[notes based on readings of Sadie, ed.

, “The Cambridge Music Guide”]

ANCIENT GREECE AND ROME

Greece

Plato, Aristotle – music molding the character of youths.

- Kithara (harp-like); aulos (oboe-like, with usually two pipes)

- Tragedies (by Sophocles, Euripides) were declaimed in a musical fashion by actors and choruses

- Plato speaks of heterophony

- Pythagoras (6th c. BC) – the motions of the planets produced a celestial ‘music of the spheres,’
unhearable by humans

(A) Aristides Quintilianus (fl late 3rd-early 4th c. AD) – treatise On Music (Peri mousikē), book i defines
the science of music and its parts (harmonics, rhythmic, metrics); book ii, explication of music’s
paideutic role; book iii, exegesis of number, the soul and the order of the universe; defines
various subclasses of music (theoretical vs practical; …)
(B) Plato – in the Timaeus, employed music as a cosmological paradigm, but also, as in his Republic
and the Laws, with practical issues (influence of music on behavior).

Ancient Greek music theory is not primarily interested in analyzing pieces of music or explaining
compositional or performing practices – specialized literature ranging from Pyhtagorean excerpts to
treatises written between 3rd-5th c. AD.

Important early treatises (ranging from 4th c. BC to 4th c. AD):

 Division of the Canon

 Cleonides, Harmonic Introduction
 Nicomachus of Gerasa, Manual of Harmonics
 THEON OF Smyrna, On Mathematics Useful for the Understanding of Plato
 Gaudentius, Harmonics Introduction
 Alypius, Introduction to Music
 Bacchius, Introduction to the Art of Music
 Dionysius, Introduction the Art of Music
Three basic traditions in the corpus of ancient Greek music theory (treatises fir in one tradition, o
sometimes a combination):

1. Pythagorean tradition – primarily concerned with number theory and the relationships between
music and the cosmos (also its influence on behavior).
2. Harmonicists – a related, scientific tradition of harmonics; attracted by the pure phenomena of
music; Aristoxenus, in his Harmonic Elements, developed a highly sophisticated system for
analyzing musical phenomena.
3. Aristoxenian tradition – based on Aristotelian principles

Rome

- Less tolerant than Greeks; Roman Republic (1st c. BC) music was thought to lower moral
standards

- Empire (after 31 BC) – Nero as musician

THE MIDDLE AGES

Fall of ancient Roman Empire (5th c. AD) to Italian Renaissance (15th c.)

Europe’s various regions with their own repertoiry of plainchant; Frankish emperor
Charlemagne (d. 814) unified Europe musically (and politically), and imposed a single repertory of
plainchant, basically Roman in origin, ‘compiled’ by St. Gregory, the Great.

Carolingian Era (under Charlemagne) – [6th c. up to] 9th c., plainchant as main outlet for
European composers; flourishing of the arts and ideas; neumatic notation (neumes) devised to help
maintain repertory; identified specific pitches by 11th c.; Guido d’Arezzo (d. c. 1050) ‘staff’; 11th c. staff
with 4-6 lines, Guido colored lines (F-red, C-yellow); 13th c. notes with square/diamond shape heads; 16th
c. round-headed notes.

(A) Pope Gregory I (590-604)

a. Categorizing of plainchant (plainsong, “Gregorian chant” [called so around 9th c.])

i. Might be ‘syllabic chant’ / ‘melodic chant’; not much skips (two skips in a row);
curvilinear style; where skips occurs, the melody tends to fold right back and fill
the vocal space with smooth step motion; meterless rhythms, ‘oratorical’
rhythms

ii. Neumatic notation (above the text)

Early Polyphony – organum, with at least two melodic lines, based on plainsong, same rhythm, parallel
motion (of 4ths, 5ths, 8vss); 9th/10th c.

(B) Leonin (c. 1163-90) – wrote mainly for two voices (organum duplum)

(C) Perotin (fl. 1200) – more developed music, ¾ voices (organum triplum/quadruplum); Viderunt
omnes, from Mass for Christmas Day; sometimes described as Gothic music

a. Both from the cathedral of Notre Dame in Paris; Magnus liber organi may have been
compiled and revised by them; what sets N.D. polyphony radically apart from earlier
polyphony is its metrical rhythm

Ars Nova (14th c.; versus 13th c. Ars Antiqua)

 (D) Philippe de Vitry (1291-1361) – French composer and theorist, leader of the Ars Nova
movement; Ars Nova treatise attributed to him (discussed isorhythm and ‘measured’ music,
mostly in triple meter, tempus perfectum; system of rhythmic modes [vs the ‘unmeasured’
music of the plainchant]

a. Vitry observed that by the early 14th c. duple meter had become acceptable

i. Discussed isorhythm – structural device whereby patterns and units of melody

were repeated

b. His compositions had a more strict rhythmical and metrical framework

(E) Guillaume de Machaut (b. c. 1300-d.c. 1377) – most representative figure of the 14 th c.; Mese de
Nostre Dame, 2 sacred motets; 21 secular motets; over 115 French songs (ballades, rondeaux,
virelais) 2-4 voices (ex., Ma fin est mon commencement); composed isorhythmic motets and lai,
virelai in early medieval forms as well as in the Ars Nova manner; one of the first to produce
polyphonic settings of secular poetry in traditional formes fixes – ballades and rondeaux – and to
write more polyphony for 4 voices instead of the usual 3; one of the earliest composer by whom
there survives a complete polyphonic setting of the Mass Ordinary

Secular Polyphony – forms: madrigal, ballata, caccia (=chase)

[Italian Ars Nova]

(F) Francesco Landini (c. 1325-1397) – Italian composer (blind from birth); most of his compositions
are polyphonic ballate for 2/3 voices; Landini cadence (producing the interval of a 5th above the
c.f. before the octave at cadences)

(G) Johannes Ciconia (c. 1335-1411) - ?

Instrumental music
 Popular – lute, harp, vielle (fiddle), rebec, psaltery, flutes, recorders, shawns (precursor of the
oboe), trumpets (buisine), bagpipe, cymbals, bells, triangles, drums, clappers, hurdy-gurdy (shaped like a
viol, with a wheel to set strings in motion); composers rarely specified roles for individual instruments,

Sacred – probably only organ

-> 13th/14th c. music written down

England (13th c.)

Earliest known example anywhere in Europe of polyphony for six voices – Sumer is icumen in
(canon a 4, plus two more voices)

(H) John Dunstaple (or Dunstable) – mainly polyphonic music for Mass (3/4/ voices); ‘typical’ English
sonority of his time, resulting from juxtaposition of 6ths and 3rds between voices, instead of
more common ‘open’ 4ths/5ths/8vs; freer treatment of the traditional cantus firmus

(I) Hildegard of Bingen (Germany ?; 12th c. abbess) – sacred monophony (spirtual songs)

Slow turn from sacred to secular (12th/13th c.). Emergence of European song (with local
vernacular languages, instead of Latin), in part by the widespread prosperity of the feudal courts –
troubadours (S France), trouveres (N France)

Nations as centers (14th c.) – France, Italy, England

RENAISSANCE
c. 1420-1600 (term, rebirth/revival; finding inspiration in the ancient classics)

 Early Renaissance – c. 1420-1475

 High Renaissance – c. 1475-1530 (dominance of imitative polyphony [Desprez])

 Late Renaissance – c. 1530-1600 (emergence of triadic sonority, projection of verbal texts,

heightening music’s expressive capabilities [Palestrina])

Protagoras – “Mankind is the measure of all things.”

(Beginnings of) Humanism

Previous centuries emphasized a philosophy of denying this world and mortifying its flesh.
Renaissance began to ‘restore’ human beings; it looked for fulfillment in the present (“…it let individuals
be the judges of their knowledge; the shapers of their destiny,” Levy)

[in painting, a more three-dimensional perspective rather than flat figures (Giotto, Masaccio, Donatello);
in poem, sensuous love lyrics to a flesh-and-blood woman, instead of the medieval stereotype of the
adored woman as a spiritual symbol (Petrarch)]

Renaissance humanists began rediscovering cultural treatises of antiquity, intrigued by the

legendary powers and quality of the music of ancient Greece but were frustrated by the difficulties in
recapturing their music, the absence of notated pieces of music, and incomplete or imperfect
manuscripts.

Court of Burgundy – famed for both political successes and artistic brilliance; it attracted some
of the greatest artists/musicians of the period.

Renaissance movement started in Italy (philosophically/politically and to a small degree

musically), but developed itself with the north – French, Flemish and Netherlandish – composers.
 (A) Guillaume Dufay (c. 1400-1474) – from the ‘Burgundian School’; French; Ave regina caelorum
(motet and last movements of a Mass), Alma Redemptoris Mater (less rhythmic distortion,
motet with plainchant in the topmost voice, added metric pulse to meterless plainchant, texture
is nonimitative polyphony until final chordal harmonies, emphasizing text); most significant
figure of the period; predominantly melodic character of his pieces, less complexities of some
late Gothic music; composer of polyphonic chansons (Ce soys de may [rondeau]); earliest
examples of text painting.

Dufay, Ockeghem, Josquin – led European musical styles through the first century of the Renaissance.

Reformation (Germany; Martin Luther, 1483-1546) – attempt to rid the Catholic church of corruption
and abuse, and to ‘rationalize’ religious practice by allowing all to worship in their own language
(‘secularization of Liturgical music)
Counter-Reformation – 1540; a move by the Catholic Church to rid itself of malpractices and to
encourage greater piety among the people (Council of Trent, 1545-1563, concerned with secular
melodies in church, the weakening of the traditions of plainsong, objected over-elaborated
polyphony obscuring liturgical words, no virtuoso singing, and only organ)

Invention of printing in mid-15th c. (music printing c.1473)

(B) Binchois (Gilles de Bins; c. 1400-1460) – chanson composer

(C) Johannes Ockeghem (c. 1410-c.1497) – Paris; use of canon in his Masses and Motets; Missa
cuiusvi toni, Missa prolationum, Requiem.

(D) Josquin Desprez (c.1440-1521) – great composer of early Renaissance; motets (Ave Maria …
virgo serena) predominantly imitative, more varied rhythm (less restricted by meter and devices
such as isorhythm), dissonance gained expressive value (Nymphes des bois, chanson, written on
the death of Ockeghem), more clearly marked cadences.
Late Renaissance

(E) Orlando di Lassus (Roland de Lassus; 1532-1594) – over 2000 works; combined several national
styles; Alma redemptoris mater

(F) Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina (c.1525-1594) – Italy; counter-reformation composer (Council of

Trent); Missa Papae Marcelli; worked at the papal chapel, never left Rome (center of Counter-
Reformation -> more restricted, less free to experiment)

Imitative polyphony – is the word!!

Word-painting – characterized later Italian madrigal

Venice – trading city, elected ruler instead of a princely family, height of prosperity in the 16 th c.

(G) Adrian Willaert (c.1490-1562) – Netherland composer, went to Venice’s St. Mark’s basilica

(H) Andrea Gabrielli (c.1510-1586) – dividing choirs/players in groups (cori spezzati technique)

(I) Giovanni Gabrielli (c.1555-1612) – earliest use of the word Concerti (concerto), for a published
volume; “he belongs … as much to the Baroque era as to the Renaissance,” emphasis on
contrast of various sorts, development of the concerto-like (concertato) style

(J) Luca Marenzio (c.1553-1599) – Italian madrigalist, famous word-painter (Dolorosi martir,
chromatic chords, change of style, object/idea reflected in actual shape of melodic line,
ascending scale=upward flight, short phrases (with rests)=breathlessness/excitement, falling
semitone=fainting/death

(K) Carlo Gesualdo (c.1560-1613) – Prince; musical language was text-oriented [Stravinsky arranged
some of his madrigals]

Spain

(L) Tomás Luis de Victoria (1548-1611) – sacred music; ‘parody’ type +20 Masses
England

(M) William Byrd (1543-1623) – Ave Verum corpus (cross-relation); the English counterpart of
Palestrina and Lassus; wrote anthems (English equivalent of motet); wrote music for Catholic
and Protestant (Anglican) churches – Masses (Latin) and Proper motets vs Services (polyphonic
settings of Magnificat, Te Deum) and anthems; intricate, flowing counterpoint in his songs
(secular and sacred); This sweet and merry month of May; wrote from keyboard (harpsichord,
virginal, spinet, organ); “Father of British Music”; not a madrigalist

(N) Thomas Morley (c.1557-1602) – laid the foundations of the English madrigal school; Now is the
month of maying; edited The Triumphs of Oriana.

(O) Thomas Weelkes (c.1575-1623) – madrigalist; wrote for The Triumphs of Oriana; employed
word-painting effects

Ensemble (Instrumental) Music

- first as arrangements of vocal pieces; then fantasia (England), canzone or ricercar (Italy and
Germany)
- popular dances were the pavan, often followed by a galliard and a passamezzo
- lute, cornett, trumpet, shawn, sackbut, percussion
- Orlando Gibbons (1583-1625)

Keyboard Music

- John Bull (1562-1628)

- Fantasia, Canzona, Courante (3 meter dance, France; corrente, Italy; coranto, English)
- Lute, like keyboard, gained independence from accompanying role (fantasias, sets of variations)

(P) John Dowland (1563-1626) – English composer of ayres (for lute).

BAROQUE

Roughly 1600-1750; Monteverdi -> Bach/Handel

Period with a certain degree of unity. Term used first in art/architecture in a negative way, for
something clumsy, strange, overblown (French/Portuguese, ‘misshapen pearl’)

17th-18th c. more theoretical and literary sources that speak of ancient Greek music began to
circulate in published form (appealing to their antiquarian and historical interests, as well as supplying
evidence for arguments about the purpose and meaning of music).

Early

(A) Giulio Caccini (c.1545-1618) – Le nuove musiche (1602; collection of madrigals and strophic arias
for solo voice and continuo); important Baroque composer of the ‘monody’ genre (vocal, florid
line and a ‘slow’-moving accompaniment by lute/harpsichord); member of the Camerata
(musicians, intellectuals, nobleman)

Rise of desire for expression (in madrigal mainly) – extreme dissonances and rhythmic contrasts
-> attack/reaction in the (excessive) use of word painting, mainly by the Camerata Fiorentina (Florence,
1570/80s), thought of as artificial and childish, with too many voices clouding feelings/expression (a
return to what they thought to be Ancient Greece practice); recitative style developed.

Idea of ‘accompanying’ parts – difference in status between instrumental parts.

