Music Appreciation
Class #12: Late Romanticism
Brahms, Tchaikovsky, Dvorak,
Elgar, Debussy
Johannes Brahms (1833-1897)
Biography
• Encouraged and support
 Hans von Bülow
 Robert and Clara Schumann (14 years older)
▫ Piano and Cello
▫ Conductor
 Earliest professional career
 Brothel?
▫ Began composing at 11
Musical Style: “War of the Romantics”
▫ Traditionalist
 Baroque and Classical techniques
 Scorn and dismissal
▫ Wagner and Liszt
▫ Romantic
 New harmonies and melodies
 Admiration and devotion
▫ Schumann and most music critics
Attack of the Walkuries
• Mocked by Wagner fans
• Intimidated by protests and attacks
▫ Result =
 Concentration on non-Wagner forms
 no operas
1st Recordings!
• Thomas Alva Edison
▫ “Hungarian Dance #1”
CD#2, Track 8
• “Hungarian Dance, #3
• Listen for…
▫ Full orchestrations
▫ Contrapuntal techniques
▫ Concentration on melody
Peyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky
1840-1893
Biography
• Child prodigy
▫ Discouraged
• Composed at 14
• Musical training (conservatory)
• “The Five”
▫ Conflicting musical influences
• Civil service job
• International success
Musical style
• Russian
▫ Folk tunes
▫ Harmonies
▫ Rhythms
• European
▫ German form
▫ Italian melody
▫ French lyricism
Ballet (Russian Nationalism?)
• Previously inconsequential music
▫ 2nd rate composers
• Tchaikovsky elevated and expanded
▫ Full orchestral tonality
• Stand-alone quality
“Romeo and Juliet” (1869)
• Scandal!
 Musically graphic
 Violence/sex
• Overture Fantasy
•
Youtube.com @ 7:45
(11:00)
Brief segue
• Sergei Prokofiev (1891-1953)
▫ “Romeo and Juliet” 1935
 Arrival of the Capulets and the Montagues
 Romeo and Juliet’s pas de deux
 Rudolf Nureyev and Lynne Fontanne: Balcony
Scene
Nutcracker (1891)
• Most expansive ballet score to date
▫ Immediately popular
▫ Critically ridiculed
▫ “Sugar Plumb Fairy” from the Kirov Ballet
Piano Concerto #1 (1875)
• Van Cliburn (1934 - )
• 1st International Tchaikovsky Competition
▫ 1958
1812 Overture (1880)
• Commission
▫ Russia’s victory over Napoleon
▫ Orchestration
 Tubular bells
 16 cannon shots on musical cue!
• Carnegie Hall
• Philadelphia
 Seiji Ozawa and the Berlin Philharmonic @ 4:00
11:45
Personal
• Gay
▫ Punishable by
prison/execution
• Paranoid
• Married
▫ Antonina Miliukova
 Virtual stranger
 Unsolicited love letter
 Disastrous marriage
Nadezhda von Meck
• Patron, 1877-90
• Letter relationship only
• Abrupt end
“Bob”
Antonín Dvořák (1841-1904)
Biography
• Born near Prague (Czech Republic)
• Father was a professional Zither player
▫ “The Third Man” 1949
• Violinist, violist, organist
• Father of 9 children!
• Extensive travel
▫ London
▫ New York (327 East 17th Street)
▫ Des Moins and Spilville, Iowa
Musical Style
• Eastern European Nationalism
▫ Folk music idiom
▫ American Negro Spiritual
• Extensive repertory
▫ Symphonies
 “From The New World”: 4th Movement
▫ Chamber music
 “The American String Quartet”
▫ Choral
▫ Opera
CD #2, Track 10
• “Slavonic Dance #1”
• Listen for…
▫ Simple rhythm
▫ Melody suggestive of “rustic” life
▫ Complex technical demands
Sir Edward Elgar (1857-1934)
Biography
• Family owned a music shop
▫ “Down time” reading and studying
 Self-taught
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Father was a professional organist
Early violin lessons
Music director of “Lunatic Asylum”
Passionate bicyclist/naturalist
▫ “There is music in the air…”
• 1st violinist under Dvorak
British Class System
• Caroline Alice Roberts
▫ Eight years older
▫ Daughter of a Major-General
 “The care of a genius is enough of a life work for any
woman!”
▫ Important introductions
• King Edward VII’s coronation: 1902
▫ “Pomp And Circumstance” march
• Knighthood
CD #2, Track 11
• “Enigma Variations”
▫ “Dedicated to my friends pictured within…”
▫ Each dedicated to a close personal collegaue,
friend or acquaintance.
▫ Inspired by Beethoven’s struggles
• Listen for…
▫ Soaring themes
▫ Full use of orchestra
▫ Simple rhythms
Claude Debussy (1862-1918)
Claude Monet:“Impression: Sunrise” 1872
Biography
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Studied piano with a former student of Chopin;
Difficult and argumentative student
Teacher of Nadezhda von Meck’s children
Judgmental of other composers
Numerous wives and children
Musical Style
• Deliberately avoid the sound of structure
▫ Key signatures
▫ Time signatures
▫ “Floating chords”
CD #2, Track 12
• “Clair de Lune”
Listen for…
• Orchestrations?! (“yuck!”)
• Evocative
• Advanced piano technique