Chapter 18:
The Late
Romantics
Responses to
Romanticism
Key Terms
Classicism
Double stops
Cross-rhythms
Romantic nostalgia
Parody
Round
Responses to Romanticism
After 1850, music continued to develop
along Romantic lines
• Seemed increasingly out of place in a world
devoted to industrialization & commerce
• Music became an emotional fantasy-world for a
society that suppressed feelings in real life
Composers responded in different ways
• Brahms used Classical models to temper
Romanticism’s unbridled emotionalism
• Mahler’s music laments Romanticism’s loss of
innocence & credibility
The Renewal of Classicism:
Brahms
Rejected many early Romantic innovations
• Went back to Classical genres & forms
• Wrote string quartets & other chamber works,
symphonies, and concertos
• Found new life in Classical forms – sonata
form, theme & variations, rondo
Beethoven’s music was a lifelong model
• Brahms was inspired by his nobility & power
• Brahms tried to temper the richness & variety
of Romantic emotion with Classicism’s
strength & poise
Johannes Brahms
(1833-1897)
Son of a bassist in Hamburg
Started musical studies at age 7
• Later played piano in taverns & wrote tunes
Met Robert & Clara Schumann at age 20
• They befriended & encouraged Brahms
Part of Brahms-Wagner controversy
• Signed manifesto against Wagner’s music
Uneventful bachelor existence in Vienna
• Steadily wrote symphonies, concertos, piano
works, chamber music, German Requiem, etc.
Brahms, Violin Concerto in D
Concertos written to show off virtuosos
• Often the composer – e.g. Mozart or Chopin
• Brahms wrote this one for Joseph Joachim
• Joachim helped out, even wrote 1st movement
cadenza
Brahms uses Classical movement plan
• Three movements, fast-slow-fast
• 1st movement double-exposition sonata form
• Last movement rondo form, the most common
Classical concerto ending
Brahms, Violin Concerto, III (1)
Rondo theme has a spirited gypsy-like lilt
• Exoticism – gypsy fiddling popular in Vienna
• Double-stops add to virtuoso fiddling effect
• Cross-rhythms at the end disrupt meter
Brahms, Violin Concerto, III (2)
Episodes provide various contrasts
• Romantic sweep in B
• Lyrical tune in C
• Short cadenzas feature soloist
Brahms, Violin Concerto, III (3)
Thematic transformation in coda
• Swinging march version of rondo theme (over
a drum beat) in very fast compound meter
Romantic Nostalgia: Mahler
Embraced Romanticism’s excesses
• Wrote huge program symphonies, some with
solo singers and choruses
• Often attempted to express profound spiritual
or metaphysical messages
• He once said a symphony is “an entire world”
But he could not fully enter this Romantic
fantasy world
• He pits lost innocence against cynical realism
• Music feels uneasy, exaggerated, distorted
Gustav Mahler
(1860-1911)
Born & raised in a dysfunctional family
Musical training at Vienna Conservatory
Pursued rising career as a conductor
• Led many of the finest orchestras of his day
• Ten years at Vienna Opera – but anti-Semitism
made for a stormy tenure there
• Ended career with Metropolitan Opera & New
York Philharmonic
Could only compose during the summer
• Wrote 10 long symphonies & 6 song cycles
Mahler, Symphony No. 1
At first a one-movement symphonic poem
• Grew into a five-movement symphony
• Finally revised into four movements
Includes fragments from his songs
• Songs about lost love
Originally a program symphony
• Hero overcomes distress of lost love
Individual style of orchestration
• Contrapuntal melodies pass from instrument to
instrument in kaleidoscopic fashion
Third Movement:
Background
March inspired by a nursery picture
• The Huntsman’s Funeral Procession
• Forest animals shed tears as they follow the
hearse of a hunter
• Full of pomp & ceremony – torches, solemn
gowns, a banner, pallbearers, a bell, a choir, &
a complement of mourners
• Why would animals mourn the death of their
tormentor in such a lavish manner?
• The painting’s innocuous qualities mask its
incongruities
Third Movement:
Use of “Frère Jacques”
Similar incongruities pervade the March
• On first hearing the music seems genuinely
solemn, mournful, perhaps even tragic
• This feeling is completely deflated when you
finally recognize the tune – “Frère Jacques”!
• Distortions make the tune harder to recognize
• Mahler casts the tune in minor mode, slows
down the tempo, & alters a few notes
• Tune introduced by the last instrument you
would expect – a bass playing in high register
• Vulgar dance band phrases also deflate mood
Third Movement:
Funeral March (1)
Very free march-trio-march form
Ironic funeral march & personal lament
• March theme a distorted minor-key parody of
children’s round “Frère Jacques”
• Trio taken from a Mahler song about lost love
March theme treated as a round
• Over mournful, monotonous drumbeat
Third Movement:
Funeral March (2)
Section 2 present dance-band fragments
• Exaggerated, parodistic, even vulgar phrases
• Return to funeral-march motives at the end
Third Movement:
Funeral March (3)
Trio offers a complete contrast
•
•
•
•
Begins with warm major-mode sounds
Trio’s theme is a delicate, lyrical melody
Tune from a nostalgic song about lost love
Its innocent quality soon turns bittersweet
Third Movement:
Funeral March (4)
March returns in final section
• Faster tempo with new counterpoints
• Dance-band phrases interrupt at even faster
tempo for a wild moment of near chaos
• Return of funeral-march motives that ended
Section 2 – the music dies away