- Basso continuo (continuo) keyboard (harpsichord, organ) or plucked string (lute) with a bass line
with figures written to indicate additional notes; often with two instruments, a sustaining one
with the written line (cello, viol, bassoon) and other also with harmony
- Trio sonata – basso continuo with two upper lines (violins)

Polyphony regarded as an old-fashioned method (or related to church music)

 Pursuit of striking effects – composers aimed to move the passions (affections) not just
instantaneously (like word-painting before, very momentarily); tried to sustain the ‘affect’ of a
movement throughout its length (the overall prevailing emotion expressed)

Courts and Churches as important centers of musical patronage.

- Italy – Gonzaga family employed many important composers (Monteverdi); Venetian noble
families opened the earliest opera house and supported composers like Alessandro Scarlatti,
Corelli and Handel.
- Germany – Thirty Years’ War ending in 1648, leaving country divided in numerous dukedoms,
marquisates, ‘free cities’, church lands, with their own courts with a Kapellmeister.
- France and England – central court (Paris and London) where musical patronage was firmly
established, with little musical activity elsewhere (until the rise of the bourgeois groups at the
end of the 17th c.).

Opera

Arose from the desire of the Florentine Camerata to re-create the ancient Greek drama with
music which gave rise to ‘monody’ style (also from huge court entertainments [intermedi] that used
music, dance, drama and speech).

- Earliest operas as court entertainment; by 1637 opera houses open to the public in Venice
- First operas by Peri and Caccini (Dafne, 1597, “first opera”)

(B) Claudio Monteverdi (1567-1643) – early madrigals moved away from the Renaissance pattern of
continuous polyphony (where words were often unclear); preferred group dialogue to
continuous imitative writing.
Orfeo (1607) – [first masterpiece opera] Orpheus’s journey to the underground to rescue
Eurydice; earliest opera performed today; variety of instruments, which were required at
specific points in the score (color to suit expression); in the late Renaissance tradition of
intermedi.
 Arianna (1608); prima prattica vs seconda prattica -> conservative writing for Mass in the
traditional imitative style (no madrigal-like illustrative word-setting) vs a free, ornamental
melodic line; Vespers (Mass settings, psalm settings, motet movements); 9 books of Madrigals
where the old concept of the polyphonic madrigal gives way to a much freer kind of
composition, of any lenghth and for any performers (stile concitato, used in book 8’s canti
guerrieri section, rapid repeated notes); Il ritorno d’Ulisse in patria (1640); Lincoronazione di
Poppea (1642), a more true to life work (no mythological).

Practice of cori spezzati grew in Venice (homophony vs polyphony) -> supposedly a sign of the
ideals of magnificence and extravagance.

Stylistic Features:

- Rhythm and Meter – more definite, regular, insistent; single rhythm repeated throughout;
acceptance of meter (bar lines first used)
- Texture – basso continuo (continuo)
- Functional Harmony

Early-Middle

Italy

(C) Girolamo Frescobaldi (1583-1643) – keyboard composer (ricerare, canzonas, dances, fantasies,
capriccios, toccatas).

(D) Francesco Cavalli (1602-1676) – Monteverdi’s sucessor in opera; Ercole amante (1660); more
concerned with writing effectively for the human voice (less extreme passionate expression [of
Monteverdi]); arias seen as the beginning of the bel canto tradition; Egisto (1643).

17th c. - Venice as main operatic center and Rome as center of sacred music.
 Sacred musical dramas (akin to operas, religious topics – Rappesentazione di anima, et di corpo,
Emilio de Cavalieri (1600)

(E) Giacomo Carissimi (1605- ) – motets, sacred works, cantatas; known mainly for his oratorios
(like Monteverdi, vivid recitative, with dissonances to heighten the expression).

Northern Europe

(F) Heinrich Schütz (1585-1672) – northern European composer counterpart to Monteverdi, wrote
only vocal music (mainly religious); employed the more modern Italian use of contrast (in pace,
texture, color, rhythm) in his motets; “the first great German composer.”

Instrumental Music for Keyboard: J. P. Sweelinck (Netherlands, 1562-1621), composer of

brilliant toccatas, fantasias and variations; Johann Jacob Froberger (middle Germany, 1616-67), pupil of
Frescobaldi who did much for the development of the dance suite for harpsichord; Johann Pachelbel
(1653-1706), organ music (chorale settings) had considerable influence.

(G) Dietrich Buxtehude (c.1637-1707) – northern keyboard composer; revived an old pratice of
giving public concerts in the church, Abendmusik (“evening music”) [Bach used to walk miles to
hear them and to hear Buxtehude play the organ]; wrote oratorios, cantatas, arias, chamber
music; remembered mainly for his organ music, half of it being chorale preludes (works in which
a famliar Lutheran hymn is used in some way – inner voice, imitative passages base on lines of
the melody, or chorale is presented ornamented); great influence on Bach’s organ music.
Middle

England

Elizabethan England = late 16th c. and Jacobean England = early 17th c.

- flowering of musical styles (madrigal, lute ayre, sacred music, keyboard music, music for
instrumental consort) led to resistance of Italian Baroque extremes;

English equivalents of new Italian genres/styles:

Italy England
Monodic song Florid type of song (first half of the century)
Concertante motet Verse anthem (of the Anglican church) – solo
verses generally alternate with full passages for
whole choir

Opera was slow to take root; at court (and later public theaters) a mixed type developed,
“masque” (owing more to French courtly entertainments) which included poetry, dance and lavish
settings

- during Commonwealth period (1642) court and cathedral appointments for musicians were
abolished and theatrical events discouraged
- Monarchy restored in 1660

(A) Henry Purcell (1659-1695) – developed rapidly, died young (like Mozart and Schubert);
composed some “fantasias” (consort music for string instruments), probably viols, of a particular
English tradition) and trio sonatas (for the more modern combination of two violins, bass viol
and harpsichord or organ); in sacred music, he wrote c.65 anthems (in the verse anthem form)
more in the Italian concertante style; composed an opera, “Dido and Aeneas” (1689) and some
semi-operas like “The Fairy Queen” (1692, based on Shakespeasre’s “A Midsummer Night’s
Dream”) which are extended entertainments, mainly spoken drama with musical sections;
“greatest English composer of the Baroque era.”
France

France was strongly connected with Italy (French kings married important Italian Medici family).

- ballet became popular in Paris by the end of the 16th c.

- new recitative style arrived in Paris (through Caccini) in early 17th c.
- Italian opera was introduced in mid-17th c. with limited success
o development of French opera, accounting for the French taste for dramatic
entertainment, including ballet and giving due weight to the traditions of French
declamation.

(B) Jean-Baptiste Lully (Giovanni Battista Lulli; Florence, 1635 – Paris, 1687) – composed mainly
ballets at first, including songs that embody an adaptation of Italian affective recitative to the
French language – which lacks the accentuation system of Italian and thus fall less naturally into
regular metric patterns (his recitatives are constantly changing in meter); he established the
new French operatic form, influenced by the strong theater traditions of that country, the
French love of dance and Louis XVI’s fondness for lavish spectacle. Died from blood poisoning
after striking a toe with the stick he used for directing performances

(C) Marc-Antoine Charpentier (c.1648-1704) – church composer of Lully’s time, studied in Italy,
brought the dramatic oratorio style to France.

(D) François Couperin (1668-1733) – most important and gifted French composer during the first
three decades of the eighteenth century; important for his chamber and harpsichord music

(E) Jean-Philippe Rameau (1683-1764) – Lully’s greatest successor as a dramatic composer; organist
and theorist; composed operas to the Lullian genre of tragédie lyrique, and opera-ballet; “…he is
said to have cared more about his theories than his composition, for he was eager to interpret
music in line with the rationalist, scientific outlook of his time.”
 Unlike Italian opera of the time, in which there is a clear break between recitative (where the
action takes place) and aria (where a character expresses his/her feelings), French opera has a relatively
continuous texture.

Late

Italy

Alessandro Scarlatti Chief representative of opera (and cantata) of

middle to late Baroque
Pergolesi Chief representative of opera of late Baroque
(early Classic)
Corelli Late Baroque ideal of instrumental music
Vivaldi Late Baroque (early Classic ideal of instrumental
Domenico Scarlatii music

(A) Alessandro Scarlatti (1660-1725) – most prolific composer of the era (c.50 operas survived; c.35
oratorios; c.85 motets; c.600 cantatas mostly for solo voice and continuo); important in the
development of the opera overture, which is Monteverdi’s day had been little more than a short
piece but which now grew into something more substantial – by the 1690s it normally consisted
of three short movements, f-s-f (this was eventually to lead to the symphony of the Classical
period); found of the “Neapolitan School”.

Early operas (A. Scarlatti) there may be as many as 60 arias, all quite brief, with recitative in
between and occasional ensemble items (usually at the ends of acts). Usually in a simple A-B form (or A-
B-B’); but these increasingly gave way to the A-B-A design which by the 1690s was standard. This pattern
allowed for longer arias, and also permitted the virtuoso singer, who was becoming more important as
opera was heard more often and in more cities, to show his/her abilities in the repeat of the A section by
adding expressive embellishments.

A. Scarlatti – serious opera

Giovanni Battista Pergolesi (1710-36) – comic opera (La serva padrona, 1733)

(B) Arcangelo Corelli (1653-1713) – important instrumental music composer; published only six sets
of works:
a. Op. 1, 3 – church sonatas (the establishment of the s-f-s-f movement pattern was largely
due to Corelli; more ‘serious’ in form, usually with at least one fugal movement; 2 violins
and continuo)
b. Op. 2, 4 – chamber sonatas (with dance rhythms; 2 violins and continuo)
c. Op. 5 – set of violin solo sonatas
d. Op. 6 – set of concertos (2 violins and cello, with a larger string body; “Christmas
Concerto”, op. 6, no. 8)
i. Each of the six sets with 12 separate works

(C) Antonio Vivaldi (1678-1741) – wrote c. 500 concertos, c. 70 orchestrasl concertos (no solo
parts), c. 80 double and triple concertos (L’estro armonico, op. 3 [1712]); La stravaganza, op. 4
[c. 1713]; Il cimento dell’armonia e dell’inventione concerti, op. 8 [c. 1725], were we find Le
quattro stagioni); over 45 operas of modest importance; RV (Ryom-Verzeichnis) is the thematic
catalogue of his works; famous “programatic” concertos, La note (bassoon concerto), Il
gardellino (“The Goldfinch”, flute concerto), La tempesta di mare, and the famous The Four
Seasons (first four violin concertos of his op. 8—although the basis of the concerto form remains
unchanged [ritornello form])

(D) Domenico Scarlatti (1685-1757 [same as Bach and Handel]) – famous for his sonatas for the
harpsichord (c. 550, each a one movement piece in binary form [some a ‘sketch’ of sonata
 form]); introduced/developed several keyboard devices such as hand-crossing, quizk repeated
notes, fast scale passages, use of the entire range of the keyboard.

Germany

(A) Georg Philipp Telemann (1681-1767) – most prolific composer of his age; “Telemann’s other
achievements included the foundation and editing of a musical periodical and the championing
of a composer’s legal and financial rights in his own music;” best-known works are from his
three collections Musique de table (1733) published as background music for eating but
intended for more general use—each set includes an overture in the French style, and Italian
concerto, and chamber works (quartet, trio sonatas, solo sonata).

(B) Johann Sebastian Bach ([21 March] 1685 – 1750 [28 July]) – 1708, court organist in Weimar,
prolific output of organ works (Ein feste Burg, where a familiar chorale melody would be woven
into the musical texture), including most of those in the prelude-and-fugue (or toccata-and-
fugue) category, along the Buxtehude model, as well as chorale preludes; stayed in Weimar until
1717, when he moved to Cöthen, under Prince Leopold; in one trip with the Prince, he came
back home to find his wife, (second cousin) Maria Barbara dead and buried (at age 36, 1720),
leaving a family of four (two had died in infancy); Bach remarried in 1721 with Anna Magdalena,
a singer at the court (she 20, he 36), bearing him no fewer than 13 children; most of his chamber
and orchestral works (Brandenburg Concertos)belong to the Cöthen years, as well as much of
his harpsichord music. During his Wiemar years, Bach became interest in the current styles of
Italian instrumental music and had made arrangements (solo harpsichord/organ) of orchestral
concertos (by Vivaldi and others). Bach’s concertos used the Vivaldian type of ritornello form,
though he liked textures rather fuller and more contrapuntal than Vivaldi’s, and with wind
instruments; also from the Cöthen period are his four “orchestral suites,” in the French style
(overtures in the abrupt, arresting, [dotted] jerky rhythms, followed by a fugal movement with
ritornello features, and a series of dances); another important work from the Cöthen years are
his The Well Tempered Keyboard (Book 1), from around 1722, as a series of preludes and fugues
for the harpsichord/clavichord (“partly designed to demonstrate that an instrument could be
tuned to play effectively in every key;” “in Bach’s time new form of compromise were being
devised to accommodate the wider range of keys that was needed”), as well as his notebooks of
simple pieces for his eldest son and his new wife, his “inventions” and “sinfonias” (“exercises in
composition and performance, in the interchange of material between the hands, to help the
player to gain independence of hand action”), and two books of dance suites, the English Suites
and the French Suites (“Each suite has the four basic dances (Allemande, Courante, Sarabande,
Gigue) with an extra one between the last pair”); in chamber music, Bach extended the use of
the harpsichord: instead of only supplying the continuous harmonies, in the six sonatas for violin
that he wrote at Cöthen he assigned it an obligatory, fully written-out RH part; the other notably
original contribution came in the sonatas or suites for solo violin and cello—he wrote six such
works for each instrument (“managing the distribution of notes in such a way as to imply
harmony”); Bach moved to Leipzig in 1723. In Leipzig he was employed not by a private patron
but by civic and church authorities. Bach had to supply Cantatas for each Sunday. In 1723 he
composed a complete cycle of cantatas (about 60), producing another one his second year;
finished his third in two years, followed by a fourth (with evidences that he wrote a fifth cycle
during the 1730s/40s). He wrote the second set of 24 preludes and fugues (WTK2) in all the keys
and four books entitled Clavier-Übung (“Keyboard Exercises”), an instructional collection where
one finds (third [second?] book) two contrasting pieces in the Italian (“Concerto in the Italian
Style) and French (“Overture in the French manner”) styles (the Goldberg Variations is the
fourth book). Bach organized the local musical society (or collegiums musicum), providing
weekly concerts. For these concertos, Bach revived his Cöthen repertory of instrumental music,
supplementing it with new harpsichord concertos and other music for small orchestra. Bach’s
novel creation (never before had the solo role in a concerto been given to a keyboard
instrument) are, for the most part, adaptations of works originally written as violin concertos.
He also wrote multiple concertos—two for two harpsichords, two for three, and one for four
(arranged from a Vivaldi four-violin concerto). For the remainder of his life, church/service music
was the focus. One of the first was his St. John Passion (1723?), followed by St. Matthew Passion
(1727), a much longer work (3hrs.), and St. Mark Passion (mostly lost)—although his basic work
was the production of a weekly cantata (f.e., Ein Feste Burg no. 80, using the famous
Reformation chorale and designed for the Reformation Festival; the chorale is used in almost
every moment).
a. Goldberg Variations – in 1741 he went to Dresden to present one of his patrons with
this work (named after the young harpsichordist, probably a pupil of Bach’s). This, which
 Bach later published as the fourth book in his Clavir-Übung, is his longest and most
demanding harpsichord work. “The set is like a summation of the musical forms that
Bach had used throughout his life in his harpsichord music—French overture, fugue,
invention, dance movements and so on, all linked by what is in effect a ground bass.”).
After a statement of the aria at the beginning of the piece, there are thirty variations,
following not the melody of the aria. But rather the bass line and chord progression
(chaconne-like)—each third variation is a canon, following an ascending pattern (var. 3
canon at the unison, var. 6 canon at the second, …, var. 27 canon at the ninth; the final
variation is a quodlibet); all the variations are in G major, apart from var. 15, 21, and 25
in G minor.
b. Musical Offering – in a trip to Berlin, in 1747, Bach was invited to improvise at the piano
a fugue on a theme by Frederick the Great. Bach did so and promised to publish the
fugue. Back to Leipzig Bach went further and wrote for the king this musical collection
built around his theme. It includes the improvised fugue and also a larger fugue (6
voices), a series of canons of different kinds, and a trio sonata for flute, violin and
continuo.
c. The Art of Fugue – written in the early 1740, it has fugues of all sorts: simple, inverted,
double, triple and quadruple, in the French style, and “mirror-wise” (all the music could
be played inverted); Bach provided his own theme.

