"Museum Pieces: The Historicist Mainstream of the Last Hundred Years"
J. Peter Burkholder [Journal of Musicology, Vol. 2 (1983) 115-134], outline, Brunner.
I. Introduction
A. Catalyst for change- Music of the late 1800’s and early 1900’s is characterized by
diversity and rapid change
B. Results found in the music that followed for the next 100 yrs
1. No rules for this music-no consensus for the new style
2.Creating music that differs radically from their contemporaries
3. Individuals change their own style & musical language from one piece to the next
C. Art Music is divorced from other traditions
D. No common conceptual tradition/no framework for understanding contributions of
individual composers
E. Labels created that do not work: Modem music, contemporary music, new music,
20th century music
F. Cannot define what binds this diverse group of composers together
II. Finding a mainstream in 20th-century music
A. No sense of shared style, but of shared concerns...
B. Mainstream is Historicism: in the past 100 years, concert music consists primarily of
music written for an audience familiar with the art music of the 18th &19th centuries.
C. Composers begin writing music for the concert hall as a museum
III. Historicism/Transition of the Concert Hall/Split of Serious and Popular music
A. Tradition arose among composers in the 19th century that involved the gradual
development of an audience familiar with music of dead composers.
B. The concert is the center of this development as it was here that the shift/split developed
1. Created the simultaneous split between classical (serious) and popular musics
2. Other Reasons for the split
C. The new respect for “dead composers” was as much commercial as artistic
1. Stemmed from music publishing, instrument manufacture, and concert management
2.This music had little to engage the attention of the musically intelligent.
3. Reaction: serious musicians went back to Beethoven, Mozart, and Haydn
4. The concert became more an intellectual venue than “entertainment”
5. Serious music became something to be “understood” rather than just enjoyed.
6. Popular music turned away from the concert halls
7. The current dichotomy between “serious” and “popular” solidified [Opera was the
exception: serious and popular audiences continued to coincide at least until the
turn of the 20th century. Elsewhere music was no longer offered to an audience
including both skilled and unskilled listeners.]
8. By the last 25 years of the 19th century, the concert hail had already become a
museum for display of art works from previous generations rather than the new.
9. Problem surfaced for living composers... not to please the audience of the present,
but how to win space in the museum
IV. In seeking the museum, composers found modernism: audience opinion becomes secondary
to importance of placement in the museum
A. Composers began to emulate and study the composers of the previous several centuries,
not just their immediate predecessors, e.g., revival of Bach, Palestrina
1. this music was less familiar and therefore “new” music
2. when the works of dead composers were revived they had lost whatever original
social function they had originally
3. served and were valued as autonomous works of art available for the concert hall.
B. Young composers devoted themselves to perfecting their craft and ignoring the goal the older masters, who kept the social role of music in the forefront while composing.
C. In taking this step, Brahms and Schoenberg, and their followers developed the unique
esoteric tradition associated with modernist “classical” music. Communicating with the
audience was secondary to creating music that would last (in the museum).
V. German Tradition and the move towards experimental music
A. Ideology: emphasis on technical innovations and compositional firsts
1. Brahms was the first example
2. Later came Schoenberg, Reger, Hindemith
3. As a whole they created a new tradition of experimental music
B. Composers outside of Germany
1. Found a personal style through several means:
a. Exoticism-incorporation of non Western music, medieval music, and jazz).
This was found primarily in France and Russia
b. Nationalism- found primarily in the peripheral countries of Europe, N. America
c. Folk elements
C. Still the need to emulate German traditions: Schoenberg, Berg, Webern, Hindemith, Strauss, Stravinsky, Bartok, and Ives each answered demand for novelty by bringing
aspects of other traditions into concert music, but to make it to the museum, they
needed to participate in some sense in the progressive developments of the 20th cen.
VI. Differences & Combinations of Progressive Music, Emulative, and Neo-Classical Music.
A. Both Progressivism and Emulation complement sides of the historicist mainstream.
VII. Most works written in the late 19th and first half of the 20th cen. intended as museum pieces.
A. Extreme stylistic diversity within the historicist mainstream is result of each artist seeking an individual solution to the common problem of creating museum pieces.
1. When composers like Schoenberg and Webern sought to extend new and unfamiliar
musical procedures they created music that is difficult to listen to, but rewarding
to analyze and study.
2. This music had no social function
B. Comparisons between concerts of early and “new music”
1. “Contemporary,” “Early,” and “Non-Western” music serve to provide “New Music”
a. Heard as different from the mainstream
b. Measured in some sense against central European standards
c. Attract a small, but enthusiastic audience, almost cultic following.
VIII. Exceptions: of the Historicist mainstream.
A. Music that does not pretend to continue the tradition of “serious” music.
1. Popular music, light classics, and jazz.
a. Jazz is a potential rival to “serious” music but represents a distinct tradition
rather than a sub group within European art music because its roots are deep in
African music and American vernacular culture.
B. Art Music- conservative in style, reveals no progressivism or emulation of the master
composers but serves a social function outside the museum
1. Religious music, film scoring, militaristic types of music
C. Avant Garde Music- (radical wing of progressivism)- includes a rejection of the past, rejection of the conception of the concert hall as a museum; has found no permanent
place in the concert hall and is allowed entrance primarily as a curiosity.
IX. Experimentalist Music
A. Before World War II- Varese, some of the music of Ives, Cowell, John Cage and “ultra modern” composers in the Americas After World War II, the avant garde works of Boulez,
Stockhausen, and Cage came to dominate the scene.
1. This wasn’t music of the past, but music of the future. Music about the very structure of sound as in works of Varese, Cowell, and many electronic composers also the super-serialists like Babbitt and Boulez.
2. Cage suggests “stop listening to masterpieces and start listening to sounds, the music all around us, with new and open ears.
C. Poses as concert music- is presented in concerts and recordings are made of it, but it is not music in the Western tradition and will never find a place in the museum. Experimental music is Western Music, but not music as that word is commonly understood.
D. In the last 40 years it has become research music, finding its home in universities in America and government supported research institutions in Europe.
E. Experimentalist composers create not for the museum, but for the library or laboratory.
X. All concerts in the art tradition are now living museums.
A. Promoters of contemporary music may seek to establish “museums” of their own to
display modern music.
1. There are contemporary chamber groups all across America
2. However, a realization is needed since the great orchestras of America and Europe
are never going to pursue modern music enthusiastically.
XI. Conclusion:
A. Musical value is not determined by popularity alone, especially true for museum pieces
B. While Music for public events and occasions is designed to be played only once or twice and must have instant appeal, works in the art music tradition need only find a small, but devoted audience and group of performers to find a place in the permanent collection.
C. The intense seriousness with which we take our past masterpieces has made it possible for living composers to write works that encompass and transcend all traditions.
Friday, November 9, 2007
Brahms and 20th-Century Classical Music (Brunner, notes)
J. Peter Burkholder, “Brahms and 20th-century Classical Music” in 19th-Century Music, Volume VIII (Summer, 1984), pp. 75-83. [Outline, by Lance Brunner]
I. Traditional View of Brahms and Modernism in music
A. Brahms was a conservative, prevailing view that he was fighting losing battle for classic musical values and forms in the face of growing nationalism and programmaticism.
B. Modern music generally viewed with respect to breakdown of tonality, which was considered “inevitable” as chromaticism eroded tonic. But this view (dogma) focuses on the evolution of pitch relationships above every other element in the music, neglecting other modernist trends not involving pitch manipulations. (p. 76)
II. Burkholder’s View: “Brahms can be characterized as the most modern and indeed the most imitated of composers of the latter 19th century…whose approach to music has become most typical of later generations of composers.”
A. Modernism redefined: not primarily about “innovations” but with the relatinship of new music to past music, the music of the concert tradition. “Modern music” written by composers obsessed with the musical past and with their place in music history, seeking to emulate the “classical masters,” measuring the value of their own music by standards of the past. [76-77] The source of modernism lies not in increasing chromaticism… but in music’s changing social function. Concerts by time of Brahms became “museums,” rather than forums for new music.
B. New works for the concert hall were expected to perform same function as masterpieces already enshrined, i.e, each new work was intended as a “museum piece,” and had to meet three basic requirements: (1) must participate in tradition of serious art music; (2) must have lasting value, rewarding rehearings, study, and analysis, becoming loved as it becomes more familiar; and (3) must proclaim a distinct musical personality (that is speak in a unique voice, but not radically outside norms), which resulted in fragmentation of style into individual dialects.
C. Beginning in 19th century music appreciated for its own sake (apart from any rituals of church, court, or commerce), art for art’s sake.
D. Pieces in a concert did not need to share style, but needed to share status as enduring classics.
III. How this relates to Brahms
A. Brahms (b. 1833) matured just as the transformation of the concert hall into a cultural museum was in the final stages.
B. After meeting Liszt & Schumann in 1850s, he renounced the avant-garde “new German School” (associated with Liszt/Wagner) and, goaded and guided in part by Schumann, turned to emulating the classics.
C. Brahms had an encyclopedic knowledge of the history of Western art music, i.e., he did his “homework!”
D. Brahms’s music pays homage to the past, not as mere imitations, but as models of ways to solving intrinsically musical problems. His interest was as a composer, not a musicologist, with historical musical problems, which he saw as basically the same as his.
E. His thorough knowledge of the past allowed him to recreate old forms and invest them with the same organic approach to form which Mozart and Bach had demonstrated. There is nothing academic about B’s music and it sounds like no other music, precisely because of the great wealth of his influences and his willingness to mix them freely, integrating procedures from vastly different traditions into his own new works.
F. Famous example of this creative synthesis is his Symphony No. 4 finale, the chaconne [78]
1. Bach, D minor chaconne for solo violin is most obvious model (see parallels, p. 78)
2. Beethoven Eroica Symphony finale is another model for Brahms. (Variations, etc.) 3. Other modes (more general) Mozart and Chopin, Schumann, and Couperin.
