Lecture Six
Romantic Era Music: Miniatures - Lieder and Chopin
Simplicity is the final achievement. After one has played a vast quantity of notes and more notes, it is simplicity that emerges as the crowning reward of art.-- Frédéric Chopin
When I wished to sing of love, it turned to sorrow. And when I wished to sing of sorrow, it was transformed for me into love. -- Franz Schubert
Again, there is a paradox encountered by many early Romantic composers: the spontaneity and creative freedom of the composer was at odds with the notion of preordained musical form. During the early Romantic era, some composers continued to use the Classical-era forms, others used them sparingly, while still others abandoned them altogether and created new forms in miniature. Here are two sorts of miniatures: Lieder (German language songs) and instrumental, especially piano, miniatures. Works by Franz Schubert and Frédéric Chopin are used to illustrate these new forms and we will continue next week with other composers.
Chopin Schubert
Outline
I. Again: The spontaneity, individuality, and creative freedom treasured in the Romantic era were at odds with the idea of strictly preordained forms.
A. Beethoven’s response—the contextual use of form—presented several problems.
1. Few composers were talented enough to manipulate form while maintaining a coherent dramatic and structural line.
2. The forms provided a “given” for both composer and audience; without them, a new ‘given” was required.
B. New formal approaches were adopted during the early Romantic era. These included:
1. Miniature compositions, which, due to their brevity, did not deal with the issues of contrast and return.
2. Grandiose compositions: huge, multimedia works employing texts, orchestras, choruses, solo singers, and even narrators.
3. Program music: instrumental music based on literary stories.
C. Romantic composers sought to give their works structural coherence and unity by using certain themes throughout a work.
II. Miniatures I: Schubert and Lied
A. A lied (lieder, plural) is a German song(s).
B. Ballades—long and story-like poems—became the ideal literary vehicle for early nineteenth-century composers of lieder.
C. German lied and lied cycles become an important nineteenth-century Romantic compositional genre.
D. Masters of German lied included:
1. Franz Schubert (1797—1828)
2. Robert Schumann (1810—56)
3. Johannes Brahms (1833—97)
4. Hugo Wolff (1860—1903)
5. Gustav Mahler (1860—1911)
6. Richard Strauss (1864—1949)
E. Featured Music:
Schubert, Erlkönig (1815)
1. Goethe’s text displays the sort of supernatural content favored by nineteenth-century composers.
2. Four characters are projected in the text: the narrator, the father, the Elfking, and the little boy.
3. Horses hooves and a dark environment are provided by the piano.
4. As the drama builds, the music changes accordingly. The hoof-beat music unifies this through-composed piece.
F. A Note about the piano in songs of the 19th century
In Romantic Songs an extremely important factor is the role of the Piano accompaniment. In earlier songs, the accompaniment was usually simple, basically giving the harmonic foundation of the melody line in the manner of folk songs and popular songs to this day. However, in Romantic Music, the piano part is both extraordinarily difficult to play and a crucial element in the success of the song. The piano part, in large part, creates the atmosphere and mirrors the inner drama and feelings of the characters. Next week we will speak about Schumann. In Schumann's Mondnacht (Moon Night), the piano not only creates the atmosphere but is the protagonist of the work, the embodiment of the moon.
G. The Poetry is also extremely important!
The choice of the poem (by Goethe) is also significant--the concept of Death (here represented in the figure of the Erlking), the ultimate symbol of the antithesis of Reason and Order, the Unknown, the Mysterious, Instinct, and Emotion, as a dangerous yet highly seductive force, is one of the recurring themes of all Romanticism.
III. Miniatures II: Chopin and the Romantic Piano
A. The modern, metal-harped piano emerged during the 1820s and 1830s.
B. Along with Franz Liszt, Frederic Chopin (1810-49) defined what sort of music these new pianos were capable of producing.
C. With a few exceptions, such as a piano concerto, and variations on Don Giovanni, Chopin’s compositional output was entirely in the form of miniatures for solo piano.