(C) George Frideric Handel (1685-1759) – wrote his first opera, Almira, in 1705 (20 yrs., a success).
Went to Italy in 1706; Opera was forbidden at Rome by Papal decree; Handel wrote two
oratorios and numerous cantatas (not sacred works, but mostly pieces for solo voice and
continuo, usually about unreciprocated love). As an opera composer, he had two notable early
successes in Florence (1707), and in Venice (1709-10) with his Agripina. He left Italy in 1710 to
north Germany (Hanover) accepting the post of Kapellmeister. One of the conditions of
acceptance of the post was that he should immediately take a year’s leave for a visit to England.
The English capital didn’t have operas as a regular part of it. At the beginning of 1711 Handel
composed the first Italian opera written for London, Rinaldo. Handel went back to Hanover in
the summer, back in London by fall 1712, where he stayed for the rest of his life. Handel lived
first at the house of the Lord Burlington, composing four more operas and pieces for the English
court (and Queen Anne). In 1714 the Queen died and his employer (the Elector of Hanover)
came to London as the new king, George I. From this time comes Handel’s Water Music, written
for a water-party for the king. In 1719 Handel went off to the main courts and opera centers of
Europe to hear and hire, as part of the mission of the newly formed Royal Academy of Music
(established by a group of nobleman trying to start an operatic life in London). In 1720 the
Academy opened; Handel’s Radamisto was its second opera. In 1724 and 1725 Handel
composed some of his finest operatic music (Giulio Cesare and Rodelinda—examples of late
Baroque serious opera). In 1723 Handel was appointed composer of the Chapel Royal[?]; in 1727
he wrote the anthem Zadok the Priest (along with three others) for the coronation of George II
(performed at every British coronation since), also becoming a naturalized Englishman. The
Royal Academy collapsed in 1728. Handel and the Academy theater manager put on operas
themselves, starting at the end of 1729. Collapsed in 1737; by then Handel had composed no
fewer than 13 new operas (Orlando, Alcina). Handel abandoned opera completely by 1741.
a. The move to Oratorio. Having written some oratorios in the past—1718, Acis and
Galatea, Ester; 1733, Deborah, Athalia—Handel turned back to this large-scale vocal
form with Saul and Israel in Egypt (1739). In 1741, Handel was invite o visit Dublin and
give concerts in aid of charities there. He wrote what he called a “Sacred Oratorio,”
better known as Messiah, and Samson. Back to London, opera was now behind Handel.
His main occupation was to give seasons of oratorios and similar works at Covent
Garden Theater. Some other admired oratorios are Judas Maccabaeus (1747), Solomon
(1749), Jephtha (1751/2). By 1753 Handel was virtually blind. Died in 1759 (age 74),
buried in Westminster Abbey.
b. Haydn often re-used music from an early work in a later one (Rinaldo, Messiah); he also
used other composers’ music (Keiser, Muffat, Telemann, Carissimi).
CLASSICAL ERA

1750 (Bach’s death) - 1827 (Beethoven’s death)

There are a number of intermediate stages between the Baroque and the Classical styles:

 Rococo – a term that art historians have used particularly of French decorative work of the late
seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries (strong, severe lines came to be broken or softened
by shell-work; Fr., rocaille); though not a central development in music history, it represents a
symptom of the breakdown of the severe grandeur of the Baroque.
 Galant (Fr., gallant) – in the arts it implied the idea of pleasure, of a fairly straightforward,
undemanding kind (sensuous pleasure, different from moral uplift or deeper artistic
satisfaction). In music it meant a flowing melodic style, free of the complexities of counterpoint,
lightly accompanied (with a static or slow-moving bass line that did nothing to draw attention
away from the melody).

In the Classical Era rationalism and humanitarian ideals came to the fore. The idea of extending
culture to the ordinary man and woman middle class as well nobility) was one of the goals of the
Enlightenment—operas in foreign language and private theater changing to native languages and in
public.

Music publishing became a substantial industry. Numerous didactic works were published for
keyboard, flute, violin. There was also the rise of concert life.

(A) Christoph Willibald Gluck (1714-1787) – worked in Italy, then briefly in London, but mainly in
Vienna. Part of his “reform” was that opera should be built around the natural expression of
human emotions rather than the heroics of the Metastasio tradition (priest and poet Pietro M.,
1689-1782), leading librettist of mid-eighteenth century). His first “reform” work was a ballet,
Don Juan (1761). The next year came his opera Orfeo ed Euridice (1762; “Che farò senza
Euridice”)—it has no da capo arias, instead there are arias of unusually varied lengths, dictated
by the needs of the situation (text/plot?); the old pattern of alternate recitative and aria, with
sharp breaks in the musical texture, is dropped in favor of a continuous sequence of linked
 numbers, always with orchestral support; also, a central role is assigned to the chorus. Gluck
wrote more “reform” operas—Alceste (1767), Iphigénie en Tauride (1779).

(B) Johann Stamitz (1717-1757) – laid, at Mannheim (part of province in southwest Germany), the
foundations of an orchestral tradition that was to influence the greatest composers of the day
and the central orchestral genre, the symphony. Composed more than 50 symphonies;
developed new styles of using instruments (more idiomatic); his handling of dynamic effects was
newly enterprising (“Mannheim crescendo”); he developed the “Mannheim rocket” (ascending
passage), “Mannheim sigh,” and others. A commentator dubbed the Mannheim orchestra “an
army of generals.”

Bach’s sons: Wilhelm Friedemann Bach (1710-1784) – the eldest, held an important post as
church organist in Halle; Johann Christoph Friedrich Bach (1732-1795) – composer at the small court at
Bückeburg; the two more prolific and internationally esteemed were:

(C) Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach (1713-1788) – outstanding North German composer of his time. In
1738, he was invited by the Prussian crown prince, Frederick, to join his musicians (near Berlin;
Frederick played the flute and had among his musicians the flutist, composer and teacher J. J.
Quantz). In 1740 Frederick became emperor and CPE Bach moved into Berlin as court keyboard
player (JS Bach composed his Musical Offering to this king, Frederick the Great). In 1768 he was
appointed, on Telemann’s death, as director of music at the five principal churches in Hamburg
and Kantor (music teacher) at a school there. He wrote his Essay on the True Art of Playing
Keyboard Instruments in 1753, which deals not only with technical questions (fingering,
ornamentation, accompaniment) but treats at length aesthetic matters and expressiveness.
Central figure in the creation of the North German empfindsamer Still (highly sensitive style) in
which the transmission of strong, definable emotion is all-important. Outside keyboard music,
CPE Bach was less influential.

(D) Johann Christian Bach (1735-1782) – traveled south to Italy, then made his career in London. JS
Bach’s youngest son, he was not yet 15 when his father died. Departed from the Bach family
 traditions by entering the world of opera (10 Italian, 1 French). His orchestral music too
represents a highpoint, with clear, “singing” melodies (especially attractive to Mozart).

(E) Franz Joseph Haydn (1732-1809) – [1732 -> Bach’s St Matthew Passion, Handel’s Messiah ten
years later; 1809 -> Beethoven already with his 5th symphony—his life covers a vast series of
changes in musical style, he himself central to those changes]. His works are catalogued in the
Hoboken-Verzeichnis, compiling over 750 works.1 Choirboy in Vienna; student of Nicola Porpora;
composed a few sacred works, keyboard pieces (à la CPE Bach), and many divertimentos (i?;
pieces for various instruments, for easygoing pleasure for listeners/performers). In 1761 Haydn
was appointed to the service of the Esterházy family. His music in the late 1760s and early 1770s
includes symphonies, divertimentos (?), much chamber music, many pieces for the baryton (viol-
like instrument which Prince Nikolaus Esterházy played), operas and church music (“I was away
from the world, there was no one nearby to confuse or disturb me, and I was forced to become
original”—especially is chamber [string quartet] works and symphonies, some say).
a. String Quartets – three sets from c. 1770, 71, 72, consisting of six works each, numbered
opp. 9, 17, 20 (the “Sun"), respectively—established the four-movement pattern (quick
outer movements and a slow movement and a minuet in between).
Much German art was affected during the 1760s/70s by what is called the Sturm und Drang
(“Storm and Stress”) movement—expressed in Haydn’s symphonies as a departure from the
idea of an elegant/tasteful piece of entertainment music in favor of urgency and strong
emotional feeling. Opera occupied Haydn in the ten years from 1775 (more comic, some
serious). Haydn’s international reputation grew, writing pieces for Spain, church work for Italy,
Paris (six symphonies, nos. 82-87), and most importantly London, from where leading violinist
and concert promoter JP Salomon collected him, age 60, after Nikolaus Esterházy’s death in
1790.
b. London Symphonies – composed for his London concerts, 12 in total (“his greatest
achievement in orchestral music”, including the “Surprise,” “The Clock,” the “Drum
Roll,” the “Miracle,” and “London,” the last of the symphonies (no. 104, in D)

1
Unlike Köchel’s catalogue of Mozart, or Deutsch’s catalogue of Schubert (both arranged chronologically),
Hoboken’s catalogue, like Wolfgang Schmieder’s catalogue of J. S. Bach, is arranged by form of work—all
symphonies are in category I, string quartets III, piano sonatas XVI.
 Haydn had composer several sets of quartets since op. 33 (The “Russian” quartets, 1781, six in
total, with no. 29 “How do you do?” and no. 30 “The Joke”).2 There had been two groups each of
six in the late 1780s, and the masterly op. 64 set in 1790. In the op. 71 and 74 group (1793, set
of six) the style is more brilliant, with a good deal of virtuoso writing for Salomon’s violin and
fuller, more sonorous textures. He was to compose only eight more complete quartets: six (op.
76, with no. 61, D minor, “Quinten”/”Fifth”/The Donkey”; n. 62, with “Emperor”/”Kaiser”; no.
63, “Sunrise”) in 1797, a further two of what was to have been another six (op. 77) in 1799, and
then another half-quartet (incomplete) in 1803. Haynd’s last years were spent primarily on vocal
music. He wrote six masses between 1796-1802 for the new Esterházt prince, Nikolaus the
younger (he hadn’t written a Mass since 1782). “Now he carried the Austrian Mass tradition to a
noble climax by integrating its conservative manner with a symphonic concentration and unity …
the six late Masses have half-jokingly been called ‘Haydn’s greatest symphonies.’” While
working on the Masses, Haydn also wrote two extended choral works—oratorios, composed not
for church performance for private patrons but for large-scale concert performance before a
wide public (different from earlier oratorios, these emphasize the chorus rather than the
soloists), The Creation (1798), and The Seasons (1801).

(F) Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791) – Born 24 years after Haydn, and dying 18 years before
him, Mozart wrote less in quantity, but excelled in every sphere—opera, sacred music, the
concerto, the symphony, chamber music. At an early age, he traveled Europe with his father and
sister (several times to Vienna, also Paris, London, and Amsterdam, and south and western
Germany). In 1770 he went to Italy, where he wrote his first opera at 14. Back to Salzburg from
his last Italian journey, early in 1773 (17y), he had already composed four settings of the Mass,
two full-scale operas, and more than 30 symphonies and about a dozen light orchestral works
(serenades/divertimentos). Mozart’s works are identified with “K” numbers, after chronological
catalogue by Köchel. He has 5 violin concerts; concertos for bassoon, clarinet, flute, flute and
harp, oboe; 18 Masses; orchestral music, like serenades (Eine kleine Nachtmusic, K. 525, 1787);
23 string quartets; 6 string quintets; clarinet quintet; flute quartet; piano quartet; piano trios;
string trios; piano and violin sonatas; 17 piano sonatas; several operas—Idomeneo (his first great
opera, 1781), Die Entführung aus dem Serail (1782), Le nozze di Figaro (with librettist Lorenzo da
2
Haydn’s works are listed in a comprehensive catalogue prepared by Anthony van Hoboken, providing each work
with an identifying number (H. or Hob.). The string quartets also have Hoboken numbers, but are usually identified
instead by their opus numbers.
 Ponte, after French playwright Beaumarchais; the music tells the listener of the characters social
background, 1786), Don Giovanni (1787), Così fan tutte (1790), Die Zauberflöte (a Singspiel,
1791), La clemenza di Tito (1791)

Other Opera Composer:

a. Carl Ditters von Dittersdorf (Viennese, 1739-99)
b. Johan Adam Hiller (German, 1728-1804) (a. and b. are Singspiel composers)
c. A. E. M. Grétry (French, 1741-1813)—wrote Opéra comique
 only in Italy was there no opera with spoken dialogue; Italian comic opera
composers:
d. Domenico Cimarosa (1749-1801)—Il matrimonio segreto, 1792
e. Baldassare Galuppi (1706-85)
f. Niccolòlo Piccini (1728-1800)
g. Giovanni Paisiello (1740-1816)—Barber of Seville, 1783

(G) Luigi Boccherini (1743-1805) – famous cellist during his lifetime. Invited to Madrid in 1770,
apointed composer to the prince, Don Luis. Chiefly a composer of chamber music, wrote
symphonies as well as concertos for his own instrument.