G. Finale (Sym 4) is “a prime example of a piece written for the concert hall museum.”
H. See other examples of B’s synthesis of two or more “alien styles”, p. 79
I. Brahms was radical in way “he faced head on the problems of writing for a concert audience familiar with the music of the past, the problem that has been the principal concern of serious composers sine his time. The requirements of composition had become paradoxical: composers sought to write new music that would find a place I the tradition of steadily aging immortal masterpieces, demanding of each piece that it visibly participate in that tradition while proclaiming its own distinctiveness.”
J. B’s solution was “dialectical, addressing not only the opposition of old and new musical styles and techniques, but also…the tension between emulation and originality.
1.“This kind of dialectic within music approaches a species of criticism, as if B were writing in his music a commentary on his own experience as a musician.”
2. “B’s music presents itself to us on two levels: for the naïve listener, as an independent musical work in abstract form, and for the connoisseur, as a gloss on the particular work, style, genre, or technique.”
3. “To experience B’s music fully, one must come to know as much about music as Brahms did—and that is no small task.”
K. “In its dialectical nature, in its role as criticism, and in its seeking not to displace the classical masters but to join them, B’s music has served as the most important model for composers of the past hundred years, challenged only by the influential avant-garde movement after WW II.” (in footnote 19, Burkholder talks about what might be called “post-modernism,” that is, those composers who rejected tradition and “the museum” of the concert hall to write completely different kinds of music: their music “celebrated sound itself in the present moment and rejected old teleological ideas of music as organic growth, sounding architecture, or emotive speech.”
L. “Modern composers have faced the same paradoxical requirements as did Brahms and have arrived at the same solution, achieving their originality through the intensification and transformation of ideas learned in their study of existing music.”
IV. Other Composer’s means of getting into the “museum” [“Each modern composer of distinction has taken a unique path, sharing with his peers only the nature of the problem and the model of B’s dialectical solution.” Examples include:
A. Mahler: Austrian symphonic tradition (from Haydn through Bruckner & Brahms), widening his net to include: “military music, bird song, folksong, and other kinds of music familiar to his audiences and with social or emotional significance.
B. Schoenberg: Germanic tradition from Bach to Reger, with his music being “truly new music which, being based on tradition, is destined to become tradition.”
C. Stravinsky: Neo-classicism (transplant reinterpretations of the past in modern terms, with the meaning of the music based largely on listener’s knowledge of style or work being glossed). Also Hindemith (Neo-baroque) and Orff (Neo-medieval)
D. Bartok: his mature music combines the elaborate art forms of fugue and sonata from the classical tradition with the rhythmic complexity, ornamentation, and dissonance of peasant music from southeastern Europe and Turkey. The synthesis of seemingly disparate traditions as folk and classical music makes clear the common dependence on motivic organization and orientation around a tonal center, and fundamental scales and intervals. Bartok’s respect for his sources helped establish the value and importance of east European folk music (in an analogous way that Brahms sponsorship of Eccard and Schuetz helped their cause).
V. The central dilemma of modern music
A. Each modern composer from Mahler to Rochberg, “has written music which focuses on the dialectics between old and new styles and between emulation and originality, music which takes music itself as its subject matter. In the process of developing his own musical language through the rapprochement of contemporary techniques with older material, each composer creates a kind of musical criticism presented in strictly musical terms, exposing hitherto unsuspected relationships between apparently unrelated musical traditions or ideas, or extending the contributions of past composers in new directions. The more familiar one is with the music used as models, the more exhilarating this criticism in music can be.” PROBLEM: most people do not know earlier models.
B. Brahms can be enjoyed on two levels: as commentary on the history of Western art music or as music of immediate appeal; but with few exceptions modern music has lost its ability to make an appeal to the naïve listener
C. Unlike the music we still think of as “modern,” despite its advancing age. Brahms’s music has attained both classic status and great popularity. Brahms recognized and solved yet a third dialectic in his composers (beyond the oppositions of the new with the old and of emulation with originality): “the tension between the present and the future—the requirement that a work demonstrate lasting value, rewarding frequent re-hearings, and becoming more loved as it becomes more familiar and yet at the same time have enough immediate appeal to move the listener to seek out a second hearing. It is on this paradox that most modern composer have foundered. Brahms, like Mozart before him, invested his music not only with hidden beauties form the connoisseur, but also with a strikingly beautiful and emotionally appealing surface…to orient the untutored listener.” Only a few composers since Brahms—notable Mahler and Debussy—have achieved the same synthesis of immediate and lasting appeal.
D. Brahms’s importance for the music of the past 100 years is this: He has provided the model for future generations of (1) what a composer is, (2) what a composer does, (3) why a composer does it, (4) what is of value in music, and (5) how a composer is to succeed. In this respect, the “music of the future” has belong not to Wagner but to Brahms. It is the change in the orientation of serious music, the change in the purpose of composition, which has been of greatest importance, rather than the changes within the language of music itself.
E. The new musical language developed by Wagner, Liszt, and their followers has had an impact on every kind of music from Muzak to jazz, yet what has determined the course of the music we call “modern” is the influence of Brahms. While other provided new musical tools Brahms helped establish the framework for using those tools, and his assumptions concerning what music is and does have been played out in succeeding generations.
I. Traditional View of Brahms and Modernism in music
A. Brahms was a conservative, prevailing view that he was fighting losing battle for classic musical values and forms in the face of growing nationalism and programmaticism.
B. Modern music generally viewed with respect to breakdown of tonality, which was considered “inevitable” as chromaticism eroded tonic. But this view (dogma) focuses on the evolution of pitch relationships above every other element in the music, neglecting other modernist trends not involving pitch manipulations. (p. 76)
II. Burkholder’s View: “Brahms can be characterized as the most modern and indeed the most imitated of composers of the latter 19th century…whose approach to music has become most typical of later generations of composers.”
A. Modernism redefined: not primarily about “innovations” but with the relatinship of new music to past music, the music of the concert tradition. “Modern music” written by composers obsessed with the musical past and with their place in music history, seeking to emulate the “classical masters,” measuring the value of their own music by standards of the past. [76-77] The source of modernism lies not in increasing chromaticism… but in music’s changing social function. Concerts by time of Brahms became “museums,” rather than forums for new music.
B. New works for the concert hall were expected to perform same function as masterpieces already enshrined, i.e, each new work was intended as a “museum piece,” and had to meet three basic requirements: (1) must participate in tradition of serious art music; (2) must have lasting value, rewarding rehearings, study, and analysis, becoming loved as it becomes more familiar; and (3) must proclaim a distinct musical personality (that is speak in a unique voice, but not radically outside norms), which resulted in fragmentation of style into individual dialects.
C. Beginning in 19th century music appreciated for its own sake (apart from any rituals of church, court, or commerce), art for art’s sake.
D. Pieces in a concert did not need to share style, but needed to share status as enduring classics.
III. How this relates to Brahms
A. Brahms (b. 1833) matured just as the transformation of the concert hall into a cultural museum was in the final stages.
B. After meeting Liszt & Schumann in 1850s, he renounced the avant-garde “new German School” (associated with Liszt/Wagner) and, goaded and guided in part by Schumann, turned to emulating the classics.
C. Brahms had an encyclopedic knowledge of the history of Western art music, i.e., he did his “homework!”
D. Brahms’s music pays homage to the past, not as mere imitations, but as models of ways to solving intrinsically musical problems. His interest was as a composer, not a musicologist, with historical musical problems, which he saw as basically the same as his.
E. His thorough knowledge of the past allowed him to recreate old forms and invest them with the same organic approach to form which Mozart and Bach had demonstrated. There is nothing academic about B’s music and it sounds like no other music, precisely because of the great wealth of his influences and his willingness to mix them freely, integrating procedures from vastly different traditions into his own new works.
F. Famous example of this creative synthesis is his Symphony No. 4 finale, the chaconne [78]
1. Bach, D minor chaconne for solo violin is most obvious model (see parallels, p. 78)
2. Beethoven Eroica Symphony finale is another model for Brahms. (Variations, etc.) 3. Other modes (more general) Mozart and Chopin, Schumann, and Couperin.
G. Finale (Sym 4) is “a prime example of a piece written for the concert hall museum.”
H. See other examples of B’s synthesis of two or more “alien styles”, p. 79
I. Brahms was radical in way “he faced head on the problems of writing for a concert audience familiar with the music of the past, the problem that has been the principal concern of serious composers sine his time. The requirements of composition had become paradoxical: composers sought to write new music that would find a place I the tradition of steadily aging immortal masterpieces, demanding of each piece that it visibly participate in that tradition while proclaiming its own distinctiveness.”
J. B’s solution was “dialectical, addressing not only the opposition of old and new musical styles and techniques, but also…the tension between emulation and originality.
1.“This kind of dialectic within music approaches a species of criticism, as if B were writing in his music a commentary on his own experience as a musician.”
2. “B’s music presents itself to us on two levels: for the naïve listener, as an independent musical work in abstract form, and for the connoisseur, as a gloss on the particular work, style, genre, or technique.”
3. “To experience B’s music fully, one must come to know as much about music as Brahms did—and that is no small task.”
K. “In its dialectical nature, in its role as criticism, and in its seeking not to displace the classical masters but to join them, B’s music has served as the most important model for composers of the past hundred years, challenged only by the influential avant-garde movement after WW II.” (in footnote 19, Burkholder talks about what might be called “post-modernism,” that is, those composers who rejected tradition and “the museum” of the concert hall to write completely different kinds of music: their music “celebrated sound itself in the present moment and rejected old teleological ideas of music as organic growth, sounding architecture, or emotive speech.”
L. “Modern composers have faced the same paradoxical requirements as did Brahms and have arrived at the same solution, achieving their originality through the intensification and transformation of ideas learned in their study of existing music.”
IV. Other Composer’s means of getting into the “museum” [“Each modern composer of distinction has taken a unique path, sharing with his peers only the nature of the problem and the model of B’s dialectical solution.” Examples include:
A. Mahler: Austrian symphonic tradition (from Haydn through Bruckner & Brahms), widening his net to include: “military music, bird song, folksong, and other kinds of music familiar to his audiences and with social or emotional significance.
