Symphony 3 Programmaticism,

Question 1

Philosophical context:

Answer 1

1. Kant’s claim (1790 Critique of Judgement) music had ‘concept-free aesthetic’ started debate around music’s representational capabilities
2. German idealism influenced both sides (Williamson 2013)

 Absolutism influenced Herder/Goethe/Schopenhauer’s notion of music being primary form of representation

 Liszt influenced by Herder’s notion that ‘musical form and semantic content are inseparable’

Question 2

Critical context

Answer 2

1. Reviews of Wackenroder, Tieff and Hoffmann with programmatic interpretations contributed
2. Symphony viewed as embodying moral, philosophical and social ideas (Marx 1824)
    Encouraged poetic interpretations of earlier works
3. Codification of sonata form by Marx (1845) and Czerny (1848)

Question 3

Wagner 1846

Answer 3

Wagner coined term ‘absolute’ music as a straw man

1. Politically charged term after 1848-9 Revolutions ‘referring to the philosophical tendencies of an earlier generation perceived to have been more concerned with abstraction than action’
    Immediately imbued neologism with conservative/archaic connotations
2. Wagner lauded engagement with ‘real’ over ‘pure’ (value of art = effect on societal development)
    Vocal forces were indispensable: interpreted Beethoven 9 as overcoming expressive limitations of instrumental music
3. Polarised ‘formalists’ and ‘contentualists’
4. 1851: Wagner declared all post-Beethoven symphonies were mere epilogue: Beethoven 9th was last symphony

Question 4

Liszt 1855: Berlioz and his Harold symphony

Answer 4

1. Coined ‘program music’ as ‘preface added to a piece of instrumental music, by means of which the composer intends to guard the listener against a wrong poetical interpretation, and to direct his attention to the poetical idea of the whole or to a particular part of it’

o Bonds 2014: terminological counterpart to ‘absolute’ music sharpened conceptual binary
o Aesthetic realm of ‘the work itself’ just like Hanslick

2. Splits composers into 2 camps:

o Non-programmatic
 ‘formalist’ (rigidly formulaic), epigonic, vacuous
 ‘mere musician’ (betrays contemporary goal to elevate music to higher plane of arts: Gesamtkunstwerk)
 Lacked understanding of mid-19thC audience
• ‘abstract ideal’ forced listener to arbitrarily fill in more concrete meanings and left them confused

o Programmatic Tondichter [tone-poets]
 Programmatic composers as ‘New Testament’ heirs of Beethoven’s legacy
 Claimed Fortschritt (step-forward): ‘new wine demands new bottles’

3. Claimed programs served 3 purposes:
   o Works with literary inspiration revealed innermost relationship between music and great ideas
   o Gave stabilising anchor for perception of listener: thread of Adriane, guiding listener through puzzle
   o Allowed poetic idea to shape form, preventing descend into formula
4. Divided Beethoven’s work into 2 (not 3) periods:
   o First: ‘traditional and recognized form contains and governs’ Beethoven’s thought
   o Second: ‘thought stretches, breaks, recreates and fashions the form and style according to its needs and inspirations’
   o Liszt followed second model through alliance with literature/visual arts

Question 5

Williamason 2013

Answer 5

Choice of symphony with no direct narrative reflects belief that ‘programmes, poetic ideas and the symphonic should be independent of genre and mere narrative, and that programme is not crucially form-determining’

Micniz

Question 6

Hanslic: On the beautiful in music

Answer 6

(1854-, revised several times to incorporate discussion of Liszt)

1. Derided programmatic composers’ arrogant betrayal of tradition
2. Argued for ‘independent meaning of music’
3. Saw programme composers as lacking compositional talent and arrogantly betraying tradition
4. Argued music consisted essentially of self-referential ‘tonally moving forms’ (tönend bewegte Formen).

o Only genuine subject of any instrumental piece is the quality and implications of its themes – its own explorations of musical language, its own possibilities for self-reflective coherence and commentary, its own autonomous tradition

5. Programmatic music is ‘the translation into music of some programme unintelligible to those who do not possess the key’

Question 7

Hepokoski (2008)

Answer 7

Liszt’s ideas influenced all composers, even those ideologically opposed

Creates taxonomy of absolute/program music, arguing extremes did not exist

12 symphonic poems/2 programme symphonies (and the aesthetic ideology they represented) had a huge impact

Question 8

Williamson (2013)

Answer 8

‘most symphonies are programmatic in some sense’

Question 9

Dahlhaus’s 1850-70 ‘dead era’

Answer 9

1. Dahlhaus: ‘devoid of a work of distinction that represented absolute rather than program music’
2. Frisch: ‘epigonic and of inferior quality’
3. Coincides with Franz Brendel’s editorship of influential Neue Zeitschrift für Musik (1845-68)
4. Cultural climate meant new symphonies faced reluctance from orchestras/publishers
   and a harsh critical reception (Frisch 1993)

 Vienna 1848-68: only 10 new symphonies performed

 1855 review of Esser symphony: ‘The creation of a symphony nowadays, is a rock on which, with only a few exceptions, most composers suffer a complete shipwreck’

 1871 review of Dietrich symphony: ‘Even the decision to write a symphony, and the fortunate outcome of this decision, must be considered a noteworthy event. As is well known, our era is not rich in pieces of instrumental music in the forms inherited from the classical period’

