Chapter 16: The Early Romantics

Early Romantic Program Music

Key Terms

• program music

• concert overture

• program symphony

• idée fixe

• Dies irae

• col legno

Program Music

• instrumental music associated with poems, stories, etc.– intimately tied with nonmusical ideas

• different genres– concert overture– program symphony– symphonic poem

• many important composers wrote in these genres

Franz Liszt (1811–1886)

• Hungarian composer– learned music at Esterházy estate – played for Beethoven at age 11

• virtuoso pianist based in Paris– dazzled audiences with technique– dashing looks, personality, and affairs– wrote fiercely difficult piano music

• second career as conductor in Weimar– wrote symphonic poems; championed Wagner

Felix Mendelssohn (1809–1847)

• from upper-class family of bankers• successful composer, pianist, organist,

conductor, and educator– founded Leipzig Conservatory– revived Bach’s St. Matthew Passion

• firm foundation in Classical technique• wrote concert overtures, oratorios, piano

works, symphonies, etc.

Fanny Mendelssohn (1805–1847)

• Felix’s equally talented sister• a highly prolific composer

– oratorios, piano works, chamber music, etc.– weekly performances at Mendelssohn home

• married painter Wilhelm Hensel• women composers were not taken

seriously– little of her music was published– rarely performed outside the home

The Concert Overture

• a single-movement orchestral work for concert performance– structure rooted in sonata form– often based on play, long poem, or novel– resembles opera overture without an opera

• an important step from opera overture to symphonic poem

• Mendelssohn’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream and the Hebrides Overture

Hector Berlioz (1803–1869)

• son of a country doctor in France– left medical school for Paris Conservatory

• made living as writer on music• wrote unprecented, ambitious program

symphonies– extraordinary, imaginative orchestration– inspired by literature (Shakespeare, Virgil)

• toured as conductor of his own music

The Program Symphony

• the Romantic era’s most “grandiose” orchestral genre

• more radical approach than the concert overture

• an entire symphony with a program– each movement tells part of the story– “story” often published in the program

Berlioz, Fantastic Symphony

• program symphony in 5 movements

• lurid autobiographical fantasy– inspired by his unrequited love for

Shakespearean actress Harriet Smithson

• displays unprecedented originality– imaginative colors drawn from huge orchestra– use of idée fixe in every movement

Idée Fixe

• “fixed idea,” a term popular in medical literature of the day

• theme represents the composer’s beloved (Smithson)– recurs in all 5 movements– symbolizes each appearance of the beloved

Movement Format of Fantastic Symphony

• related to Classical symphony format– middle two movements reversed– movements IV and V unprecedented

• I – fast tempo, sonata form, slow intro• II – moderate tempo, triple meter; waltz• III – the slow movement• IV – moderate tempo; a march• V – fast tempo, free form follows story

Fantastic Symphony

The Program of the Symphony

• A young musician of unhealthy sensibility and passionate imagination poisons himself with opium in a fit of lovesick despair. Too weak to kill him, the dose of the drug plunges him into a heavy sleep attended by the strangest visions, during which his sensations, emotions, and memories are transformed in his diseased mind into musical thoughts and images. Even the woman he loves becomes a melody to him, an idée fixe as it were, that he finds and hears everywhere.

The Program: I

Movement 1: Reveries, Passions• First he recalls the soul-sickness, the

aimless passions, the baseless depressions and elations that he felt before first seeing his loved one; then the volcanic love that she instantly inspired in him’ his jealous furies; his return to tenderness; his religious consolations.

The Program: II

Movement 2: A Ball

• He encounters his beloved at a ball, in the midst of a noisy, brilliant party.

The Program: III

Movement 3: Scene in the Country• On a summer evening in the country, he

hears two shepherds piping in dialogue. The pastoral duet, the location, the light rustling of trees stirred gently by the wind, some newly conceived grounds for hope—all this gives him a feeling of unaccustomed calm. But she appears again. . . . what if she is deceiving him?

The Program: IV

Movement 4: March to the Scaffold

• He dreams he has killed his beloved, that he is condemned to death and led to execution. A march accompanies the procession, now gloomy and wild, now brilliant and grand. Finally the idée fixe appears for a moment, to be cut off by the fall of the axe.

The Program: V

Movement 5: Dream of a Witches’ Sabbath• He finds himself at a Witches’

Sabbath. . . . Unearthly sounds, groans, shrieks of laughter, distant cries echoed by other cries. The beloved’s melody is heard, but it has lost its character of nobility and timidity. It is she who comes to the Sabbath! At her arrival, a roar of joy. She joins in the devilish orgies. A funeral knell; burlesque of the Dies irae.

Berlioz, Fantastic Symphony, V

• the most audacious movement yet– orchestral sound effects reign

• idée fixe now treated as vulgar parody– on piccolo clarinet with carnival ornaments– his beloved is the witches’ guest of honor

Berlioz, Fantastic Symphony, V

• composer’s funeral at same time– solemn Dies irae chant ridiculed by witches

Berlioz, Fantastic Symphony, V

• raucous Witches’ Round Dance is a fugue

• Round Dance and Dies irae combine at climax– witches parodying the church melody

Romantic Features of Fantastic Symphony

• “grandiose” in scope and scale• program symphony for large orchestra• blurs the lines between music, literature,

theater, and autobiography• cyclic work, unified by idée fixe• fascination with supernatural, macabre• new orchestral colors, expressive effects,

unusual forms• only 39 years after Haydn’s Symphony No. 95!