B. Schoenberg: Germanic tradition from Bach to Reger, with his music being “truly new music which, being based on tradition, is destined to become tradition.”
C. Stravinsky: Neo-classicism (transplant reinterpretations of the past in modern terms, with the meaning of the music based largely on listener’s knowledge of style or work being glossed). Also Hindemith (Neo-baroque) and Orff (Neo-medieval)
D. Bartok: his mature music combines the elaborate art forms of fugue and sonata from the classical tradition with the rhythmic complexity, ornamentation, and dissonance of peasant music from southeastern Europe and Turkey. The synthesis of seemingly disparate traditions as folk and classical music makes clear the common dependence on motivic organization and orientation around a tonal center, and fundamental scales and intervals. Bartok’s respect for his sources helped establish the value and importance of east European folk music (in an analogous way that Brahms sponsorship of Eccard and Schuetz helped their cause).
V. The central dilemma of modern music
A. Each modern composer from Mahler to Rochberg, “has written music which focuses on the dialectics between old and new styles and between emulation and originality, music which takes music itself as its subject matter. In the process of developing his own musical language through the rapprochement of contemporary techniques with older material, each composer creates a kind of musical criticism presented in strictly musical terms, exposing hitherto unsuspected relationships between apparently unrelated musical traditions or ideas, or extending the contributions of past composers in new directions. The more familiar one is with the music used as models, the more exhilarating this criticism in music can be.” PROBLEM: most people do not know earlier models.
B. Brahms can be enjoyed on two levels: as commentary on the history of Western art music or as music of immediate appeal; but with few exceptions modern music has lost its ability to make an appeal to the naïve listener
C. Unlike the music we still think of as “modern,” despite its advancing age. Brahms’s music has attained both classic status and great popularity. Brahms recognized and solved yet a third dialectic in his composers (beyond the oppositions of the new with the old and of emulation with originality): “the tension between the present and the future—the requirement that a work demonstrate lasting value, rewarding frequent re-hearings, and becoming more loved as it becomes more familiar and yet at the same time have enough immediate appeal to move the listener to seek out a second hearing. It is on this paradox that most modern composer have foundered. Brahms, like Mozart before him, invested his music not only with hidden beauties form the connoisseur, but also with a strikingly beautiful and emotionally appealing surface…to orient the untutored listener.” Only a few composers since Brahms—notable Mahler and Debussy—have achieved the same synthesis of immediate and lasting appeal.
D. Brahms’s importance for the music of the past 100 years is this: He has provided the model for future generations of (1) what a composer is, (2) what a composer does, (3) why a composer does it, (4) what is of value in music, and (5) how a composer is to succeed. In this respect, the “music of the future” has belong not to Wagner but to Brahms. It is the change in the orientation of serious music, the change in the purpose of composition, which has been of greatest importance, rather than the changes within the language of music itself.
E. The new musical language developed by Wagner, Liszt, and their followers has had an impact on every kind of music from Muzak to jazz, yet what has determined the course of the music we call “modern” is the influence of Brahms. While other provided new musical tools Brahms helped establish the framework for using those tools, and his assumptions concerning what music is and does have been played out in succeeding generations.
Rise of the Classical Repertoire in 19th Cen (Erica's notes)
The Rise of the Classical Repertoire In 19th Century Orchestral concerts
By William Weber (From Peyser's The Orchestra)
Presented by Erica Rumbley (October 30, 2007)
*The Overarching Significance of 19th century orchestras is their building of a museumlike classical repertoire
Classical referring to “the performance of music of any previous period that forms part of a canon of great works”
Canon—“A body of works that are defined as the summit of achievement in an artistic field; studied and emulated by practitioners and honored in ritual and iconography
--Their concerts establish the importance of a pantheon of certain composers—Especially “Big Three”
*18th century beginnings
--Lots of operatic and sacred music included on concerts—different from today
--Older composers begin to form an early canon—connected with similar movements in literature
--This movement affects especially Paris; Berlin and Leipzig; Vienna; and England, which supported older music first with London’s Academy of Ancient Music and helped establish important social precedents for the 19th century through its annual subscription concert series and revival of some baroque music
*Early 19th Century
--Now all countries begin to focus on the same common body of ‘great composers’ (The ‘Big Three’—Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven—Core is Austrian/German, but spreads to various countries, international standardization
--Music and music aesthetics become an important intellectual topic in their own right as music rises in cultural status, with “richer intellectual trappings”
--These changes are accompanied by changes in program format; in the 18th century, different genres of music, as well as instrumental and vocal music, were always alternated, keeping the audience entertained, and usually an overture opened the program.
As the 19th century approaches, however, the focus begins to move to single long works, usually symphonies, with less variety in overall programming. At the beginning of the century, most programs included 8 or 10 pieces of short or moderate lenth, with the only long compositions (oratorios or sacred) often presented in segments. Composers were not the focal point, and often their names were not included on the program.
Beethoven breaks this with his symphonies(The first example of this is the performance of Beethoven’s Eroica in 1807—opens 2nd half of concert, followed by only one aria) Many other compositions follow, by him and others
--More focus is placed on the composers themselves, with the romantic idea of genius of the individual leading to this focus
--Vocal music is still important, and programs are still intended to please a crowd, but changes have been made; many in the audience are still skeptical of the new canon idea and long instrumental works
*Evolution of the Repertoire—Three Periods
I) Mozart’s death (1791) to Beethoven’s death (1827)
--The ‘Big Three’ emerge as the greatest masters, with Beethoven as most important (He bridges different genres, while Mozart is known most for vocal and opera and Haydn for Symphonies
--Many other composers of the late 18th and early 19th centuries are included, especially Handel, Gluck and Carl Maria von Weber
II) After Beethoven’s death (next 20 years)
--Only a vague sense of a canon surrounding big three, changes in this period, develop a self-conscious sense of the repertoire as a canon
--Classical Music becomes a “cause” defended militantly—a reaction against the commercialism of musical life at the time, with publishing and mass concerts giving rise to simplified editions of recent opera and virtuoso pieces. Now the orchestras stand outside the mainstream of public taste; more serious musicians use “classics” to combat salon music, which they thought degraded popular taste
--The term Classical is standardized across Europe to designate this specific canon of works
--Orchestral taste is conservative, rather than reactionary, with some new music still included.
--Up to 1850, the standard repertoire of today is being built, but some other works are still included; even now some see it leading in the wrong direction by rejecting new pieces
III) 1848 – 1870
--Orchestras and their classical repertoire become the center of musical life
--When musical life started again after the revolutions of 48-49, a major trend in public taste favored the Classical repertoire. The public is tired of the “razzle-dazzle” of merely virtuosic display, so the new generation of virtuosos begins to play concertos by Mozart and Beethoven
--Orchestras grow from private concert societies into national cultural institutions—probably spurred by revolutions, since the performance of oratorios served as a powerful ritual of social unity, leading to the national institutions. Urban growth also helped, with the establishment of large concert halls in major cities
--Many important changes; one was the growing promence of overtures, arias, and full scenes from operas of the 1820-1840s.
--Music from the Renaissance and Baroque eras is revived
--Bach was the main figure—Mendelssohn, St. Matthew’s Passion
--Sets off a revival of other early music
--Partly a return to the 18th century origins of the Classical repertoire, such as Handel
--Not played real frequently at concerts, but yet important because of its unusual nature and its part in fostering the growth of the study of music history
--The overall repertoire becomes mostly standardized (despite the variety from opera excerpts and Baroque revival). The enshrining of master composers throughout Europe leads to homogenization. During the 1830s, most orchestras honor many local composers, but by the 1870s, they are mostly playing music by the same core of dead masters.
--A crisis from the lack of acceptance for new music begins. At the beginning of the century, it was unusual for works by dead composer to occur more than occasionally on programs, by the 1870s none of the major orchestras gave more than a third of their annual repertoire to music of living composers, and the percentage was often smaller; this situation has led to today
--Wagnerians lead a bitter ideological attack against the orchestras of the 1850s for their focus on established masters and resistance to forward-looking works. (Yet Wagner owed a lot to orchestras for the diffusion of his music)
--Some dissemination of new music is made possible by newly organized concert series offered to a less affluent audience
--Euterpe in Leipzig since the early 1830s
--London’s Crystal Palace after it reopened in 1854
--Popular Concerts and Colonne Concerts in Paris (1860s-70s)
--These concerts give more attention to new music than elite orchestras, don’t exaggerate how far they went, but they did welcomd young composers and some avant-garde works by followers of Liszt and Wagner. Performing controversial pieces put the orchestras in the spotlight and helped them draw a public that was not intolerant of new music. They didn’t have a mass audience, with many middle-class listeners who were well educated in music. (Clerk with well-worn pocket score of Beethoven Symphonies)
*Four Important Cities
I) Leipzig
--The Gewandhaus Orchestra, which is largely dominated by the classical canon—its concerts in the 1780s were only 13 % works by dead composers, by 1870, they are 76% works by the deceased
--The competing Euterpe series is organized rather early, and features some newer composers, notably Liszt, Wagner, and their followers
--It is one of the most interesting musical cities in Europe, with much variety and richness of musical styles
II) London
--The Philharmonic Society of London is similar to the Gewandhaus in program makeup, but quicker to focus on a strict canon of works,
--The Society’s social base is not as affluent as in the other cities
--The New Philharmonic Society (1850s) is not too different in its programs, although oratorios by British composers are included here
III) Vienna
--The Vienna Philharmonic is not founded until 1842, much later than other cities began offering professional concert series
--It includes more new works (Brahms, Bruckner, etc)
--The lack of a cheaper series hinders further dissemination of new music, and this perhaps influences radical Viennese composers in the 20th century
IV) Paris
--The Conservatoire Orchestra (1828) is the most resistant of all to new music
--Rival popular concert series are very nationalistic
*Conclusion
--In the 19th century, great symphonic works were enshrined in the orchestras—the operas houses of Europe were slower to establish a canon of works. with instrumental music acquiring a central place in music taste
--The programs still differ from today in their inclusion of many diverse vocal works
--Diverse—operatic, oratorios, songs, and chamber works. The public was equally diverse
--Concerts would still seem a bit strange to us today
By William Weber (From Peyser's The Orchestra)
Presented by Erica Rumbley (October 30, 2007)
*The Overarching Significance of 19th century orchestras is their building of a museumlike classical repertoire
Classical referring to “the performance of music of any previous period that forms part of a canon of great works”
Canon—“A body of works that are defined as the summit of achievement in an artistic field; studied and emulated by practitioners and honored in ritual and iconography
--Their concerts establish the importance of a pantheon of certain composers—Especially “Big Three”
*18th century beginnings
--Lots of operatic and sacred music included on concerts—different from today
--Older composers begin to form an early canon—connected with similar movements in literature
--This movement affects especially Paris; Berlin and Leipzig; Vienna; and England, which supported older music first with London’s Academy of Ancient Music and helped establish important social precedents for the 19th century through its annual subscription concert series and revival of some baroque music
*Early 19th Century
--Now all countries begin to focus on the same common body of ‘great composers’ (The ‘Big Three’—Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven—Core is Austrian/German, but spreads to various countries, international standardization
--Music and music aesthetics become an important intellectual topic in their own right as music rises in cultural status, with “richer intellectual trappings”
--These changes are accompanied by changes in program format; in the 18th century, different genres of music, as well as instrumental and vocal music, were always alternated, keeping the audience entertained, and usually an overture opened the program.
