carried hidden meanings of enslaved people's yearning for freedom. The first to appear in print was Go Down, Moses, which uses the story of Israel's deliverance from Egypt as a symbol for the liberation of the slaves. The song was published in 1861, during the first year of the Civil War, after a missionary heard it sung by refugees from slavery.

The first publications of spirituals tried to document the songs as former slaves sang them, though the editors admitted that they could not notate the bent pitches and other aspects of performance. But soon dozens of spirituals were arranged as songs with piano accompaniments that anyone could play and in four-part harmony for choirs. The Fisk Jubilee Singers, depicted in Figure 30.11, popularized spirituals in the 1870s through polished performances in concert tours on both sides of the Atlantic. By the late 1800s, spirituals were simultaneously folk music for those who had learned them from oral tradition, popular songs for those who bought them in collections or as sheet music or heard them in popular venues, and a source of melodic material for classical composers like Dvorák (see pages 741 to 43).

FIGURE 30.11 The original Fisk Jubilee Singers, photographed in 1873 in London, during their European tour. Founded at Fisk University in Nashville, Tennessee, the group consisted of African American student musicians who performed spirituals and other songs in four-part harmony.

SCHOMBURG CENTER, THE NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY, ASTOR, LENOX AND TILDEN FOUNDATIONS/ART RESOURCE, NY

Reception and Recognition

By the end of the nineteenth century, what seemed in retrospect like a mainstream of musical development in the late eighteenth century had broken into many smaller currents, like a great river forming a delta as it heads toward the sea. The split between classical and popular music had widened and was becoming irrevocable, but even within those two broad traditions there were many competing strands.

Most of the classical composers we have studied found a place in the permanent repertoire. National flavor helped many gain a neesh, from Fauré and Dvořák at Europe's center to Tchaikovsky, Grieg, and others on the periphery. Some were admitted into the canon of classical masters on the strength of relatively few works, as were Franck, Smetana, and Elgar. In each case, performers, audiences, and critics tended to favor works that brought a distinctive new personality into the tradition, a trend that would become even stronger in the twentieth century.

Divisions between classical and popular streams existed everywhere in Europe and the Americas, not only in the United States. Yet the American case is especially interesting because the hierarchy of permanence is the opposite of Europe's. In the United States, the late-nineteenth-century composers in the classical tradition won respect and renown in their lifetimes, but then faded from view, and despite recent revivals their music is still relatively little known. The reasons for this are debated: is it simply a question of unfamiliarity, or lesser quality, or prejudice against American composers, or did Paine, Beach, and their contemporaries fail to create music with an identifiable personality because they were overly dependent on a tradition that was not native and thus inauthentic—or does that very question give too much credence to the expectation that all composers outside Germany should be nationalists? By contrast, some popular traditions produced works that have never ceased being played and enjoyed. These pieces—including Sousa's best-known marches, popular songs such as The Battle Cry of Freedom and The Band Played On, and dozens of African American spirituals—have every reason to be called "classics."

Like the works of Handel, Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven that became the first classics, these works entertained their first audiences but also had an enduring appeal that brought performers and listeners back repeatedly, and their growing familiarity made these pieces even more beloved. The twentieth century in turn saw other types of popular music develop their own repertoires of classics and their own legions of connoisseurs. More than in most other nations, the permanent repertoire of musical classics from the United States grew from indigenous popular traditions, rather than as an offshoot of the international classical mainstream.