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Music History II > Unit 2 > Flashcards

Unit 2 Flashcards

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1
Q

The Biedermeier and the Lied

A
  • bourgeois domesticity, conservatism
  • repressive government and music as an escape
  • genres: character pieces, duets, the Lied
  • name of the era
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2
Q

Changes at the turn of the 19th century

A
  • backlash against the French Revolution (repressive governments) which meant groups couldn’t gather; less of a market for symphonies; opera continues to be popular, more in Italy
  • fewer public, more private genres, piano pieces, quartets, psalms, music for the home
  • music as personal expression rather than entertainment
  • sense of escapism, supernatural
  • orchestral effects develop, improvement of instruments, focus on development instead of exposition
  • industrial revolution/urbanization
  • influence of Beethoven/rise of the canon
  • push for neo-baroque sound (with Brahms)
  • “old music has value”
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3
Q

After Beethoven

A
  • “curse” of the nine symphonies; the epitome of symphonic writing
  • even Beethoven knew that once he wrote his 9th symphony, the genre was completed
  • no one after Beethoven writes as many symphonies
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4
Q

Franz Schubert (1797-1828)

A
  • started composing early
  • known among connoisseurs
  • he wrote public genres, but mostly known for Lied
  • gather in small groups in “salons” and sing Schubert’s music in private
  • Schubertiades are the gatherings where his music was sung
  • likely gay, the circles he was in was with more people who were known to be gay
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5
Q

Forms of the Lied

A
  • strophic; music is same for every verse
  • modified strophic; most of music is the same
  • through-composed; even if the poems are written in stanzas, the music doesn’t follow that
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6
Q

Gretchen am Spinnrade

A
  • Schubert
  • from Faust by Goethe, supernatural elements
  • setting the scene
  • harmonic complexity
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7
Q

The Congress of Vienna 1815

A
  • restoration of ruling families, everything is broken up to contain politically motivated uprising from below
  • political repression, particularly in areas under German and Austrian control, no civil liberties
  • a lot of choral music for choral societies, which were new
  • gives rise to a new sense of nationalism
  • Europe splintered around 1815
  • ends in 1840
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8
Q

Robert Schumann (1810-1856)

A
  • started as a piano virtuoso, stopped because of injury
  • “Neue Zeitschrift fur Musik” the new magazine for music
  • Florestan and Eusebius (his pseudo names, two different personalities)
  • becomes a music critic as well as composer because Beethoven was kind of special in being able to fund himself
  • he also conducts choral societies
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9
Q

Im Wunderschönen Monat Mai

A
  • Schumann
  • words sound like the music will be light and happy, major
  • piece with the differences in A major and F# minor with the subjects of May and (unrequited) love with the ending on a dominant of the key of the next piece, leading to the next piece in the song cycle
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10
Q

The Character Piece

A
  • Schumann fathers this kind of genre
  • very short piano pieces
  • evoke a certain mood or character
  • written for the home (era of private music making)
  • miniature set: short, interconnected pieces
  • Carnival Eusebius (calmer, deep thoughts), Florestan (passionate, swinging between wildness and calmer), Coquette
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11
Q

Ciphers

A
  • codes in music
  • BACH
  • CHBAAsGGesFEDsDDesC
  • found at the beginning of the Florestan in Carnival
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12
Q

Women in the Romantic Era

A
  • amateur performers
  • salons held in a private home, private performances, Chopin was huge in the salon culture, some salons got up to 200 people, they were sometimes big events, but not open to the public
  • meant to beautify the home, just as you have beautiful paintings and furniture
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13
Q

Fanny Hensel (1805-1847)

A
  • born Fanny Mendelssohn
  • held a prominent salon
  • published under her brother’s name
  • brother did not want her to publish
  • husband encouraged her
  • was born Jewish, then their father converted them to Lutheran
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14
Q

Das Jahr (Das Yar)

A
  • piano miniatures, character pieces

- chorales (influence of Bach)

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15
Q

Clara Schumann (1819-1896)

A
  • famous public performer
  • Robert encouraged her in performing and composing
  • instrumental in promoting Robert’s work
  • she started the memorization of concerti, and that was seen as conceited
  • she was very strict with sticking to the scores she played
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16
Q

