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The History of Music,
Second Edition
Early Romanticism
Teacher’s Guide
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The History of Music, Second Edition
Early Romanticism
Table of Contents
Tabl
INTRODUCTION.........................................................................3
LEARNING OBJECTIVES..................................................................3
TARGET VOCABULARY...................................................................3
DISCUSSION STARTERS...................................................................3
REVIEW QUESTIONS.....................................................................4
TRANSCRIPT............................................................................7
©2005 Clearvue
6465 N. Avondale Avenue
Chicago, IL 60631
800-253-2788 • 773-775-9433
[email protected]
clearvue.com • PowerMediaPlus.com
The History of Music, Second Edition
Early Romanticism
Introduction
During the early 1800s, artists were deeply affected by the ideas that brought about revolution.
At this time, people strongly believed in individual rights, expressing feelings, and giving free
reign to the imagination. The music of the romantic period reflected these new ways of thinking.
Many of the composers from the romantic period were influenced by Ludwig van Beethoven, who
used both dissonant and consonant harmonies in his music. Romantic music gave priority to emotional expression, a trend heard in works by such composers as Franz Peter Schubert, Frédéric
Chopin, Hector Berlioz, and others.
As new forms of composition, including the symphonic poem, became popular, opera continued to
thrive in Italy. The beloved Italian composer Giuseppe Verdi built upon and expanded opera, captivating audiences across Italy.
Learning Objectives
After completing the program and participating in discussion and activities, students will be able
to:
• Explain what a virtuoso is and name several prominent virtuosos from the romantic period;
• Describe how Ludwig van Beethoven's compositions influenced the development of music;
• Compare the music from the romantic period with music from previous musical periods;
• Understand how consonant harmony and dissonant harmony are different and how each affects
a composition; and
• Discuss important musical forms from the romantic period, including the character piece and
the symphonic poem.
Target Vocabulary
harmony
piano
Otello
lieder
idée fixe
Clara Schumann
chromatic
virtuoso
romanticism
Falstaff
Franz Liszt
Giuseppe Verdi
Heroic Symphony
consonant harmony
dissonant harmony
Robert Schumann
Fantastic Symphony
Ninth Symphony
Frédéric Chopin
Hector Berlioz
character piece
French Revolution
symphonic poem
Niccolò Paganini
Franz Peter Schubert
Unfinished Symphony
Ludwig van Beethoven
Discussion Starters
1. Ask students to think about how and why the revolutions from that time affected music. Which
composers were affected by these revolutions? Were there any particular pieces of music that were
clearly connected to the sentiments resulting from revolutions/wars?
2. Start a discussion about virtuosos. Why were people so captivated by virtuosos? Who were some
of the prominent virtuosos from the romantic period? Are there any modern equivalents of the
romantic virtuosos? What might be some of the rewards of being a virtuoso? What might be some of
the drawbacks?
3. Make a list of composers/musicians from the romantic period. Which of these composers/musicians
were the students familiar with before watching the program? What were their impressions of
those composers/musicians before the program? What were their impressions afterward? What
made these composers/musicians memorable? What was their appeal during the romantic period?
What qualities, if any, make these composers/musicians appealing now?
3
Review Questions
Use these discussion topics and questions to review the program material.
1. Discuss the importance of Beethoven's third and fifth symphonies. [In Vienna in the 1790s,
Beethoven had studied with Haydn, and his first two symphonies had followed the formats developed by Haydn and Mozart. In 1804, Beethoven completed his third symphony, which he subtitled "Heroic." While it was based on the same forms, it was a work of unprecedented expressive
power. Beethoven reached maturity during the turbulent years of the French Revolution, and he
was in spirit a young man of his times. Heroism, struggle, fate, victory—these were concepts that
inspired him, and he tried to convey them in his music. In his "Heroic" symphony, Beethoven built
a strong musical structure, much longer than previous symphonies but with each part contributing to an overall unity. A symphony was no longer simply a group of four unrelated movements.
Ever since it was introduced in 1808, his Fifth Symphony
hony has suggested to audiences a great
victory won after intense struggle. The entire work is unified by a simple four-note motif that
is integrated into each movement. Composing like this was slow and painstaking, and required
continual experimentation and revision. But Beethoven was not trying to simply please a patron.