Among Boccherini’s friends was the Austrian-French composer Ignace Pleyel (1757-1831), a
pupil of Haydn who settled in Paris as a music publisher and instrumental manufacturer.
A combination of the creative and commercial sides of music was Muzio Clementi (Rome, 1752-
1832). He developed a reputation as a harpsichordist; in 1781, in Vienna, he competed with Mozart
before the emperor. Most of his compositions are for the piano (which he played and helped develop).
He began to exploit the new pianoforte with its capacity for brilliant effects. “Known towards the end if
his life as ‘father of the pianoforte’, Clementi was a great innovator rather than a great composer”
(teacher of John Field, 1782-1837, ‘creator’ of the nocturne style that Chopin invested).

(H) Ludwig can Beethoven (1770-1827) – Youth (up to 1802). (“this division … relates convincingly
with the times of change, or of personal crisis, …”). In 1792, he was sent to Vienna to study
under Haydn, where the lesions itself were not particularly successful. Around the time of his
Viennese public début, in 1795, Beethoven issued his first important publications: three piano
trios op. 1 and three piano sonatas op. 2 (no. 1 F minor; “far from the graceful entertainment
offered by the preceding generation”). His first two symphonies date from 1800 and 1802. His
piano sonatas contain the most striking ideas of his first period (17 up to 1802). The ‘heroic’
period (1803-12); where he produced many of his most famous works. Probably in 1796 he first
became aware that his ears had become less keen; by 1800 he was aware not only of his hearing
impairment but also that the condition was worsening. In 1802 he was in a village called
Heiligenstadt outside Vienna, where he wrote his “Heilidenstadt Testament”: a kind of will,
addressed to his two brothers, describes his bitter unhappiness over his affliction. “Beethoven,
however, came through this depression with his determination strengthened.” He wrote of
“seizing fate by the throat” and of the impossibility “of leaving this world before I have
produced all the works that I feel the urge to write”. During this time he wrote his oratorio
Christ on the Mount of Olives (1803), his opera Fidelio (1804-5, first called Léonore ou L’amour
conjugal), and his third Symphony, the Eroica (1803). Symphony no. 4 is relatively orthodox; no.
5, in C minor, with its short 4-note motive developed throughout; no. 6, “Pastoral Symphony”,
with 5 movements, instead of the normal four, “more the expression of feeling than painting.”
Beethoven wrote only one opera, Fidelio, as a “rescue opera”, written during 1804 and 1805.
Initially it was a failure; it received another version in 1814 (it is a German Singspiel). During this
‘stylistic’ period, he also composed his fourth to eighth symphonies, the 4 th and 5th piano
concertos, violin concerto, and other pieces (including his Appassionata). The last period (1813-
1827). The years following 1812 have been called his silent years: first because he composed
relatively little; secondly, because he was more than ever cut off from the world by his deafness.
In 1815 his brother Carl Caspar died and he fought for the guardianship of his nephew Karl.
Beethoven wrote six more piano sonatas, three in 1814-18, three more in 1820-22. In 1823 he
wrote a set of 33 variations on a waltz by publisher Diabelli (Diabelli sent several Austrian
composers a trivial little waltz theme, asking each to write one variation for a collective set).
Beethoven also composed more fugues during this time (op. 106, piano sonata). The great
climaxes to his life’s work during this time consist of two choral works (Mass, Symphony no. 9)
and a group of string quartets. Symphony no. 9, the Choral Symphony—1st mov., short motif; 2nd,
scherzo, main idea treated in a fugue exposition; 3rd, double-variation slow movement; finale,
set of variations on Schiller’s Ode to Joy, with a double fugue for the chorus; finished in 1824. His
last string quartets occupied him for the rest of his life. Prince Golitsïn, of St. Petersburg had
asked for 3 string quartets; when he had written three, Beethoven still had more to say, and
produced another two. Beethoven wrote 9 symphonies, 5 piano concertos, one opera, and 32
piano sonatas.
ROMANTIC ERA

1827 - 1910/3 (Sadie-Cambridge) or 1790s – 1900 (Plantinga)

“… a decade before 1800 so as to take notice of certain works, written in the 1790s by the
maturing Beethoven and by his more forward-looking contemporaries, that seem to belong more to the
new century than to the old. The later boundary, set at 1900, may seem especially whimsical; it cuts
Mahler off in mid-career, for example, and surgically separates the tone poems of Richard Strauss from
the remarkable operas that follow. But pursuing the tracks of Romantic music into the twentieth century
would launch us on a daunting journey with no natural stopping place: Saint-Saëns lived until 1921,
Puccini until 1924, Rachmaninov until 1943, both Strauss and Pfitzner until 1949. … The language of
musical impressionism taking shape in France and the welter of radical experiment in Vienna were
distinctly modern in character, and their force and influence were such that they must figure in any
balanced account of European music in the last decade-and-a-half before the First World War. How
these new ideas and styles comported with the old seems a proper subject in the history of twentieth-
century music.” (Plantinga)

In the Classical world, form and order came first; in the Romantic, expressive content does.

Classical—broadly speaking, has a clear-cut structure that the hearer is intended to perceive as an
important part of the musical experience.

Romantic—depends on strong emotional expression, which may be generated by some subtlety or

richness of harmony or color, or a variety of other means; and this is more important to the impact
of the work than is its form.

American Revolution, 1776 – for the first time a colony proclaimed its independence
French Revolution, 1789 – near extinction of the ruling classes in France
Napoleonic Wars, 1790s up to 1815
Industrial Revolution – the shape of society was undergoing fundamental and permanent changes
 In the Romantic era, virtuosity attained new dimensions; what in an earlier age might have been
thought tasteless and lacking in musical substance became attractive to audiences (f.e., Nicolò Paganini,
1782-1840).

The audiences were larger, and drawn from a wider range of social groups; larger concert rooms
had to accommodate performances less intimate, less refined.

It is to this age that the concept of “artist as hero” belongs. The Romantic composer was not
simply supplying a commodity to his employer; he was a creator of something valuable and permanent.
The creative artist was now the visionary (and he saw himself as the equal of any man). In this context, it
is not surprising that the Romantic composer set a great deal more store than the Classical on originality
(to assert his individuality).

Symphony—becomes larger as composers strive to embody within it the widest possible range of
expression.
Concerto—becomes increasingly a vehicle for virtuosity.
Symphonic Poem—the most characteristic orchestral form, in which the music tells a story, or parallels
its emotions (Liszt, Berlioz).
Chamber music—moving from the drawing-room to the concert hall, acquires a more public character.
Piano music—moves away from the abstract sonata towards the genre piece (designed to capture a
particular emotion/atmosphere)
Opera—different directions in different countries; deals with big issues, like the destiny of Man/nations.
Solo song with piano (German Lied)—the most characteristic new genre (F. Schubert).

(A) Franz Schubert (1797-1828) – He is called a “Romantic Classicist”. The catalogue of Schubert was
organized by Otto Erich Deutsch, “D.” number; the works are listed chronologically (it
underwent several updates). From 1814 dates his first Mass setting and a fine string quartet. He
wrote Gretchen at the Spinning-Wheel (Gretchen am Spinnrade, D. 118, Op. 8) also in 1814 (17
yrs). In total, he wrote c. 600 songs. In 1815 alone he wrote c. 150 songs as well as two
symphonies, piano music, two Mass settings and four small-scale operas with spoken dialogue.
From this year comes the Goethe setting The Erlking (Erlkönig, D. 328, Op. 1). By 1816 it was
 organized the “Schubertiads”, evenings of performing Schubert’s newest music (middle-class,
artistically aware young people). Schubert wrote a total of 9 symphonies; 1816 is the year of his
fifth symphony; no. 8, in B minor, started in 1822, is the famous “Unfinished Symphony”, D. 759,
and his no. 9 in C major, D. 944 published in 1840 (usually called no. 9, sometimes no. 7). From
1817 comes his To Music (An die Musik), Death and the Maiden, and his The Trout (Die Forelle,
in his typical modified strophic model). Starting around 1815 he wrote less songs and focused in
instrumental music. In 1823 he wrote the song cycle Die schöne Müllerin, D. 795, Op. 25, a
collection of 20 songs. Schubert’s main composition of 1827 is the song cycle Winterreise
(“Winter’s Journey”) D. 911, published as Op. 89, with 24 songs. To late 1827 and 1828 belong
the two fine piano trios; there are also several short piano pieces published under the title
Impromptu and Moments musicaux. In September of 1828 he produced four major instrumental
works—three piano sonatas and a string quintet. He wrote a total of 15 string quartets, a string
quintet, piano quintet (“The Trout”), piano trios, violin sonatas and 21 piano sonatas.

(B) Carl Maria von Weber (1786-1826) – staunch German nationalist, he had plans to improve the
German opera. Finished his Der Freischütz in mid-1820; he has two other less famous opera,
Euryanthe (1823) and Oberon (1826). He also wrote 2 piano concertos, 2 clarinet concertos, a
bassoon concerto, 4 piano sonatas, among many other works. One of his compositional devices
was the use of a special theme in connection with a character, which he would alter to convey
that character’s feelings or behavior (technique later developed by Wagner). In Der Freischütz
Weber enlarges the vocabulary of music, as in the Wolf’s Glen scene, with soft trombones and
low clarinets together, tremolando on the strings, shrieks on the woodwinds, shouts from
offstage. First composer to write serious music criticism.

(C) Felix Mendelssohn (1809-1847) – born in Hamburg, into a well-to-do upper-middle-class Jewish
family, with a well-established cultural and intellectual background. He wrote six symphonies up
to when he was 12 and a further seven over the next two years (works following the Classical
style). When he was still 12, he was taken to meet Goethe; lines from Goethe’s Faust colored his
Octet for strings, written when he was 17. Fairies affected another work of this time, his
overture for Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream—although in normal sonata form, it
includes music description of incidents/characters in the play (the soft wind chords at the
beginning and end hint at the atmosphere of the woodlands, the rapid motion of the high violins
 ‘unmistakably’ represents the fairies, the “hee-haw” figure ‘clearly’ mimics Bottom with an ass’s
head, while the expressive second subject stands for the youthful pairs of lovers; Midsummer
was complemented in the early 1840s with music for other scenes of the play, including the
most famous wedding march ever written). In 1829 Mendelssohn asked his teacher and
conductor of the well-known Berlin choral society (Singakademie), Zelter, to perform Bach’s St
Matthew Passion; the work was revived for the first time, just over a century after its premiere
—this historic occasion initiated the long-term revival of Bach’s choral works. A Scottish trip
suggested to him musical ideas from which he composed a symphony (no. 3, “Scottish”, 1842)
and an overture (in the Hebrides islands, off the Scottish coast, he had seen Fingal’s Cave—he
then wrote the overture the Hebrides, Fingal’s Cave, 1830, revised 1832). Having played a part
in the revival of Bach, Mendelssohn now did the same for Handel, whose music had been kept
alive in England but was little performed in Germany. He wrote his “Italian Symphony”, no. 4 in
1832. For his repeated journeys to England he composed his oratorio Elijah, essentially in the
Handelian tradition (1846). Among the compositions of the mid-1840s are two piano trios and
several string quartets. But his finest achievement of this period was his Violin Concerto (1844).
In the spring of 1847 his sister Fanny died; that summer he wrote a passionate string quartet. He
died in November of that year. Other great works are his “Reformation” Symphony (no. 5,
1832); Lieder ohne Worte, in 8 vols (1829-45).

(D) Robert Schumann (1810-1856) – In 1830 he was in Leipzig to live and study with Friedrich Wieck.
His first work to be published, a set of piano variations on the name of a girls acquaintance,
Abegg, appeared in 1831 (Abbeg Variations, Op. 1, 1830; the theme uses the notes A, B, E, G, G);
other piano works and symphony movement date from this time (Papillons, Op. 2, 1831). A
similar idea runs through another, larger work, Carnaval (Op. 9, 1835). Here the “theme” is A, S,
C, H (in German, A-E(Es)-C-B, or Ab(As)-C-B, or SCHA[?]). Asch was a town from which Ernestine
von Fricken (17y), a pupil of Wieck’s, came. In 1834, on a career in music journalism, Schumann
co-founded the Neue Zeitschrift für Musik (“The New Journal for Music”, still in existence). In his
criticism (and music) Schumann wrote under various names, chiefly “Eusebius” and “Florestan”
(modeled on characters in a Jean Paul novel), also “Master Raro” (originally a name for Wieck)
and others (Eusebius=gentle, lyrical, contemplative; Florestan=fiery, impetuous). These names
and others appear as movements titles in Carnaval; also in Carnaval are pieces after the
commedia dell’arte characters Pierrot and Arlequim, and such others as “Coquette”, “Papillons”,
 “Chiarine” (his name for Clara), “Chopin” and “Paganini” (all character pieces). Schumann held a
group of friends that fought for true art, the League of David, fighting the anti-art philistines.
Other works for piano: sonatas as well as studies and character pieces, including
Davidsbündlertänze (“Dances for the League of David”), Kreisleriana (fantasy piece around the
character of a mad Kapellmeister created by the Romantic writer E. T. A. Hoffman), and the
Kinderszenen (“Scenes from Childhood”). He married Clara, against her father’s wish, in
September of 1840. That year he wrote almost 150 songs, including several collections
(Liederkreis, Op. 24) and two cycles—Frauenliebe und leben (“A woman’s love and life”) tells the
story of a woman, through falling in love, marriage, motherhood and widowhood; the other
cycle, Dichterliebe (“A poet’s love”) tells of a love that fails (unlike Schubert, Schumann
concentrates more on the emotion focal point of a poem than on the details of the text). He
wrote a movement for piano and orchestra (1840) which later became the first movement of his
Piano Concerto—the second and third movements of the concerto were written in 1845. During
1842 he turned to chamber music—Piano Quintet, Piano Quartet, 3 string quartets. He also
wrote choral music, Scenes from Faust (1853); and an opera, Genoveva (1850), rarely heard
nowadays. Also from 1850 comes his Renish Symphony. In 1853 he met Brahms and they
became friends. In 1854, beginning to have hallucinations, he attempted suicide by throwing
himself in the Rhine; he was rescued and taken to an asylum. He died in 1856.