Piano Trio

A
  • no longer a private genre
  • influence of early music
  • sudden harmonic shifts
  • you can see the Bachian counterpoint in these trios
  • sudden shifts in the way the harmony works
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17
Q

July Monarchy in France (1831-1848)

A
  • Paris as “Capital of the 19th Century”
  • restoration period
  • “July Revolution”
  • newly built concert halls, new audiences
  • taste for the exotic
  • era of the big concert hall
  • a lot of wealthy people around to teach, women who need to learn music
  • prestigious prizes “Prix de Rome” for composers
  • Paris is the center of public musical life
  • they cultivate a taste for the exotic, operas about India, China
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18
Q

19th Century Virtuoso

A
  • virtuoso in many fields
  • characteristics of musician virtuosos: foreign born, child prodigy
  • the virtuosos were the first “rock stars”
  • they cultivated a public persona
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19
Q

Franz Liszt (1811-1886)

A
  • Foreign born (in Hungary to Austrian parents)
  • child prodigy
  • personality: technical whiz, later “mystic”
  • later, concert master in Weimar
  • devoted a lot of later music to religious subjects
  • first person to write atonal compositions, worked with Wagner who pushed boundaries of tonality
  • new ways to use the piano (it was developing with technology at the time)
  • double action pianos (more hammers hitting keys) and more strings (three rather than one)
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20
Q

Un Sospiro

A
  • concert etude (to hone a particular skill)

- technically challenging and difficult to play expressively because the melody is broken up between technical passages

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21
Q

New Scales

A
  • pentatonic melody

- octatonic coda

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22
Q

Fryderick Chopin (1810-1849)

A
  • born near Warsaw, he was Polish
  • popular in Salons
  • mostly composed piano music
  • nationalism
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23
Q

The Mazurka

A
  • stylized dance from Mazovia
  • audience appreciates the exotic element
  • Mazurka rhythms: dotted eighth sixteenth, quarter, quarter
  • accents fall on beat two and sometimes beat three
  • strange intervals, tempo fluctuation, heavy bass, lots of trills
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24
Q

Markers of Exoticism

A

-trills, drones, augmented 2nds

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25
Q

Concert Life in the 19th Century

A
  • rise of the “classics”
  • Beethoven reigns supreme
  • first appearances of the conductor
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26
Q

Absolute vs. Program Music

A
  • program (programmatic) music: extramusical content
  • absolute music: no extramusical content, but it can still have meaning, just not directly related to one particular thing
  • ideological position, Beethoven’s legacy?
  • did Beethoven leave program music, or is he the ultimate in absolute?
  • absolute people think that it taints music
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27
Q

Hector Berlioz (1803-1869)

A
  • abandoned medicine for music
  • passionate personality
  • critic and conductor
  • 1827: sees Harriet Smithson as Ophelia in Hamlet, and he fell in love on the spot, she heard the symphony, married him, had a child, and divorced
28
Q

Symphonie Fantastique

A

-first piece to actually tell a story
-over 100 players
-“idée fixe” means obsession, occurs in all movements
I: Dreams and Passions
II: A Ball (typical dance), dancing at the ball and sees a vision of his love
III: Scene in the Country, starts with shepherd’s song but then more sinister, haunting presence of the idee fixe, artist tries to kill himself
IV: March to the Scaffold, the artist dreams that he killed the beloved and is being marched to the guillotine, and before the hammer falls, he sees one tiny vision of her before the axe falls
V: Dream of a Witches Sabbath, combines idee fixe and Dies Irae, evokes the sound world of this orgy, col legno with the strings as dancing bones, laughing in the woodwinds, high clarinet sounds for idee fixe

29
Q

Influence of Beethoven

A
  • Beethoven Symphony no. 5 with cyclism
  • Symphony no. 6: programmatic elements, structure, one of the first “programmatic” symphonies, movements all have titles, five movements just like Symphonie Fantastique, both have a country scene, ball scene, shepherd’s song, thunderstorm
  • going from minor to major (C minor to C major)
30
Q

