| The Romantic Period
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After Beethoven,
composers turned their attention to the expression of intense feelings
in their music. This expression of emotion was the focus of all the arts
of the self-described "Romantic" movement Whether in the
nature imagery or passionate violence found in the paintings of
Friederich, Delacroix, and Goya, the strange and fanciful
literature of Edgar Allan Poe, or the adventure and myths of the great
collections of fairy tales and folk poetry, the depiction in art of the
beautiful, the strange, the sublime, and the morbid was the ruling credo
of the period.
In music, the nineteenth century saw the creation and evolution of new
genres such as the program symphony, pioneered by Beethoven and
now developed by Hector Berlioz; its off-shoot, the symphonic poem was developed by
Franz Liszt; the concert overture,
examples of which were composed by Felix Mendelssohn and virtually every composer thereafter; and short, expressive piano
pieces written for the bourgeois salons of Europe by Robert Schumann and Frédéric
Chopin. For inspiration, many Romantic composers turned to the visual
arts, to poetry, drama and literature, and to nature itself. Using the
classical forms of sonata and symphony as a starting
point, composers began focusing more on new melodic styles, richer
harmonies, and ever more dissonance, in the pursuit of moving
their audiences, rather than concerning themselves with the structural
discipline of Classical forms. |
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Romantic Composers
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Hector Berlioz Sent to Paris by his father to study medicine, Berlioz
instead studied music, supporting himself by writing about music and
giving lessons. Berlioz may well have been the first great composer to
not be able to play a musical instrument, nor to have shown any musical
talent at an early age. But he persevered, and became interested in the
vast possibilities of orchestration and the different combinations of
instrumental sounds. In 1830, only three years after the death of
Beethoven,
Berlioz composed his most famous work, the programmatic Symphonies
fantastique. Having an autobiographical basis, the piece is a highly
romantic program symphony in five movements, the story of which tells of
an artist who, unhappy in love, takes an overdose of opium and dreams of
his own passions and desires, his beloved, her murder, and his own
death. Berlioz had seen the Irish actress Harriet Smithson perform in
Shakespeare's Hamlet's and had fallen passionately, even
hysterically in love with her. He intended to immortalize his love in
music with his symphonies. The artist's beloved is represented
throughout the work by a melodic motif known as the idée fixe,
a device which serves to unify the disparate elements of the symphony.
The fourth movement is entitled "March to the Scaffold,"
and depicts the protagonist's dream of his own execution for having
killed his faithless beloved. The symphony was wildly successful at its
premiere, and made a name for its young composer, if not a fortune.
Berlioz' remarkable gift for orchestration resulted in sounds never
before heard from a symphony orchestra. Greatly criticized during his
lifetime for his orchestral extravagance, the brilliance and
overwhelming effect of such instrumental excerpts as the Rakoczy March from the dramatic cantata The Damnation of Fausthave earned
Berlioz lasting fame as a composer who was definitely ahead of his
time. Back To List |
Franz Liszt was taught the piano by his father and then Czerny (Vienna,
1822-3), establishing himself as a remarkable concert artist by the age
of 12. In Paris he studied theory and composition with Reicha and Paer;
he wrote an opera and bravura piano pieces and undertook tours in
France, Switzerland and England before ill-health and religious doubt
made him reassess his career. Intellectual growth came through
literature, and the urge to create through hearing opera and especially
Paganini, whose spectacular effects Liszt eagerly transferred to the piano in
original works and operatic fantasias. Meanwhile he gave lessons and
began his stormy relationship (1833-44) with the (married) Countess
Marie d'Agoult. They lived in Switzerland and Italy and had three
children. To help raise funds for the Bonn Beethoven monument, he
resumed the life of a traveling virtuoso (1839-47); he was adulated
everywhere, from Ireland to Turkey, Portugal to Russia. In 1848 he took
up a full-time conducting post at the Weimar court, where, living with
the Princess Carolyne Sayn-Wittgenstein, he wrote or revised most of the
major works for which he is known, conducted new operas by Wagner,
Berlioz, and Verdi and, as the teacher of Hans von Bülow and others in the German
avant-garde, became the figurehead of the 'New German school'. In 1861-9
he lived mainly in Rome, writing religious works (he took minor orders
in 1865); from 1870 he journeyed regularly between Rome, Weimar and
Budapest. He remained active as a teacher and performer to the end of
his life. Although he failed in his aim to revolutionize liturgical
music, Liszt did create in his psalm settings, Missa solemnis and
the oratorio Christus some intensely dramatic and moving choral
music, successful in his lifetime and well suited to concert
performance.Back To List |
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 Richard Wagner
was the son either of the police actuary Friedrich
Wagner, who died soon after his birth, or of his mother's friend the
painter, actor and poet Ludwig Geyer, whom she married in August 1814.
