Posted: January 1st, 2020
Music Literature
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The term ‘Strum undo rang’ (German for storm and stress) was used to describe the emotionalism and new harmonic flexibility of his symphonies, and the confidence of his enormously popular choral works such as The Creation’ and ‘The Seasons’ inspired by the English choral tradition established by Handel.
His series of string quartets also reveal this new depth. His 12 ‘London’ symphonies were partly written in Vienna and partly in London, which he visited at the invite of the violinist Johann Salomon and where they were first performed to great acclaim.He wrote to please his employers and his growing public but in hose, the last of his 1 04 symphonies, while the structure remains the same he challenges his listeners to think there way through his music rather than just be entertained by it. Wolf Kinfolk says “The undervaluation of Haydn that has prevailed since the Romantic era….
. Still stands in the way of a correct approach to Heyday’s late symphonies, which are comparable in musical significance to those of Beethoven, Breakneck or Mailer.
” 4. Ludwig Van Beethoven was born in 1770 in Bonn, Germany as the son of a court musician.His talent for the piano was soon realized and he gave his first public performance at the age of eight. Beethoven’s father wanted to promote him as the next child prodigy, another Mozart. Beethoven was employed as a court musician in Bonn in 1787.
During this time he studied briefly under both Haydn and Mozart, although it was certainly not a satisfying relationship for Beethoven. It turns out that events in Beethoven ‘s life greatly affected (or seem to have affected) him writing. Because of this Beethoven’s musical output is very episodic.As we shall see, there are three main periods in Beethoven’s life, known simply as the early, middle, and late periods. In 1 792, Beethoven relocated to Vienna. This is the beginning of his early period which lasted roughly until 1800. During this time Beethoven quickly made a name for himself as a virtuoso pianist.
He used his abilities at the piano to gain favor with the nobility. In fact, he even tried to claim his own noble roots by accidentally changing the Van to Von, a title of nobility. His compositions during this period consisted mainly of works for his main instrument, the piano.An example of a piece composed during this time is the Path©toque Sonata, Pop. 13 1798. Beethoven’s hearing was also beginning to deteriorate at this point. However, he went to great lengths to hide this fact room those around him.
Beethoven is a transition figure in the history of western music. He is generally known as the father of the Romantic era. However, during the first period most of his compositions were classical in nature. However, in 1800 Beethoven is reported to have turned to his friend Crumple and said, “l am not very well satisfied with the work I have thus far done. From this day on shall take a new way. And basically, he did. Beethoven abandoned the classical forms of the previous century and set out for a more expressive (Romantic) musical voice.
His musical imagination began to grow beyond that of the piano. This period, which later became known as the Heroic Period because Of the larger than life nature that his compositions took on, saw the creations of such masterpieces as the Tempest Sonata, Pop. 31 (1 801 2), the 3rd Symphony (Rica), Pop. 55 (1803), his only opera, Fidel, Pop. 72 (1803-5), and the 5th Piano Concerto (Emperor), Pop. 73 (1809). Some say that this middle period was Beethoven’s greatest.
It certainly was his most productive. In about a decade Beethoven produced countless masterpieces in every genre. In 1809, however, his musical output began to drop, possibly in connection to his declining health and mental state. Around 181 5 the famous Immortal Beloved affair occurred, which left Beethoven in deep depression and contemplating suicide. Although there has been much debate over the identity of this Immortal Beloved character, it is now assumed that the lucky woman was Josephine, Countess Deem, n©e Countess von Brunswick. Ludwig van Beethoven contributed a wealth of innovations to the evolution of music.One such contribution was his expansion of the symphonic coda to become an integral part of the sonata-allegro movements.
Beethoven’s invention of the “germ motive,” variations of themes throughout work, so delicate as to be almost invisible, brought a depth not only to his symphonies but to all his work, as seen In his sonata, “Pathetic,” where the opening bar provides all the subjects used in the first movement. Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony used a four-note motif, juxtaposing the notes throughout the piece, lending a sense of internal conflict to the music while almost incidentally providing the first major example of the cyclic form.His individuality, and the manner in which that individuality melded into his compositions, is perhaps his greatest contribution to music. 5. Contrary to hat the book says, Salon is originally derived from the Italian word Salons, meaning large hall. Salon music was a popular music genre in Europe during the 19th century. It was usually written for solo piano in the romantic style, and often performed by the composer at events known as “Salons”.