Mendelssohn and the New Classicism

A
  • looks back and takes stock of what came before him
  • Jewish, privileged family, child prodigy, conductor at Leipzig (Bach’s hometown)
  • his father converted the family to Lutheranism, but he was still considered Jewish as a race
  • good friends with Schumanns
  • interested in innovating the forms of the Classical era
31
Q

The Concerto in the Romantic Era

A
  • written for specific people, Ferdinand David (famous violinist that he wrote for)
  • influence of Beethoven (still about fireworks and virtuosity, but there also has to be some idea of expressiveness)
  • virtuosity vs. content
  • music becomes more expressive than words (Schumann on Chopin’s F minor Concerto)
32
Q

Mendelssohn’s Violin Concerto

A
  • virtuosity vs. poetry
  • the violin will play a melody, the orchestra will pick it up, and then the violin will go off and do something crazy
  • playing to the strengths of the individual soloist
33
Q

The St. Matthew Passion Revival

A
  • one of Bach’s oratorios
  • roots in Berlin (Bach-central location all that Berlin had), Teacher Zelter
  • Mendelssohn’s calling card in Paris, he was the one who knew everything about Bach, and that made him stand out
  • March 11, 1829, the music world loves it, re-discover Bach and his immense expressive power in his music, composers start writing like Bach
  • goes to college in Berlin, goes on a summer trip and finds a collection of Bach’s vocal music, and he makes it a mission to bring this back to the world
34
Q

The Baroque Influence

A
  • choral societies
  • “Elijah” was Mendelssohn’s attempt to create a Bach or Handel oratorio, and this part was based off of Handel’s Messiah
  • Influence of Handel, fugal/canon, prominent leap of a 4th in the “tune,” counterpoint section to homophonic section that dissolves away
35
Q

Italian opera in the 19th Century

A
  • Italian opera is king
  • no difference between buffa and seria anymore
  • literary subjects, operatic versions of Shakespeare, recent history, Renaissance operas in England Tudor family
  • shift in focus from ancient world to literary world
  • Bel Canto (Rossini, Bellini, Donizetti) beautiful voice, the voice is still the most important thing, era of the extreme coloratura
36
Q

Gioachino Rossini (1792-1868)

A
  • Beethoven was really popular in Germany, but he doesn’t become international until after his death
  • Rossini was international famous
  • Most famous composer in the 1810s-20s
  • Famous for both comic and tragic operas
  • rumored to be a lazy composer
  • often self-plagiarized, the same aria would come up in different operas
  • constraints of then business (no copyright, had to work quickly)
37
Q

Barbar of Seville

A
  • Count Almaviva: a young nobleman, in love with Rosina
  • Figaro: Barbar to Almaviva
  • Rosina: young woman, in love with Count Almaviva
  • Bartolo: Rosina’s guardian, in love with Rosina
  • Don Basilio: Rosina’s music teacher, friend to Bartolo
38
Q

New Structures

A

-orchestral intro, recitative, slow tempo, medium tempo, quick tempo

39
Q

Guiseppe Verdi (1813-1901)

A
  • involvement in the Risorgimento (had political music that became like a national anthem)
  • Viva Verdi! is Viva Vittorio Emanuele Rei D’Italia (rally call for unification)
  • push for Italian national government, and pushback from local aristocracy
  • his music comes very political
  • requiem written for the death of a famous Italian patriot
40
Q

Verdi as Dramatist

A
  • focus on character rather than voice

- same structure as the Bel Canto

41
Q

Four Opera Houses

A
  • Opera National de Paris
  • Opera Comique
  • Theatre-Italien
  • Theatre Lirique
42
Q

Grand Opera

A
  • all about spectacle
  • historical subjects, no longer glorifying aristocracy
  • 5 acts with a ballet
  • set structure of this French brand opera
  • ballets were popular because they weren’t dressed as much as everyone else running around at the time
  • plots are very complicated
43
Q

