The Second Half of the
Nineteenth Century
The New German School
• Progressive ideas and styles after 1850
• “The music of the future” — a teleological view of the
composer’s role in music history
• Freedom from convention
– harmonic exploration
– unconventional form
– programmaticism
• Composers
– Liszt, Berlioz (by adoption), Wagner
Wagner’s music dramas — theories and
style
• The Artwork of the Future
• Gesamtkunstwerk — combines multiple art forms in
multimedia “counterpoint”
• Based in folklore and mythology — represents values
of the culture
• Libretto built on Germanic tradition — Stabreim
• Symphonic treatment of
– themes (leitmotiv)
– free motion of harmony
– developmental texture
After Wagner — representative late
Romantic composers and genres
• Vienna
– Johannes Brahms (1833–1896) — symphony, chamber
music, song
– Anton Bruckner (1824–1896) — symphony, sacred
music
• France
– Charles Gounod (1818–1893) — lyric opera
– César Franck (1822–1890) — symphony, organ music,
chamber music
• Italian opera
– Verdi
After Wagner — post–Romantic
composers and genres
• Hugo Wolf (1860–1903) — song specialist
• Gustav Mahler (1860–1911) — song, symphony, vocalorchestral cycle
• Richard Strauss (1864–1949) — tone poem, opera,
song
Post–romantic opera —
realism and verismo
• Characteristics
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plots set among oppressed-class characters
violent endings
powerful, intense scorings
extreme demands on voice
• Some representative works
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Georges Bizet, Carmen (1873–1874)
Pietro Mascagni, Cavalleria rusticana (1890)
Ruggero Leoncavallo, I pagliacci (1892)
Giacomo Puccini, Il tabarro from Il trittico (1918)
Exoticism
• Attempt to reinvigorate music in the context of fin-de-siècle
Europe
• Draws on style features from distant music cultures — e.g.,
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Eastern Europe — Gypsy culture
the Middle East
East Asia
Spain
the Americas
• Problems of orientalism
– colonial appropriation
– misrepresentation of “other” musicultures
Late nineteenth–century nationalism
• Patriotic expression by composers from suppressed
cultures on the European periphery
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Bohemia
Russia
Scandinavia
Spain
the Americas
• National materials
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literary and folkloric sources
folk tunes or folk melody styles
dance rhythms
harmonic colorations — modal scales
Questions for discussion
• Wagner’s musical theories and works generated wideranging interest outside strictly musical circles. How can we
explain this phenomenon?
• How did musical developments in France and Italy after
1850 reflect special situations and/or characteristic interests
of those countries?
• How did the rise of national styles in the late nineteenth
century resemble or differ from the rise of nationally
distinct styles in the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries?
• Would it be appropriate to refer to some developments in
music of the late nineteenth century as mannerist? Why or
why not?