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Chapter 21: Music Imported and Exported
I. Introduction
A. Most of the text has thus far concentrated on Germany, Austria, France, and Italy.
B. Music obviously existed in other European countries, and we now turn to those.
C. Chopin was acknowledged by Schumann.
D. He was a different type of piano virtuoso.
E. That he hailed from Poland at a time when Polish nationalism was surging added to his fame.
II. Chopin
A. Chopin’s Career: From Warsaw to Paris
1. Recognized for his talent at a young age, Chopin traveled at a young age.
a. His first foreign debut was in Vienna, where he performed a work in homage to
Mozart.
b. He also performed one of his compositions that represented aspects of Polish
music—this was the one that won acclaim.
2. He hoped to follow in the steps of Paganini, but never won popular success on that
scale.
3. Instead, Chopin won his fame in prominent European families.
a. He became the most desired piano teacher in Paris.
b. He did not perform in the concert hall between 1838 and 1848.
4. In Paris, Chopin made his public persona through his publications.
5. A relationship with George Sand (the novelist Aurore Dudevant) allowed him to
compose in luxurious seclusion until it ended in 1847. The break-up left him depressed and not
interested in work.
6. He moved to England and again moved in fashionable circles.
7. He died in Paris of tuberculosis, the most Romantic of all diseases. He was a
mysterious stranger from Poland who embodied many aspects of Romanticism.
B. The Pinnacle of Salon Music
1. Chopin cultivated a refined manner that allowed him to move among the wealthy.
2. Improvisation was an important aspect of his performance, and he later tried to write it
down.
3. Since he did not perform in public, he didn’t need other musicians to play with him.
Therefore, most of his music is for piano solo.
4. Chopin saw himself as a creative artist rather than a virtuoso. To play like Chopin was
deemed an aspiration for many pianists.
5. He was one of the first to use the term “rubato.”
6. He wrote three sonatas; these were difficult for his contemporaries to understand.
7. Most of Chopin’s compositions are character pieces: nocturnes, études, ballades,
rondos, scherzos, and impromptus. He also has a number of dances.
8. The wide range of pieces, from large-scale works to miniatures, allows for a full
picture of the enigmatic composer.
C. The Chopinesque Miniature
1. Chopin’s preludes are expressive performance pieces that demonstrate his penchant for
improvisation.
2. Like those of Bach, Chopin composed a prelude in each major and minor key.
a. Four preludes are discussed in the text.
b. The A-Minor Prelude is an odd work, dissonant and ugly in a fanciful way.
Sand likened it to the composer’s coughing up blood in a bout with tuberculosis.
c. It is followed by an exuberant prelude in G major, and then the simple E-minor
slow prelude.
D. Nationalism as a Medium
1. The Polish dances, mazurkas and polonaises, are the most obvious Polish works by
Chopin.
a. They were considered exotic in France.
2. As with the Preludes, the moods and emotions of these works vary tremendously.
3. The mazurkas date from different periods in his life, and the style differs in each.
4. The polonaises are more heroic, as are the scherzos and ballades (and a few nocturnes).
a. His contemporaries saw the ballades as the most serious expressions of Polish
nationalism.
b. Mickiewicz wrote literary Polish ballades in Paris at the same time that Chopin
lived there.
1) Chopin’s ballades attempt to portray the same effects as Mickiewicz’
ballades, but without words.
2) He adapted aspects of the traditional sonata in these as well, particularly
narrative content vis à vis thematic development.
5. The Ballade in G Minor demonstrates a goal-oriented overall shape through such
narrative techniques.
a. It is a rather long work (ten minutes) and contrasts with the miniatures
discussed earlier.
b. Chopin was so familiar with the workings of sonata form that he could use
them in a personal way to convey structure.
6. The Ballade in G Minor is associated with a Polish Revolt, and some writers have
linked it to the “story of Poland” and its eventual independence.
III. United States of America
A. America Joins In
1. Gottschalk’s early career began like Chopin’s, but he never achieved the same fame.
2. He was the first American composer to make his mark in European fine-art music.
3. His socially ambitious parents shielded him from popular culture and brought him up
in European musical outlets: the salon and opera house.
4. A prodigy, at age fifteen Gottschalk performed Chopin’s E-Minor Concerto with the
composer in the audience.
5. His most commercially successful music was that based on exotic themes and locales,
particularly from the New World.
a. Gottschalk’s “Bamboula” represents a place, music, and community that the
composer probably did not know first-hand (he was fifteen and in Paris when he composed it).
b. Nonetheless, the type of pianism needed to play the work struck audiences as
authentic.