Les Huguenots

A
  • Giacomo Meyerbeer (Jewish); one of the most popular composers in France, and he wrote a bunch of grand operas; he was Wagner’s mentor
  • St. Bartholomew’s day massacre; Protestants vs. Catholics
  • Protestant (Huguenot): Raul, Catholic: Valentine; they call in love and Raul believes that Valentine belongs to another man; the French queen, Marguerite, promises Valentine to Raul, and he says no, the queen’s plan fails
  • “Ein feste Burg”
  • the queen sings in an Italian Bel Canto style with a bunch of melismas
44
Q

Opera Comique

A
  • developed after the quarrel of the clowns
  • La Padrona, etc.
  • less spectacle, spoken dialogue, no ballet, different vocal styles
  • after 1870, much more serious
  • tends to stay in the French genre
  • more psychological stories than historical
  • more character-driven
45
Q

Carmen

A
  • George Bizet
  • Exoticism, trend of writing about faraway places and times
  • an exotic woman, and somehow she ends up with a western man, usually an army officer of some sort
  • exotic framed as female, dangerously seductive, and either both die, or the woman dies, woman is punished for her sexuality
  • Mix of influences
  • he doesn’t do research into authentic Spanish or gypsey music; if it sounds strange, he just throws it in there
46
Q

Revolutions of 1848

A
  • popular uprisings in Europe and Latin America
  • Germany: middle and working class demand unified country, freedoms; eventually fail
  • many sent into exile, including Richard Wagner
  • people push for a unified Germany, making local rulers upset
  • Wagner goes around Europe and ends up with Meyerbeer
47
Q

Richard Wagner (1813-1883)

A
  • very nationalist, very anti-Semitic, ironically mentored by Meyerbeer
  • he worshipped Beethoven, and thought of himself as his successor
  • Beethoven exhausted the symphony, so Wagner went to opera, but saw the opera as a continuation of the ideas in Beethoven’s 9th
  • after Beethoven, vocal music was the way of the feature
  • lots of writings on music, politics
  • he came to music as a teenager
  • he doesn’t call his work “opera” because he doesn’t want them to seem French or Italian
  • he finds Ludwig II from the Southern Germany area, and he builds Wagner a giant theatre specifically to put on his Wagnerian operas with huge stage equipment and a hidden orchestra
  • his operas are based on Germany myths and poems, which is a nationalist gesture; not only Greek myths can be operas
48
Q

Gesamtkunstwerk

A
  • “total work of art”
  • “music-dramas,” “festival-stageworks,” rather than “opera”
  • Theatre at Bayreuth (BYE-royth) in southern Germany
  • Wagner wanted everything to com
  • GeSAMPST-koonst-verk
  • everything should be unified
  • Wagner wrote all of his own music and librettos; everything comes from one person, the staging, music, libretto, etc.
  • no such thing as a Wagner aria, more like arias, not really recitative, but more like arioso or duet
  • makes the orchestra much more important
  • Meyerbeer knew that people would show up late because the ballet is in the second act, but Wagner doesn’t want that
  • Wagner wants to get a message across, so he’s willing to make audiences mad by putting the ballet at the beginning
49
Q

Chromaticism

A
  • dissonance resolves to dissonance

- TRISTan Chord (F-B-D#-G#) resolves to another dissonant chord, and it doesn’t fully resolve until the end of the opera

50
Q

Lietmotif

A

-“lite motif”
-Wagner uses motifs that connect to a character
-the orchestra can tell you things that the characters can’t
-new emphasis on the orchestra
-influence of Beethoven
-Example: the Ring motif, and Valhalla motif from The Ring Cycle, Wagner’s Magnum Opus
in Beethoven’s symphonies, the way he transforms music from one movement to the other,

51
Q

Tristan Chord as Leitmotif

A
  • a love that cannot be consummated, only in death
  • rising tension that won’t resolve
  • side quest from King Arthur
  • King Mark in love with Isolde, and he sends Tristan to go get her; Tristan and Isolde hate each other, and she doesn’t want to marry Mark, but if she doesn’t, then Tristan will have to kill himself because of honor, so they decide to drink a death potion, but the witch switches it with a love potion, so sexual tension because she’s supposed to be with Mark
52
Q

Nationalism

A
  • talking more about ethnicities than actual countries at this point
  • big 19th century thing
  • Wagner on Germany mythology
  • Weber quoting folk tunes
53
Q