GERMANY – German nationalism in the late eighteenth century, German poetry, drama and legend
(Goethe), and German love the transcendental ensured the homeland of early Romanticism in
music.
ITALY – Romanticism took a different direction (opera).
NORTHERN EUROPE (England) – no strong manifestation.
SLAVONIC COUNTRIES – slow to develop (partly because of the social backwardness of their institutions;
when it did develop [turn of the century], it did so powerfully and distinctively).
Nevertheless, the world capital of Romanticism was PARIS. Germany was still a decentralized
nation. France was more centralized, and Paris the largest and culturally the richest city on the European
mainland.
(E) Frederic Chopin (1810-1849) – While he was at school (1822-7) he took music lessons with the
head of the Warsaw Conservatory; he then became a full-time student, taking a three-year
course in theory and composition. His studies (Etudes) show how real music can be made out of
a technical piano-playing challenge, being generally brief pieces. His ballades are more
extended, with themes not “developed” in the Beethovenian sense, although with an increasing
element of virtuosity for each recurrence. His nocturnes are modeled after Irish composer and
pianist John Field. Nearly all Chopin’s music is for solo piano. There is a fine cello sonata, a piano
trio, a handful of Polish songs; his orchestral works all have solo piano parts. The scherzos
include some of Chopin’s most vivid and red-blooded music. The two sonatas of his maturity,
each in four movements, demand a new view of what a sonata is: there is no Beethovenian
unity.

(F) Franz Liszt (1811-1886) – less fine a composer, but a musical thinker and a crucial figure. Liszt
studied in Vienna with Czerny and Salieri, and gave his first concerts when he was 11. By the
time he was 16 he was a veteran touring virtuoso, and gave up traveling to teach, at the same
time considering entering the priesthood. He transcribed works by Berlioz and others for the
piano; he believed that any music, written for whatever medium, could be performed in the
piano just as effectively. He also wrote fantasies on themes from popular operas. From his
emotional reaction from several places visited, Liszt wrote several piano pieces, later collecting
them as Années de pèlerinage (“Years of Pilgrimage”). In 1835 he lived with Countess Marie
d’Agoult (having three children); they separated in 1844. In 1847 he began a relationship with
Princess Carolyne Sayn-Wittgenstein. From 1848-57 he was the musical director to the Grand
Duke of Weimar, where at the theater, he gave premières of several important orchestral works
and operas, notably Wagner’s Tannhäuser. To these years belong two piano concertos, 12
symphonic poems and two programmatic symphonies. The symphonic poems are based on
ideas from art or literature (Hamlet, Shakespeare; Tasso, Goethe; Hunnenschlacht, painting)—
the music is less narrative than expressive of the emotions aroused by the subject. His Faust
Symphony was written in 1854—“three character studies after Goethe”, he called it (“Faust”,
“Goethe”, “Mephistopheles”). His greatest piano work, the Sonata in B minor, was composed in
1852-3 and dedicated to Schumann. Liszt resigned his Weimar position in 1858. In Rome he took
minor orders in the Roman Catholic Church. His music of this period reflects his increasing
religious interest—oratorios, Mass settings and motets (1860s-70s). He was estranged from
 Wagner for a time, because of Wagner’s affair with Liszt’s daughter Cosima (who was married to
the pianist and conductor Hans von Bülow), but they were reconciled and were together in
Venice in the early 1883.

(G) Hector Berlioz (1803-1869) – in 1826, after giving up his father’s dream of a career in medicine,
he enrolled at the Paris Conservatoire. His first great work came in 1827, the Symphonie
Fantastique, a piece in five movements, built around a “program” which Berlioz distributed at
performances.3 Shortly before the première of the Fantastique, Berlioz had been awarded the
Prix de Rome (he had entered four times, had failed the previous year because his work was
considered too original). He later wrote what is considered a sequel to the Fantastique, his Lélio,
or the Return to Life. To earn a living Berlioz turned to journalism. Several important works
belong to this period: the symphony Harold in Italy (commissioned by Paganini and including a
solo viola part for him, 1834); the opera Benvenuto Cellini (1838); and the Grande Messe des
Morts (or Requiem). In 1841 he orchestrated songs from the Nuits d’éte (“Summer Nights”) from
pieces he had composed in the 1830s with piano accompaniment. By then he was an
international celebrity. During 1844-46 he had composed a major new work, based on Goethe’s
Faust: a “dramatic legend” called La damnation de Faust. Incorporating some music from his
“Eight scenes from Faust” of the 1820s, it is for chorus, soloists and orchestra—the first section
is set in Hungary (with a Hungarian national march); the second deals with Faust and
Mephistopheles, with drinking scenes, scenes for soldiers and students, and a delicate, graceful
sylph’s dance; the third centers on Marguerite (French usage for Gretchen); and the last has as
its climax Faust’s consignment to Hell. Berlioz was a master of orchestration, and wrote a
standard nineteenth-century work on the subject (Grand Traité d’Instrumentation et
d’Orchestration Modernes, 1843/4). In 1853 Berlioz had the satisfaction of conducting
Beethoven’s Choral Symphony and of meeting Wagner. In 1854 two very different works of a
religious character were performed: his Te Deum (full of grand effects, such as the use of a
children’s choir of 600); and the gentle and charming oratorio L’enfance du Christ. Two operas

3
The symphony portrays a musician who, in despair over a hopeless love, has taken opium and is in feverish,
dream-haunted sleep. In the first movement (“Reveries, Passions”), he recalls the emptiness before he met his
beloved—a slow introduction, “passionate but unfocused and arbitrary, with climaxes that fade into nothing”—
and then the fierce love that she inspired in him, the beloved is represented by an idée fixe (the first subject of a
sonata-form movement). Second, he is at a ball, graceful but later hectic (when the beloved appears). The central
movement represents a country scene; then the music becomes turbulent, and the beloved’s theme is heard. The
fourth movement and the fifth call on the Romantic preoccupation with death and the supernatural.
 belong to his late years. One, Béatrice et Bénédict is based on Shakespeare’s Much Ado about
Nothing. The other is his great epic The Trojans. He died in 1869.

France after Berlioz:

None French Romantic composer (after Berlioz) achieved much distinction in instrumental
music.
 César Franck (1822-1890) – wrote symphonic poems, a symphony, piano pieces, organ pieces.
 Charles Gounod (1818-1893) – his reputation was chiefly made in the opera house (Faust, for
many years the most loved of French operas; was displaced by Georges Bizet’s Carmen: a failure
on its first performance, in 1875, but soon recognized as a masterpiece).
 Jacques Offenbach (1819-1880) – another prominent figure in French opera; founded his own
company who gave short, light operas which mocked at the lax morals of the sophisticated
Parisian society; he also wrote one serious work, The Tales of Hoffman (unfinished at his death).4

In ENGLAND the leading figure was Arthur Sullivan (1842-1900), who with W. S. Gilbert created
a repertory with a firm and lasting appeal to middle-class English-speaking audiences.

ITALY
The story of Italian music in the nineteenth century is essentially the story of opera (and of four
men: Rossini (beginning of the century); Bellini and Donizetti (early Romantic years, 1830s/40s); and
Verdi).

(H) Gioacchino Rossini (1792-1868) – Tancredi is the first of his serious operas. His next opera,
L’italiana in Algeri, is totally, often absurdly comic, a tale about an Italian girl shipwrecked in
Algiers. Four further operas followed in the remainder of 1813-14. In 1816 he wrote a comic
opera on a story that had been successful before, that of the Barber of Seville (Il barbiere di
Siviglia). The story, which treats the same characters (created by Beaumarchais) as Mozart’s
Figaro, had been set by Paisiello back in 1784 (in fact his Roman audiences did not much care for

4
Offenbach’s most eminent follower was the Viennese waltz composer, Johann Strauss II/Junior (1825-1899); his
best known work is his operetta Die Fledermaus (1874).
 it). This was followed by his treatment of the Cinderella story, La Cenerentola (1817). In
Semiramide (1823), the scenes grow longer and more fully developed, with more ensembles and
greater use the chorus. In 1824 Rossini settled in Paris as the director of the Théâtre-Italien. Two
years later, he decided that it was at the Opéra itself that his real ambitions lay. At first he
adapted earlier, Italian works to French texts and performing requirements, trimming off some
of the vocal elaboration that suited Italian words and tastes to produce a more austere and
direct melodic line. There he wrote two works in French: an opera comique, Le Comte Ory
(1828), and Guillaume Tell (1829). This last has every claim to be regarded as his greatest work
(although lengthy). In his last years he lived an active social life and composed a little more
(including some piano and vocal pieces that he called Sins of Old Age); he died in 1868.

Rossini’s works/operas, even though he lived through the Romanticism, deal with topics that
were familiar on the stage in the Classical era (unlike Weber’s exploration of the supernatural).
Romanticism comes into Italian opera only with the next generation (hesitantly).

(I) Gaetano Donizetti (1797-1848) – unlike his rival Vicenzo Bellini (1801-1835), whose strength lay
in exquisitely shapely vocal lines, G. Donizetti was less the refined Romantic, more the sturdy,
professional man of the theater. In Paris he adapted and revived Lucia di Lammermoor, which
had been a striking success at Naples in 1835 and is his finest work. His Parisian career was on
the whole successful: La favorite was well received at the Opéra in 1840 and Don Pasquale, one
of his liveliest comedies, delighted the Théâtre-Italien audiences three years later. He began his
career as the natural successor to Rossini. (works: “Una furtiva lagrima”, L’elisir d’amore, 1832;
Mary Stuart, 1835).

(J) Giuseppe Verdi (1813-1901) – born the same year as Wagner, when he was 18 he applied for
admission to Milan Conservatory, but was refused: he was past the proper admission age and
inadequate as pianist and in counterpoint. In 1839 his first opera, Oberto, was staged at La Scala.
That year his wife and two children died, leading him to a deep depression. The Scala director,
trying to help Verdi, found a libretto on the biblical story of Nebuchadnezzar. The result,
Nabucco, was a triumph when, in 1842, it reached the stage, establishing Verdi’s international
reputation. Eight further operas date from the 1840s; much the finest is Macbeth, after
Shakespeare (1847). Two of his finest and most admired operas came from the 1850s (middle
 years): Rogoletto (1851) and La Traviata (1853)—as well as Il Trovatore. “Verdi was
incidentally[?] a non-believer and strongly opposed to what he saw as the oppressive influence
of the church; some of this feeling comes through in his operas.” He lived for a while in Paris and
the Italian operas of Verdi’s following years are infused with French grand opera elements—
Simon Boccanegra (1857), Un ballo in maschera (1859), and La forza del destino (1862); another
work while in Paris is his Les vêpres siciliennes, 1855. One particular work after 1860 is Don
Carlos (1867), a French grand opera after the play by Schiller. “This work touches on all the
themes that had appealed to Verdi: nationhood; … the rival power of church and state; … male
courage and comradeship; the conflict of generations; and above all love, …. At the center of the
opera there is a spectacular “auto-da-fé” scene in which heretics are burned by The Inquisition.”
He habitually revised operas that seemed to him to need it: Don Carlos, Macbeth, Boccanegra,
La forza del destino all underwent partial reqriting. In 1871, he wrote Aida, first performed in
Cairo, soon after the opening of the Suez Canal—Aida emerges as a perfectly balanced and
controlled Italian transformation of grand opera. Verdi’s next major work was not an opera but
a Requiem. This originated in a proposal he made in 1868, on Rossini’s death, for a Requiem to
commemorate him, to which several leading Italian composers would contribute movements; it
was never materialized. In 1873 the Italian poet Alessandro Manzoni, whom Verdi revered, died;
so Verdi used the movement he had written towards a complete Requiem for Manzoni (his
Requiem is often criticized as operatic in style). Back to opera, in 1887 he wrote Otello, in
collaboration with poet and composer Arrigo Boito—this work has more continuity of texture
than any earlier opera he had written. Falstaff is another collaboration with Boito, again with a
Shakespeare text, this time a comedy—it came to stage in 1893, the year Verdi was 80. He still
wrote a group of sacred choral pieces in his last years (1897). He died in 1901.

(K) Richard Wagner (1813-1883) – the German counterpart to Verdi. In 1839 he wanted to go to
Paris, for the opera on which he was now working, Rienzi, was in the grand opera tradition. In
Paris, he was befriended by Meyerbeer and influenced by Berlioz. There he drafted a libretto on
the legend of The Flying Dutchman. With a recommendation from Meyerbeer, he submitted
Rienzi to the Dresden Court Opera; it was accepted and premièred in 1842. Three months later
(in 1843) The Flying Dutchman (Der fliegende Holländer) followed. After the success of Rienzi,
Wagner had accepted the post of royal Kapellmeister at the Saxon court in Dresden. During the
1840s he wrote two more operas, Tannhäuser (1845, rev. 1861) and Lohengrin (1847). In both
these operas Wagner begins to move away from the concept of opera as songs linked by
narrative sections. In 1848, Europe’s year of revolution, Wagner was caught up in political
activity, involved in revolutionary and anarchical propaganda. Lohengrin’s limited success
provoked Wagner into thinking more deeply about new forms of opera or musical theater. He
wrote an important book on this topic, Opera and Drama, in 1850. One of his several other
writings is called The Artwork of the Future; another, notorious one is his bitterly anti-semitic
Judaism in Music, some of it a merciless attack on Meyerbeer. In the 1850s Wagner started with
the idea of an opera treating the story of Siegfried’s (a Nordic-Germanic mythological hero)
death, but then prefaced it with another opera scenario, on the young hero. These were to
become Götterdämmerung (1876, The Twilight of the Gods) and Siegfried (1876). Then he
planned a third opera to precede these, telling an earlier part of the story, Die Walküre (1870),
and finally yet another, prefatory work, Das Rheingold (1869). Thus he wrote the text in reverse
order (with much revision of earlier sections); but he composed the music forwards, and more
than 20 years elapsed between the first part of Rheingold and the conclusion of
Götterdämmerung—this is called The Ring of the Nibelung operas (Der Ring des Nibelungen,
1876). Two other works, of more normal dimensions, were composed while the Ring was in
progress: Tristan und Isolde (1857-9) and The Mastersingers of Nuremberg (1868, Die
Meistersinger von Nürnberg). In the late 1870s Wagner started work on a new opera, a “sacred
festival drama” to be called Parsifal (Wagner preferred to describe Parsifal not as an opera, but
as "ein Bühnenweihfestspiel" - "A Festival Play for the Consecration of the Stage")—it had its
first performances at the 1882 Bayreuth Festival. He died of a heart attack in 1883. In earlier
operas Wagner was beginning to move away from traditional conceptions of opera towards a
new and powerful unity, mainly through the use of recurring themes and a more continuous
musical texture. The idea of recurring themes was not of course new (f.e., Mozart). An already-
heard theme can be seen in Verdi’s La Traviata (Violetta’s dying); Weber used recurring ideas
(themes re-heard to hint the presence of a character); similar thematic transformation is also
used by Liszt and Berlioz. Wagner made the leitmotif his basic way of linking music and drama.
In his mature works, some kind of brief theme is associated with every significant idea in the
drama: people, objects, thoughts, places, states of emotion. These ideas are of course related in
character to what they portray, being, nevertheless, not simply “labels”. Further, a leitmotif may
develop and change to signify development and change in what is stands for. This offer the
composer great opportunities for the subtle treatment of ideas. It may, for example, be heard in
 the orchestra to represent an unspoken thought of a character on the stage; or it may tell the
audience something unknown to those on the stage, like the identity of a disguised character or
the motives behind some action. It may establish a connection with some earlier event. A
number of leitmotifs may be combined to show links between ideas. Above all, Wagner
extended the expressive capacity of music by developing a style more chromatic than anyone
had attempted before. Chromaticism, since the time of Monteverdi, Bach and Mozart, had been
recognized as a means of heightening emotional expression—within a clear sense of key,
contradicting it only momentarily. But with Wagner it was used so freely, and in so many
simultaneous layers, that it loosened the sense of key or even broke it down altogether.

