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the-romantic-era

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The Romantic Era

Module 8 YouTube Playlist

19th Century Program Music: Berlioz Goes to Hell

  • Program Music = Story told in instrumental music
  • Absolute/Pure Music = Those without pre-existing story
  • Musical Signifiers
  • Genres of Program Music
    • Tone poem (symphonic poem) = one movement for orchestra
    • Program symphony = multi-movements for orchestra
    • Dramatic overture = to opera, play or festival, one movement
  • Hector Berlioz, Symphonie Fantastique
    • Berlioz could not play piano
    • Wrote this piece for Harriet Smithson — his idee fixe
    • Written in 5 movements — just as Shakespeare
    • A Program Note is distributed to the audience for the first time
    • Cornet and ophicleide (predecessor of tuba) introduced
    • Rhythmic diminution = note values become shorter
    • Fugato = Fugue in the middle of another movement
    • Col legno = Scrape the violin strings with back of the bow, to indicate burning fire
    • Hector and Harriet did marry, but they were miserable
  • Some examples
    • Tchaikovsky, Romeo and Juliet
    • Scheherazade
    • Pictures at Exhibition

The Romantic Piano and Piano Music

  • Western Music is the only one with fixed pitch keyed instrument
  • Harpsichord
    • Only one dynamic range at a time
    • Cannot “shape” a phrase
    • Cannot play loud enough
  • Pianoforte = soft loud
    • Escape Mechanism = allow the hammer to leave the string so that it sounds freely
    • Knee levers → Pedals
    • Cast iron reinforcement introduced, so that more tighter strings can be placed without collapsing the soundboard.
    • Soft pedal and Damper pedal
    • Steinway - over-stringing, bass strings run above middle ones at an angle, unified cast iron frame
  • Chopin’s Piano Music
    • Nocturnes, Etudes, Preludes, Scherzos, Mazurkas, Polonaises, Concertos
    • “Big guitar effect” = bass arpeggio
  • Franz Liszt
    • “Lisztomania”
    • First placed the piano in the direction that audience are on the right
    • First created “recital”
    • Sonata, Hungarian Rhapsodies, Transcendental Etudes, Concerto Etudes
    • “Three Hand Trick”

Romantic Opera

  • Italian and German tradition of opera
  • Bel canto opera = focus almost entirely on aria, accompaniment is rather simple
  • Type of Operatic Voices
    • Coloratura
    • Soprano - Lyric, Spinta, Dramatic
    • Mezzo
    • Contralto
    • Tenor - Lyric and Dramatic
    • Baritone
    • Bass
  • Verdi’s Opera
    • “Action Packed Music”: a lot happens in the music, banner headlines of emotion
    • *Overture to MacBeth
    • La Traviata
      • Based on real story of Marie Duplessis, a courtesan.
      • Conventions of the dying heroine of romantic era. In this opera, Violetta.
    • Scena = scene = aria + recitative + aria
    • Cabaletta = following the recitative, a fast concluding “exit” aria
    • tempo rubato = slowing of the tempo
    • Recitativo accompagnato = recitative accompanied by orchestra

What to listen for?

  • Quality (richness of tone)
  • Comfort level (does the voice sound strained?)
  • Capacity to control the tone
  • Capacity to hold pitches (especially the climatic final pitch)
  • Tempo of performance (often the greater the vocal control, the slower the tempo)
  • Richard Wagner
    • Self-taught musician
    • Wagner’s new Bayreuth Theater
      • First theater to use gaslight instead of candles
      • First to not allow late comers
      • First to use pit, so that audience do not see the players.
    • Ring Cycle
      • Rheingold, Die Walküre, Siegfried, Götternämmerung
      • Leitmotif = light motif, a signifier
      • “Music Dramas”, “Endless Melody”

The Romantic Orchestra

The Classical Paradigm

  • Symmetrical phrasing (antecedent & consequent)
  • Monophonic and then Homophonic texture
  • Thin texture
  • Strings predominate, woodwinds punctuate, brasses play almost no role
  • New ideas (melodies) come in rapid succession

The Romantic Paradigm

  • Long sweeping melody with much string vibrato
  • Rhythm much freer (syncopations over bar lines)
  • Tempo can be unstable (tempo rubato)
  • Wild swings of dynamics (pppp to ffff)
  • Larger orchestra with prominence of brass
  • Beethoven introduced:
    • Piccolo
    • Trombone
    • Contrabassoon
  • Hector Berlioz added:
    • Harp
    • Cornet
    • Ophicleide (early tuba)
    • English horn (low oboe)
  • Violin
    • The bow is larger
    • The fingerboard is now at an angle with the strings
    • Strings are no longer made of cat gut
  • Romantic music becomes slower, in that the sound of the orchestra is richer, there is no need for a lot of motifs to feel in the time
  • A fingerprint: Triad → Surprise chord → Minor chord → Dissonance → resolving to Consonance Tonic
  • Musikverein in Vienna: the first concert hall only for music
  • Gustav Mahler
    • Compose in summer, conduct in winter
    • Orchestral Lieder and 9 Symphonies
    • A Path through Mahler’s Symphonies
      • No. 1
      • No. 4
      • No. 5
      • No. 8
      • No. 2
      • No. 7
      • No. 9
      • No. 3
      • No. 6
    • Ich bin der Welt abhanden gekommen

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