Russia Before the Enlightenment

A
  • “Mongol Yoke”
  • church frowned on secular music
  • Russian Orthodox instead of Catholicism or Protestantism, so music was mostly homophonic chant
54
Q

The Enlightenment in Russia

A
  • Peter the Great opens a “Window on Europe”
  • modernization, changes in dress, Julian (Julius Caesar; our) calendar
  • beard tax. if your beard is longer than a certain point, you have to pay
  • he’s not particularly interested in changing music, but it kind of happened with the other changes
  • later Tsars, French and Italian opera
  • 1861: Tsar Alexander I emancipates serfs
55
Q

Mikhail Glinka (1804-1857)

A
  • first internationally popular Russian composer
  • trained abroad, wanted to write in a new Russian style, not in the typical French and Italian that Russia had adopted
  • put Russia on the map through operas
56
Q

Moguchaya Kuchka

A
  • “The Mighty Five” or “The Mighty Handful”
  • Mily Balakirev (leader)
  • Cesar Cui
  • Modest Mussorgsky
  • Alexander Borodin
  • Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov
  • amateur composers
  • inspired by Schumann, Chopin, Liszt, and Berlioz
  • they did not like the contemporary Italian operatic style, Bel Canto
  • thought of music as a nationalist endeavor
57
Q

Modest (Moe-DEST) Mussorgsky (1839-1881)

A
  • Civil Servant
  • trained mostly by Balakirev
  • both operas and instrumental pieces
  • Boris Godunov “Coronation Scene;” many versions, idiomatically Russian music, speech rhythms, folk tunes, “hymn to the sun,” irregular meter
58
Q

Boris Godunov “Coronation Scene”

A
  • non-functional chords
  • they stay in the key, but they don’t lead anywhere
  • speech rhythms, folk tunes, and irregular meter
  • the chords all turn and shift around the middle C7
59
Q

The Canon

A
  • beyond Mozart, Haydn, Beethoven
  • Mendelssohn’s Bach revival
  • advent of musicology
60
Q

Johannes Brahms (1833-1897)

A
  • he knows his Classical composers very deeply
  • he doesn’t immediately know how to deal with the canon
  • mentored by Schumann; Brahms shows up at his house and plays the piano and Robert freaks out and writes about how awesome he’s going to be
  • struggled with legacy of Beethoven
  • “Beethoven’s Tenth;” homage or rebuke?
  • he was 40 years old when he finally wrote his first symphony, which was Beethoven’s genre, and it gets shot down because it’s not “original” enough
  • Wagner hates Brahms
  • ideological debates between program music (Wagner and Liszt) and absolute music (Brahms)
61
Q

Influences on Brahms’ Symphony No. 4

A
  • Bach; Chaccone/Passacaglia; BWV 150/1004
  • Beethoven; theme and variations finale (Symphonies nos. 3 and 9)
  • he takes Baroque forms and molds them into a romantic symphonic idiom
  • skip Beethoven and go back to Bach

Bach’s BWV 1004

  • used the sarabande rhythm (quarter, dotted quarter, eighth)
  • similar rhythms; chorale variation
62
Q

Piano Quintet

A
  • sonata form (ish)
  • 3 (ish) key exposition, third relations (influence of Schubert, Beethoven)
  • each theme is a variation of the theme that came before it
63
Q

The Wagnerians

A
  • includes Liszt
  • Beethoven’s Ninth points to opera (or program music)
  • think the symphony isn’t worthwhile anymore
  • they go for tone poems; extended one-movement works
  • emphasis on emotions and expression
  • extramusical content, emotions run high
  • unstructured gestures
  • Brahms and co. are too intellectual, conservative
64
Q

The Brahmsians

A
  • there are still things to be done with form and structure
  • absolute music
  • program music takes away what music is supposed to be; standalone
  • Wagner and co. are arrogant, diluting music’s power and beauty
  • only later recognized as innovators
65
Q

Wagnerian Program Music

A
  • Liszt in Weimar; inspired by Wagner, Berlioz

- tone poem or symphonic poem; orchestral effects

Music History II (3 decks)

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