As the 19th century approaches, however, the focus begins to move to single long works, usually symphonies, with less variety in overall programming. At the beginning of the century, most programs included 8 or 10 pieces of short or moderate lenth, with the only long compositions (oratorios or sacred) often presented in segments. Composers were not the focal point, and often their names were not included on the program.
Beethoven breaks this with his symphonies(The first example of this is the performance of Beethoven’s Eroica in 1807—opens 2nd half of concert, followed by only one aria) Many other compositions follow, by him and others
--More focus is placed on the composers themselves, with the romantic idea of genius of the individual leading to this focus
--Vocal music is still important, and programs are still intended to please a crowd, but changes have been made; many in the audience are still skeptical of the new canon idea and long instrumental works
*Evolution of the Repertoire—Three Periods
I) Mozart’s death (1791) to Beethoven’s death (1827)
--The ‘Big Three’ emerge as the greatest masters, with Beethoven as most important (He bridges different genres, while Mozart is known most for vocal and opera and Haydn for Symphonies
--Many other composers of the late 18th and early 19th centuries are included, especially Handel, Gluck and Carl Maria von Weber
II) After Beethoven’s death (next 20 years)
--Only a vague sense of a canon surrounding big three, changes in this period, develop a self-conscious sense of the repertoire as a canon
--Classical Music becomes a “cause” defended militantly—a reaction against the commercialism of musical life at the time, with publishing and mass concerts giving rise to simplified editions of recent opera and virtuoso pieces. Now the orchestras stand outside the mainstream of public taste; more serious musicians use “classics” to combat salon music, which they thought degraded popular taste
--The term Classical is standardized across Europe to designate this specific canon of works
--Orchestral taste is conservative, rather than reactionary, with some new music still included.
--Up to 1850, the standard repertoire of today is being built, but some other works are still included; even now some see it leading in the wrong direction by rejecting new pieces
III) 1848 – 1870
--Orchestras and their classical repertoire become the center of musical life
--When musical life started again after the revolutions of 48-49, a major trend in public taste favored the Classical repertoire. The public is tired of the “razzle-dazzle” of merely virtuosic display, so the new generation of virtuosos begins to play concertos by Mozart and Beethoven
--Orchestras grow from private concert societies into national cultural institutions—probably spurred by revolutions, since the performance of oratorios served as a powerful ritual of social unity, leading to the national institutions. Urban growth also helped, with the establishment of large concert halls in major cities
--Many important changes; one was the growing promence of overtures, arias, and full scenes from operas of the 1820-1840s.
--Music from the Renaissance and Baroque eras is revived
--Bach was the main figure—Mendelssohn, St. Matthew’s Passion
--Sets off a revival of other early music
--Partly a return to the 18th century origins of the Classical repertoire, such as Handel
--Not played real frequently at concerts, but yet important because of its unusual nature and its part in fostering the growth of the study of music history
--The overall repertoire becomes mostly standardized (despite the variety from opera excerpts and Baroque revival). The enshrining of master composers throughout Europe leads to homogenization. During the 1830s, most orchestras honor many local composers, but by the 1870s, they are mostly playing music by the same core of dead masters.
--A crisis from the lack of acceptance for new music begins. At the beginning of the century, it was unusual for works by dead composer to occur more than occasionally on programs, by the 1870s none of the major orchestras gave more than a third of their annual repertoire to music of living composers, and the percentage was often smaller; this situation has led to today
--Wagnerians lead a bitter ideological attack against the orchestras of the 1850s for their focus on established masters and resistance to forward-looking works. (Yet Wagner owed a lot to orchestras for the diffusion of his music)
--Some dissemination of new music is made possible by newly organized concert series offered to a less affluent audience
--Euterpe in Leipzig since the early 1830s
--London’s Crystal Palace after it reopened in 1854
--Popular Concerts and Colonne Concerts in Paris (1860s-70s)
--These concerts give more attention to new music than elite orchestras, don’t exaggerate how far they went, but they did welcomd young composers and some avant-garde works by followers of Liszt and Wagner. Performing controversial pieces put the orchestras in the spotlight and helped them draw a public that was not intolerant of new music. They didn’t have a mass audience, with many middle-class listeners who were well educated in music. (Clerk with well-worn pocket score of Beethoven Symphonies)
*Four Important Cities
I) Leipzig
--The Gewandhaus Orchestra, which is largely dominated by the classical canon—its concerts in the 1780s were only 13 % works by dead composers, by 1870, they are 76% works by the deceased
--The competing Euterpe series is organized rather early, and features some newer composers, notably Liszt, Wagner, and their followers
--It is one of the most interesting musical cities in Europe, with much variety and richness of musical styles
II) London
--The Philharmonic Society of London is similar to the Gewandhaus in program makeup, but quicker to focus on a strict canon of works,
--The Society’s social base is not as affluent as in the other cities
--The New Philharmonic Society (1850s) is not too different in its programs, although oratorios by British composers are included here
III) Vienna
--The Vienna Philharmonic is not founded until 1842, much later than other cities began offering professional concert series
--It includes more new works (Brahms, Bruckner, etc)
--The lack of a cheaper series hinders further dissemination of new music, and this perhaps influences radical Viennese composers in the 20th century
IV) Paris
--The Conservatoire Orchestra (1828) is the most resistant of all to new music
--Rival popular concert series are very nationalistic
*Conclusion
--In the 19th century, great symphonic works were enshrined in the orchestras—the operas houses of Europe were slower to establish a canon of works. with instrumental music acquiring a central place in music taste
--The programs still differ from today in their inclusion of many diverse vocal works
--Diverse—operatic, oratorios, songs, and chamber works. The public was equally diverse
--Concerts would still seem a bit strange to us today
Tuesday, October 23, 2007
Music in Relation to Other Arts (Notes by Higo Rodrigues)
Here is the text for Higo Rodrigues's Power Point today [thank you for supplying this to the classd!]
MUSIC IN RELATION TO THE OTHER ARTS: THE CRITICAL DEBATE
Jane F. Fulcher (article from Joan Peyser's The Orchestra)
Nature and Appropriate boundaries of content (meaning) in Instrumental Music
1848-1849 – European Revolutions (Spring of Nations; Year of Revolution)
“…the issue that fundamentally divided the positions was the social function of music … the role that music was now to serve … in light of the new cultural era that the revolutions in Europe had ineluctably ushered in.”
Robert Schumann (1810-1856)
“Instrumental music, according to Schumann, as well as to Hegel and E. T. A. Hoffmann, was quintessentially a medium for the expression of the elusive realm of life.”
“…who was expressing, the composer or the listener, and the way in which the creative and perceptive acts relate.” ???
ETA Hoffmann (1776-1822)
“Music expressed the composer.”
– Instrumental music transcends other arts and languages to become the discourse of a ‘higher realm’ – “Music, for Hoffmann, was simultaneously transcendental and personal, expressing the composer’s feelings but through reference to an infinite realm.”
“When we speak of music as an independent art, should we not always restrict our meaning to instrumental music, which, scorning every aid, every admixture of another art, gives pure expression to music’s specific nature…? How can it ever have occurred to you (miserable composers) to treat after the fashion of the plastic arts the art diametrically opposed to the plastic?” (c. 1813) – no extra-musical reference.
“For Hoffmann, great composers inscribed a content in their works, one that emanated from the most profound recesses of their inner being but one that was nevertheless translated into an indirect language accessible to the listener through his own interpretative act.”
Hegel (1770-1831)
“The content the composer invests in his music is accessible to the perception of the listener in an indirect way.”
“For Hegel, music … combines two processes, for perception of music is not an intellectual matter or rational process but an absorbing identification, a natural empathy with its significance.”
Effect of Music and its Stimulus
“The kind of act that listening should be – active and intellectual, or passive – is here integrally linked to the issues of what it is that music communicates and precisely how it does it.”
Schumann – Correctness of Interpretation
“For Schumann, instrumental music did contain a definite content, the result of the specific environmental influences working on the composer. (…) for Schumann, the task of criticism … was to get at the content of a work.”
Schumann - Content
“The ‘character’, then, was not explicit, and yet it was perceptually clear, a disposition obtruding itself so that no other interpretation was possible … thus, if music restricts itself to the kind of content to which it is suited, it can be referential and yet satisfy on its own terms.”
Schumann’s oscillations
“In some cases he was uncertain as to whether guides to the meaning of his works were required; in others he vacillated over how realistic or detailed a program should be and whether or not the listener should employ it.”