D. Featured Music:
Chopin, Etude in C Minor op. 10, no. 12
1. Its form is AA’AA2
2. Its mood is furious and turbulent, as expressed by the minor mode and the sweeping left-hand arpeggios.
E. Featured Music:
Chopin, Mazurka in A Minor op. 17, no. 4
1. Its form is ABA
2. It has a definite.
3. The piano plays a bel canto line.
F. Featured Music:
Chopin, Etude in Gb op. 10, no. 5
1. Its form is AA BA
2. Its mood is brilliant and energetic.
Selected Miniatures—Frederic Chopin
Etude in C Minor op. 10, no. 12 (“Revolutionary Elude”)
A A’ A A2
Measures: 1-18 19-40 41-58 59-84
Mazurka in A Minor op. 17, no. 4
A B A’
a a’ b a c c’ c2 c3 a coda (b’)
Etude in Gb Major op. 10, no. 5 (“Black Note Etude”)
A A’ B A2
Measures: 1-8 9-16 17-49 50-85
We will continue, if time allows, with the following written by Prof. Sue Talley, or begin here with lecture seven.
Franz Schubert
Throughout the history of music, even to the present, there is an unfortunate amount of backbiting and jealousy among professional musicians. The 19th century, the century of Romanticism and passion, had its share of discord among the great musicians of its day, and these musicians could not seem to agree upon the direction music would take in the 19th century. That was the ostensible point of disagreement: Would music continue more or less in the tradition of the Classical period, or would it shoot off into something totally new and—for the musical conservatives, threatening? This, and other considerations, were burning questions for the musical world as revolution after revolution threatened the established kingdoms of the secular order.
In the lives of the great pianists and composers, the Schumanns, Schubert, Brahms, and Mendelssohn, one could sense a tremendous respect for the past, and at the same time, a definite trend toward the expressive, the romantic, the intuitive. In the music of Chopin, Liszt, Berlioz, and Wagner, the respect for the past continued, but music simply exploded into the future. That is to greatly overstate and oversimplify the field of composers who dominated the century. But if the figure of Beethoven dominated the first half of the nineteenth century, it was to be the figure of Wagner who dominated the second half.
We will begin by considering the tremendous output of Franz Seraph Peter Schubert. Born much later than Beethoven, in 1797, but dying only a year after Beethoven did, at 31 years of age, Schubert was eulogized as having imparted to the world “a rich treasure, but fairer hopes!” The “rich treasure” included 8 symphonies, and a sketch for a ninth, 7 overtures, dances and minuets, 16 string quartets, a string trio, a piano quartet, four piano trios, four quintets, a nonet and two octets, a considerable output of miscellaneous chamber music, an abundance of piano sonatas and other works, including works for four hands, 5 cantatas and religious dramas, over six hundred songs for piano and voice—the list goes on and on. Legend has it that upon one occasion, when he was very young, Schubert dashed off his most famous song of all, “Ave Maria,” to pay a tavern bill. The sheer volume of Schubert’s music shows that such a story is not out of the question.
As a little boy, Franz studied piano and violin, and went to a grim-looking Jesuit school, where he was admitted because of his beautiful boy soprano. But there he was exposed to the wonderful music of Haydn, Mozart, Cherubini, and Beethoven—and he was absolutely entranced. He was too poor to buy music paper, so a kind friend bought it for him, and he used it up, the friend wrote, “by the riem.” Schubert began neglecting his studies to write music, and his father was very upset with him, and while the school honored him by placing him in the first chair of the violin section, his father forbade him to enter his house. That was too bad for Franz, because he was, by virtue of his talent, the leader of the family string quartet, and he was denied the privilege of weekends of music at home, which he loved. (He was not readmitted to the family circle until the death of his mother of typhus, in 1812). The leader of the orchestra at his school, seeing that the talent Franz had would take its course, introduced him to Salieri, and continued his studies and his friendship with the older man for many years.
When Franz was reconciled to his family, his father married again and he loved and admired his stepmother, who also loved and admired him. In 1812, his voice changed; the school kept him for one more year, and then he had to go. However, by then, young Franz had written his First Symphony.
Out of school, Schubert risked being conscripted into the army, so he studied to be a school teacher. His grades were interesting; “good” in writing skills, “fair” in arithmetic, and “bad” in religion. He assisted his father in the schoolhouse for three years, and Franz apparently was a disciplinarian, himself, who handled naughty children quite well for a man less than five feet tall. He continued his writing while teaching school, and his father was so pleased at the reception of his Mass in F that he actually presented him with a five-octave piano. The composer was seventeen.
He fell in love with a plain young lady with a beautiful voice, but she married a baker, and Schubert continued to declare his sadness and his love for her. But he was a little shy of marriage. He wrote several operas, but, oddly enough, they were unsuccessful. The most famous song from this period of his life was “Gretchen at the Spinning-Wheel,” a bittersweet ballad which has the sound the spinning-wheel underlying its sad little story. Shortly thereafter, he wrote another famous ballad, “The Erlking,” describing a child dying the arms of his father and seeing death descend to take him away. By 1815, Schubert began turning out art-songs, or lieder, at the astonishing rate of about eight per day. The symphonies he began composing showed his indebtedness to the earlier masters, Mozart, Haydn, and Weber. Continuing to teach school until he could stand it no longer, Schubert managed, somehow, to swell his output of compositions, to include a number of outstanding sonatas and other works for the piano.