He was trying to reach all of humanity, present and future.] What was the public perception of
Beethoven? What was his standpoint on serving the wealthy? [The music audience was growing
in the early 1800s, as the middle class began to have time and money to support the arts. Still,
a composer could not survive without help from patrons. Beethoven did not completely reject
help from the wealthy, but he accepted it only on his own terms, demanding to be treated not as
a servant but as an artist accountable to himself. Beethoven was regarded as the foremost composer of his time. He excelled in all the standard forms: chamber music, religious choral works,
and even opera. But some of his music bewildered and challenged his listeners, especially his use
of dissonance.]
2. What are consonant and dissonant harmony? [Harmony is concerned with the sound of several
notes played at once, especially in homophonic music. Along with many other factors, harmony
affects the strength of tonality. Harmony includes sound combinations that range from consonant to dissonant. Consonant harmony tends to sound smooth, clear, and generally more relaxed.
Dissonant harmony tends to sound more agitated, restless, and disturbed. While both consonance
and dissonance had been a feature of music for centuries, Beethoven used dissonance much more
aggressively than had any of his predecessors.]
3. What handicap did Beethoven suffer from? How did this affect his music? [Beethoven's life
was a struggle. He endured a handicap especially painful to a musician. At age twenty-eight, he
began to lose his hearing. By age fifty, he was totally deaf. During his later years, the composer
turned inward, producing music that often gives the impression of deep thought, of groping with
cosmic ideas. Even today, this music sounds strange to many listeners.] Describe Beethoven's
Ninth Symphony. [One of his late works, the Ninth Symphony remains among his most popular.
This symphony, with its profound statement of faith in universal brotherhood, is celebrated for its
innovative use of a chorus in the finale, the singing of Friedrich Schiller's Ode to Joy.]
4. How did Beethoven's music inspire the musicians of the romantic period? [The intensity of
his music, his pride in himself as an artist, and his merging of symphonic music, choral singing,
and poetry made Beethoven a hero to a group of young composers who represented a new spirit
in the arts called romanticism. The romantic movement brought together musicians, writers, and
painters whose personal lives were often as unconventional as their art.] Why was this period
called the romantic period? [As with the word classical, the word romantic has many meanings.
As used to describe movements in the arts, the words are almost opposites. If the classicists
4
valued clarity, restraint, order, and rational organization, the romantics valued spontaneity, passion, and imagination. Where the classical artist gave priority to overall form and structure, the
romantic artist gave priority to emotional expression and, in music, to such matters of sensation
as tone color and melody. The classicist saw himself as a humble artisan striving for the highest standards of workmanship, while the romantic saw himself as a lonely prophet struggling to
express a message from within.]
5. How did Franz Peter Schubert get his start in music? [Schubert was born in a suburb of
Vienna a few years after Beethoven arrived in the city. Attracted to the idea of combining music
and poetry as Beethoven had done, Schubert, while still a teenager, began setting poems to
music. Schubert wrote some six hundred lieder
ieder (the German word for songs), sometimes composing several in one day and often using the same poem over and over.] Was Schubert's music wellknown? [Shy and indifferent to material success, Schubert drew little public attention. Though
he died at age thirty-one, he composed an enormous quantity of music. But hardly any of it had
been heard, except by his enthusiastic circle of friends. One of his nine symphonies, called the
Unfinished
nished Symphony because it has only two movements, was not performed until nearly forty
years after his death. Today, it is his most famous work. Although it is based on standard sonata
allegro form, it differs from the classical style in several ways: it emphasizes mood and melody
and creates variety in tone and color by featuring instruments other than the strings. Many young
composers of the early 1800s were moving in similar directions. Some went further than Schubert,
using the symphonic form to tell a story.]
6. Describe Hector Berlioz's Fantastic Symphony. [Berlioz was a French composer who fell deeply in love with an actress he had seen on stage but never met. He decided to write a symphony
as part of his effort to impress her. Called Fantastic Symphony, it depicts the drug-induced fantasy of a sensitive young musician tortured by love. Berlioz represents his beloved by a particular
theme—called an idée fixe—that recurs in each movement. At the end, the musician is beheaded,
and a grotesque funeral follows in which his soul is mocked by his beloved, now transformed into
a witch. To portray his extravagant story, Berlioz called for an enlarged orchestra, including such
instruments as the English horn and the harp, instruments not usually used in symphonies. The
result is a rich array of subtle tone colors and some stunning effects.]
