Chapter 21:Romantic Music: Program Music, Ballet,

and Musical Nationalism

Program Music• Program Music: Instrumental music that seeks to re-create

in sound the events and emotions portrayed in some extramusical source – a story, legend, play, novel, historical event– Tells a story through music– Specific musical gestures evoke particular feelings and

associations– Connected to the strong literary spirit of the 19th-

centuryOn the other end of the spectrum

• Absolute Music: Instrumental music free of a text or any pre-existing program– Johannes Brahms (1833-1897)

• Program Symphony: A symphony with three, four, or five movements, which together depict a succession of specific events or scenes drawn from an extramusical story or event– Berlioz’s Symphonie fantastique

• Dramatic Overture: A one-movement work that portrays through music a sequence of dramatic events– Rossini’s overture to the opera William Tell (1829)– Tchaikovsky’s 1812 Overture

• Tone Poem (Symphonic Poem): A one-movement work for orchestra that gives musical expression to the emotions or events associated with a story, play, political event, or personal experience– Tchaikovsky’s Romeo and Juliet

Hector Berlioz (1803-1869) and the Program Symphony

• Born near Grenoble, France

• Composer and music critic

• Skilled in orchestration– Added new instruments to the orchestra

– Compositions required an enormous number of musicians

• Influenced by literature, especially Shakespeare

• Life epitomized the artist as Romantic hero

Symphonie fantastique (1830)• The first complete program symphony

• Berlioz wrote the program based on his love affair with Harriet Smithson

• Five movements: I. Reveries, Passion II. A Ball

III. Scene in the Country IV. March to the Scaffold

V. Dream of a Witches’ Sabbath

• Unifying theme: idée fixe (fixed idea)–Represents “the beloved”

–Appears in each movement

–Altered to reflect his changing mood about “the beloved”

IV. March to the Scaffold• Re-creates the sounds of the French military bands he

heard as a child

• Rousing march tempo

• Exceptionally heavy low brass

• Use of the ophicleide (tuba)

• Crescendo and snare drum announce the fall of the guillotine

• Graphically orchestrated so we hear the severed head of the lover fall and thud on the ground

V. Dream of a Witches’ Sabbath• Berlioz creates his personal vision of hell

• Parody of the idée fixe

• Dies Irae chant – burial hymn of the medieval church

• Parodied as a satiric dance

• Final fugato, double counterpoint

Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky (1840-1893):Tone Poem and Ballet Music

• Tone Poem: One-movement work for orchestra that captures the emotions and events of a story through music

• Most prolific writer of late 19th-century program music

• Professor at the Moscow Conservatory

• Supported by patroness Madame Nadezdha von Meck and Tsar Alexander III

• Compositions include every genre of Romantic Era music

• Primarily known today for his program music and ballets

Tone Poem Romeo and Juliet (1869; rev. 1880

• Like Berlioz, found extramusical inspiration from Shakespeare– Romeo and Juliet, The Tempest, Hamlet

• Free, not literal, representation of the principal dramatic events

Tchaikovsky’s Ballets• Ballet: Dramatic dance in which characters and steps tell

a story

• Tchaikovsky's talents uniquely suited to ballet– “Short segment” style; could create one striking

melody/mood after another

– Swan Lake (1876), Sleeping Beauty (1889), The Nutcracker (1892)

• “Dance of the Reed Pipes” from The Nutcracker– Ternary form

– Evokes the sound of shepherds playing pan-pipes

– Clear meter

Music and Nationalism• Arose from the political upheaval of the 19th-century– Desire to maintain ethnic identity and support national pride

• National anthems, native dances, protest songs, victory symphonies

• Use of indigenous musical elements– Folksongs, Scales, Dance rhythms, Local instrumental sounds,

Programs based on national subjects

• Evocative titles– Liszt - Hungarian Rhapsodies

– Rimsky-Korsakov – Russian Easter Overture

– Dvořák – Slavonic Dances

– Smetana – Má vlast (My Fatherland)

– Sibelius – Finlandia

Russian Nationalism: Modest Musorgsky (1839-1881)

• Russia was one of the first countries to develop its own national style of art music, distinct and separate from the traditions of German orchestral music and Italian opera

• Modest Mussorgsky

• “Everything Russian is becoming dear to me.”

• Night on Bald Mountain (tone poem, 1867), Pictures at an Exhibition (set of character pieces, 1874), Boris Godunov (opera, 1874)

Pictures at an Exhibition (1874)• Originally for piano; orchestrated by Maurice Ravel in

1922

• Each movement depicts a different drawing or painting by Victor Hartmann (1833-1873)

• Promenade: Opens the work and serves as transition between movements– Solo contrasts with full brass then full orchestra

– Irregular meter and use of pentatonic scale

• Polish Ox-cart: Creates a sense of time and movement– Two-note ostinato

– Crescendo and decrescendo as the cart approaches and slowly disappears

– Begins and ends with the lowest sounds; orchestrated with tuba and double basses

• The Great Gate of Kiev: Impression of a parade passing through a great arch– Rondo form: ABABCA

– Use of different musical

styles in each section