Schumann and the necessity of programmatic guides
On Berlioz’s Symphonie fastastique (1830) – “… a program meant that the content of the work, its essential character, was not self-evident, as it should be. Moreover, an explicit program thwarted or restricted that which Schumann valued so highly, the independent poetic fantasy of the listener.”
1849
“After 1849 the question of what music should signify or contain and the relation of music to the listener assumed a decidedly new tone.”
Liszt’s target – reason!!
Liszt – “Only in music does feeling, in manifesting itself, dispense with the help of reason and its means of expression, so inadequate in comparison with intuition … (music advantage is its) supreme capacity to make an inner impulse audible without the assistance of reason.”
F. Liszt (1811-1886)
“Yet unlike Schumann, Liszt did not hold that the content should be self-evident, and he stressed the importance of guiding the listener’s perception of the work.”
Liszt’s program – “any foreword in intelligible language added to a piece of music, by which the composer intends to guard the hearer against an arbitrary poetical interpretation, and to direct his attention in advance to the poetical idea of the whole.”
Liszt’s Program
The program should indicate “the spiritual moments which impelled the composer to create the work.”
“Since Liszt did not believe that music could describe objects, he held that the program should only ‘put the listener in the same frame of mind as would the objects themselves.”
Liszt’s Works
Harmonies poétiques et religieuses (1834)
Ce qu’on entend sur la montagne (1849)
Les préludes (1848)
Liszt and V. Hugo
“…clearly Liszt espoused Hugo’s dictum that literature was true ‘modern art’.”
“In music, the literary model resulted in the primacy of content over form and a stress on techniques that have analogies with specific verbal meanings.”
Liszt and Form
“Both (Liszt and Berlioz) refused to adhere to any formal or schematic outline that bore little relation to what they wished to express. Finally, both composers allowed a program to dictate important decisions, but it was Liszt who renounced even a nominal adherence to traditional form.”
“…for Liszt, content is the determining factor of form, every composition will assume its own unique shape.” – The artistic emancipation of content from schematicism.
Liszt
“Is it not evident from this that it is merely a question of officially recognizing an already existing power with a view to allowing it greater freedom of action and assisting it in the removal of liabilities?”
Eduard Hanslick (1825-1904)
“After moving to Vienna and receiving his law degree, Hanslick entered the Austrian bureaucracy.”
“Music, for Hanslick, does have a spiritual force and thus a social end, but through its formal, sublimating properties, not through its elemental force.”
“Music has no subject beyond the combinations of notes we hear, for music speaks not only by means of sound, it speaks nothing but sounds.”
REASON – “The source of knowledge, is also the source of the beautiful in art.”
Hanslick’s Reason
“He thought that ‘to be slave of unreasoning, undirected, and purposeless feeling, ignited by a power which is out of all relation to our will and intellect, is not worthy of the human mind. If people allow themselves to be so completely carried away by what is elemental in art as to lose all self-control, this scarcely redounds to the glory of the art, and much less to that of the individual’.”
MUSIC IN RELATION TO THE OTHER ARTS: THE CRITICAL DEBATE
Jane F. Fulcher (article from Joan Peyser's The Orchestra)
Nature and Appropriate boundaries of content (meaning) in Instrumental Music
1848-1849 – European Revolutions (Spring of Nations; Year of Revolution)
“…the issue that fundamentally divided the positions was the social function of music … the role that music was now to serve … in light of the new cultural era that the revolutions in Europe had ineluctably ushered in.”
Robert Schumann (1810-1856)
“Instrumental music, according to Schumann, as well as to Hegel and E. T. A. Hoffmann, was quintessentially a medium for the expression of the elusive realm of life.”
“…who was expressing, the composer or the listener, and the way in which the creative and perceptive acts relate.” ???
ETA Hoffmann (1776-1822)
“Music expressed the composer.”
– Instrumental music transcends other arts and languages to become the discourse of a ‘higher realm’ – “Music, for Hoffmann, was simultaneously transcendental and personal, expressing the composer’s feelings but through reference to an infinite realm.”
“When we speak of music as an independent art, should we not always restrict our meaning to instrumental music, which, scorning every aid, every admixture of another art, gives pure expression to music’s specific nature…? How can it ever have occurred to you (miserable composers) to treat after the fashion of the plastic arts the art diametrically opposed to the plastic?” (c. 1813) – no extra-musical reference.
“For Hoffmann, great composers inscribed a content in their works, one that emanated from the most profound recesses of their inner being but one that was nevertheless translated into an indirect language accessible to the listener through his own interpretative act.”
Hegel (1770-1831)
“The content the composer invests in his music is accessible to the perception of the listener in an indirect way.”
“For Hegel, music … combines two processes, for perception of music is not an intellectual matter or rational process but an absorbing identification, a natural empathy with its significance.”
Effect of Music and its Stimulus
“The kind of act that listening should be – active and intellectual, or passive – is here integrally linked to the issues of what it is that music communicates and precisely how it does it.”
Schumann – Correctness of Interpretation
“For Schumann, instrumental music did contain a definite content, the result of the specific environmental influences working on the composer. (…) for Schumann, the task of criticism … was to get at the content of a work.”
Schumann - Content
“The ‘character’, then, was not explicit, and yet it was perceptually clear, a disposition obtruding itself so that no other interpretation was possible … thus, if music restricts itself to the kind of content to which it is suited, it can be referential and yet satisfy on its own terms.”
Schumann’s oscillations
“In some cases he was uncertain as to whether guides to the meaning of his works were required; in others he vacillated over how realistic or detailed a program should be and whether or not the listener should employ it.”
Schumann and the necessity of programmatic guides
On Berlioz’s Symphonie fastastique (1830) – “… a program meant that the content of the work, its essential character, was not self-evident, as it should be. Moreover, an explicit program thwarted or restricted that which Schumann valued so highly, the independent poetic fantasy of the listener.”
1849
“After 1849 the question of what music should signify or contain and the relation of music to the listener assumed a decidedly new tone.”
Liszt’s target – reason!!
Liszt – “Only in music does feeling, in manifesting itself, dispense with the help of reason and its means of expression, so inadequate in comparison with intuition … (music advantage is its) supreme capacity to make an inner impulse audible without the assistance of reason.”
F. Liszt (1811-1886)
“Yet unlike Schumann, Liszt did not hold that the content should be self-evident, and he stressed the importance of guiding the listener’s perception of the work.”
Liszt’s program – “any foreword in intelligible language added to a piece of music, by which the composer intends to guard the hearer against an arbitrary poetical interpretation, and to direct his attention in advance to the poetical idea of the whole.”
Liszt’s Program
The program should indicate “the spiritual moments which impelled the composer to create the work.”
“Since Liszt did not believe that music could describe objects, he held that the program should only ‘put the listener in the same frame of mind as would the objects themselves.”
Liszt’s Works
Harmonies poétiques et religieuses (1834)
Ce qu’on entend sur la montagne (1849)
Les préludes (1848)
Liszt and V. Hugo
“…clearly Liszt espoused Hugo’s dictum that literature was true ‘modern art’.”
“In music, the literary model resulted in the primacy of content over form and a stress on techniques that have analogies with specific verbal meanings.”
Liszt and Form
“Both (Liszt and Berlioz) refused to adhere to any formal or schematic outline that bore little relation to what they wished to express. Finally, both composers allowed a program to dictate important decisions, but it was Liszt who renounced even a nominal adherence to traditional form.”
“…for Liszt, content is the determining factor of form, every composition will assume its own unique shape.” – The artistic emancipation of content from schematicism.
Liszt
“Is it not evident from this that it is merely a question of officially recognizing an already existing power with a view to allowing it greater freedom of action and assisting it in the removal of liabilities?”
Eduard Hanslick (1825-1904)
“After moving to Vienna and receiving his law degree, Hanslick entered the Austrian bureaucracy.”
“Music, for Hanslick, does have a spiritual force and thus a social end, but through its formal, sublimating properties, not through its elemental force.”
“Music has no subject beyond the combinations of notes we hear, for music speaks not only by means of sound, it speaks nothing but sounds.”
REASON – “The source of knowledge, is also the source of the beautiful in art.”
Hanslick’s Reason
“He thought that ‘to be slave of unreasoning, undirected, and purposeless feeling, ignited by a power which is out of all relation to our will and intellect, is not worthy of the human mind. If people allow themselves to be so completely carried away by what is elemental in art as to lose all self-control, this scarcely redounds to the glory of the art, and much less to that of the individual’.”
External Factors for 19th-cen Composers (Lorne Dechtenberg)
Here are Lorne's notes on Alan Houtchens’ article “Romantic Composers Respond to Challenge and Demand” in Peyser’s The Orchestra, which he presented in class as a report last week. (Thank you Lorne!)
External Factors Acting on Romantic (19th-century) Composers
Prepared by Lorne Dechtenberg
I. Economic Demands
A. Need to make a living
• Result – composers often worked multiple jobs
• Such jobs included conducting (e.g., Mendelssohn), being a critic (e.g., Schumann), and teaching (many did this)
B. Pleasing publishers
• Mass consumption of written music was by amateurs who played at home (often on a keyboard instrument)
• Publishers therefore wanted easier pieces for either solo piano or small chamber groups (duo, trio) that included piano (or songs)
C. Pleasing live audiences
• Concert patrons still enjoyed watching virtuosic performances
• Orchestras therefore wanted difficult, virtuosic pieces
II. Cultural and Artistic Trends
A. The development of the Pianoforte (the modern piano)
• Constructed progressively better and with a louder and better sound
• Composers began to incorporate it into the orchestra (not just concerti)
B. Composer-Conductors were particularly revered by Romantic audiences
• “The composer whose inner ear is the judge of his composition works in quite a different way. This inner ear is an amazingly able judgeof musical shapes – something peculiar to the art of music and a sacred mystery which the layman cannot fathom.” (Weber)
C. The creation of the valved horn
• Allowed the playing of pitches from more than one harmonic series
• Gave the horn more flexibility, but a new sound
• Difference among composers’ reactions
o Brahms hated the color of the valved horn
o Mahler loved it (called for all 7 horn players to stand in the finale of his Symphony No.1)
o Weber also liked it, although he experimented with his own sounds (his Concertino in E Minor calls for the player to sing into the horn while playing!)