7. What is a symphonic poem? Who developed this form? [A symphonic poem is an orchestral
piece meant to depict a series of moods or tell a story, and is often called "program music." Franz
Liszt, a 19-year-old pianist and composer from Hungary, tried to abandon classical forms, which
led to his development of the symphonic poem.] Describe Liszt's symphonic poems. [Liszt's symphonic poems were held together by themes, each representing an element of the story, the way
Berlioz used the idée fixe to represent his beloved. The musical devices Liszt used to suggest
longing, restlessness, mystery
mystery, and unfulfilled love greatly reduced the sense of tonal stability.
These devices are called chromatic—related to color—because they enrich or color the tonal structure. Liszt's symphonic poems often seem like successions of colorful episodes that begin and end
at whim, without a preconceived formal plan.] For what talent was Liszt most well-known? [As
innovative as he was as a composer, Liszt won his greatest fame as a pianist. His reputation was
established in Vienna, where at age ten he performed for Beethoven and met Schubert. This was
the beginning of the age of the virtuoso, a solo performer who exerted an almost magical spell
over audiences through a combination of personal magnetism and astonishing musical skill. Liszt
became a glamorous personality (and frequently the butt of cartoonists and reporters) during his
long years of triumphant concert tours. His love affairs with various countesses and princesses
were widely publicized.]
5
8. Who was Niccolò Paganini? [Paganini was the first great romantic virtuoso. His phenomenal wizardry on the violin, combined with his exotic appearance, prompted rumors that he was possessed
by the devil. Touring throughout Europe, Paganini won great wealth and fame.]
9. What were Frédéric Chopin's accomplishments as a composer? [Chopin, a pianist about the
same age as Liszt, was hailed as another Mozart in his native Poland. The frail Chopin lacked the
physical stamina for the heroic role of a virtuoso. He preferred to play for small groups in intimate
settings, suitable to his delicate, dreamy style. Chopin's compositions were tailored to his own
strengths as a pianist, evoking wistful moods through his own brand of chromatic harmony. Chopin's
playing style was so admired that even his hands were portrayed as objects of art. He was especially highly regarded in Paris, where he came to perform his own compositions. His short pieces for
piano solo—often called character pieces because they centered on a single mood—harked back to
the baroque idea of restricting a piece to one emotion. But musical language had changed so much
over nearly two centuries that the effect was now very different. The character piece for the piano
became a favorite of romantic composers and performers.]
10. Who were Robert and Clara Schumann? [Robert Schumann, a German composer born the same
year as Chopin, was another master of the character piece. His dream of becoming a virtuoso ended
when he injured his hand, but he wrote a great deal of music for the piano. His pieces were performed throughout Europe by his wife, Clara, one of the most important musicians of the time.
Settling in Liepzig, Robert Schumann founded and edited a journal of musical opinion and became
a central figure in the romantic movement, helping to promote such talented colleagues as Chopin
and Schubert. But he had great difficulty establishing himself as a composer.] Describe the sound
of Schumann's compositions. [Schumann's music embodied two characteristic romantic attitudes:
one, sensitive and dreamy; the other, impetuous and passionate. He even devised names for these
two sides of his personality and sometimes signed his compositions with the one that applied.]
11. What areas were important musical centers during the romantic period? [In the nineteenth
century,
ury, as in the century past, Vienna was the center of European musical activity
activity, where the
Austro-German school of composers—Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, Schumann, and others—dominated musical thinking. Paris was another center, attracting Liszt, Chopin, and others who
made their reputations there. But in Italy, the center of musical life during the Baroque period,
composers had isolated themselves from the European mainstream, concentrating almost exclusively
on opera. The Italian people were intensely devoted to music, and the support they gave to composers was rewarded by a continual supply of works created to suit their tastes.]
12. What were Giuseppe Verdi's contributions to opera? [Opera was still viewed as a showcase for
singers as it was more than a century before when the art of bel canto began. Appealing melodies
were primary: plot, costume, scenery, and instrumental accompaniment all were given relatively
minor attention—until the arrival of Giuseppe Verdi. Verdi had an instinctive gift for conveying
intense emotions through simple, direct music tailored expertly to the human voice. The son of
a poor innkeeper from a small village, Verdi had little musical training and could barely play the
piano. But he understood the tradition of Italian opera so deeply that he was able to expand it,
creating powerful human dramas of lust, passion, and violence that captivated the Italian public.