N.B. Brodbeck has contended notion of ‘dead era’, citing 500 symphonic works composed in this time (see expanded notes)

Question 10

Symphonic poem

Answer 10

Symphonic poem as elevated stage on which to develop traditional great symphony

1. Mid-century struggle for Beethovenian symphonic mantle
2. Extra-musical facilitates musical development

 Symphonic style developed through opera

 Gluck was hugely influential on Berlioz, Wagner and Liszt

 Second Viennese School relied on vocal music for longer pieces in atonal ‘interregnum’ (e.g. Wagner)

3. Symphonic poem: freed of weighty Beethovenian expectations

 Monumental one-movement structure could function as symphonic movement (Bruckner/Mahler)

 Alternatives to sonata form?

Question 11

Liszt’s innovations:

Answer 11

1. Liszt’s symphonic works were ‘regarded as pieces of revolutionary novelty, standard-bearers of the avant-garde’
    Wagner on Liszt’s music: ‘so new, so incomparable to anything else’
2. Liszt’s style is amalgam of cosmopolitan influences

 Welds Italianate melodies, Germanic thematic development, Hungarian gypsy music and French grand opera) into distinctive compositional style
Stylistic eclecticism mirrors Meyerbeer, whose operas Liszt admired

 Overtly and covertly alludes to pre-existing themes

3. Symbolically conveys programme
   o Innovative formal approach (148)
    Form guided by poetic idea, leading to formal innovation/deformation
    Liszt’s formal ingenuity most visible when seen as deformation of conventional sonata form
4. Tasso opening evokes frustrations of Tasso’s life via formal frustration
   o Slow introduction followed by allegro energico leading to extended dominant pedal, constructing expectations of main allegro theme in C-min
   o Expectations thwarted by return of slow introduction (ABA)
   o Thwarted again by main theme’s eventual appearance as long lyrical melody in slow tempo
   Festklänge is sonata-form variant
5. Hamlet: close parallels with play: underpinned by large-scale arch form, thematic transformation and varied repeats
6. Harmonic approach: complex, chromatic, subtle, wandering (155)
    Orpheus opening: restrained, subtle use of harmony

(1) Repeated iterations of ambiguous unaccompanied horn G reinterpreted each time
(2) Anticipated resolution to C finally reached but weakly, and immediately deflected
(3) Hamilton: ‘expected resolutions [are] gently deflected by a supple chromaticism that never leads to excess’

Question 12

Faust symphony (1854/1857)

Answer 12

Exemplifies Micznik’s notion of programmatic music interpreting rather than merely reflecting its programme

3 movements depict 3 characters, rather than strict narration

1. Faust (aristocrat): loose sonata form; notable areas of tonal ambiguity
   • Different motives highlight Faust’s internal conflict
2. Gretchen (Faust’s love): slow mov in ternary form
   (1) Repeatedly returns to tonic: expanding notion of ‘feminine’ second subject to entire movement
   (2) Theme as duet between oboe and viola (Berlioz?)
   (3) B-section tonally destabilised by infiltration of Faust’s Appassionata/Affetuoso themes, which reappear in operatic manner (Berliozian technique)

(4) Gendered theme:
o Non-developing, lacking accented beginnings/endings
o Articulates Ab (tonic) triad, conjunct motion, homophony
• Kramer: Gretchen portrayed through male view

3. Mephistopheles (agent of devil, spirit of negation): obscured recapitulation of mov 1
   (1) Parasitic presence is revealed in musical mutation of Faust’s themes rather than meriting its own
   (2) Opening imitates Witches Sabbath: Berlioz?
   (3) Gretchen’s theme reappears at end before being overridden by crescendo into Faust’s Grandioso theme in v1, and all-male Chorus Mysticus singing of female redemption in v2
4. Berliozian dramatic/operatic use of thematic return and metamorphosis
5. Revised version (1857) adds all-male Chorus Mysticus: Beethoven 9 influence?

Question 13

Influence of Faust symphony innovations

Answer 13

(1) Dahlhaus: ‘around 1900 there was little or no difference between the symphony and the symphonic poem’, based on the closeness of Mahler and Strauss’ styles
(2) Strauss’ Symphonia domestica and Alpensinfonie show ‘convergence between symphony and symphonic poem’ through symphonic-scale single-movement structure
(3) Liszt’s influence on Strauss now widely accepted in scholarship
(4) Mahler’s Lisztian “relativisation” (Dahlhaus p239) of formal categories gives his symphonic movements characteristics of symphonic poems
(5) Strauss’s tone poems take on dimensions of entire symphonies

Question 14

Conclusion

Answer 14

The symphony is an inherently conservative genre, bound to narratives of its own curation and history, and programmaticism effected the greatest halt in the symphony’s nineteenth-century development. However, in doing so it arguably provided the necessary stimulus and musical context for the symphony’s extensive redevelopment in the century’s final quarter, in which the extremes of progammaticism and absolutism were variously synthesised. This renders programmaticism not only important, but inextricable from the symphony’s ultimate development over the century. In a sense, the narrative of programmaticism’s developmental influence follows the per aspera ad astra plot archetype so common within nineteenth-century symphonies themselves – the narrative of great struggle eventually giving way to climactic victory.