(L) Johannes Brahms (1833-1897) – In 1853 he met Robert and Clara Schumann; Schumann drew
attention to Brahms in an enthusiastic article. In 1854, after hearing of Schumann’s breakdown,
he went to Bonn to be near him—and near Clara, for whom he developed a romantic passion
which remained with him, at a calmer level, all his life. From this year comes his first
compositions, for piano—three substantial sonatas. In 1860 he signed a manifesto opposing the
“new music” of Liszt (and Berlioz, Wagner), which placed him decisively in a musically
conservative camp. Some important works belong to the 1860s, among them his Variations on a
theme by Handel. Brahms was a slow and intensely self-critical composer; he consulted his
friends especially violinist Joseph Joachim and Clara Schumann, about new works, and was
always ready to revise them. His compositions of this time include piano (St Antony Variations)
and chamber works, and songs. He did produce a major choral work, the German Requiem, in
the late 1860s (he had begun it many years earlier, and took it up soon after his mother’s death
in 1865). It is not a traditional Roman Catholic Requiem for the dead but a series of settings of
biblical texts, in German, that speak of death, mourning and comfort. It was in 1876 that
Brahms’s first symphony appeared (started as far back as 1855). His broad scheme in this
movement is very much like Beethoven’s, and as in many of Beethoven’s mature works, there is
further development of the ideas in a coda. His Second Symphony, gentler and more relaxed,
was written the following year, 1877, at a lakeside resort. The next year, at the same resort, he
wrote his Violin Concerto, for his friend Joachim (a “concerto against the violin”, said Joachim).
In 1881 he finished his massive Second Piano Concerto. In 1883 he completed his Third
Symphony; in 1885 his Fourth, which was to be his last (it illustrates Brahms’s application of the
passacaglia, in its finale). Brahms’s next, and last, orchestral work followed in 1887. This was a
 double concerto for violin and cello (he also wrote two sonatas for cello, and three violin
sonatas). Meanwhile, chamber music and songs had flowed steadily from Brahms’s pen—his
third and last violin sonata dates from 1888 and a string quintet comes from 1890; he wrote a
Clarinet Quintet in 1891. His piano music also includes rhapsodies, intermezzos, ballades,
capriccios, variations, piano duets (Liedeslieder Waltzes, 1874, 1877), and his Hungarian Dances
(1852-1869). From over 180 songs, Brahms wrote, in 1869, a set that he called Four Serious
Songs (Vier Ernst Gesänge)—songs to biblical texts, concerned, as in his German Requiem, with
death and consolation (his last composition).

THE TURN OF THE CENTURY

 Increasing notions of Nationalism – rise of more democratic forms of government; larger
development centers developed due to the advance of industrialization.
 Movement towards the exotic (Exoticism) – Rimsky-Korsakov (Spanish Caprice, Sheherazade),
Debussy (gamelan music and gongs of Indonesia), Puccini (looking further into Japan, China, and
the American Wild West).
 Realism in art – a reaction against the idealistic, imaginative, fantastic side of Romanticism;
verismo can be seen as part of the reaction against the exalted emotions of Verdi’s operas and
grand opera generally, and against the unreality and loftiness of Wagner’s world
o Verismo – Cavalleria Rusticana (by Pietro Mascagni [1863-1945], 1889) “began” Verismo
in opera in the 1890s, which peaked in the early 1900s, and lingered into the 1920s. The
style is distinguished by realistic—sometimes sordid/violent—depictions of everyday
life, especially the life of the contemporary lower class. It rejects the historical or
mythical subjects associated with Romanticism. Cavalleria is usually coupled with
Ruggero Leoncavallo’s (1858-1919) Pagliacci (1891), dubbed the Cav/Pag. Puccini is not
generally regarded as a verismo composer, but there are elements of the same kind of
realism (sometimes ‘synonymized’ as bloodshed) in his depictions of the life of
impoverished artist in Paris in La bohème and in the wanton cruelties of Tosca. [see
giovane scuola)

(A) Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky (1840-1893) – received a more Western-oriented musical training at St
Petersburg Conservatory, where his composition teacher was the young, cosmopolitan and
conservative (not much nationalist) Anton Rubinstein. But in the winter of 1867-8 he came into
contact with Balakirev, who was eager to make Tchaikovsky a sixth member of “The Five”.
Balakirev’s impact in Tchaikovsky resulted in some nationalist works such as his operas The
Voyevoda (1869), The Oprichnik (1874) and Vakula the Smith (1876). None of them is much
performed now: indeed, of Tchaikovsky’s ten operas only Eugene Onegin (1879) and The Queen
of Spades (1890) are part of the repertory. Another mature achievement is his “fantasy
overture” Romeo and Juliet (1869)—with its adaptation of sonata form with musical ideas in
unlike keys (Bm and Db major). His best orchestral piece after it is his First Piano Concerto
(1875), with its structural “fault”—the failure of the famous opening tune to reappear
(proposing a style rather than a theme). In the Swan Lake (1877) he wrote exquisitely illustrative
 music without thought of large-scale musical form. He returned to a fairy-tale musical world in
two later full-length ballets, Sleeping Beauty (1890) and his masterpiece Nutcracker (1892).
Tchaikovsky also wrote six symphonies (no. 6, in Bm, “Pathétique”), and a violin concerto. He
died in 1893 either by catching cholera or by committing suicide.

The Five (The Mighty Handful) – Balakirev, Rimsky-Korsakov, Borodin, Cui, Mussorgsky
The group had the aim of producing a specially Russian kind of art music. The formation of the
group began in 1856, and by 1867 was regarded as members of a group around Balakirev, when the
critic Vladimir Stasov coined the nickname. This was the period when they were mighty indeed: the
period of Balakirev’s two orientally-colored masterpieces (Islamey for piano, Tamara for orchestra), of
Rimsky’s orchestral narratives Sadko (1867) and Antar (1868) and his opera The Maid of Pskov (1872), of
Borodin’s Second Symphony (1876) and Prince Igor project (begun in 1869), and of Mussorgsky’s Boris
Godunov (1872).
Before them, Mikhail Glinka (1804-57) had gone some way towards a distinctly Russian kind of
music, writing operas on Russian subjects, remaining nevertheless a provincial affair; the Mighty Handful
represented the first concentrated attempt to develop such music.
Mily Balakirev (1837-1910) was the leader of the group; with no advanced musical education,
was suspicious of its value for others, and it pleased him that Borodin was an academic chemist, Rimsky-
Korsakov an ex-sailor and Mussorgsky a minor civil servant.
Modest Mussorgsky (1839-1881) – Boris Godunov is his only large-scale work he completed. His
other nationalistic famous work is his piano suite Pictures at an Exhibition (1874; it has been
orchestrated by many, notably Ravel). Many of Mussorgsky’s greatest songs are contained in cycles: The
Nursery (1870), a sharply unsentimental view of childhood with words by the composer; Sunless (1874),
painting a quite personal pessimism; and Songs and Dances of Death (1877).
Cesar Cui composed in almost all genres of his time, with the distinct exceptions of the
symphony and the symphonic poem; art songs constitute the greatest number of works by Cui.
Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov’s unusually varied and brilliant orchestration is seen in his Sheherazade
(1888) and The Spanish Caprice (1887). His Principles of Orchestration remains one of the standard texts
on ht subject.
They tried to incorporate in their music what they heard in village songs, dances, in church
chants and the tolling of church bells. They also tried to reproduce the long-drawn, lyrical and
melismatic peasant song, what Glinka had once called “the soul of Russian music.” Balakirev’s study of
Russian music and transcriptions preserved the distinctive aspects of Russian folk music; these
characteristic are: tonal mutability (a tune seems to shift naturally from one tonal center to another);
heterophony; parallel fifths, fourths, and thirds. The Five also adopted a series of harmonic devices to
create a distinct “Russian” style: whole-tone scale (often suggesting evil characters/scenes); the Russian
submediant (harmonic pattern, in major mode, C-E-G - C-E-G# - C-E-A, Korsakov’s Sheherazade, III);
Diminished or Octatonic scale; Modular rotation in sequence of thirds ([?] looser type of tonal structure,
avoid the “rigid Western laws of modulation in sonata form”); Pentatonic scale.

Subsequent famous Russian composers are Rachmaninov and Scriabin.

(B) Alexander Scriabin (1872-1915) – gradually left conventional form as he left behind other
musical conventions in his last years: the last five of his ten piano sonatas are each in a single
movement, and his threw symphonies of 1899-1904 had their successors in single-movement
orchestral experiences, The Poem of Ecstasy (1908) and Prometheus, Poem of Fire (1910; from
where we have the Prometheus/Mystic Chord). The later Scriabin was possessed with a vision of
music as an agent of spiritual enlightenment. He gradually departed from major-minor tonality.

(C) Sergey Rachmaninov (1873-1943) – started a career as a concert pianist after graduating from
the Moscow Conservatory; his popular Prelude in C# minor dates from the year of his
graduation (1892), his First Symphony from three years later (1895). He virtually abandoned
composition until his Second Piano Concerto (1901), the most popular of his works.

East European Nationalism

(D) Bedřich Smetana (1824-1884) – it was not until after a meeting in 1858 with Liszt that he wrote
his first important works, a set of three symphonic poems. In 1861 he wrote an opera: in tune
with the nationalist feelings of the time, he chose a theme from his country’s history, The
Brandenburgers in Bohemia, a success; this was followed with a spirited comedy of Bohemian
peasant life, The Bartered Bride (1863-66). In 1881 Smetana resigned his post as conductor at
the Provisional Theater because of his deafness. From the 1870s date his cycle of six symphonic
poems, My Country (or Homeland, orig. Má Vlast) based on the countryside, the history and the
legends of Bohemia. The best known of these is Vltava (Germ. Die Moldau), which traces in
music the course of the country’s main river. His string quartet in E minor (1876), sub-titled
“From my Life” is a musical autobiography in four movements. It begins with a sonata-form
 movement; the scherzo is replaced by a Slavonic equivalent, a polka; the slow movement recalls
“the happiness of my first love”; the finale, beginning as a rustic dance in E major, breaks off,
and Smetana introduces the whining high E that had racked his inner ear. The illness (syphilis)
that caused his deafness eventually killed him, in 1884.

(E) Antonín Dvořak (1841-1904) – he gained work as a viola player, being Smetana’s principal in the
orchestra of the Provisional Theater, where he played in the first performance of The Bartered
Bride and in a concert conducted by Wagner. His Third Symphony (1873) won an Austrian
national prize and brought him to the notice of Brahms, who encouraged him. Dvořak dedicated
a quartet to him, and made sure the outer movements were in orthodox sonata form, but like
Smetana he introduced a polka instead of the usual scherzo. In 1884 he conducted his music in
London to immense acclaim, followed by several commissions. In 1891 he accepted the post of
director of the National Conservatory of Music in New York, spending 1892-5 in the USA. His
American research went into the works he wrote, including his Ninth Symphony in E minor,
“From the New World”, and his F major string quartet, “American” (both 1893). Back in
Bohemia, Dvořák wrote two more quartets in 1895, his last chamber works; they were followed
by a group of five symphonic poems. His final years were mostly devoted to opera, like his
dramatic masterpiece, Rusalka (1900). He died in Prague in 1904.

(F) Leoš Janáček (1854-1928) – influenced by Dvořák, composed in the Bohemia style. His last ten
years were an extraordinarily productive period that saw the composition of four great operas—
Katya Kabanova, The Cunning Little Vixen, The Makropoulos Case and From the House of the
Dead—as well as a Mass, a Sinfonietta, two string quartets and a few other works. Like Smetana,
he wrote in his last years a chamber work looking back at his early life and musical formation,
the wind sextet Youth (1924). Janáček made notations of the rhythms and pitch inflections of
people’s speaking voices. Janáček also learned from Moravian folk music, which encouraged him
towards a style of short melodic phrases, baldly repeated or juxtaposed in the building up of
large structures.

Vienna
 (G) Hugo Wolf (1860-1903) – made enemies through his work as a music critic. During the brief
period of his greatest productivity, 1888-91, he worked at feverish pace: about 180 songs date
from those years, divided into settings of Mörike, Goethe and Spanish and Italian poets in
translation. After that he wrote a second volume of Italian songs (1896) and an opera, Der
Corregidor (1895), written supposedly whenever not inactive by syphilis. In the autumn of 1897
he lost his never steady hold on sanity, and he died in a sanatorium.

(H) Anton Bruckner (1824-1896) – In 1863 he encountered Wagner’s music through a performance
of Tanhäuser, and soon began to write works that are characteristic: his First Symphony, in C
minor, and large-scale Masses. All subsequently revised. Apart from his Te Deum (1884) and a
few other choral works, he devoted himself to the symphony—Schubert was his nearest
predecessor in matters of form; his sonata allegros often have three groups of subject matter
rather than two and, like Schubert’s, tend to substitute repetition in a different key for
development. “Sonata form is not, as in Beethoven and Brahms, a resolution of some conflict
inherent in the opening material; instead it is the mold for a symmetrical movement from
statement to changed statement and back to statement.”

(I) Gustav Mahler (1860-1911) – like Bruckner, Mahler expanded the dimensions of the symphony
so that a single work lasts for an hour or more. Only three of his symphonies are, like all
Bruckner’s, four-movement cycles–nos. 1, 6, and 9. The number of movements may be larger
(five in nos. 2, 5, 7, and 10; six in no. 3) or smaller (two in no. 8). He also extended the symphony
by adding voices: solo women’s and choral voices in nos. 2-4 and a great mass of soloists and
choirs in the symphonic oratorio that is no. 8 (aka the “Symphony of a Thousand”, 1906). In
1880 he began a career as a conductor that led him to important posts in Prague, Leipzig,
Budapest, Hamburg, Vienna and New York, becoming one of the outstanding conductors of his
day. His First Symphony, in D (1884-1888), as ultimately published exists in the traditional four
movement form—initially , there existed an additional 2nd movement, removed by Mahler for
the final publication in 1899.5 It also uses themes from his song cycle of the same period Lieder
eines fahrenden Gesellen (“Songs of a wayfarer”). His Second Symphony, in C minor moving to
5
It was removed because of harsh criticism (“Blumine”, the title for the rejected Andante second movement, was
rediscovered by Donald Mitchell in 1966, while doing research for his biography on Mahler; Benjamin Britten gave
the first rediscovered performance in 1967; famous Mahler conductors such as L. Bernstein, Georg Solti, never
performed it, reasoning that since Mahler had rejected it from his symphony so it should not be played as part of
it.
 Eb major (1895), has a mezzo-soprano song as penultimate movement and a choral finale; the
Third, in D minor-major (1896), again has a solo song (for contralto) followed by a choral piece;
and the Fourth, in G moving to E (1900), has just the song (for soprano) as finale. Mahler also
wrote another symphony in the disguise of an orchestral song cycle (see Curse of the Ninth) and
called it Das Lied von der Erde (1909, “The songs of the Earth”), setting Chinese poems in
translation.