Italy's resistance to foreign musical influence was part of a political struggle against foreign domination. Verdi, an ardent nationalist, imbued his operas with patriotic fervor. The enthusiastic cry,
"Viva Verdi," became a political slogan and a sign of appreciation as huge numbers of people, rich
and poor, flocked to his operas, many attending performances night after night. Otello is one of two
operas based on Shakespeare's plays that Verdi created when he was in his seventies. Otello and
Falsta , with their dramatic coherence and advanced use of the orchestra, are widely considered
Falstaff
to be his greatest accomplishments.] How did Italians react to Verdi's death? [Verdi, the most popular Italian composer of all time, lived into the beginning of the twentieth century. He was buried
6
on the grounds of a home he had established for aging musicians. As the coffin passed, the
streets filled with people who spontaneously began to sing one of his most beloved melodies, "Va'
Pensiero."
Transcript
Introduction
Hello, I’m Megan Keith. Welcome to The History of Music, an introduction to the Western classical
music tradition. Part Five of our series, Early Romanticism, brings us into the early 1800s, a time
when artists were deeply affected by the ideas that had led to revolutions in France and North
America. Painters, musicians, and writers passionately believed in the concept of individual rights
and began to express their innermost feelings and give free reign to their imaginations.
It was Beethoven, with his Third Symphony, who led the artistic world into the romantic era.
Beethoven was inspired by the spirit of the times, and he worked to unify his symphonic movements around particular themes. We can hear this in his famous Fifth Symphony—the entire work
is tied together with a simple four note motif built into each movement.
Beethoven was a master of many musical forms, but he is especially remembered for his powerful
style, including his aggressive use of both dissonant and consonant harmonies.
Inspired by Beethoven’s work, many other composers of the romantic period showcased spontaneity and imagination in their music. While classical artists relied on form and structure, the romantic musicians gave priority to emotional expression.
Franz Schubert, Hector Berlioz, Franz Liszt, Frédéric Chopin, and Robert Schumann—we will learn
about all of these leading composers of the romantic era. Finally, we will travel to Italy, where
opera remained the most popular musical form. It’s here that composer Giuseppe Verdi helped
opera transcend the baroque style into the powerful emotion of romanticism.
Program
In Vienna in the 1790s, Ludwig van Beethoven had studied with Haydn, and his first two symphonies had followed the formats developed by Haydn and Mozart. In 1804, Beethoven completed a
third symphony, which he subtitled “Heroic.” While it was based on the same forms, it was a work
of unprecedented expressive power.
Beethoven reached maturity during the turbulent years of the French Revolution, and he was
in spirit a young man of his times. Heroism, struggle, fate, victory—these were concepts that
inspired him, and he tried to convey them in his music. In his “Heroic” Symphony, Beethoven built
a strong musical structure, much longer than previous symphonies but with each part contributing
to an overall unity. A symphony was no longer simply a group of four unrelated movements.
Ever since it was introduced in 1808, his Fifth Symphony has suggested to audiences a great victory won after intense struggle. The entire work is unified by a simple four-note motif that is
integrated into each movement. Composing like this was slow and painstaking, requiring continual
experimentation and revision. But Beethoven was not trying simply to please a patron. He was
trying to reach all humanity, present and future.
The music audience was growing in the early 1800s, as the middle class began to have time
and money to support the arts. Still, a composer could not survive without help from patrons.
Beethoven did not completely reject help from the wealthy, but he accepted it only on his own
7
terms, demanding to be treated not as a servant but as an artist accountable to himself.
Beethoven was regarded as the foremost composer of his time. He excelled in all the standard
forms: chamber music, religious choral works, and even opera. But some of his music bewildered
and challenged his listeners—especially his use of dissonance.
Harmony is the sound of several notes played at once—especially in homophonic music. Along
with many other factors, harmony affects the strength of tonality. Harmony includes sound combinations that range from consonant to dissonant. Consonant harmony tends to sound smooth,
clear, and generally more relaxed. Dissonant harmony tends to sound more agitated, restless,
and disturbed. While both consonance and dissonance had been a feature of music for centuries,
Beethoven used dissonance much more aggressively than had any of his predecessors.
During the early 1800s, the piano was undergoing many changes in design and construction, giving
it a stronger, more powerful voice with greater expressive possibilities, which Beethoven explored
in his later sonatas. The mighty sounds he called forth became the measure of the piano’s power
for generations.