Salon compositions are usually fairly short and often focus on virtuoso pianist display or emotional expression of a sentimental character.The Parisian salon was conceived as a gathering of musicians, artists, and intellectuals who shared similar interests and tastes, and was hosted by a wealthy aristocrat, often a woman. In addition, it was also a place where professional performers and artists could mingle freely with amateurs. In the European salon, the piano became a focal point in gatherings of friends and families in 19th century America. Chopin is one of the great performers who often played at salons. 6. Don Giovanni has long been regarded as Mozart supreme theatrical achievement.
The subject seems unpromising – the last day in the life of the notorious womanlier Don Juan – but the skill of the librettist allied to the genius of Mozart at the very peak of his powers has created a work which is not only highly entertaining but reflects an incredible understanding of the human condition. It is widely regarded, to this day, as one of the greatest pieces of music ever written. The sustained success of this opera demonstrates how the pieces fell together in this instance.Don Giovanni is celebrated as a world-class example of “drama Cisco,” as both Mozart and his librettist Lorenz dad Point described it, a category to which Mozart other operas El Nozzle did Figaro and Coos fan Tutee also belong. Drama Cisco, literally “playful drama,” refers to operas comprised of both comic and tragic elements. In part l, Don Giovanni attempts to seduce Donna Anna whilst his manservant Peculiarities keeps lonely watch outside. Giovanni is challenged to a duel by Anna’s father, the Commendatory; the Commendatory is killed and Anna’s fiance©, Duct Titivation, swears vengeance.
In his search for new adventures Giovanni encounters his forsaken love Donna Eluvia. Peculiarities delights in telling Eluvia every detail of his master’s many conquests whilst the Don is busy wooing Donna Examine. A party of peasants enters: Maturing and Biggie are about to celebrate their wedding. Giovanni relishes the opportunity of yet another conquest, and sees off an angry Biggie. He skillfully maneuvers his way out of a simultaneous collision with all three women, leaving Maturing and Eluvia to fight it out between themselves.Then in part II, Titivation visits the Commentator’s mausoleum, followed by the Don and his servant. To Pastoralist’s terror, the statue visibly and audibly accepts an invitation to supper: Giovanni however is unconvinced.
Back at Giovanni house, Eluvia arrives and makes an impassioned but unsuccessful final plea for the Don to mend his ways. As the evening progresses Giovanni and Peculiarities share the pleasures of good DOD and wine, singing the praises of life’s delights, the beauties of Venice, and Venetian women in particular.The statue arrives to keep its appointment and drags an unrepentant Giovanni to his death. Titivation and the women enter, aroused by the noise; Peculiarities and the cook Lantern describe Giovanni downfall and the opera ends with final rejoicing. 7. Schubert music neatly bridges the Classical and Romantic periods through its use of lovely melodies, inventive scoring, and nature imagery, wedded to the traditional classical forms while at the same time expanding them. In his horn life, Schubert composed operas, symphonies, sonatas, masses, chamber music, piano music, and over 600 songs.
But regardless of the genre, his gift for creating beautiful melodies remains almost unsurpassed in music history. Schubert music is also passionate, sometimes even dark, with an emphasis on major/minor key shifts and harmonic writing. Examples of his gift for melody can be found in the popular Piano Quintet in A major , which includes a set of variations on the tune of one of his popular songs, and from which it gets its nickname, “The Trout”. Although left unfinished for known reasons, Schubert stirring and beautiful Symphony no. In B minor remains one of his most often heard and best-loved works. But it is his songs, or German Lieder, for which Schubert is best known. Through his choice of beautiful poetry by some of the best writers of the day, his inspired melodies, and his sometimes elaborate treatment of the piano part, many of Schubert songs are miniature masterpieces Of poetic and dramatic beauty.
His two song cycles (groups of poems by a single or various authors selected because of thematic content, and usually published together), yield some of the finest examples of Schubert Lieder.Wooing? ” from the song cycle, Die such¶nee Mјleering (The Fair Maid of the Mill) is an outstanding example of the almost limitless artistry of this composer. Schubert Lieder would come to influence the song-writing of many later composers. 8. The “Lied” is any of a number of particular types of German song, as they are referred to in English and French writings. The earliest so-called lieder date from the 12th and 13th centuries and are the works of minnesingers poets and singers of coo arty love.Many surviving Milliner reflect southern German origins and are written in a group of manuscripts of a somewhat later date.
These songs occur in a number of forms based on poetic models. The lied proper, like many other forms, commonly comprises two sections, the first phrase of music (A) repeated with different words, and the second phrase (B), again with different words ABA. This is the Bar form much favored by German composers and often expanded in various ways. The monophonic Milliner are virile, abounding in small leaps. They are attractively contoured and make use of modal scales.Because musical notation of this period is not precise regarding rhythmic values, the rhythmic interpretation of Milliner is controversial. Among important minnesingers are Walter von deer Vegetative, Tanners, Wolfram von Senescence, and Neither von Rental, the first three known today through the operas of Richard Wagner.
