Download Chapter 12: Romantic Orchestral Music

Chapter 21:
Romantic Music: Program Music, Ballet,
and Musical Nationalism
Program Music
• Program Music: Instrumental music that seeks to re-create
in sound the events and emotions portrayed in some
extramusical source – a story, legend, play, novel,
historical event
– Tells a story through music
– Specific musical gestures evoke particular feelings and
associations
– Connected to the strong literary spirit of the 19thcentury
On the other end of the spectrum
• Absolute Music: Instrumental music free of a text or any
pre-existing program
– Johannes Brahms (1833-1897)
• Program Symphony: A symphony with three, four, or
five movements, which together depict a succession of
specific events or scenes drawn from an extramusical
story or event
– Berlioz’s Symphonie fantastique
• Dramatic Overture: A one-movement work that portrays
through music a sequence of dramatic events
– Rossini’s overture to the opera William Tell (1829)
– Tchaikovsky’s 1812 Overture
• Tone Poem (Symphonic Poem): A one-movement work
for orchestra that gives musical expression to the
emotions or events associated with a story, play, political
event, or personal experience
– Tchaikovsky’s Romeo and Juliet
Hector Berlioz (1803-1869)
and the Program Symphony
• Born near Grenoble, France
• Composer and music critic
• Skilled in orchestration
– Added new instruments to the orchestra
– Compositions required an enormous number of musicians
• Influenced by literature, especially Shakespeare
• Life epitomized the artist as Romantic hero
Symphonie fantastique (1830)
• The first complete program symphony
• Berlioz wrote the program based on his love affair with
Harriet Smithson
• Five movements:
I. Reveries, Passion
II. A Ball
III. Scene in the Country
IV. March to the Scaffold
V. Dream of a Witches’ Sabbath
• Unifying theme: idée fixe (fixed idea)
–Represents “the beloved”
–Appears in each movement
–Altered to reflect his changing mood about “the beloved”
IV. March to the Scaffold
• Re-creates the sounds of the French military bands he
heard as a child
• Rousing march tempo
• Exceptionally heavy low brass
• Use of the ophicleide (tuba)
• Crescendo and snare drum announce the fall of the
guillotine
• Graphically orchestrated so we hear the severed head of
the lover fall and thud on the ground
V. Dream of a Witches’ Sabbath
• Berlioz creates his personal vision of hell
• Parody of the idée fixe
• Dies Irae chant – burial hymn of the medieval church
• Parodied as a satiric dance
• Final fugato, double counterpoint
Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky (1840-1893):
Tone Poem and Ballet Music
• Tone Poem: One-movement work for orchestra that
captures the emotions and events of a story through
music
• Most prolific writer of late 19th-century program music
• Professor at the Moscow Conservatory
• Supported by patroness Madame Nadezdha von Meck
and Tsar Alexander III
• Compositions include every genre of Romantic Era
music
• Primarily known today for his program music and
ballets
Tone Poem Romeo and Juliet (1869; rev. 1880
• Like Berlioz, found extramusical inspiration from
Shakespeare
– Romeo and Juliet, The Tempest, Hamlet
• Free, not literal, representation of the principal dramatic
events
Tchaikovsky’s Ballets
• Ballet: Dramatic dance in which characters and steps tell
a story
• Tchaikovsky's talents uniquely suited to ballet
– “Short segment” style; could create one striking
melody/mood after another
– Swan Lake (1876), Sleeping Beauty (1889), The
Nutcracker (1892)
• “Dance of the Reed Pipes” from The Nutcracker
– Ternary form
– Evokes the sound of shepherds playing pan-pipes
– Clear meter
Music and Nationalism
• Arose from the political upheaval of the 19th-century
– Desire to maintain ethnic identity and support national pride
• National anthems, native dances, protest songs, victory
symphonies
• Use of indigenous musical elements
– Folksongs, Scales, Dance rhythms, Local instrumental sounds,
Programs based on national subjects
• Evocative titles
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Liszt - Hungarian Rhapsodies
Rimsky-Korsakov – Russian Easter Overture
Dvořák – Slavonic Dances
Smetana – Má vlast (My Fatherland)
Sibelius – Finlandia
Russian Nationalism: Modest Musorgsky
(1839-1881)
• Russia was one of the first countries to develop its own
national style of art music, distinct and separate from the
traditions of German orchestral music and Italian opera
• Modest Mussorgsky
• “Everything Russian is becoming dear to me.”
• Night on Bald Mountain (tone poem, 1867), Pictures at an
Exhibition (set of character pieces, 1874), Boris Godunov
(opera, 1874)
Pictures at an Exhibition (1874)
• Originally for piano; orchestrated by Maurice Ravel in
1922
• Each movement depicts a different drawing or painting by
Victor Hartmann (1833-1873)
• Promenade: Opens the work and serves as transition
between movements
– Solo contrasts with full brass then full orchestra
– Irregular meter and use of pentatonic scale
• Polish Ox-cart: Creates a sense of time and movement
– Two-note ostinato
– Crescendo and decrescendo as the cart approaches and
slowly disappears
– Begins and ends with the lowest sounds; orchestrated
with tuba and double basses
• The Great Gate of Kiev: Impression of a parade
passing through a great arch
– Rondo form: ABABCA
– Use of different musical
styles in each section