20 Romantic Unit 20
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Transcript 20 Romantic Unit 20
IB Music SL
Unit 20 – Romantic Vocal Music
Romantic Choral Music
Increased popularity
Choral music societies as artistic outlet
Part songs, the oratorio, the Mass, and the
Requiem Mass
Repetition helps lead to understanding
Brahms: A German Requiem
Protestant tradition (console the living)
Old Testament: Psalms, Proverbs, Isaiah, Ecclesiastes
New Testament: Paul, Matthew, Peter, John, Revelation
Written after deaths of Robert Schumann and Brahms’s mother
Soloists, four-part chorus, and orchestra
7 movements, arch form
Connections between movements:
1 and 7
2 and 6
3 and 5
Brahms: A German Requiem
Fourth movement chorus,
How lovely is thy dwelling place
Centerpiece of work
Psalm 84
Form: A-B-A′-C-A′
Fanny Mendelssohn Hensel and
the Romantic Part Song
Fanny Mendelssohn Hensel (1805-1847)
Older sister of Felix, raised in Berlin
Trained on the piano and in composition
Encouraged (as a female) not to pursue music as a
career
Recognized as a gifted artist
Participated in salon concerts at parent's home
After her mother's death Fanny took over the
concerts
Died suddenly of a apoplectic stroke in 1847
Fanny Mendelssohn's Music
Output dominated by Lieder, choral part
songs and piano music
Some large-scale works
Keyboard music reflects her interest in Bach's
contrapuntal procedures
In her Lieder she favored the poetry of
Goethe
Fanny Mendelssohn Hensel: Under
the Greenwood Tree
Four-voice part song
A cappella
Text drawn from Shakespeare's As
You Like It
Strophic, with two verses
Chorus "Come hither" follows each
verse
Changing textures provide interest
Romantic Opera
Basic emotions with an elemental force
Suspension of disbelief
Superstar performers, extravagant scenery
The Development of National
Styles
France
Grand opera
Opéra comique
Germany
Singspiel
Music drama
Italy
Opera seria
Opera buffa
Bel canto singing style
Exoticism in Opera
Verdi’s Aida
Saint-Saëns’s Samson
and Delilah
Richard Strauss’s Salome
Music suggests faraway locale
Georges Bizet (1838–1875)
French lyric opera composer
Prix de Rome
Carmen & Roma (Gypsy) culture in Spain
Based on Merimée’s story
Realism in opera
Bizet: Carmen excerpt
Love, hate, desire
Disintegration of a personality
Tempestuous Carmen is central figure
Music evokes colors of Spain
Realism, sensuality, and a tragic end
Cuban habanera
Women in Opera
Visibility for women composers:
Louise Bertin La Esmerelda
And singers
Jenny Lind (1820–1887)
Maria Malibran (1808–1836)
Pauline Viardot (1821–1910)
Verdi and Italian Opera
Giuseppe Verdi (1813–1901)
Italian composer
Studies in Milan
Austrian Hapsburg rule
Patriotic, nationalistic works
28 operas
Composed successfully until age 80
Died at 87
National hero
Verdi’s Music
Romantic drama and passion
Melody above all
Three compositional periods
Early period:
Middle period (French grand opera):
Macbeth, Rigoletto, Il trovatore, La traviata
A Masked Ball, The Force of Destiny, Don
Carlos
Final period:
Aida, Otello, Falstaff
Verdi: Rigoletto
Based on Victor Hugo’s The King is Amused
Libretto by Francesco Piave
Three acts
Renaissance Mantua
Themes of seduction and deceit, with a tragic end
Popular moments from Act III:
Tenor aria, “La donna è mobile”
Strophic
Quartet, “Un di”
4 characters/emotions
Wagner and the Music Drama
Richard Wagner (1813–1883)
German composer, early career in Dresden
Grand operas, nationalistic operas
Exile in Switzerland after 1849
Art and Revolution, The Art Work of the Future, and Opera
and Drama
Music drama
The Ring of the Nibelung
Ludwig II summoned him back to Germany
Festival Theater at Bayreuth
Married Cosima Liszt
Last work: Parsifal
Died at age 70
Wagner’s Music
Music dramas
“Endless melody”
Total artwork (Gesamtkunstwerk)
Orchestra as unifying element
Leitmotifs
Chromatic dissonance
Wagner: Die Walküre excerpt
The Ring of the Nibelung
Gold in the Rhine River
Rhine Maidens
Norse sagas, medieval German epic poem,
the Nibelungenlied
Cycle: Das Rheingold, Die Walküre,
Siegfried, Götterdämmerung
Wagner: Die Walküre
Act III (Finale) of Die Walküre
Leitmotifs: slumber, magic sleep, magic fire,
and Siegfried
Puccini and Late Romantic Opera
Post-Romantic Italian composers
verismo
Pietro Mascagni, Ruggero Leoncavallo and
Giacomo Puccini
Giacomo Puccini (1858–1924)
Italian composer
Early operatic successes: Manon Lescaut,
La bohème, Tosca, Madame Butterfly
Last work Turandot left unfinished
Died in 1924 of a heart attack
Puccini: Madame Butterfly 1 2
Verismo and exoticism
Inspired by performance of a play
Disastrous premiere
Revised version
Central tragic-heroic character: geisha CioCio-San
Act II, Cio-Cio-San’s aria “Un bel di”
describes desire for her lover’s return
Tchaikovsky and the Ballet
Ballet—Past and Present
Part of larger work: intermedio, masque,
ballet de cour
Independent art form in 18th century (France
and Russia)
19th-century Russian ballet (czar’s court)
Marius Petipa (St. Petersburg)
Pas de deux
Serge Diaghilev (1872–1929)
Ballets Russes
Vaslav Nijinksy and Tamara Karsavina
Picasso and Braque
Igor Stravinsky
Igor Stravinsky
Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky (1840–1893)
Russian composer
End-of-the-century pessimism
Sexual identity
Antonina Milyukova
Nadezhda von Meck
Correspondence
Carnegie Hall in New York (1891)
Died suddenly at age 53
Tchaikovsky: The Nutcracker
Swan Lake, Sleeping Beauty, The Nutcracker
The Nutcracker by E. T. A. Hoffmann
Christmas tale: Clara and her gift nutcracker
March, Act I
Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy
Celesta
“Exotic” dances:
Arab, Chinese, Trepak