(J) Richard Strauss (1864-1949) – his first compositions, symphonies and quartets were replaced by
symphonic poems, beginning with the “symphonic fantasy” Aus Italien (“From Italy”, 1886) and
continuing with seven more such works during the next dozen years—Don Juan (1889), Macbeth
(1888), Till Eulenspiegel (1895), Don Quixote (1898); in these, Strauss preferred rondo and
variations form, delighted in making self-sufficient musical pictures. After his autobiographical
Symphonia domestica (1903) Strauss turned to opera. Apart from his Eine Alpensifonie (“An
Alpine Symphony”, 1915) and two pieces with solo left-hand piano in the 1920s, he wrote
nothing more of consequence for the orchestra until the 1940s. His efforts went into opera,
beginning with Salome (1905) and Elektra (1908), both a long single act. Afterwards, he wrote
Der Rosenkavalier (1911), starting a long relationship of collaboration with the librettist Hugo
von Hofmannsthal, creating four more operas over the next two decades: Ariadne auf Naxos
(1912), Die Frau ohne Schatten (“The Woman without a Shadow”, 1919), Die ägyptische Helena
and Arabella (1933)—only Ariadne has gained a regular place in the repertory. These were
followed, most importantly, by Intermezzo (1924) and Capriccio (1942). After these he wrote no
more operas, but returned to the forms and genres of his youth: a Second Horn Concerto
(1942); two other concertos for wind instruments, two works for a Mozartian serenade
ensemble of winds and a movement for strings, Metamorphosen (1945). He ended with his Four
Last Songs for soprano and orchestra (1948), and died at his home in September 1949.

Northern Europe
One of the first Scandinavian to make an international reputation (to extend Nordic symphonic
tradition) was Norwegian Edvard Grieg (1843-1907), establishing a reputation in Germany, England and
the USA, chiefly through his piano miniatures, which drew on Norwegian folk traditions, but also for his
atmospheric music for Ibsen’s play Peer Gynt and his popular piano concerto, admired and performed
by Liszt.
 Another important composer is Dane Carl Nielsen (1854-1931) who wrote symphonies of great
force and individuality, with a Mahlerian chromatic style, distinguished chiefly for the driving rhythms
and the tough, unpolished angular quality of his themes and harmonies.

(K) Jean Sibelius (1865-1957) – composed chamber music, choral music, symphonic poems on Finish
myths, among his great pillars of his seven symphonies. His Fourth Symphony (1911) provides a
harmonic world as dissonant as that of the contemporary late works of Mahler. After his
Seventh Symphony (1924) Sibelius wrote an incidental score for Shakespeare’s Tempest (1925)
and a final symphonic poem, Tapiola (1926), but then practically nothing for the remaining 30
years of his life.

(L) Edward Elgar (1857-1934) – the rise of Sibelius and Nielsen in the Nordic countries was
paralleled by that of Elgar in England, in the same decade, the 1890s. He wrote a sequence of
cantatas that enjoyed much success among the choral societies then abundant in England. One
of them is Caractacus, which won him a commission to write an oratorio for the Birmingham
Triennial Festival of 1900. The resulting work was The Dream of Gerontius (1900), a setting for
soloists, chorus and orchestra. This, with the Enigma Variations for orchestra (1899) brought his
success. During the next dozen years there were two symphonies, a Violin Concerto and a
radiant work for string quartet and string orchestra, the Introduction and Allego. There were
numerous songs, and there were two more oratorios, The Apostles and The Kingdom. He also
has a Cello Concerto in E minor (1919). Elgar may be regarded as the “creator” of an English
symphonic style.

France
During the turn of the century the areas of greatest achievements in France were opera and
song.
Opera – Jules Massenet (1842-1912) was the most popular; his two most admired works are Manon
(1884) and Werther (1892)
Song – the outstanding figures were Henri Duparc (1848-1933), who composed a tiny handful of
exquisite songs, and Gabriel Fauré (1845-1924), who also composed much fine piano and chamber
music and a Requiem.
(M) Claude Debussy (1862-1917) – visits to Bayreuth in 1888-9 and an encounter with Javanese
music quickened his artistic progress. It was a work of literature that released his first orchestral
masterpiece, the Prelude à “L’aprés-midi d’un faune” (based on Mallarmé’s poem, 1894). While
working on the prelude Debussy composed his String Quartet in G minor (1893); although in G
minor, it has modal coloring. Around the turn of the century he produced outstanding and fully
accomplished works, in a new musical language, in every genre that interested him: song
(Chansons de Bilitis, 1898), orchestral music (Nocturnes, 1899), piano music (the suite Pour le
piano, 1901) and opera (Pelléas et Mélisande, 1902). All these works were a little time in the
finishing. After this breakthrough Debussy worked more quickly and confidently, producing the
symphonic sketches La Mer (1905) and the orchestral Images (1912) as well as an abundance of
piano music, including two sets of Images (1905-7) and two sets of Préludes (1910-13). Only his
piano piece L’isle joyeuse, one of his longest piano pieces, has some vestige of sonata form;
other works are static in structure, either of ternary design or based on ostinato patterns.
Debussy’s last orchestral score, the ballet Jeux (1913), was one of the several works for the
theater that he produced during his last few years, written for the Diaghilev season that also
included Stravinsky’s sensational The Rite of Spring. In 1915 he received a commission to edit
Chopin’s piano works, and he added to his own a set of 12 Etudes, most of them concentrating
on some aspect of keyboard technique (“For Thirds”, “For repeated notes”) as well as
compositional style—as in “For opposing sonorities”, “For fourths”, where the dominance of
4ths produces an environment inhospitable to the tonal system, “For chords”, a study in clear-
cut syncopation. His final project was a set of six sonatas for different ensembles, only three
finished: one for cello and piano (1915), one for flute, viola and harp (19915) and one for violin
and piano (1917). He died in Paris in 1917).

(N) Maurice Ravel (1875-1937) – in referring to Ravel’s orchestral writing, Stravinsky called him a
“Swiss watchmaker”, for his mastery of fitting parts together. He made orchestral versions of
most of his piano works (excluding his Jeux d’eau, 1901, and Miroirs, 1905), and also made the
most commonly played orchestration of Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition. Ravel enjoyed
exploring in each work a particular musical character: the Hispanic, the childlike, the Baroque.
His Hispanic works include not only the Rapsodie espagnole (1908) and Boléro (1928) but also
several songs and an opera, L’heure espagnole (“Spanish Time”, 1911). His other opera, also in
one act, is his most intensive exploration of childhood: L’enfant et les sortileges (“The child and
 the spells”, 1925); he also wrote a fairytale ballet Ma mere l’oye (“Mother Goose”, 1911). This
work dates from his most productive period, when he also composed an hour-long ballet for
Diaghilev, the ancient Greek story of Daphnis at Chloé; a set of waltzes, and a song cycle to
poems by Mallarmé. During the World War I his rate of composition slowed down as he worked,
through his piano suite Le Tombeau de Couperin, to a neo-classical style of sparer texture within
models of form and phrasing inherited from the past. After Tombeau he wrote chamber works
as well as larger ones: L’enfant, the waltz fantasy La valse and two piano concertos (one for LH
alone, 1930, and another in G major, 1931).

Italy
Debussy – France; Mahler – Austria; Elgar – England; Puccini – Italy

(O) Giacomo Puccini (1858-1924) – Puccini was not truly a verismo composer; his operas are not set
in the (then) present; only a few have elements of the “realistic” world of feeling. But, the first
of his pieces that shows the influence of the verismo school is Manon Lescaut (1893). La bohème
(1896), is an altogether softer, more sentimental piece. “Here Puccini used the pentatonic scale
as a source of memorable orchestral ideas”. La bohème is Puccini’s most popular opera, but his
next two, Tosca (1900) and Madama Butterfly (1904), run it close. Puccini’s capacity to compel
the audiences emotions in sympathy with his heroines is particularly striking—most of his
heroines are “little women”, who suffer and die for their true love. It happens again in his next
opera, La fanciulla del West (1910). His later operas, which include a “triptych” written for the
Metropolitan in New York (Il Trittico, 1918, with Il tabarro [“The Cloak”], Suor Angelica, and
Gianni Schicchi, his only comedy) and Turandot, show him enlarging his harmonic and orchestral
style. He died in 1924, leaving Turandot unfinished.

WW1 – 1914-1918
WW2 – 1939-1945
MODERN TIMES

It begins in the years leading up to World War I. The works from this time did not merely carry
further the continuing processes of the breakdown of tonality and on increase in dissonance. There is in
them a conscious, deliberate element of violence and distortion, a renunciation of traditional ideas of
the beautiful and the expressive. “The traditional bourgeois concertgoers was meant to be offended and
disturbed from his complacency by works like these; … This was a period when artists of all kinds were
seeking to find a more truthful, more expressive way of treating the realities of human existence in the
harsh, dissonant world of the twentieth century…”. Expressionist Wassily Kandinsky’s (1866-1944) move
towards abstraction invites analogy with Schoenberg’s towards atonality. “Equally an analogy may be
drawn between Stravinsky and early Cubism, particularly as represented by Pablo Picasso (1881-1973),
an artist with whom Stravinsky in fact collaborated.
Neo-classicism is used in music of this time to describe those works of the first half of the
twentieth century that look back beyond the Romantic era to the Classical, the Baroque or even earlier
for inspiration or simply for technical procedures.
 Prokofiev have drawn on classical forms in his instrumental music
 Stravinsky’s opera The Rake’s Progress, with its strong Mozart echoes, is outstanding among
neo-classical works
 Paul Hindemith, whose music is notably tidy in its forms and techniques, and unromantic in
feeling, has also often been called a neo-classicist
 Ferruccio Busoni (1866-1924) – Italian composer and pianist, sought inspiration in Bach for his
Fantasia contrappuntistica
Folksong interests of the previous generation persisted. Men like Ralph Vaughan Williams in
Englad and Béla Bartók in Hungary were collecting folksong on a methodical, scientific basis.
One technological development of the war years particularly important for musicians was tape
recording. With tape recording any sound could be manipulated. The term musique concrete was used
for “compositions” of this kind. Later, these techniques were applied to musical sounds, notably by
Stockhausen in Gesung der Jünglinge (“Songs of the youths”, entirely made up from a tape of one boy
singing a hymn), and in America by composers at the influential Columbia-Princeton center.
Some composers, nevertheless, preferred exactly the opposite of the kind of control tape
recording and later synthesizers provided. Even in the electronic world, a device called the ring
modulator was sometimes used which would distort the sound in ways that could not always be
calculated in advance. And some composers combined a pre-existing tape with live music-making, while
others used electronic devices like amplifiers or throat microphones to introduce deliberately random
elements into their music. In this area (Random Music) the most representative is probably the
American composer John Cage.
 Other composers, recognizing and wishing to extend the role of the performer, abandoned
traditional methods of notation in favor of symbolic graphic ones which the player could interpret
exactly as he felt inclined; nothing is “wrong” and anything that reflects the player’s feelings, on seeing
the music is “right”. A piece of music might even be presented to the player as a piece of prose, to which
he would react by playing something. Somewhat less extreme, in a string quartet by Lutoslawski the
players are asked to improvise on given phrases until the first violinist gives a signal to move on, and in a
Stockhausen piano piece the player decides on which sections he will include and in what sequence.

The Second Viennese School

In 1908, the decisive break to atonality was made by a young composer, who was thereby to
establish himself as one of the dominant influences on the music of the twentieth century: Arnold
Schoenberg.

(A) Arnold Schoenberg (1874-1951) – “…he always remained devoted to the Viennese tradition as
expressed in the music of Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert and Brahms. Indeed, he saw
himself not as overturning that tradition but rather as perpetuating it. … Music must unfold with
symphonic logic, stating its themes, developing them and then recalling them in an altered
state.” Schoenberg produced a stream of piano pieces, songs and chamber works throughout
the 1890s, but nothing he considered worthy. Verklärte Nacht (“Transfigured Night,” 1899), a
symphonic poem for string sextet, was the first instrumental score he acknowledged (the
Composer’s Union in Vienna declined to perform it). It brought Tristan-style harmonies into
chamber music, orthodox form and medium. “He saw the need … to write it possible for the
language of Wagner to be spoken with the logic of Brahms.” In 1903 Schoenberg began giving
composition lessons privately. Among his first pupils were Alban Berg (1885-1935) and Anton
Webern (1883-1945). The same tonal-loose style is continued in the First Chamber Symphony
(1906). His next chamber work, String Quartet no. 2, completes the move into atonality
foreshadowed by the Chamber Symphony. Following, there are his first fully atonal works:
Erwarting (1909) and Pierrot lunaire (1912). From this time there is his Die Jakobsleiter (“Jacob’s
Ladder,” 1917-22), never completed. Also written to the composer’s own text is Moses und Aron
(1932), again unfinished. His Pierrot lunaire is a set of 21 brief poems, presenting his
Sprechgesung. Gradually, while working on Die Jakobsleiter and teaching in Vienna, he evolved
the basic principles of 12-tone serialism, which was intended not so much as a system as an aid
 to extend composition without tonality. Schoenberg’s first wholly serial work is the Piano Suite
(1923). As he insisted, “one uses the series then one composes as before.” From 1932 comes his
opera Moses und Aron. In 1934 Schoenberg settled in California, his home for the rest of his life.
This late period was one of continued teaching, privately (among them John Cage) and at the
University of Southern California. These were the years too of Schoenberg’s most complex and
coherent serial works, including the Violin Concerto (1936), the Fourth String Quartet (1936),
the Piano Concerto (1942), the String Trio (1946) and the Phantasy for violin and piano (1949).
He died in 1951, leaving a liturgical piece, Kol nidre, for rabbi, chorus and orchestra, unfinished.
Among his vocal music there is also his Das Buch der hängenden Gärten (15 songs, 1909). The
“emancipation of the dissonance” was a concept or goal put forth by him (as well as his pupil
Anton Webern).