The 14th century brought a decline of the monophonic lied and the introduction of polyphonic lieder for two or more voices or voice and instruments. Skipping ahead a lot, the 1 9th century saw German composers again turning to lied production.Late 18th- and early 19th-century Romanticism gave great impetus to serious popular poetry, and many poems of such masters as Goethe were set by lied composers. Franz Schubert, who imposed more than 600 lieder, Robert Schumann, Johannes Brahms, and Hugo Wolf are among the finest 19th-century lied composers. Although the verse in lieder often was mediocre, for the Romantics, poetry and music were of equal importance. Romantic lieder are generally for a solo voice with piano accompaniment, which often required a virtuoso technique.The songs were primarily salon music: individual lieder lack the scope of contemporary opera arias, but are more intimate and emotionally refined.
Composers often wrote cycles of lieder, all related by a single topic but giving scope for considerable casual development. A lied may be either through-composed or strophic, I. E. Repeating the music for each new stanza of the poem. Occasionally lieder are arranged for accompaniment by full orchestra or, in the case of several lied cycles, for chamber ensemble of reduced strings and winds.Not sure why the book calls it Leafing, because I have never seen it like that. Have always seen it Reeling, so that is what will refer to it as.
The Reeling is about a father and son who are riding home on a horse and the Reeling, who is like a mythical seductive elf. The song has rapid repeated octaves in triplets in the IANA, which represent the horse’s hooves. The Reeling is trying to convince the child to come with him and in fear, the child pleads with his father to protect him. The child’s fear is suggested by clashing dissonance and high vocal range.The father, who cannot see or hear the Reeling, reassures his son that everything is alright with a more rounded vocal line, sung in the lower register. The Reeling tells the child that they can play games and that his daughters can take care of the child. The child becomes more and more terrified and his dad will not take him seriously.
The song ends with the father ding into the courtyard with the child dead in his arms. T He song is through-composed in that the music follows the action of the story with a steady rise in tension and pitch that builds almost to the end. . Remoteness, strangeness, and subjectivity is heightened in the Romantic Era and is perhaps its most clarifying difference from the earlier period. In this general sense, Romanticism is not a phenomenon of any one period, but has occurred at various times in various forms. Another important characteristic of romanticism is its aspiration to transcend immediate times or occasions, to reach back into the past and forward into he future. Romanticism cherishes freedom, movement, passion, and endless pursuit of the unattainable.
It is this aspect which, perhaps, gives music of the Romantic Era its sense of longing, and heightened emotions. This impatience of limits leads to a breaking down of distinctions. The personality of the artists tends to become merged with the work of art; classical clarity is replaced by a certain intentional obscurity, definite statement by suggestion, allusion, or symbol. The arts themselves tend to merge; poetry, for example, aims to acquire the qualities of music, wherein the actual sounds of the works egging to take on special, even musical, significance. USIA of the 1 9th century is: more concerned with color, whether of chord or instrumentation, than ever before, that highly distant key relationships become the expectation rather than the unusual, that the tonic/dominant axis is weakened by a subordination direction, that melody becomes exalted into what might be called ‘themes’, that counterpoint, in the main, is of less importance, and that the orchestral instrumentation is expanded greatly to include piccolo, English horn, contrabass, bass and, occasionally, soprano (Be) clarinets, romaine, tuba, harp, and a steadily growing list of percussion.Forms often take one of two paths, either that of great expansion (symphony) or that of the miniature (Nocturnes). A new form which runs between these extremes is the Tone Poem or Symphonic Tone Poem which, springing from some literary or poetic inspiration, is, in general, a large single-movement work for orchestra with many contrasting sections of Tempe and texture.
Nineteenth Century Romanticism was an international movement which affected all the arts which was born to some extent in the spirit Of the great revolutions Of the late 18th and early 19th centuries.Because of the Industrial Revolution, pianos were being with cast iron frames. People were able to afford them, and they were being played at home a lot more. This, intern, brought about all the salons and such. Much of the most widely admired piano repertoire in classical music, for example, that of Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven, was composed for a type of instrument, the appropriate, that is rather different from modern instruments this music is normally performed on today.Even the music of the Romantic movement, including List, Chopin, Robert Schumann, Felix Mendelssohn and Johannes Brahms, was written for pianos bestially different from modern pianos. Starting in Beethoven’s later career, the appropriate evolved into the modern piano as we know it today.
