Chapter 17
The Early Romantics
Key Terms
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Lied (plural: lieder)
Through-composed
Strophic
Song cycle
Character pieces
Études
Nocturnes
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Program music
Program symphony
Idée fixe
Dies irae
The Early Romantics
• Perhaps the most brilliant generation
in music history
• Profoundly influenced by Beethoven
• Deeply influenced by literary
Romanticism
The Lied
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German lied = song
Piano accompaniment
Romantic poetry
Intimate mood
– Not intended for concert hall
– Performers seem to share emotional
insights with the listener
Strophic Songs
• Use the same music for all stanzas
• Often used when stanzas are all
similar in construction
• Difficult to create variety
Through-Composed Songs
• Use different music for each stanza
• Often used for poems with frequent
changes of mood or voice
• Difficult to create unity
Franz Schubert (1797–1828)
• Earliest (and greatest?) master of the
Lied
• Born and trained in Vienna
• Supported by teaching, publications,
and friends
• Prolific—wrote nearly 700 songs in
addition to symphonies, sonatas, etc.
• Died in a typhoid epidemic
Schubert, “Erlkönig”
• Story song on a ballad poem by
Goethe
• Eight-stanza poem with many
voices
• Through-composed setting
• Themes of death and the
supernatural
The Story of the Erlking
• A furious horseback ride through the
night
– Father tries to save his deathly ill son
• The Erlking comes for the child
– Beckons, then cajoles, then threatens
• Father does not see the demon
• When they reach home, the boy is dead
in his arms
The Music of the Erlking
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Fast triplets suggest hoofbeats
Father’s music is low, gruff, stable
Son’s music is high, frantic, unstable
Demon’s music is ominously sweet
Tension lets up as they reach home
Stark recitative announces boy’s
death
The Song Cycle
• A group of songs with a common theme
• Sometimes based on ready-made group
– Schubert’s settings of Wilhelm Müller’s Die
schöne Müllerin and Winterreise
• Or composer can assemble a set
– Schubert’s Schwanengesang
• Unified cycle more impressive than single
miniatures
Robert Schumann
(1810–1856)
• Studied for career as piano virtuoso
• Married his teacher’s daughter after
court battle
• Wrote piano music, songs, works for
orchestra, and chamber music
• Founded The New Music Journal
• Attempted suicide; died in an asylum
R. Schumann, Dichterliebe
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His most famous song cycle
Based on poems by Heinrich Heine
No story, just a common theme
Traces psychological progression
from optimism to despair
“Im wunderschönen
Monat Mai”
In the wonderfully lovely month of May,
When all the buds were bursting,
Then it was that in my heart
Love broke through.
In the wonderfully lovely month of May,
When all the birds were singing,
Then it was that I confessed to her
My longing and desire
“Im wunderschönen
Monat Mai”
• The first song in Dichterliebe
• Is it strophic or through-composed?
• What is the effect of the piano
interludes?
• Why did Schumann write it this
way?
“Die alten, bösen Lieder”
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The last song in Dichterliebe
Is it strophic or through-composed?
How does the mood change in stanza 6?
What is Schumann expressing in the long
piano coda?
• What kind of ending does this make for
the song cycle?
Clara Wieck Schumann
(1819–1896)
• Eldest child of Friedrich Wieck,
famous piano teacher
• Married her father’s student Robert
Schumann
• Composed songs, piano and
chamber works
• Toured widely after Robert’s death
C. Schumann, “Der Mond
kommt still gegangen”
• Is it strophic or through-composed?
• What is the relationship between
piano and voice?
• How does Schumann create a
sense of climax in the final stanza?
• What does the piano coda add to
the song?
C. Schumann, “Der Mond
kommt still gegangen”
The Character Piece
• Short piano pieces (miniatures)
• Meant to portray a distinct mood or
character
• Like a Lied but without a poem
– Songs Without Words
• Composed at all levels of difficulty
• Appeared under many genre and
descriptive titles
Form of the Character Piece
• Simple, sectional forms
• Repetition, contrast, return,
variation
• Thematic unity
– Recurring motives
– Similarity of mood
Schubert, Moment Musical
No. 2 in A-flat
• Open title—any mood possible
• Form uses contrast and return
– A B A´ (coda) B´ A´´ coda
– Lyric A theme: a gentle, rocking figure
– Emotive B theme: steady moving
accompaniment
– A´ with coda feels like the end
– Fortissimo B´ in minor key a surprise
R. Schumann, Carnaval
• Style has warmth and privacy (innigkeit)
• Often assembled piano pieces in sets
• Carnaval = 20 short character pieces
– Musical portraits at a Mardi Gras ball
– Schumann, girlfriends Estrella and Chiarina,
composers Paganini and Chopin, etc.
R. Schumann, “Eusebius”
• Pen name for his tender, dreamy self
• Rhythmically very free (quintuplets, triplets,
rubato)
• Form based on repetition, contrast, and return
(aa ba b´a´ ba)
R. Schumann, “Florestan”
• Pen name for his more impetuous self
• Opening outburst follows Eusebius’s
tentative ending
• Moves in fits and starts
– Abrupt tempo changes; abrupt ending
• Form based on repetition, variation
– a a´ a´´ a´´´
Frédéric Chopin (1810–1849)
• Born near Warsaw; settled in Paris
• Pianist of miraculous ability and delicacy
– Earned rave review from Schumann at age 20
– Rarely performed in public
• Composed almost exclusively for piano
• Moved in high society and artistic circles
• Frail health—died of tuberculosis
Chopin, Nocturne in F-sharp
• Nocturnes (“night pieces”)—various moods
• Singing quality, melodic decorations
• Relaxed rubato, subtle chromaticism
• Form uses repetition, contrast, return (a a´
b c a´´ coda)
Program Music
• Instrumental music associated with
poems, stories, etc.