He went to school in Dresden and then Leipzig; at 15 he wrote a play, at
16 his first compositions. In 1831 he went to Leipzig University, also
studying music with the Thomaskantor, C.T. Weinlig; a symphony was
written and successfully performed in 1832. In 1833 he became chorus
master at the Würzburg theatre and wrote the text and music of his
first opera, Die Feen; this remained unheard, but his next, Das
Liebesverbot, written in 1833, was staged in 1836. By then he had
made his début as an opera conductor with a small company which however
went bankrupt soon after performing his opera. He married the singer
Minna Planer in 1836 and went with her to Königsberg where he became
musical director at the theatre, but he soon left and took a similar
post in Riga where he began his next opera, Rienzi, and did much
conducting. In 1839 they slipped away from creditors in Riga, by ship to
London and then to Paris, where he was befriended by Meyerbeer and did
hack-work for publishers and theatres. The theme of redemption through a
woman's love, in the Dutchman, recurs in Wagner's operas (and perhaps
his life). In 1845 Tannhäuser was completed and performed and Lohengrin
begun. In both Wagner moves towards a more continuous texture with
semi-melodic narrative and a supporting orchestral fabric helping convey
its sense. In 1848 he was caught up in the revolutionary fervour and the
next year fled to Weimar (where Liszt helped him) and then Switzerland
(there was also a spell in France); politically suspect, he was unable
to enter Germany for 11 years. In Zürich, he wrote in 1850-51 his
ferociously anti-semiotic Jewishness in Music (some of it an
attack on Meyerbeer) and his basic statement on musical theatre, Opera
and Drama; he also began sketching the text and music of a series of
operas on the Nordic and Germanic sagas. By 1853 the text for this
four-night cycle (to be The Nibelung's Ring) was written, printed
and read to friends - who included a generous patron, Otto Wesendonck,
and his wife Mathilde, who loved him, wrote poems that he set, and
inspired Tristan und Isolde - conceived in 1854 and completed
five years later, by which time more than half of The Ring was
written. In 1855 he conducted in London; tension with Minna led to his
going to Paris in 1858-9. 1860 saw them both in Paris, where the next
year he revived Tannhäuser in revised form for French taste. but it was
literally shouted down, partly for political reasons. In 1862 he was
allowed freely into Germany; that year he and the ill and childless
Minna parted (she died in 1866). In 1863 he gave concerts in Vienna,
Russia etc; the next year King Ludwig II invited him to settle in
Bavaria, near Munich, discharging his debts and providing him with money. In
1877 Wagner conducted in London, hoping to recoup Bayreuth
losses; later in the year he began a new opera, Parsifal. He
continued his musical and polemic writings, concentrating on 'racial
purity'. He spent most of 1880 in Italy. Parsifal, a sacred
festival drama, again treating redemption but through the acts of
communion and renunciation on the stage, was given at the Bayreuth
Festival in 1882. He went to Venice for the winter, and died there in
February of the heart trouble that had been with him for some years. His
body was returned by gondola and train for burial at Bayreuth. Wagner did
more than any other composer to change music, and indeed to change art
and thinking about it. His life and his music arouse passions like no
other composer's. His works are hated as much as they are worshipped;
but no-one denies their greatness. Back To List |
Hector Berlioz as
a boy he learnt the flute, guitar and, from treatises alone, harmony (he
never studied the piano); his first compositions were romances
and small chamber pieces. After two unhappy years as a medical student
in Paris (1821-3) he abandoned the career chosen for him by his father
and turned decisively to music, attending Le Sueur's composition class
at the Conservatoire. He entered for the Prix de Rome four times
(1827-30) and finally won. Among the most powerful influences on him
were Shakespeare, whose plays were to inspire three major works, and the
actress Harriet Smithson, whom he idolized. pursued and, after a bizarre
courtship, eventually married (1833).Berlioz's 15 months in Italy
(1831-2) were significant more for his absorption of warmth, vivacity
and local color than for the official works he wrote there: he moved
out of Rome as often as possible and worked on a sequel to the Symphonie
fantastique (Le retour à la vie, renamed Lélio in
1855) and overtures to King Lear and Rob Roy, returning to
Paris early to promote his music. Although the 1830s and early 1840s saw
a flow of major compositions - Harold en Italie, Benvenuto
Cellini, Grande messe des morts, Roméo et Juliette, Grande
symphonie funebre et triomphale, Les nuits d'été - his
musical career was now essentially a tragic one. He failed to win much
recognition, his works were considered eccentric or 'incorrect' and he
had reluctantly to rely on journalism for a living; from 1834 he wrote
chiefly for the Gazette musicale and the ]ournal des débats. As
the discouragements of Paris increased, however, performances and
recognition abroad beckoned: between 1842 and 1863 Berlioz spent most of
his time touring, in Germany, Austria, Russia, England and elsewhere.
Hailed as an advanced composer, he also became known as a leading modern
conductor. A lofty idealist with a leaping imagination, Berlioz was
subject to violent emotional changes from enthusiasm to misery; only his
sharp wit saved him from morbid self-pity over the disappointments in
his private and professional life. The intensity of the personality is
inextricably woven into the music: all his works reflect something in
himself expressed through poetry, literature, religion or drama. Though
Berlioz's compositional style has long been considered idiosyncratic, it
can be seen to rely on an abundance of both technique and inspiration.