Beethoven’s own life was a struggle. He endured a handicap especially painful to a musician: at
age twenty-eight, he began to lose his hearing. By age fifty, he was totally deaf. During his later
years, the composer turned inward, producing music that often gives the impression of deep
thought, of groping with cosmic ideas. Even today, this music sounds strange to many listeners.
But one of his late works remains among his most popular. His Ninth Symphony, with its profound
statement of faith in universal brotherhood, is celebrated for its innovative use of a chorus in the
finale, the singing of Friedrich Schiller’s Ode to Joy.
The intensity of his music, his pride in himself as an artist, and his merging of symphonic music,
choral singing, and poetry made Beethoven a hero to a group of young composers who represented a new spirit in the arts called romanticism. The romantic movement brought together
musicians, writers, and painters whose personal lives were often as unconventional as their art.
This painting portrays a group of these young artists symbolically gathered beneath a bust of
Beethoven.
As with the word classical, the word romantic has many meanings. As used to describe movements in the arts, however, the two words are almost opposites. If the classicists valued clarity,
restraint, order, and rational organization, the romantics valued spontaneity, passion, and imagination. Where the classical artist gave priority to overall form and structure, the romantic artist
gave priority to emotional expression and, in music, to such matters of sensation as tone color
and melody. The classicist saw himself as a humble artisan striving for the highest standards of
workmanship, while the romantic saw himself as a lonely prophet struggling to express a message
from within.
One of the young romantics was Franz Peter Schubert, who was born in this suburb of Vienna a
few years after Beethoven arrived in the city. Attracted to the idea of combining music and poetry
as Beethoven had done, Schubert, while still a teenager, began setting poems to music.
Schubert wrote some six-hundred lieder—the German word for songs—sometimes composing several in one day and often using the same poem over and over. Shy and indifferent to material
success, Schubert drew little public attention. Though he died at age thirty-one, he composed
an enormous quantity of music. But hardly any of it had been heard, except by his enthusiastic
circle of friends. One of his nine symphonies, called the Unfinished Symphony because it has only
two movements, was not performed until nearly forty years after his death. Today, it is his most
8
famous work. Although it is based on standard sonata allegro form, it differs from the classical
style in several ways: it emphasizes mood and melody and creates variety in tone color by featuring instruments other than the strings.
Many young composers of the early 1800s were moving in similar directions. Some went further
than Schubert, using the symphonic form to tell a story. Hector Berlioz, a French composer just a
few years younger than Schubert, fell deeply in love with an actress he had seen on stage but had
never met. He decided to write a symphony as part of his effort to impress her. Called Fantastic
Symphony, it depicts the drug-induced fantasy of a sensitive young musician tortured by love.
Berlioz represents his beloved by a particular theme—called an idée fixe—which recurs in each
movement. At the end, the musician is beheaded, and a grotesque funeral follows in which his
soul is mocked by his beloved, now transformed into a witch. To portray his extravagant story,
Berlioz called for an enlarged orchestra, including such instruments as the English horn and the
harp, instruments not usually used in symphonies. The result is a rich array of subtle tone colors
and some stunning effects.
Franz Liszt, a nineteen-year-old pianist and composer from Hungary, was on tour in Paris and
attended the first performance of Berlioz’s unusual work. Liszt was so impressed that he arranged
the Fantastic Symphony for piano and included it in his recitals all over Europe. As a composer,
however, Liszt was even more radical than Berlioz. While Berlioz’s work aims to tell a story, it
otherwise follows classic symphonic form. But Liszt tried to abandon classical forms altogether,
developing the symphonic poem, an orchestral piece meant to depict a series of moods or tell a
story—often called “program music.” His symphonic poems were held together by themes, each
representing an element of the story, the way Berlioz used the idée flxe to represent his beloved.
The musical devices Liszt used to suggest longing, restlessness, mystery, and unfulfilled love
greatly reduced the sense of tonal stability. These devices are called chromatic—related to color—
because they enrich or color the tonal structure.
Liszt’s symphonic poems often seem like successions of colorful episodes that begin and end at
whim, without a preconceived formal plan. But as innovative as he was as a composer, Liszt won
his greatest fame as a pianist. His reputation was established in Vienna, where at age ten he performed for Beethoven and met Schubert. This was the beginning of the age of the virtuoso, a solo
performer who exerted an almost magical spell over audiences through a combination of personal
magnetism and astonishing musical skill.