– Intimately tied with nonmusical ideas
• Different genres
– Concert overture
– Program symphony
– Symphonic poem
Franz Liszt (1811–1886)
• Hungarian composer
– Learned music at Esterházy estate
– Played for Beethoven at age 11
• Virtuoso pianist based in Paris
– Dazzled audiences with technique
– Dashing looks, personality, and affairs
– Wrote fiercely difficult piano music
• Second career as conductor in Weimar
– Wrote symphonic poems; championed Wagner
Felix Mendelssohn (1809–1847)
• From upper-class family of bankers
• Successful composer, pianist, organist,
conductor, and educator
– Founded Leipzig Conservatory
– Revived Bach’s St. Matthew Passion
• Firm foundation in Classical technique
• Wrote concert overtures, oratorios, piano
works, symphonies, etc.
Fanny Mendelssohn
(1805–1847)
• Felix’s equally talented sister
• A highly prolific composer
– Oratorios, piano works, chamber music, etc.
– Weekly performances at Mendelssohn home
• Married painter Wilhelm Hensel
• Women composers were not taken
seriously
– Little of her music was published
– Rarely performed outside the home
The Concert Overture
• A single-movement orchestral work for
concert performance
• Resembles opera overture without an
opera
• An important step from opera overture to
symphonic poem
• Mendelssohn’s A Midsummer Night’s
Dream and the Hebrides Overture
Hector Berlioz (1803–1869)
• Son of a country doctor in France
– Left medical school for Paris Conservatory
• Made living writing about music
• Wrote unprecedented, ambitious program
symphonies
– Extraordinary, imaginative orchestration
– Inspired by literature (Shakespeare, Virgil)
• Toured as conductor of his own music
The Program Symphony
• The Romantic era’s most
“grandiose” orchestral genre
• More radical approach than the
concert overture
• An entire symphony with a program
– Each movement tells part of the story
– “Story” often published in the program
Berlioz, Fantastic Symphony
• Program symphony in five movements
• Lurid autobiographical fantasy
– Inspired by his unrequited love for
Shakespearean actress Harriet Smithson
• Unprecedented originality
– Imaginative colors drawn from huge orchestra
– Use of idée fixe in every movement
Idée Fixe
• “Fixed idea,” a term popular in medical
literature of the day
• Theme represents the composer’s
beloved (Smithson)
– Recurs in all five movements
– Symbolizes each appearance of the
beloved
Movement Format of
Fantastic Symphony
• Related to Classical symphony format
– Middle two movements reversed
– Movements IV and V unprecedented
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I: Fast tempo, sonata form, slow intro
II: Moderate tempo, triple meter; waltz
III: The slow movement
IV: Moderate tempo; a march
V: Fast tempo, free form follows story
Fantastic Symphony
The Program of the Symphony
• A young musician of unhealthy sensibility and
passionate imagination poisons himself with opium in
a fit of lovesick despair. Too weak to kill him, the
dose of the drug plunges him into a heavy sleep
attended by the strangest visions, during which his
sensations, emotions, and memories are transformed
in his diseased mind into musical thoughts and
images. Even the woman he loves becomes a
melody to him, an idée fixe as it were, that he finds
and hears everywhere.
The Program: I
Movement 1: Reveries, Passions
• First he recalls the soul-sickness, the
aimless passions, the baseless
depressions and elations that he felt
before first seeing his loved one; then
the volcanic love that she instantly
inspired in him; his jealous furies; his
return to tenderness; his religious
consolations.
The Program: II
Movement 2: A Ball
• He encounters his beloved at a
ball, in the midst of a noisy, brilliant
party.
The Program: III
Movement 3: Scene in the Country
• On a summer evening in the country, he
hears two shepherds piping in dialogue.
The pastoral duet, the location, the light
rustling of trees stirred gently by the
wind, some newly conceived grounds
for hope—all this gives him a feeling of
unaccustomed calm. But she appears
again. . . . What if she is deceiving him?
The Program: IV
Movement 4: March to the Scaffold
• He dreams he has killed his beloved,
that he is condemned to death and led
to execution. A march accompanies the
procession, now gloomy and wild, now
brilliant and grand. Finally the idée fixe
appears for a moment, to be cut off by
the fall of the ax.
The Program: V
Movement 5: Dream of a Witches’ Sabbath
• He finds himself at a Witches’ Sabbath:
unearthly sounds, groans, shrieks of
laughter, distant cries echoed by other
cries. The beloved’s melody is heard, but
it has lost its character of nobility and
timidity. It is she who comes to the
Sabbath! At her arrival, a roar of joy. She
joins in the devilish orgies. A funeral
knell; burlesque of the Dies irae.
Berlioz, Fantastic Symphony, V
• The most audacious movement yet
– Orchestral sound effects reign
• Idée fixe now treated as vulgar parody
– On piccolo clarinet with carnival ornaments
– His beloved is the witches’ guest of honor
Berlioz, Fantastic Symphony, V
• Composer’s funeral at same time
– Solemn Dies irae chant ridiculed by witches
Berlioz, Fantastic Symphony, V
• Raucous Witches’ Round Dance is a
fugue
• Round Dance and Dies irae combine at
climax
– Witches parodying the church melody
Romantic Features of
Fantastic Symphony
• “Grandiose” in scope and scale
• Program symphony for large orchestra
• Blurs the lines between music, literature,
theater, and autobiography
• Cyclic work, unified by idée fixe
• Fascination with supernatural, macabre
• New orchestral colors, expressive effects,
unusual forms
• Only 39 years after Haydn’s Symphony No. 95!