D. Opera (perhaps the most experimental genre – as it had been in the Baroque)
• French Grand Opera – combined singing, acting, dance, pantomime, and special effects
• Opera was the first genre to embrace the valved horn (and valved trumpet)
• Also began using other instruments for color (e.g., Bass Clarinet, Harp, English Horn)
• Dvořák called for a contrabass clarinet, but there wasn’t one in Bohemia (modern-day Czech); it had to be sent from Paris, and the player couldn’t play it because he knew only the German fingering system!
E. The conservatory infrastructure
• Turned out highly trained musicians to play in professional orchestras
• This meant that composers could write whatever they want with the expectation that professional performers would be able to play it.
III. Sociopolitical Developments
A. The rise of music criticism
• People other than composers, performers, and audiences now had a say in the popular success or failure of a composer or work
• The disapproval by some critics of the extensive experimentation during this time may had contributed to the rift between composers and mass audiences
B. Nationalism among composers
• As the available body of literature began to expand, composers sought to set their own music apart by incorporating folk stories, characters, and music from their respective homelands
• Der Freischütz (Weber / Germany), Finlandia (Sibelius / Finland) Slavonic Dances (Dvořák / Bohemia), A Life for the Tsar (Glinka / Russia) Peer Gynt (Grieg / Norway), and many others
C. Nationalism among orchestras
• With the rise of international music criticism, many orchestras wanted to garner reputations outside their borders
• Most orchestras already had a unique sound by virtue of the instrument types (e.g., size and shape of brass bores), fingering patterns (e.g., French vs. German), and techniques (e.g., amount and speed of vibrato)
• Some still sought more notoriety – “As conductor of the court orchestra at Meiningen from 1880 to 1885 Hans von Bülow fashioned a distinctive sound quality and performance capability for that body by requiring all of his musicians to stand during performances and by insisting on the use of five-string basses, Hermann Ritter’s larger alta violas, and pedal timpani.” (Houtchens)
This outline is based in part on Alan Houtchens’ article “Romantic Composers Respond to Challenge and Demand” in Peyser’s The Orchestra.
External Factors Acting on Romantic (19th-century) Composers
Prepared by Lorne Dechtenberg
I. Economic Demands
A. Need to make a living
• Result – composers often worked multiple jobs
• Such jobs included conducting (e.g., Mendelssohn), being a critic (e.g., Schumann), and teaching (many did this)
B. Pleasing publishers
• Mass consumption of written music was by amateurs who played at home (often on a keyboard instrument)
• Publishers therefore wanted easier pieces for either solo piano or small chamber groups (duo, trio) that included piano (or songs)
C. Pleasing live audiences
• Concert patrons still enjoyed watching virtuosic performances
• Orchestras therefore wanted difficult, virtuosic pieces
II. Cultural and Artistic Trends
A. The development of the Pianoforte (the modern piano)
• Constructed progressively better and with a louder and better sound
• Composers began to incorporate it into the orchestra (not just concerti)
B. Composer-Conductors were particularly revered by Romantic audiences
• “The composer whose inner ear is the judge of his composition works in quite a different way. This inner ear is an amazingly able judgeof musical shapes – something peculiar to the art of music and a sacred mystery which the layman cannot fathom.” (Weber)
C. The creation of the valved horn
• Allowed the playing of pitches from more than one harmonic series
• Gave the horn more flexibility, but a new sound
• Difference among composers’ reactions
o Brahms hated the color of the valved horn
o Mahler loved it (called for all 7 horn players to stand in the finale of his Symphony No.1)
o Weber also liked it, although he experimented with his own sounds (his Concertino in E Minor calls for the player to sing into the horn while playing!)
D. Opera (perhaps the most experimental genre – as it had been in the Baroque)
• French Grand Opera – combined singing, acting, dance, pantomime, and special effects
• Opera was the first genre to embrace the valved horn (and valved trumpet)
• Also began using other instruments for color (e.g., Bass Clarinet, Harp, English Horn)
• Dvořák called for a contrabass clarinet, but there wasn’t one in Bohemia (modern-day Czech); it had to be sent from Paris, and the player couldn’t play it because he knew only the German fingering system!
E. The conservatory infrastructure
• Turned out highly trained musicians to play in professional orchestras
• This meant that composers could write whatever they want with the expectation that professional performers would be able to play it.
III. Sociopolitical Developments
A. The rise of music criticism
• People other than composers, performers, and audiences now had a say in the popular success or failure of a composer or work
• The disapproval by some critics of the extensive experimentation during this time may had contributed to the rift between composers and mass audiences
B. Nationalism among composers
• As the available body of literature began to expand, composers sought to set their own music apart by incorporating folk stories, characters, and music from their respective homelands
• Der Freischütz (Weber / Germany), Finlandia (Sibelius / Finland) Slavonic Dances (Dvořák / Bohemia), A Life for the Tsar (Glinka / Russia) Peer Gynt (Grieg / Norway), and many others
C. Nationalism among orchestras
• With the rise of international music criticism, many orchestras wanted to garner reputations outside their borders
• Most orchestras already had a unique sound by virtue of the instrument types (e.g., size and shape of brass bores), fingering patterns (e.g., French vs. German), and techniques (e.g., amount and speed of vibrato)
• Some still sought more notoriety – “As conductor of the court orchestra at Meiningen from 1880 to 1885 Hans von Bülow fashioned a distinctive sound quality and performance capability for that body by requiring all of his musicians to stand during performances and by insisting on the use of five-string basses, Hermann Ritter’s larger alta violas, and pedal timpani.” (Houtchens)
This outline is based in part on Alan Houtchens’ article “Romantic Composers Respond to Challenge and Demand” in Peyser’s The Orchestra.
Sunday, September 30, 2007
Study Sheet for Exam 1 (4 October 2007)
MUS 622 (Fall 2007): Study Guide for Test 1 (4 October 07)
Final Version (9/29/07)
Here is the final form of the study guide that will help you focus on specific topics so you can prepare for the exam efficiently and without excess stress. It is best to listen to pieces in a relaxed manner, not “third-circle” freaked out, trying to cram. You can’t enjoy the music that way. I know this is easy to say, but I have to make the suggestion anyway, just to offer you the opportunity to listen in different ways, and perhaps experience the contrast between pragmatic listening (to identify form or stylistic features) and in an open manner (to make friends with the piece and get to know it more intimately). Your choice.
I. Identification (I will not necessarily play the beginnings of movements, so do not just listen to the opening measures, please).
A. Six recorded excerpts will be played, 4 from the assigned listening and 2 that are not required. For each you should list the composer, work, and approximate date, if you know these, and include two of the most obvious stylistic traits that led you to name that composer. If you do not recognize the work, list a likely composer, type of piece and two style traits that led you to this answer.
B. There will also be 3 score excerpts (two from the assigned list, one not assigned), and you will be asked to choose 2 of them to write about, answering the same questions as I. A., above.
II. Essays and Outlines: Questions in Four Sections are given below. During the exam I will ask you to choose one question from two of the four categories to answer. You can prepare these questions before hand and be sure that they will be asked on the exam, but I do not want you to bring in previously written materials for the exam. I would like your answers to be as thorough as possible I the time allows (you should have 20-25 minutes for each essay). You may also answer in the form of key words and phrases, but make them coherent and well organized. Note that if you choose to make up your own question (in D.), you must have my approval first. These questions should address a broad area or representative work, not a highly specialized topic, but you can try out the questions of me beforehand.
A. The Early Classical Orchestra: formation and repertory
1. Stauffer article—what are some of the principal contributing factors to the formation of the orchestra?
2. Describe the style of either Sammartini or Stamitz Symphony
B. Haydn and Mozart
1. Kyle Gann, in the review we read of his called “No More Heroes,” claimed that Haydn’s music was experimental and radical, often introducing elements of surprise or humor into his music. Through specific examples from the symphonies we studied (or other ones), show some of the most important ways Haydn was an innovator and an “experimental” composer.
2. How was Haydn and his music received during his two trips to London? How effects did his trips there have on Haydn’s style and musical life?
3. In what ways did Mozart’s symphonic output differ from that of Haydn? Discuss especially the quantity of symphonies and their reception among contemporaries. Why were Haydn’s symphonies more popular?
4. Mozart’s “Jupiter” Symphony (K. 551) is considered a tour de force in
symphonic writing. What is so special about this symphony?
5. Contrast how you hear the music of Haydn and Mozart.
C. Beethoven
1. Discuss how Beethoven’s “Heiligenstadt testament” is reflected in one or more of his symphonies.
2. The Eroica Symphony is considered a monument in the history of symphonic literature. Why? Consider especially first movement, but also overall form. How was symphonic writing different after the Eroica? (Botstein’s article is useful, as well as Lockwood’s writing on Symphony No. 3 (among others, of course).
3. What is special about Symphony # 5, movement1 and the overall symphony?
4. Discuss the program of the Pastoral Symphony. How is it realized?
D. Your own questions: Several of you have submitted sample questions which I have not included here. However, I would like to give you the freedom to ask and answer one of your own questions, if you would like. But you must submit question (or two if you like) to me for my approval to make sure it is appropriate for the exam (that is not too narrow or outside of our topic). Once I have given approval of the question, you are free to use it in this section of the exam.
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Note: The scores and recordings for the Schubert Assignment for Tuesday, 2 October, did not get on E-reserve yet (the reading assignment did, though). But you can get the scores to Symphonies Nos. 8 and 9 at one of the following two sites. You already know the sites where you can get the recordings through the FA Library electronic resources (although you can’t download those files, I am sorry to say).
Score library:
http://www.dlib.indiana.edu/variations/scores/symphonic.html
http://imslp.org/wiki/Main_Page
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NOTE: All of this will be up on the Blog, along with Erica’s report on the London Symphonies by tonight or early in the morning, but this should be enough to get you going.