Niccolò Paganini was the first great romantic virtuoso. His phenomenal wizardry on the violin,
combined with his exotic appearance, prompted rumors that he was possessed by the devil.
Touring throughout Europe, Paganini won great wealth and fame.
Young Liszt sought to capture the public’s fancy in a similar manner. His talent was supported by
continuing improvements in the construction of the piano, which could now produce a range of
expression, from delicately whispered melodies to thundering cascades of sound. Liszt became a
glamorous personality—and frequently the butt of cartoonists and reporters—during his long years
of triumphant concert tours. His love affairs with various countesses and princesses were widely
publicized.
Throughout his long life, Liszt used his wealth and power to help spread the names and work of
other gifted composers of the time, most of whom were his friends. He even championed a potential rival, Frédéric Chopin, a pianist about the same age as Liszt, who, in his native Poland, had
been hailed as another Mozart.
9
But the frail Chopin lacked the physical stamina for the heroic role of a virtuoso. He preferred to
play for small groups in intimate settings, suitable to his delicate, dreamy style. Chopin’s compositions were tailored to his own strengths as a pianist, evoking wistful moods through his own
brand of chromatic harmony. Chopin’s playing style was so admired that even his hands were portrayed as objects of art. He was especially highly regarded in Paris, where he came to perform his
own compositions.
His short pieces for piano solo—often called character pieces because they centered on a single
mood—harked back to the baroque idea of restricting a piece to one emotion. But musical language had changed so much over nearly two centuries that the effect was now very different. The
character piece for the piano became a favorite of romantic composers and performers.
Robert Schumann, a German composer born the same year as Chopin, was another master of the
character piece. His dream of becoming a virtuoso ended when he injured his hand, but he wrote
a great deal of music for the piano. His pieces were performed throughout Europe by his wife,
Clara, one of the most important musicians of the time.
Settling in Liepzig, Robert Schumann founded and edited a journal of musical opinion and became
a central figure in the romantic movement, helping to promote such talented colleagues as
Chopin and Schubert. But he had great difficulty establishing himself as a composer. Schumann’s
music embodied two characteristic romantic attitudes: one, sensitive and dreamy; the other,
impetuous and passionate. He even devised names for these two sides of his personality and
sometimes signed his compositions with the one that applied.
In the nineteenth century, as in the century past, Vienna was the center of European musical
activity, where the Austro-German school of composers—Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert,
Schumann, and others—dominated musical thinking. Paris was another center, attracting Liszt,
Chopin, and others who made their reputations there.
But in Italy, the center of musical life during the baroque period, composers had isolated themselves from the European mainstream, concentrating almost exclusively on opera. The Italian
people were intensely devoted to music, and the support they gave to composers was rewarded
by a continual supply of works created to suit their tastes. Opera was still viewed as a showcase
for singers—as it was more than a century before, when the art of bel canto began. Appealing
melodies were primary; plot, costume, scenery, and instrumental accompaniment all were given
relatively minor attention, until the arrival of Giuseppe Verdi.
Verdi had an instinctive gift for conveying intense emotions through simple, direct music tailored
expertly to the human voice. The son of a poor innkeeper from a small village, Verdi had little
musical training and could barely play the piano. But he understood the tradition of Italian opera
so deeply that he was able to expand it, creating powerful human dramas of lust, passion, and
violence that captivated the Italian public.
Italy’s resistance to foreign musical influence was part of a political struggle against foreign domination. Verdi, an ardent nationalist, imbued his operas with patriotic fervor. The enthusiastic cry,
“Viva Verdi,” became a political slogan, as well as a sign of appreciation, as huge numbers of
people—rich and poor—flocked to his operas, many attending performances night after night.
Otello is one of two operas based on Shakespeare’s plays that Verdi created when he was in his
seventies. Otello and Falstaff
Falstaf , with their dramatic coherence and advanced use of the orchestra,
are widely considered to be his greatest accomplishments. Verdi, the most popular Italian
composer of all time, lived into the beginning of the twentieth century. He was buried on the
grounds of a home he had established for aging musicians. As the coffin passed, the streets filled
10
with people who spontaneously began to sing one of his most beloved melodies, “Va’ Pensiero.”
11