Schubert was evidently a jolly and likable person. His friends, proud to be in a circle called the “Schubertians,” affectionately referred to him as “Tubby.” They managed to have a great deal of fun together, as well as mutual intellectual stimulation. One of these, a man named Franz von Schober, had to rescue the composer at times by sheltering him in his home, and later attached himself to Franz Liszt. However, perhaps the most important man in Schubert’s acquaintance at this time was Michael Vogl, who was a great singer and became a great supporter of Schubert. Schubert was a shy man; although he was a fine pianist, he preferred to turn the pages when his works were performed.
It was not until June 17, 1816, that Schubert actually received money for something he composed. And it was in 1817 that Schubert quit the teaching profession and lived, from then on, with one friend or another. He liked to compose from six in the morning until shortly after noon each day, but on one occasion, when he wrote the first version of Die Forelle (The Trout), he was so sleepy that he accidentally poured ink over it instead of sand, which was then used to dry the ink.
Also in 1816 Schubert met a remarkable music genius from Italy, Rossini, whose most famous work is The Barber of Seville. Rossini made a tremendous hit in Vienna; even the German masters were somewhat overwhelmed by him. Schubert wrote two Overtures in the Italian Style at this time. He continued to be inspired to write opera, a form which apparently eluded him.
In 1818, Schubert went to the famous Esterhazy household as a sort of musical servant, where he was to teach several members of the family, and had a little bit of rest and a pleasant time in which he could create; but it was not the time of his greatest output. Again, he tried his hand at opera and operetta, not with great success, but he was beginning to see more of his music produced, in spite of the fact that not one publisher had offered to bring out his scores.
In the ensuing years, Schubert traveled, often with the singer Vogl. He continued to produce a prodigious amount of music. And he was often ill. He said in his diary, “Picture to yourself a man whoses health can never be right again, and who, in his despair thereat, only makes matters worse instead of better—picture to yourself, I repeat, a man whose fairest hopes have come to nothing, to whom the joy of love and friendship offer nothing but the greatest pain, and whose enthusiasm for the beautiful threatens to disappear and ask yourself it such a man is not indeed unhappy…thus joyless and friendless do I pass my days…” Yet, in 1824, he acknowledged, “There is none who understands the pain of another and none his joy…Oh! Torment of those who grasp this…My works are the product of my understanding of music and of my grief; those which have been created by grief alone seem to please the world most…Grief sharpens the understanding and strengthens the spirit.” No one knows the exact nature of Schubert’s illness, but it came upon him frequently and he could be very miserable.
The great song cycle that Schubert wrote near the end of his short life, Die Schoene Muellerin (The Beautiful Miller's Daughter) and Winterreise (Winter Journey) illustrate an important theme of Schubert’s Romanticism. In both cycles the narrator has hopes of happiness that are quickly dashed and he falls further and further into isolation and despair. Schubert, the composer, identified with the narrator as the artist isolated and misunderstood by the world in which he lived--a metamorphosis of Rousseau's view of the antagonism between Society and Nature with, in this case, the Romantic artist as the mouthpiece of Nature.
“What can one do after Beethoven?” It was Schubert who asked the question. But throughout his very short life, he managed to do a great deal after Beethoven. His outstanding achievement was in the art song, or lied, but his sonatas and symphonies contained rich sonorities and tonal effects which had not been heard before. Even though he admired Beethoven so much, Schubert neither followed his construction nor his point of view in his symphonies. They were not so dynamic; there were not startling, crashing climaxes, but there was chromatic modulation and beautiful lyric song-writing in the symphonies. Schubert was said to “favor the wood-winds, the horns, the mysterious colors of the low trombones, the technical brilliance of the strings.” [Bekker, The Story of the Orchestra,, page 131] “The inner urge from clarity to obscurity, from daylight to dusk, from plastic objectivity to gradual extinction—this decrescendo line applied in music only as in other fields.” [Ibid., p. 132] The “decrescendo line” seemed to parallel the life of Franz Schubert, which was tragically foreshortened by illness of an unknown nature. Before he died, Schubert asked to be buried as close to Beethoven’s grave as possible. And he was.