Cecily Gordon
Eng 258
Romantic Music
Class Notes
Overview of Musical Style Analysis.
When listening to a piece of music there are several things to look for in order to better understand the purpose of the piece.
Begin with Context:
Who: The composer of the piece of music. Also the author of the lyrics if it is a vocal piece.
When: The historical events and how they influenced the composer and the music
What: The genre of the piece. Is it a song of a symphony? For what instrument was it written.
Why: The purpose of the piece and idea behind it. What caused the composer to write this piece? What where his inspiration or influences?
For a vocal piece: The language, how the word and music relate to each other. How the music reflect and enhances the lyrics (or not)
Also consider: The score: how detailed is it in terms of expressive devices, etc?’
After context has been established aural analysis can begin using the SHMRG rubric:
Sound: overall characteristics, including:
Timbre: What instrument (or voices) are used. How many are used. How are they used?
Texture: How the different instruments are arranged and relate to each other. Just one by itself, many moving together or many moving against each other? Is the sound “thick” or “thin”
Dynamics: How loud or soft and to what degree?
Harmony: How natural or unnatural does the harmony sound? In major (the “happy” key) or minor (the “sad” key)? How often and where does the harmony
change?
Melody: Is an actual, “singable” melody distinguished or just snippets? What is the shape of the melody, how does it rise and fall? Is it in a high register or a low register? In a song, how does the melody follow the lyrics?
Rhythm: Is there a clear rhythm or “groove”, or is it more laid back? Are odd rhythms used? How fast or slow is the tempo?
Growth: How the piece develop from beginning to end. Are there distinguishable sections? How does it begin? How does it end?
Background for Romantic Music: Music of the Enlightenment
Baroque Period :ca. 1600-1750
Classical Period: ca. 1750-1800
(Dates are relative as periods always overlap)
Music of the Baroque and Classical periods reflect the Enlightenment ideas of logic, order and reason over emotion and passion. Composers of the time did not work independently. Instead they were employed by either the Church or the nobility, writing for and directing their own private orchestras and choirs.
Baroque composers
Johann Sebastien Bach (1685-1750)
Bach was a member of one of the largest musical families in Europe. He fathered twenty children, three of whom (Carl Phillip Emanuel, Johann Christian and Wilhelm Friedemann) became composers and were more famous in their father’s lifetime than he was. Throughout his life Bach worked as kappellmeister(literally chapelmaster-the music director) for several German noblemen both in Cöthen and Leipzig.(Emery 6,7) Overall Bach’s music is characterized as being highly mathematical and logically structured with few indications for expression. He arranged a large number of religious choir pieces as well as instrumental pieces that were primarily intended as educational exercises rather than “show” pieces.
Classical Composers:
Franz Joseph Haydn (1732-1809)
Haydn worked for the wealthy Esterhazy family on their country estate. He wrote symphonies for Count Esterhazy’s private orchestra and solo music for the Count himself. In the final years of his life he moved to Vienna where he worked and taught composition, becoming the father of the “First Viennese School”, as Vienna (and Germanic countries in general) became the center of musical composition in Europe until the end of the 19th century.
Characteristics of Haydn’s music (and the Classical period in general) include:
Simple straightforward pieces
Order and structure in form-four or eight measure phrases that are easily discernable
Simple keys, (major keys were heavily favored)
Music that was easily accessible to amateur musicians
A lack of excessive expression markings (Haydn 104)
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791)
Mozart stared life as a child prodigy who grew into a prolific genius composer, beginning the public fascination with musical genius. He traveled all over Europe before he eventually moved to Vienna, where he studied briefly with Haydn. He died at the relatively young age of thirty-five, leaving his last composition, a Requiem Mass, unfinished.
Mozart was the primary composer of opera during his lifetime. Influences from opera can be heard in all his other composition, such as long lyric melodies and detailed orchestra parts. The Marriage of Figaro, a comedy based on play by Pierre de Beaumarchais, is one of Mozart’s most well known operas. Several Enlightenment themes are apparent throughout the story such as:
Servants outwitting their wealthy masters
Greed, lust and corruption
A confusing and satirical plot that eventually leads to an ordered and happy ending.