Typical are expansive melodies of irregular phrase length, sometimes
with a slight chromatic inflection, and expressive though not tonally
adventurous harmonies. As a critic he admired above all Gluck
and Beethoven, expressed doubt about Wagner
and fought endlessly against the second-rate. Back To
List |
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 Giuseppe Verdi was born into a family of small landowners and
Tavernier's. When he was seven he was helping the local church organist;
at 12 he was studying with the organist at the main church in nearby
Busseto, whose assistant he became in 1829. He already had several
compositions to his credit. In 1832 he was sent to Milan, but was
refused a place at the conservatory and studied with Vincenzo Lavigna,
composer and former La Scala musician. He might have taken a post as
organist at Monza in 1835, but returned to Busseto where he was passed
over as maestro di cappella but became town music master in 1836
and married Margherita Barezzi, his patron's daughter (their two
children died in infancy). Verdi had begun an opera, and tried to arrange
a performance in Parma or Milan; he was unsuccessful but had some songs
published and decided to settle in Milan in 1839 where his Oberto
was accepted at La Scala and further operas commissioned. It was well
received but his next, Un giorno di regno, failed totally; and
his wife died during its composition. Verdi nearly gave up, but was
fired by the libretto of Nabucco and in 1842 saw its successful
production, which carried his reputation across Italy, Europe and the
New World over the next five years. It was followed by another opera
also with marked political overtones, I lombardi alla prima crociata,
again well received. Verdi's gift for stirring melody and tragic and
heroic situations struck a chord in an Italy struggling for freedom and
unity, causes with which he was sympathetic; but much opera of this
period has political themes and the involvement of Verdi's operas in
politics is easily exaggerated. . In 1879 the composer-poet Boito and
the publisher Ricordi prevailed upon Verdi to write another opera, Otello;
Verdi, working slowly and much occupied with revisions of earlier
operas, completed it only in 1886. This, his most powerful tragic work,
a study in evil and jealousy, had its premiere in Milan in 1887; it is
notable for the increasing richness of allusive detail in the orchestral
writing and the approach to a more continuous musical texture, though
Verdi, with his faith in the expressive force of the human voice, did
not abandon the 'set piece' (aria, duet etc) even if he integrated it
more fully into its context - above all in his next opera. This was
another Shakespeare work, Falstaff, on which he embarked two
years later - his first comedy since the beginning of his career, with a
score whose wit and lightness betray the hand of a serene master, was
given in 1893. That was his last opera; still to come was a set of Quattro
pezzi sacri (although Verdi was a non-believer). He spent his last
years in Milan, rich, authoritarian but charitable, much visited,
revered and honored. He died at the beginning of 1901; 28,000 people
lined the streets for his funeral. Back To List
Johannes Brahms studied the piano from the age of seven and theory and
composition (with Eduard Marxsen) from 13, gaining experience as an
arranger for his father's light orchestra while absorbing the popular
alla zingarese style associated with Hungarian folk music. In 1853, on a
tour with the Hungarian violinist Reményi, he met Joseph Joachim and
Liszt; Joachim, who became a lifelong friend, encouraged him to meet
Robert Schumann. Brahms's artistic kinship with Robert Schumann and his
profound romantic passion (later mellowing to veneration) for Clara
Schumann, 14 years his elder, never left him. After a time in
Düsseldorf he worked in Detmold, settling in Hamburg in 1859 to direct
a women's chorus. Though well known as a pianist he had trouble finding
recognition as a composer, largely owing to his outspoken opposition -
borne out in his d Minor Piano Concerto op.15 - to the aesthetic principles of
Liszt and the New German School. But his hopes for an official conducting post
in Hamburg (never fulfilled) were strengthened by growing appreciation
of his creative efforts, especially the two orchestral serenades, the Handel
Variations for piano and the early piano quartets. He finally won a
position of influence in 1863-4, as director of the Vienna Singakademie,
concentrating on historical and modern a cappella works. Around this
time he met Wagner,
but their opposed stances precluded anything like friendship. Besides
giving concerts of his own music, he made tours throughout northern and
central Europe and began teaching the piano. He settled permanently in
Vienna in 1868.Brahms's urge to hold an official position (connected in
his mind with notions of social respectability) was again met by a brief
conductorship - in 1872-3 of the Vienna Gesellschaftskonzerte - but the
practical demands of the job conflicted with his even more intense
longing to compose. Both the German Requiem (first complete performance, 1869) and the Variations on
the St. Antony Chorale (1873) were rapturously acclaimed, bringing
intemational renown and financial security. Honors from home and abroad
stimulated a spate of masterpieces, including the First
(1876) and Second (1877) Symphonies,
the Violin Concerto (1878), the songs of opp.69-72 and the C major Trio. In
1881 Hans von Bülow became a valued colleague and supporter, 'lending'
Brahms the fine Meiningen court orchestra to rehearse his new works,
notably the Fourth Symphony (1885). At Bad Ischl, his favorite summer resort, he
composed a series of important chamber works. By 1890 he had resolved to
stop composing but nevertheless produced in 1891-4 some of his best
instrumental pieces, inspired by the clarinetist Richard Mühlfeld.
Soon after Clara Schumann's death in 1896 he died from cancer, aged 63,
and was buried in Vienna. Back To List
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