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MUS622 Listening/Score IDs for Identification on Exam (4 October 2007)
[All Selections on E-reserve]
1.) Beethoven, Ludwig / Symphony no.3, Eroica, all 4 movements
2.) Beethoven, Ludwig / Symphony no.5 in C minor, op.67, all 4 movmenets
3.) Beethoven, Ludwig / Symphony no.6 in F Major, op.68 "Pastoral," movement 1 only
4.) Haydn, Joseph / Symphony no.45, movement 1 only
5.) Mozart, Wolfgang / Piano Concerto No. 40 in D minor, K.466, movements 1 & 2 (recognize)
6.) Mozart, Wolfgang / Symphony no.38 in D, K.504 movements 1 & 3
7.) Mozart, Wolfgang / Symphony no.40, all 4 movements
8.) Mozart, Wolfgang / Symphony no.41 "Jupiter" all 4 movmenets
9.) Sammartini, Giovanni / Symphony in F Major, no.32, first movement
10.) Stamitz, Johann / Sinfonia no.8 in Eb Major, first movement
Haydn's London Symphonies, Report by Erica Rumbley
September 11, 2007
Report by Erica Rumbley
Haydn's London Symphony's
For nearly 30 years, Haydn had been an employee of the Esterhazy court, functioning virtually as a servant or slave to the Prince. While other offers of employment and opportunity had lurked in the distance, he was always afraid to leave the court, afraid of upsetting his employers. Even when Johann Peter Salomon, a German composer, conductor, and mainly impresario in England, tried to lure him to London, he refused, unable to leave Prince Nicholas. However, all of that changed in September, 1790, when the Prince died. Nicholas’ successor, Anton, disbanded the orchestra and Haydn was no longer needed in a full-time basis. Thus, Salomon saw his big chance and marched (okay, sailed) over to Austria to tell the great composer: “I am Salomon from London, and I have come to fetch you to England!” While not everyone believed this to be in Haydn’s best interest—Mozart strongly objected that the older man was not prepared for such a trip and couldn’t even speak English, Haydn decided to go, saying: “my language is understood all over the world.”
Thus began the greatest adventure and happiest period of Haydn’s long and productive life.
SLIDE
Welcome to London, circa 1790. It was a place of power—the ruling bodies of Britain resided within its confines; a place of prestige—movements taking place in the city influenced the rest of the country and the world; a place of unrest—religious reform and political upheaval were rampant; a place of fashion and wealth—such power and prestige could only lead to elegant ladies, fine gentlemen, and numerous social occasions. London also boasted a flourishing music and concert industry with a well-educated middle class eager for new music. Into this sparkling world came Franz Joseph Haydn, one of the greatest and most pivotal composers of the century.
SLIDE
He did not come without experience, which he had garnered at the Esterhazy court, as well as ambition and backing. Salomon had guaranteed him 300 lbs for an opera for Gallini, 300 for six new symphonies, 200 for the publishing rights to those symphonies, 200 for 20 other new compositions, and at least 200 from a benefit concert—a total of 1200 lbs! Thus Haydn had some assurance of financial gain, although now it was up to him to make the venture a success.
Haydn braved the English Channel in December, a stormy time of year for such a crossing. After an agonizing voyage, he arrived on the British coast and made it to London on January 2, 1791.
It did not take long for the Austrian master to develop quite a following in the new city; Salomon had obviously already done some publicity for his visit, for Haydn wrote a friend: “My arrival caused a great sensation through the whole city, and I went the round of all the newspapers for three successive days. Everyone seems anxious to know me. I have already dined out six times, and could be invited every day if I chose; but I must in the first place consider my health, and in the next my work.” A poem by Charles Burney, written in 1791, shows such warm feelings for Haydn, saying; “At length great Haydn’s new and varied strains of habit and indiff’rence broke chains…To Germany pre-eminence allow for instrumental powers, unknown before thy happy flights had taught her sons to soar…” He goes on in extravagant praise of the composer, exaggerating his greatness and contribution to the musical scene in London. Thus Haydn quickly became a “superstar” in the city and was soon caught up into its social life, even attending a Court Ball.
SLIDE
However, he did not neglect his work, as he mentioned in his comment about dining out. In 1791, Haydn composed Symphonies 93, 94, 95, and 96, starting on 98. The next year saw the completion of this work as well as no. 97. The first to debut, in February 1791, was No. 96, which was a rousing success. Haydn’s Symphonies usually played at the beginning of the second half of the concert, so that latecomers would definitely be present for their performance. Other concerts soon followed, with more excellent receptions of Haydn’s new symphonies. A reporter had this to say on March 11 (about no. 95 or 96):
Never, perhaps, was there a richer musical treat. […] His new Grand Overture [what they called a symphony] was pronounced by every scientific ear to be a most wonderful composition; but the first movement in particular rises in grandeur of the subject…
Thus read many of the reports on Haydn’s works, making the composer even more popular and loved, so that soon he had many friends in England. He used the summer break between concert seasons to visit many of them, traveling through the country to their homes. In this period Haydn also moved out to live with some friends in Hertfordshire, where he greatly enjoyed the quiet and found it the ideal place for composition, writing much of Symphonies no. 93 and 94.
Life seemed a little too easy, though, and soon some difficulties inevitably popped up. First of all, Prince Anton Esterhazy, became impatient for Haydn to return, and was therefore quite upset when Haydn asked for another’s year’s leave. Thus Haydn feared losing his job when he opted to stay on in London, but this did not occur. At the beginning of the next season, yet another obstacle met the Salomon-Haydn team—the “Professional Concert Series,” a rival concert series (not unusual for London at the time) set up by some organizers who had tried to enlist Haydn’s services for themselves in the 1780s. They began to slander his composing skills, saying that his talent had “dried up” and soon recruited Haydn’s own pupil, Ignaz Pleyel, to compose for their series in direct competition to Haydn. Although the old master remained calm and courteous on the surface, dining with Pleyel and attending his concerts, he nevertheless felt the stress of competition. In January, 1792, he wrote a friend that
At present I am [composing] for Salomon’s concerts, and I am making every effort to do my best, because our rivals, the Professional Concert, have had my pupil Pleyel from Strasbourg come here to conduct their concerts. So now bloody harmonious war will commence between master and pupil…
Into this volatile atmosphere, on February 17, 1792, came Symphony no. 94, perhaps Haydn’s most enduringly famous composition, the “Surprise” Symphony. The stories behind this work vary…but it serves to highlight Haydn’s humor and wit, as well as being an immense success with the public. A review of its debut comments:
“The second movement was equal to the happiest of this great Master’s conceptions. The surprise might not be unaptly likened to the situation of a beautiful Shepherdess who, lulled to slumber by the murmer of a distant Waterfall, starts alarmed by the unexpected firing of a fowling-piece. The flute obligato was delicious.”
Such comments show a contemporary’s appreciation of Haydn’s wit in composition and provide yet another example of the glorification his works so often received. Even this Symphony, however, shows the pressure of the rival concert, as Haydn’s friend Griesinger wrote
I jokingly asked him once if it was true that he composed the Andante…in order to wake up the dozing English audience. ‘No…my intention was to surprise the public with something new, and to debut in a brilliant manner, in order to prevent my rank from being usurped by Pleyel, my pupil…’
Perhaps time has been the ultimate judge of this competition, declaring Haydn the hands-down, undisputed winner.
The rest of Haydn’s 6 new Symphonies were debuted to resounding approval, and the concert series ended in June. At this point, Haydn’s contentment with London and his standing there was so great that he nearly changed his allegiance from Austria to England, yet he ultimately remained loyal to his homeland. In August of 1792 Haydn arrived back in Vienna, where he was to spend 18 months mostly preparing for a return to the city of his success, although he did take on a notable new pupil during this period—Beethoven.
SlIDE
It was in early February, 1794, that Haydn again arrived in London. This visit met with even greater success than the first, partly due to the lack of a rival concert series. Haydn continued to circulate among English society, and his Symphonies recorded enthusiastic audiences and a receptive press, which now described him as “the inexhaustible, the wonderful, the sublime HAYDN!”
The orchestra available to Haydn on his second visit was larger than the first time, now including clarinets as a standard member of the ensemble. Thus he was able to further extend his composition and orchestration. The greatest success of Haydn’s life—the debut of his Symphony No. 100, the Military, was to take place in the spring of 1794, on March 31. The Morning Chronicle reported about its reception:
‘Another new Symphony by Haydn, was performed for the second time; and the middle movement was again received with absolute shouts of applause. Encore! Encore! Encore! Resounded from every seat: the Ladies themselves could not forbear…”
Obviously the audience was stirred into a furor over this stirring piece, cheering as crowds today might at a sports event. Why such an uproar? Well, as this report goes on to say:
‘…Is the advancing to battle; and the march of men, the sounding of the charge, the thundering of the onset, the clash of arms, the groans of the wounded, and what may well be called the hellish roar of war increased to a climax of horrid sublimity! Which, if others can conceive, [Haydn] alone can execute.”
This is the type of brilliant work which truly “moves the passion” as Haydn so often sought to do in his compositions. In it he included timpani, triangle, cymbals and bass drum in addition to the regular instruments. This Symphony provides a great example of the ‘other side’ of this technical genius, the side of emotion and even depiction in his music.
The next (1795) season brought with it a change of venues for Haydn; Salomon was forced to cancel his series because of difficulties in obtaining singers from Europe, thus Haydn moved to the “Opera Concerts,” a series complete with a 60-piece orchestra under G.B. Viotti, a famous Violinist from Italy.
Despite this move, Haydn’s works continued to meet with resounding approval, down to No. 104, his “farewell” to Symphonic form. His popularity was so astounding that at a benefit concert in May at which he conducted nos. 100 and 104, he made about 400 lbs in one evening, a huge return for one concert.
