Power point 20. The Romantic Era: Early Romantic Song and Piano

1. The Early Romantic Era
1820-1850

2. German Romanticism
•movement in German arts and literature
•romance –poem or tale about heroic events and
people
•fantastic, imaginary, idealized past
•nature/refuge from technology
•individualism/refuge from mass society
•express individual feelings
•transgress rules and limits

3. Early Romantic Style
• accessible
• tuneful melodies
• little counterpoint
• predictable phrasing
• harmonic innovations
– non-harmonic tones
– unexpected progressions
– chromatic chords and voice leading
– distant modulations
– tonal ambiguity
• contrasts with classic era:
– new forms rather than improving upon previous forms

4. Song

5. Franz Schubert (1797-1828)
• over 600 Lieder: songs for voice and piano set to German
Romantic poetry
• forms:
– strophic: Das Wandern
• lyric poetry: short, strophic poem on one subject
expressing a personal feeling or viewpoint
– modified strophic—music of 1st stanza varied in later
stanzas: Der Lindenbaum
– ternary—ABA: Der Atlas
– bar form—AAB: Ständchen
– ballad—through-composed: Erlkönig
• long song with narrative and dialogue
• song cycle—set of songs intended to be performed in
order: Winterreise, Die schöne Müllerin,
• accompaniment
– sets mood
– musical/extra-musical imagery: accompaniment
reflects an image in poem: Gretchen am Spinnrade
– harmony—parallel major/minor; triadic relationships

6. Robert Schumann (1810-1856)
• 1840—Liederjahr—“Year
of Song”
• Dichterliebe—Heine
– Im wunderschönen
Monat Mai
• Frauenliebe und Leben
– marriage
• piano/voice equal
partners
• piano—long preludes,
interludes, postludes

7. Piano
• in home
– teaching
• exercises and etudes
– amateurs
• females make music
rather than work @
home—sign of status
• dances, lyrical pieces
modeled on song,
character pieces,
sonatas, duets
• uniform rhythm &
difficulty
• public performance
– pieces for virtuosos
• specialization Liszt’s last piano

8. Schubert
• for amateurs—marches, waltzes,
Moment musicaux, impromptus, duets
• sonatas—unlike Beethoven, themes not
appropriate for development; themes
found in different environments to
suggest new meanings
• “Wanderer” Fantasy—based on song
Der Wanderer

9. Felix Mendelssohn (1809-1847)
• Lieder ohne Worte
– songs without words
• Andante con moto, op.
19, no. 1

10. Schumann
• character piece:
– suggests mood, personality, scene (usually
indicated in title)
– Carnaval
• set of Character pieces
• depicts Commedia dell’arte characters:
– Pierrot
– Harlequin
• Schumann’s own characters:
– Florestan—impulsive revolutionary
– Eusebius—contemplative dreamer
– Meister Raro—Friedrich Wieck (wise
master, Clara’s father)

11. Frederic Chopin (1810-1849)
• wrote almost exclusively for
piano
• concert études
• Polish dances
– Mazurka in B-flat Major
• nocturnes—sort of a song
without words
– Nocturne in D-flat Major
• ballade—one of 1st to write
instrumental ballades
• idiomatic

12. Franz Liszt (1811-1886): Early Career
• virtuoso
• child prodigy
• solo recital
• from memory
• master class
• Hungarian influence
– Hungarian Rhapsodies
• Paganini influence
• transcriptions
• Un Sospiro—concert etude
• Sonata in b minor—
thematic transformation