(B) Alban Berg (1885-1935) – not an instrumentalist by education, he came to Schoenberg in 1904
for composition lessons. From 1912 comes his Altenberg Songs for soprano and orchestra. His
three Pieces of orchestra of 1915 leans more towards Mahler, finished on the very eve of World
War I (dedicated to Schoenberg). During the war Berg spent more than three years as a soldier,
an experience that revived his earlier interest in making an opera out of Georg Büchner’s play
Woyzeck, a play dealing with the dehumanizing effects of doctors and the military on a poor
young man’s life. Berg’s first opera, Wozzeck (1914-1922) was first performed in Berlin in 1925—
it began to be performed widely and so to guarantee its composer as income. Berg’s next work
was the Chamber Concerto for piano, violin and 13 wind instruments (1925), a piece that welds
the tonal and the atonal more firmly that had been the case in Wozzeck. Afterwards, Berg
adopted serialism, which he used in parts of his Lyric Suite for string quartet (1926). His second
opera is Lulu, which began to be written in 1929 and was not quite finished when he died in
1935.

(C) Anton Webern (1883-1945) – his disposition towards serialism was brought to an extreme of
concentration and calculation in such works as his Symphony (1928), Concerto for nine
instruments (1934) and String Quartet (1938). The symphony is scored for a small orchestra, of
clarinets, horns, harp and strings. There are only two movements, the first in sonata-form but
characteristically also a four-part canon, the second a set of variations that pivots at its halfway
point (palindrome). Several of his pieces are miniatures such as his Six Bagatelles for string
 quartet (1913). He was working on a further Jone cantata in 1945 when he was shot in error by
an American soldier.

The non-serial alternative

(D) Igor Stravinsky (1882-1971) – his work took off with two short orchestral pieces (Scherzo
fantastique and Fireworks) performed in St Petersburg in 1908. In his works, he expressed
hesitancy over Western European values—far beyond that of Tchaikovsky and Mussorgsky. In
1909 he began an association with Sergei Diaghilev—three one-act ballet scores took Stravinsky
out of Rimsky’s kind of musical picture-making (Stravinsky had lessons with Rimsky between
1902 and 1908) and into a quite new understanding of the art: The Firebird (1910), Petrushka
(1911) and The Rite of Spring (1913). Unlike Schoenberg’s constant development, Stravinsky is
happy to cut from one idea to another and back again; lacking long-term growth, the score
(Petrushka) can accommodate a great variety of materials. In The Rite of Spring (orig. Fre. Le
sacre du printemps) the emphasis on rhythm is enhanced by the unchanging harmony,
instrumentation and dynamic level (“Sacrificial Dance”). The premiere of Rite involved one of
the most famous classical music riots in history.6 After leaving Russia at the outbreak of WW1,
most of Stravinsky’s other works from his time in Switzerland are satellites of The Wedding (Les
Noces, 1923). Just as The Wedding is both ballet and cantata, The Soldier’s Tale is a short play
with substantial musical interludes and dances. In another collaboration with Diaghilev, once the
war was over, was Pulcinella, a ballet based on an early eighteenth-century commedia dell’arte
libretto and music believed (in Diaghilev’s time) to have been composed by Pergolesi; this piece
opened the way to neo-classicism. In it Stravinsky rewrote this older music in a more modern
way (borrowing themes and textures, adding modern rhythms, harmonies). Among Stravinsky’s
early neo-classical works was his Octet for wind instruments. He had now settled in France,
having left Switzerland in 1920. The last of Stravinsky’s works written for Diaghilev is his Oedipus
rex (1927), an “opera-oratorio”. After rejoining the Russian Orthodox Church in 1916 he wrote
the Symphony of Psalms for choir and orchestra (1930). A “real” symphony duly emerged a
decade later in the Symphony in C (1940). During the decade between both Symphonies he had
taken French citizenship in 1934. However, the outbreak of WW2 caused him to move west
again, to the USA, arriving in New York in 1939, settling next year in Hollywood. In 1945 he

6
Richard Taruskin has written an article about the premiere, entitled “A Myth of the Twentieth Century”, in which
he attempts to demonstrate that the traditional story of music provoking unrest was largely concocted by
Stravinsky himself in the 1920s.
 became an American citizen. In 1951 he wrote his largest work, the opera The Rake’s Progress.
Stravinsky’s gradual adoption of serialism (which he possibly felt freer to investigate after
Schoenberg’s death) is charted in his work of the 1950s (Canticum sacrum). Most of his serial
compositions are sacred or intended as funerary tributes. There was a last mixed-media
dramatic piece, The Flood. There was also a sequence of epitaphs for distinguished literary
friends, including Dylan Thomas, T. S. Eliot and Aldous Huxley. He also wrote a Requiem
Canticles (1966), sung at his funeral.

Central Europe
Schoenberg-Stravinsky relate to Brahms-Wagner in an earlier age, offering alternatives to their
contemporaries: either to ground their music in the past, or to make a clean break. Some middle course
composers of the first half of the twentieth century are Bartók, Hindemith, Weil.

(E) Béla Bartók (1881-1945) – as one who had set himself the task of becoming a Hungarian
composer Bartók set about using true folk music; but since he had first to collect and study this
music, he became at the same time one of the founders of modern ethnomusicology. Bartók
also employed palindromic structures. String Quartet no. 4 (1928) has the pattern Allegro-
scherzo-slow movement-scherzo-Allegro. The two outer movements share themes and the two
scherzos are distinguished by their sound—the first is muted, the second all plucked. In addition
to his studies as an ethnomusicologist, Bartók worked for much of his professional life as a piano
teacher, producing much educational music, including most importantly the six volumes of
Mikrokosmos (1926-39), ranging from elementary pieces to pieces suitable for concert. Like
Stravinsky and Schoenberg, Bartók left Nazi Europe for the USA (1940). His American years were
overshadowed by leukemia and serious financial hardship. Bartók died, in a New York hospital,
in 1945 (before composing his Piano Concerto no. 3, 1945, and his Concerto for Orchestra,
1943).

(F) Paul Hindemith (1895-1963) – a classically neo-classical composer. Every phase of his
development (he tried out various styles, including Schoenberg’s) is represented by dozens of
major works. However, his Bach-Stravinsky style of neo-classicism is summed up in the series of
seven works with the title Kammermusik, most of them concertos for various instruments, and
all of them written between 1922 and 1927. Ever since the last works of Beethoven there had
 been an evident gap between the interests of composers and the taste of the general musical
public. Hindemith suggested that composers ought to write with the non-specialist and the
amateur in mind, and he furthered the concept of Gebrauchsmusic or “music for use,” with a
decisive function (film scores, radio music) or aimed at performance by children or amateurs. In
the late 1920s and early 1930s he wrote a lot of music of both kinds, but these activities were
cut short by the arrival in power of the Nazis. In 1938 he left Berlin, and from 1940 to 1953 he
made his home in the USA as a professor at Yale. Hindemith’s emigration to the USA brought
little change in his style (by now his harmony more smoothly tonal, and his use of Baroque form
as framing devices was also giving way to a mellower kind of continuity). His most important
American work was a Requiem for the dead of WW2. America also provided the opportunity for
several large-scale orchestral works. Other pieces have an educative, useful purpose. A flute
sonata of 1936 eventually became the starting-point for a cycle of sonatas for all the normal (?)
orchestral instruments. Meanwhile the Ludus tonalis (“Tonal play”) for piano (1942) offered a
set of “studies in counterpoint, tonal organization and piano playing,” exploring Hindemith’s
own expanded notion of tonality. In the late 1930s, Hindemith wrote a theoretical book, The
Craft of Musical Composition (1937), which lays out his system of tonal but non-diatonic music.

(G) Kurt Weill (1900-1950) – studied with Ferruccio Busoni in Berlin between 1920 and 1923. He
began a brief collaboration with dramatist Bertolt Brecht in their joint opera Rise and fall of the
City of Mahagony (1924), followed by The Threepenny Opera (1928) (Ger., Die
Dreigroschenoper), whose great popular success enabled Weill live off his earnings as a
composer. The piece (a musical) was adapted from an 18th century English ballad opera, John
Gay’s The Beggar’s Opera, and offers a Marxist critique of the capitalist world. The collaboration
ended five years later with Seven Deadly Sins, a song-cycle-cum-ballet. In 1935 Weill moved on
to the USA, and spent the rest of his life in New York as a composer for Broadway.

Other contemporaries
 Carl Orff (1895-1981) – German, lived in Munich, working not only as a composer but also in
music education; wrote his Carmina Burana (1936), a dramatic cantata on low medieval verse.
 Francis Poulenc (1899-1963) – influenced by Stravinsky; wrote an opera, Dialogues des
Carmelites (1956); his harmony is more comfortably diatonic
o Poulenc and five of his contemporaries were known as the Les Six; the others were:
  Arthur Honegger (1892-1955)
 Darius Milhaud (1892-1974) – one of the most prolific composers of the century
 Georges Auric (1899-1983)
 Germaine Tailleferre (1892-1983)
 Louis Durey (1888-1979)
 Eric Satie (1866-1925)
 Manuel de Falla (1876-1946) – musically influenced by Paris, he was the century’s leading
Spanish composer. “Like Bartók, Falla believed that his country needed a music based on its rich
folk heritage.” Before going to Paris he had written an opera, La vida breve. Falla returned to
Spain on the outbreak of WW1 and composed a second opera, El amor brujo. Then came a
ballet, The Three-Cornered Hat, produced by Diaghilev and which made Falla’s name.

America
(H) Charles Ives (1874-1954) – Ives wrote a group of Psalm settings around the age of 20, some of
them in several keys at the same time or vaguely dissonant. His formal musical education was at
Yale, between 1894 and 1898, where he wrote in a more conventional kind, such as his First
Symphony (1898). On leaving Yale, Ives went into the insurance business. Most of his output
dates from the two decades up to 1918, when he suffered a heart attack, but almost nothing of
it was known outside a small circle of musicians whom Ives invited occasionally to play pieces
through. At the center of his works stands a body of around 150 songs (At the River, Padacelsus,
Feldeinsamkeit, The Circus Band). His many revisions of his works came with the conviction that
what mattered in music was the “substance” and not the “manner”: “Why can’t music go out in
the same way it comes into a man,” he wrote, “without having to crawl over a fence of sounds,
thoraxes, catguts, wire, wood and brass? … Is it the composer’s fault that man has only ten
fingers?” One of Ives’s orchestral pieces is The Unanswered Question, composed in 1906,
antecedating Schoenberg’s first properly atonal compositions. Ives’s position as a precursor is
borne out by many other features. His use of recognizable scraps of musical quotations looks
forward as far as Stockhausen and Berio in the 1960s. He experimented too with tuning a piano
in quarter-tones (Tone Roads, nos. 1 and 3, 1911 and 1915) and with many devices in his songs.
If a piano sonata demanded impossible spreads and the introduction of subsidiary instruments
(a flute in the finale), then so it must be: as his Second Piano Sonata, Concord, is, picturing the
personalities of four writers associated with that Massachusetts town. In 1920 Ives publoished
 it, privately, and in 1922 followed it with a volume of 114 songs: in both cases he sent his music
off to anyone who might be interested, and asked for no financial recompense; it was not until
the 1940s that he began to be recognized as the first great American composer. By then,
though, he had long stopped composing.

(I) Henry Cowell (1897-1965) – an experimenter since an early age, his methods are discussed in his
influential book New Musical Resources (1930). He wrote what is probably the first example of
an “aleatory” composition in his Mosaic Quartet for strings (1935), to be played “alternating the
movements at the desire of the performers…”. In 1927 he launched the New Music Edition,
publishing challenging new works on a subscription basis.

(J) Edgard Varèse (1883-1965) – born in France, came to New York in 1915. The most compact of
Varèses’s works from the 1920s in Hyperprism (1923), scored for flute, clarinet, seven brass and
seven percussion players. Varèse returned to Paris in 1928 and stayed there for five years.
During this period his interest in percussion received maximum expression in Ionisation (1931),
for percussion orchestra. With the arrival of the tape recorder, he composed Déserts (1954).
“The title for him meant ‘not only physical deserts of sand, sea, mountains and snow, outer
space, deserted city streets … but also this distant inner space … where man is alone in a world
of mystery and essential solitude.’”

(K) Aaron Copland (1900-1990) – ballets Billy the Kid (1942), Rodeo (1942), Appalachian Spring
(1944)

(L) Elliot Carter (1908)

(M) Leonard Bernstein (1918-1990)

Britain
(N) Vaughan Williams (1872-1958)
(O) Gustav Holst (1874-1934)
(P) Frederick Delius (1862-1934)
(Q) Benjamin Britten (1913-1976)
Russia (Soviet Union)
(R) Sergei Prokofiev (1891-1953)
(S) Dmitry Shostakovich (1906-1975)

Since 1945
(T) Olivier Messiaen (1908-1992) – French composer, organist and ornithologist. His music is
rhythmically complex (he was interested in rhythms from ancient Greek and from ancient
Indian/Hindu sources); harmonically and melodically it is based on modes of limited
transposition (modes or scales that fulfill specific criteria relating to their symmetry and the
repetition of their interval groups, compiled by Messiaen, and published in his book La
technique de mon langage musical—whole tone scale, octatonic/diminished scale, …). All these
elements are applied to the celebration of the mysteries of the Roman Catholic Church, the
central force behind Messiaen’s music. They came into play in his meditation on the Christ child,
Vingt regards sur l’Enfant-Jésus (1944). He also turned to birdsong for his material, used almost
exclusively in the Catalogue d’oiseaux (1956-8).

(U) Pierre Boulez (1925)

(V) Stockhausen (1928-2007) – German composer, known for his groundbreaking work in electronic
music, aleatory (controlled chance) in serial composition, and musical spatialization (“spatial
music” indicates music in which the location and movement of found sources is a primary
compositional parameter).

(W) John Cage (1912-1992) – a pioneer of chance music, electronic music and non-standard use of
musical instruments; one of the leading figures of the post-war avant-garde. Best known for his
1952 composition 4’33’’, in three movements. Another famous creation of Cage’s is the
prepared piano (Sonatas and Interludes, 1946-48). Through his studies of Indian philosophy and
Zen Budhism in the late 1940s, Cage came to the idea of aleatoric or chance-controled music,
which he started composing in 1951. The I Ching, an ancient Chinese classic text on changing
events, became Cage’s standard composition tool for the rest of his life. In a 1957 lecture,
Experimental Music, he described music as “a purposeless play” which is “an affirmation of life—
not an attempt to bring order out of chaos nor to suggest improvements in creation, but simply
a way of walking up to the very life we’re living.”