The transition into Romanticism: Ludwig van Beethoven(1770-1827)
Beethoven was born in Bonn, Germany and soon showed musical genius. After studying for several music and composition with various teachers in Bonn (including his father) he traveled to Vienna in 1792 to study with Haydn. As with most educated people of the time Beethoven supported the principles of the Enlightenment and the early years of the French Revolution. The early period of Beethoven’s music reflects this, being in the Classical style of Haydn. At first Beethoven admired Napoleon as a product of the Enlightenment, bringing order to the chaos of the French Revolution and even planned to dedicate his Third Symphony to Bonaparte. However, when Napoleon declared himself Emperor in 1804 Beethoven became so disgusted that he promptly scratched the name Bonaparte out of the manuscript so forcefully that he left a hole in the paper and renamed the piece Sinfonia eroica, composta per festeggiare il sovvenire d'un grand'uomo ("Heroic symphony, composed to celebrate the memory of a great man")-better known as the Eroica symphony. In addition, Beethoven was becoming increasingly deaf and the best doctors and scientists could do nothing to help him, causing him to become suicidal(Kerman 5). The depth of Beethoven’s feelings is apparent in the “Heiligenstadt Testament”, a letter he wrote to his brothers Carl and Johann while he was staying the countryside in the fall of 1802:
“…but what a humiliation when one stood beside me and heard a flute in the distance and I heard nothing, or someone heard the shepherd singing and again I heard nothing, such incidents brought me to the verge of despair, but little more and I would have put an end to my life - only art it was that withheld me, ah it seemed impossible to leave the world until I had produced all that I felt called upon me to produce…” (Kalischer, 39)
So it was that instead of killing himself, Beethoven poured his despair into composing music that he himself couldn’t hear except in his head-epitomizing the Romantic ideal of the troubled genius who can only be saved through the expression of his art
The Eroica Symphony represents the end of the Classical (Enlightenment) period of logic reason and restraint and the beginning of the Romantic period (and Beethoven’s own “Heroic” period) of passion and expression.
Musical Characteristics of the Eroica symphony
Descriptive title-instead of just Symphony number X
Vast size-almost twice as long as previous symphonies
Musical representations of nature
Horn calls
Flutes represent bird calls, shepherd pipes
Second movement is a funeral march
Death is an ever-recurring theme in Romantic period
Extremes in dynamics
Sudden changes from very soft to very loud and vice versa
Into the Romantic period (ca. 1800-1900)
Starting with Beethoven, several changes took place at the beginning of the nineteenth century which helped to influence Romanticism. Composers no longer worked for wealthy noblemen or institutions, instead they were independent artists who freelanced on their own, becoming major celebrities. Composers were also highly influenced by Romantic poets such as the German Johann von Goethe (1749-1832). Goethe’s poetry was used as the lyrics for art song or “leider” and the most productive “leader” of leider was Franz Schubert(1797-1828).
Schubert lived in Vienna for his entire life, during which he wrote many works for piano and over six hundred leider (Winter i). One of Schubert most famous art songs is the Erlkonig, based off a poem by Goethe that tells the story of a father riding through the woods with his young son who is enticed away by the Erlking, a spirit who lives in the woods. Characteristics of Schubert’s Erlkonig include:
Myth, superstition and the supernatural
Dark themes, including fear and death
The use of German (rather than the more “musical” Italian) lyrics and expression markings indicate growing nationalism among composers
Highly expressive musical techniques depict the characters of the song:
1. The Narrator: the singer uses the middle range, in the minor key.
2. The Child: sung in the higher range, representing his age, becomes increasingly agitated through the song by his fear of the Erlkonig.
3. The Father: sung in the lower range, in minor and major, attempts to bring comfort to the fears of the child
4. The Erlkonig: sung softly, alternating between a high and low range in major as he attempts to lure the boy away to his death.