After this season ended, Haydn stayed on in London for about two months, perhaps sorry to see his time there end. He arrived back in Vienna at the end of August, never again to return to the city of his triumph, happiness and success.
However, the years Haydn spent in London and the Symphonies he composed for the concerts there have left an indelible mark on music to the present day. Not only are they technically inventive and forward-looking, but these works also “stir the soul” of the listener and allow one to catch a glimpse of an even deeper level of Haydn’s character.
SLIDE
In considering the impact of these Symphonies, perhaps Mozart himself says it best:
“But there is no one who can do it all—to joke and to terrify, to evoke laughter and profound sentiment—and all equally well: except Joseph Haydn.”
Cite Grove—Salomon, Haydn in London
Report by Erica Rumbley
Haydn's London Symphony's
For nearly 30 years, Haydn had been an employee of the Esterhazy court, functioning virtually as a servant or slave to the Prince. While other offers of employment and opportunity had lurked in the distance, he was always afraid to leave the court, afraid of upsetting his employers. Even when Johann Peter Salomon, a German composer, conductor, and mainly impresario in England, tried to lure him to London, he refused, unable to leave Prince Nicholas. However, all of that changed in September, 1790, when the Prince died. Nicholas’ successor, Anton, disbanded the orchestra and Haydn was no longer needed in a full-time basis. Thus, Salomon saw his big chance and marched (okay, sailed) over to Austria to tell the great composer: “I am Salomon from London, and I have come to fetch you to England!” While not everyone believed this to be in Haydn’s best interest—Mozart strongly objected that the older man was not prepared for such a trip and couldn’t even speak English, Haydn decided to go, saying: “my language is understood all over the world.”
Thus began the greatest adventure and happiest period of Haydn’s long and productive life.
SLIDE
Welcome to London, circa 1790. It was a place of power—the ruling bodies of Britain resided within its confines; a place of prestige—movements taking place in the city influenced the rest of the country and the world; a place of unrest—religious reform and political upheaval were rampant; a place of fashion and wealth—such power and prestige could only lead to elegant ladies, fine gentlemen, and numerous social occasions. London also boasted a flourishing music and concert industry with a well-educated middle class eager for new music. Into this sparkling world came Franz Joseph Haydn, one of the greatest and most pivotal composers of the century.
SLIDE
He did not come without experience, which he had garnered at the Esterhazy court, as well as ambition and backing. Salomon had guaranteed him 300 lbs for an opera for Gallini, 300 for six new symphonies, 200 for the publishing rights to those symphonies, 200 for 20 other new compositions, and at least 200 from a benefit concert—a total of 1200 lbs! Thus Haydn had some assurance of financial gain, although now it was up to him to make the venture a success.
Haydn braved the English Channel in December, a stormy time of year for such a crossing. After an agonizing voyage, he arrived on the British coast and made it to London on January 2, 1791.
It did not take long for the Austrian master to develop quite a following in the new city; Salomon had obviously already done some publicity for his visit, for Haydn wrote a friend: “My arrival caused a great sensation through the whole city, and I went the round of all the newspapers for three successive days. Everyone seems anxious to know me. I have already dined out six times, and could be invited every day if I chose; but I must in the first place consider my health, and in the next my work.” A poem by Charles Burney, written in 1791, shows such warm feelings for Haydn, saying; “At length great Haydn’s new and varied strains of habit and indiff’rence broke chains…To Germany pre-eminence allow for instrumental powers, unknown before thy happy flights had taught her sons to soar…” He goes on in extravagant praise of the composer, exaggerating his greatness and contribution to the musical scene in London. Thus Haydn quickly became a “superstar” in the city and was soon caught up into its social life, even attending a Court Ball.
SLIDE
However, he did not neglect his work, as he mentioned in his comment about dining out. In 1791, Haydn composed Symphonies 93, 94, 95, and 96, starting on 98. The next year saw the completion of this work as well as no. 97. The first to debut, in February 1791, was No. 96, which was a rousing success. Haydn’s Symphonies usually played at the beginning of the second half of the concert, so that latecomers would definitely be present for their performance. Other concerts soon followed, with more excellent receptions of Haydn’s new symphonies. A reporter had this to say on March 11 (about no. 95 or 96):
Never, perhaps, was there a richer musical treat. […] His new Grand Overture [what they called a symphony] was pronounced by every scientific ear to be a most wonderful composition; but the first movement in particular rises in grandeur of the subject…
Thus read many of the reports on Haydn’s works, making the composer even more popular and loved, so that soon he had many friends in England. He used the summer break between concert seasons to visit many of them, traveling through the country to their homes. In this period Haydn also moved out to live with some friends in Hertfordshire, where he greatly enjoyed the quiet and found it the ideal place for composition, writing much of Symphonies no. 93 and 94.
Life seemed a little too easy, though, and soon some difficulties inevitably popped up. First of all, Prince Anton Esterhazy, became impatient for Haydn to return, and was therefore quite upset when Haydn asked for another’s year’s leave. Thus Haydn feared losing his job when he opted to stay on in London, but this did not occur. At the beginning of the next season, yet another obstacle met the Salomon-Haydn team—the “Professional Concert Series,” a rival concert series (not unusual for London at the time) set up by some organizers who had tried to enlist Haydn’s services for themselves in the 1780s. They began to slander his composing skills, saying that his talent had “dried up” and soon recruited Haydn’s own pupil, Ignaz Pleyel, to compose for their series in direct competition to Haydn. Although the old master remained calm and courteous on the surface, dining with Pleyel and attending his concerts, he nevertheless felt the stress of competition. In January, 1792, he wrote a friend that
At present I am [composing] for Salomon’s concerts, and I am making every effort to do my best, because our rivals, the Professional Concert, have had my pupil Pleyel from Strasbourg come here to conduct their concerts. So now bloody harmonious war will commence between master and pupil…
Into this volatile atmosphere, on February 17, 1792, came Symphony no. 94, perhaps Haydn’s most enduringly famous composition, the “Surprise” Symphony. The stories behind this work vary…but it serves to highlight Haydn’s humor and wit, as well as being an immense success with the public. A review of its debut comments:
“The second movement was equal to the happiest of this great Master’s conceptions. The surprise might not be unaptly likened to the situation of a beautiful Shepherdess who, lulled to slumber by the murmer of a distant Waterfall, starts alarmed by the unexpected firing of a fowling-piece. The flute obligato was delicious.”
Such comments show a contemporary’s appreciation of Haydn’s wit in composition and provide yet another example of the glorification his works so often received. Even this Symphony, however, shows the pressure of the rival concert, as Haydn’s friend Griesinger wrote
I jokingly asked him once if it was true that he composed the Andante…in order to wake up the dozing English audience. ‘No…my intention was to surprise the public with something new, and to debut in a brilliant manner, in order to prevent my rank from being usurped by Pleyel, my pupil…’
Perhaps time has been the ultimate judge of this competition, declaring Haydn the hands-down, undisputed winner.
The rest of Haydn’s 6 new Symphonies were debuted to resounding approval, and the concert series ended in June. At this point, Haydn’s contentment with London and his standing there was so great that he nearly changed his allegiance from Austria to England, yet he ultimately remained loyal to his homeland. In August of 1792 Haydn arrived back in Vienna, where he was to spend 18 months mostly preparing for a return to the city of his success, although he did take on a notable new pupil during this period—Beethoven.
SlIDE
It was in early February, 1794, that Haydn again arrived in London. This visit met with even greater success than the first, partly due to the lack of a rival concert series. Haydn continued to circulate among English society, and his Symphonies recorded enthusiastic audiences and a receptive press, which now described him as “the inexhaustible, the wonderful, the sublime HAYDN!”
The orchestra available to Haydn on his second visit was larger than the first time, now including clarinets as a standard member of the ensemble. Thus he was able to further extend his composition and orchestration. The greatest success of Haydn’s life—the debut of his Symphony No. 100, the Military, was to take place in the spring of 1794, on March 31. The Morning Chronicle reported about its reception:
‘Another new Symphony by Haydn, was performed for the second time; and the middle movement was again received with absolute shouts of applause. Encore! Encore! Encore! Resounded from every seat: the Ladies themselves could not forbear…”
Obviously the audience was stirred into a furor over this stirring piece, cheering as crowds today might at a sports event. Why such an uproar? Well, as this report goes on to say:
‘…Is the advancing to battle; and the march of men, the sounding of the charge, the thundering of the onset, the clash of arms, the groans of the wounded, and what may well be called the hellish roar of war increased to a climax of horrid sublimity! Which, if others can conceive, [Haydn] alone can execute.”
This is the type of brilliant work which truly “moves the passion” as Haydn so often sought to do in his compositions. In it he included timpani, triangle, cymbals and bass drum in addition to the regular instruments. This Symphony provides a great example of the ‘other side’ of this technical genius, the side of emotion and even depiction in his music.
The next (1795) season brought with it a change of venues for Haydn; Salomon was forced to cancel his series because of difficulties in obtaining singers from Europe, thus Haydn moved to the “Opera Concerts,” a series complete with a 60-piece orchestra under G.B. Viotti, a famous Violinist from Italy.
Despite this move, Haydn’s works continued to meet with resounding approval, down to No. 104, his “farewell” to Symphonic form. His popularity was so astounding that at a benefit concert in May at which he conducted nos. 100 and 104, he made about 400 lbs in one evening, a huge return for one concert.
After this season ended, Haydn stayed on in London for about two months, perhaps sorry to see his time there end. He arrived back in Vienna at the end of August, never again to return to the city of his triumph, happiness and success.
However, the years Haydn spent in London and the Symphonies he composed for the concerts there have left an indelible mark on music to the present day. Not only are they technically inventive and forward-looking, but these works also “stir the soul” of the listener and allow one to catch a glimpse of an even deeper level of Haydn’s character.
SLIDE
In considering the impact of these Symphonies, perhaps Mozart himself says it best:
“But there is no one who can do it all—to joke and to terrify, to evoke laughter and profound sentiment—and all equally well: except Joseph Haydn.”
Cite Grove—Salomon, Haydn in London
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