Modern pianos were in wide use by the late 19th century. They featured an octave range larger than the earlier appropriate instrument, adding around 30 more keys to the instrument.The mechanical action structure of the upright piano was invented in London, England in 1826 by Robber Worms, and upright models became the most popular model, also amplifying the sound. Mass production in factories made them more affordable for a larger number of people. They appeared in music halls and pubs during the 19th century, providing entertainment through a piano soloist, or in combination with a small band. Pianists began accompanying singers or dancers performing on stage, or patrons dancing on a dance floor.During the 1 9th century, American musicians playing for working-class audiences in small pubs and bars, particularly African American composers, developed new musical genres based on the modern piano.
Ragtime music, popularized by composers such as Scott Joplin, reached a broader audience by 1900. 10. Political conditions really influenced the growth of nationalism in Europe urine the 19th century to such a degree that it became a decisive force with the Romantic movement. THe pride of conquering nations and the struggle for freedom of surprised ones caused strong emotions that inspired the works of many creative artists.During the nineteenth century the popular view was taken that folk music “is always and above all the music of a nation. ” However, what makes this ambiguous and ill-founded is the fact that when one discusses folk music with references to ‘the people”, the expression ‘the people” usually refers to the lower strata of the population known universally s peasants, and also to the concept of ‘the nation” as a whole. However, nineteenth century nationalism was a phenomena of the bourgeois, not an expression of the peasant’s self-awareness.
This use of folk music by the bourgeois was more to reassure themselves of the authenticity of their own patriotism as well as an appeal across the social barriers of the time. (For the nobility, it was not the national loyalties that counted, but dynastic ones. ) For the bourgeois, national character was the “primary and essential quality of folk music… And that folk music expresses the spirit of a people. ” In the nineteenth century, composers not only expressed themselves but chose the style in which to do it.
In general, the Romantic composer was slow in discovering and using folk songs in their music.At first they were used in brief works, such as a peasant dance like a mazurka, but gradually became to be used in symphonic works, although the lush vivid orchestrations tended to mask their simplistic character. Because folk music is basically monadic, it resisted assimilation into the well-established formulas of major-minor tonality, and for that very reason it challenged composers to experiment with unusual harmonies. This in turn affected harmonies in music unconnected with folk-oriented music, and thus manifested itself into the mainstream of developments.This experimentation was itself a consequence of a specific, well-defined problem that was encountered by Romantic composers of the era, and was not the result of random factors. The work of Pollard’s most famous composer FRR©d©rice Chopin (1810-1849) is exemplary in showing how nationalist music takes elements of the vernacular culture to refry the nation’s people. Historically during Chopping time, Poland was politically under the intro of Russia, Prussia and Austria; while Germany, Italy and France dominated European musical high culture.
Chopping sense of the Polish nation led him to draw On the music Of the rural poles to create a distinctly Polish music, based on folk music forms, harmonies and rhythms in a high culture setting and for an elite audience. A famous example of Chopping use of elements folk culture is in his mazurka, of which he is known to have written at least 69 for solo piano. These are, however, distanced from their original form – a folk dance from Pollard’s Amazonian region played on bagpipe and fiddle.Chopping mazurka were not meant for dancing and are more technically advanced through their use of classical techniques and more advanced harmonic structures; but are based on the same rhythmic structure with a % time signature. Until the 19th century, Russian art music had been dominated by foreign musicians. Peter the Great (1689-1725) had begun this trend by importing foreign musicians to modernize his kingdom. As a result, very few Russian compositions in the western European art music tradition exist before Gillian.
Mikhail Gillian was the first Russian composer to give a native voice to common musical styles of the day.After studying music and visiting Italy and Berlin, Gillian composed an opera about the Russian peasant and hero Ivan Susann. The work was titled A Life for the Tsar, and used several aspects new to Russian music. It used recitative instead of spoken dialogue, and had recurring themes. There were two Russian folk tunes in the opera, and several more tunes that had the characteristics of folk music. Gamesman, a Bohemian, was the first great Czech nationalist composer. He wrote his first nationalist work in 1 863, in Czech, as a contest entry to the Provisional Theater.
He learned to read and write Czech to enter the competition.This opera, Abortion v Check (The Brandenburg in Bohemia) has a historic plot, but the music does not represent folk song. His second opera, Pardon never©star (The Bartered Bride, 1863-1866), incorporates folk melodies, and was a success beyond Czechoslovakia. Also included in his nationalistic works are the six tone poems M Blast (My Fatherland, 1872-1880). Dover was the most successful of the Czech nationalist composers. He performed viola in the Provisional Theater under Gamesman, and was mentored by Brahms. Dover included Bohemian themes and elements into much of his music.
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