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CHAPTER 25
1. Describe the trend toward new concert halls and orchestras in the nineteenth century.
What repertory was performed in these concert halls? In what sense was the concert hall a
“museum culture”?
The rapid growth of industrial cities and expansion of the bourgeoisie led to a sharp increase in
the number (and size) of concert halls. This public demand for music also led to the formation of
new orchestras, most of which specialized in the performance of music by dead composers. By
century’s end, the vast majority of performances consisted of the “Viennese Classics” (works by
Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven), Schubert, Mendelssohn, Schumann, and a handful of others.
This repertory narrowed to form the canon of pieces that continue today to make up the majority
of orchestra concerts—a permanent collection of musical works that reflect a curatorial,
classicizing “museum culture.”
2. What is meant by developing variation, and how is it reflected in Brahms’s Piano
Quartet in G Minor, Op. 25?
“Developing variation,” a term coined by Schoenberg, refers to a style of motivic saturation
championed by Brahms. Like Wagnerian leitmotif, Brahms built his chamber music on the
continual transformation of brief, germinal themes, eschewing melody in favor of motivic rigor
and density. This technique can be seen in the Piano Quartet in G Minor, Op. 25, which begins
with a short motive that is immediately transposed, inverted, and harmonized (all in the first
eight measures). The density of Brahms’s formal designs demands close attention of the listener.
3. In what ways is Brahms’s First Symphony modeled on Beethoven’s symphonies,
particularly the Ninth?
In his First Symphony, Brahms took the fateful key of C minor from Beethoven’s Fifth. He also
follows a Beethovenian arc of “Struggle and Victory.” The influence of Beethoven’s Ninth,
however, is most pronounced. Like Beethoven, Brahms treats the fourth movement as the goal
toward which the rest of the symphony is directed. The movement unfolds in a manner
structurally similar to the finale of the Ninth, and he employs a sweeping hymn in the strings that
blatantly resembles the “Ode to Joy” melody. This was a major statement: By recasting
Beethoven’s vocal melody for instruments, Brahms repudiated the New German need for
programmatic content. He also put Beethoven’s legacy into conversation with earlier German
music (particularly Bach) through the use of chorale textures.
4. Describe the various influences on Bruckner’s symphonies, including those of Beethoven,
Wagner, and his experience as a church organist.
Bruckner’s symphonies follow a traditional, Beethovenian four-movement structure. The
movement order and forms of his symphonies are likewise based on the model of Beethoven
(including the archetypal “creation myth” opening), and he regularly employs the Beethovenian
technique of cyclicism (i.e., reusing the opening theme later in the symphony). Wagner’s
influence is exhibited in Bruckner’s large-scale orchestral forces (including Wagner tubas),
progressive harmonic palette, and sense of quasi-religious drama. And finally, Bruckner’s
background as a church organist can be heard in his predilection for slow tempos, sequences,
ostinatos, and antiphonal scoring techniques.
5. How do you interpret Dvořák’s subtitle “From the New World”? Do you consider his
“New World” Symphony an “American” work? Why or why not?
The subtitle “From the New World” can be interpreted as a souvenir (“Impressions and
Greetings”) documenting Dvořák’s time abroad for his Czech compatriots. It can also mean that
Dvořák wanted the musical content to be “American.” Dvořák’s American benefactor instructed
the composer to write an opera on the national myth of Hiawatha in order to show native-born
composers how it is done, and much of the explicitly American materials from this unfinished
opera made it into the “New World” Symphony. The Americanness of this work is exhibited in
Indian-inspired melodies and African-American spirituals. However, by combining (conflating?)
these two influences, Dvořák showed himself to be an outsider, demonstrating that the symphony
is not an “American” work at all but rather a musical postcard from a well-meaning but naïve
European.
6. How did American composers go about creating a distinctive American music? What
approach to American music is reflected in Beach’s “Gaelic” Symphony?
Dvořák’s use of Indian and African-American materials in his symphony, ostensibly in reference
to national origins, provoked a response among U.S. composers, who sought America’s
distinctive musical creation myth in the folk traditions of Europe, particularly England, Scotland,
and Ireland. In contrast to Dvořák, who viewed nationality as a matter of “soil” (i.e., where you
are born), composers such as Amy Beach saw nationality as a matter of “blood” (i.e., ethnic
background). The middle movements of her “Gaelic” Symphony are thus based on Irish folk
songs, a musical borrowing more in line with her Boston blue-blood roots.
7. Describe César Franck’s role as a composer of instrumental music in France.
Franck was aligned with the Société Nationale de Musique, a group that aimed to elevate the
status of French music, in part through mastery of the language of Germanic instrumental music.
As such, Franck’s compositions are indebted to Wagner and Beethoven. They are also imbued
with a sense of spiritual drama, a result of his training as a church organist (like Bruckner).
Unlike most of the major composers of the nineteenth century, Franck was an active teacher and
mentor, with many devoted students who propagated this model of German-style instrumental
music.
8. Drawing together the material in this chapter with that of Chapters 22 and 23, compare
the ways in which the following composers responded to Beethoven, either in their music or
in their rhetoric: Wagner, Liszt, Brahms, and Bruckner.
Wagner considered Beethoven’s Ninth to be a revolution that prefigured his own music dramas.
By adding vocal forces to the orchestra, Wagner thought, Beethoven evolved beyond purely
instrumental music and glimpsed the future of Gesamtkunstwerk-style fusion. Guided thus by the
historicism of Brendel, he felt himself to be heir to Beethoven’s legacy of progressivism.
Similarly, Liszt felt himself to be a revolutionary in the mold of Beethoven. Much of the rhetoric
of the New German School can be understood as a response to Beethoven: As the quintessential
German composer, Beethoven illustrated the historical necessity of innovation and
experimentation. In this sense, to historicists Beethoven in some ways represented the first truly
“historical” composer.
Brahms was haunted by the specter of Beethoven, leading to the incredibly long gestation period
of his First Symphony. When it came, Beethoven’s mark was everywhere, especially in his
treatment of motif. Brahms, like Beethoven, was a master of seamlessly transforming small
motivic seeds into the structural basis of the whole symphony. Further, aspects of the First are
direct references to Beethoven, including the key (C minor), finale structure, and “Ode to Joy”derived hymn. This last gesture was a critique as much as an homage.
Bruckner drew inspiration from Beethoven in his four-movement structures, movement ordering,
forms, and use of cyclicism (i.e., repetition of opening themes later in the symphony). The Ninth
proved the model on which Bruckner based the syntax of his late symphonies.