5. The Horse: represented by the piano in rapidly repeated chords, imitating hoofbeats. (Schubert 179)
The German heavy metal band Rammstein adapted their own version of the Erlkonig into their 2004 song Dalai Lama
As composers began to write increasingly expressive and difficult music highly skilled musicians, or virtuosos, emerged who were especially suited to the Romantic glorification of the individual over the group. The modern piano developed as the most individual of all instruments and so became ideal for the composer and virtuoso to display their feats on. One man who attempted to become a great virtuoso pianist was Robert Schumann (1810-1856). For several years Schumann studied with the piano teacher Frederich Wieck whose daughter Clara was already being recognized as a rising virtuoso. However a severe hand injury permanently ended Schumann’s dreams of being a pianist and he turned to composing instead. Schumann was also becoming increasingly mentally unstable as he exhibited violent moods swings that were most likely the result of bipolar disorder. Schumann attributed his changes in personality to two imaginary characters, Florestan, “the fiery”, and Eusebius, “the melancholy”. Schumann also “founded” the “Davidsbündler”or League of David, an imaginary society of artists and composers who were assailed by the Philistine critics of the day. “Members” of the Davidsbündler included other composers such as Felix Mendelssohn and Frederic Chopin as well as Florestan and Eusebius. Schumann wrote a series of pieces called Davidsbundlertanze Op.6 (Dances of the League of David) which he dedicated to its members, indicating the composers as being Florestan and Eusebius. Individual titles bore descriptive titles such as “Here Florestan stopped and his lips trembled with sorrow” and “Quite redundantly, Eusebius added the following; but a great happiness shone in his eyes a while” (Jovanovic). Another of Schumann’s notable works was the Carneval suite, another set of character pieces, this time representing people in a large masque ball. Titles of pieces included Florestan, Eusebius as well as Estrella (inspired by Schumann’s former fiancée Ernestine von Fricken) and Chiarina (representing Clara Wieck, the virtuosic daughter of his former piano teacher and Schumann’s new love). In 1840, after a long struggle with her disapproving father, Schumann married Clara Wieck, and together they represented the union of the Romantic composer and virtuoso.
Characteristics of Schumann’s music include
Large sets of short pieces with descriptive titles that represent particular characters or moods (“character” pieces).
Extreme changes in dynamics, tempo and other expressive devices within a piece, a result of Schumann’s bipolar condition.
Changes in mood or character are often indicated by F or E: Florestan or Eusebius.
Descriptive titles are given to the sets of pieces.
Highly detailed expression marks on scores.
Sources
Daverio, John “Schumann, Robert”, Grove Music Online ed L. Macy (Accessed February 18, 2008) www.grovemusic.com
Emery, Walter. “Bach” Grove Music Online ed L. Macy (Accessed February 18, 2008) www.grovemusic.com
Haydn, Franz Joseph. “Sämtliche Klaviersonaten, Band I” G. Henle Verlag
Kalischer, A.C. “Beethoven’s Letters”. New York: Dover, 1972
Kerman, Joseph and Tyson, Alan“Beethoven, Ludwig van”. Grove Music Online ed L. Macy (Accessed February 18, 2008) www.grovemusic.com
Jovanovic, Milica, “Robert Schumann Recital”(Given October 28, 2007).
Schubert, Franz “200 Songs in Three Volumes: Volume I: 100 Songs”. New York: International Music Company
Webster, James. “Haydn, Joseph” Grove Music Online ed L. Macy (Accessed February 18, 2008) www.grovemusic.com
Winter, Robert. “Schubert, Franz” Grove Music Online ed L. Macy (Accessed February 18, 2008) www.grovemusic.com
Online
Grove music dictionary: www.grovemusic.com
Music in Western Civilization III, class archive: http://www.class.uidaho.edu/mush323/archive.htm
Rammstein lyrics : www.rammsteinniccage.com
Erlkonig lyrics: http://www.recmusic.org/lieder/get_text.html?TextId=6382
Possible Test questions
1. How does Beethoven represent the transition from the Enlightenment to Romanticism?
2. How would composers use music to describe characters or feelings? Use a specific example.