6. Gottschalk toured frequently, bringing high culture to American audiences in
particular.
7. He also wrote a number of parlor pieces in which he attempted to introduce a measure
of sophistication to American audiences.
8. He left the United States in 1865 to avoid false charges of statutory rape and spent the
last four years of his life in South America.
a. He produced monster concerts that included around 650 performers, including
twenty-five pianists on twenty-five pianos.
B. Art and Democracy
1. Gottschalk represented America’s schizophrenic attitudes toward high and low culture.
2. Europeans held Americans in disdain for their commercialism, mechanical technology,
and indifference to matters of culture and conduct.
3. By 1865, a new middle class offered a large audience for the popular consumption of
art.
IV. Russia
A. Russia: The Newcomer
1. As Peter I (“the Great”) Westernized Russia, musical exchanges began between
Western Europe and St. Petersburg.
2. Italian opera came to Russia in the mid-eighteenth century.
3. Catherine the Great imported a long line of distinguished composers to Russia.
a. Comic operas (in French) were performed alongside serious Italian ones.
b. Russian composers began to study with the foreign musicians.
c. By the end of the eighteenth century there were Russian musical comedies by
Russian composers.
d. Instrumental music was slower to make an impact. The first import to do so
was John Field.
B. National Markings and Folk Tunes
1. After the imported musicians, a second stage of composition in Russia consisted of
native-born talent.
2. This coincided with Herder’s influential ideas about national character, so Russian
music featured “natural artifacts” of peasant culture.
3. Russian folk art was soon exported as well.
4. While this may seem like Russian nationalism, the idea of such nationalism was
essentially a response to Russia’s Westernization.
C. Mikhail Glinka
1. The first school of significant Russian composers dates to 1836 and the premiere of
Glinka’s A Life for the Tsar.
a. This work was patriotic, heroic, and tragic. Heretofore Russian opera had been
predominantly comic.
b. Glinka used Russian folk style in the opera. (He was not the first to do so.)
c. Comparisons with Chopin’s nationalism are inevitable because he and Glinka
deal with the same subject, but from different sides.
2. Glinka was singled out as the beginning of Russian nationalism because he used folk
style in a spirit of nationalism, not peasant folksiness.
a. He did not imitate existing songs but created new ones in the style of the old
ones.
b. In this manner, he represented Romantic ideals of creation from the heart and
genius.
3. Glinka also mastered advanced international compositional technique—he was more
cosmopolitan than his Russian contemporaries.
a. His opera has affinities with Rossini in the vocal writing.
b. There is also a connection with French grand opera in scale.
c. Finally, it includes harmonic and contrapuntal complexities seen in German
operas.
D. Acquiring Brains and Beauty
1. Despite the fact that no conservatories existed when Glinka was studying music, he
had a well-rounded musical education.
a. He studied the works of Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven when young.
2. Glinka went to Milan and studied with Donizetti and Bellini. Here he acquired beauty.
3. He went to Berlin for study and acquired brains.
4. As such, Glinka’s nationalism was dependent on his acquisition of other music, a more
cosmopolitan base.
5. Glinka was politically committed to Russia. He worked under the most reactionary
monarch in Europe.
6. The subject matter of A Life for the Tsar fits perfectly with the aims of Tsar Nikolai I.
a. Based on the legend of Ivan Susanin, the story had been around for some time.
b. In the story, the peasant saves the tsar, ultimately losing his life.
c. By using the “Tsar” in the title, Glinka makes a statement about his
commitment to Official Nationalism.
7. Chopin’s nationalism was felt in his music, but without text.
8. Glinka’s Poles express themselves collectively and impersonally—thus without an
independent voice.
a. He uses musical contrasts to depict Poles and Russians.
b. The Russians’ music is personal and lyrical.
9. Glinka’s score for A Life for the Tsar is a significant reason why he is considered the
founding father of Russian composers.
a. His use of folk elements in a tragic style is new.
b. He brought in styles associated with earlier periods to depict the divine right of
the tsar to rule.
c. The sentiments are counterrevolutionary.
E. How the Acorn Took Root
1. Glinka also left a significant mark on instrumental music—so much so that
Tchaikovsky claimed that Glinka’s Kamarinskaya was “the acorn from which the whole oak of
Russian symphonic music grew.”
2. Kamarinskaya is based on two Russian folk themes.
3. Glinka inserted a musical pun, blending two different folk songs together.
4. The long-range tonal plan reflects the opening motive of the wedding song. Such a
structural trajectory is seen in Beethoven, and Glinka sought to emulate him but used folk songs
as the melodic material.