berliszt - are you saying all Classical era music is difficult to connect with but you connect more with the Early Romantic era? Like Beethoven/Mozart isn't your jam at all or it's more like you'd prefer the more emotional/sometimes less pomp and circumstance variation of the Early Romantic? That makes sense. One thing at least Mozart has going against him is sometimes he wrote for his employers, so some of it... if not a lot of it... feels very formulated... just like a pop/country song of today. But when Mozart did his amazing stuff, I find very few if any that I like more. Beethoven on the other hand wrote very little I wasn't enthused with. Anyway, like you mention it's great we all have different points of view. It'd be a very dull world otherwise.
Fischman - thanks for the heads up about Masur's 3rd. I'll make sure to add that to my spreadsheet. And yes my joke was more for the Fischman's and Afterhours' and Scaruffi's of the world. The three people of the world who detest them... hehe - kidding of course. I know there's plenty out there who refuse to be brainwashed... hehe.
Era: Romantic
Year: 1843
Form: Opera/early Musical Drama
Score: 88
And now for something completely different (there's a reference). The first serious effort from Wagner to make one of the greatest works of all time. Wagner is unique in that he writes the libretto (he preferred calling it poetry/gedichte) and the music and the stage direction and the art direction and the... well you get the picture. Probably a huge stretch to say this, but really the first auteur if you will. The whole enchilada. Anyway, this work is great. The tempestuous sea/ocean and one of the great stories of Western history - the Flying Dutchman. In my recollection this is first in the blaring horns/tuba that so mark the Romantic period - incredibly strong/powerful sounds, something that marks a new turn in Western music.
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This legend of a Dutch sea captain cursed to sail the earth unendingly, only coming ashore once every seven years to seek the selfless love of a woman, featured themes that would be of enduring interest to Wagner: the theme of a wanderer in search of redemption reappears several times in his later Ring des Nibelungen; that of redemption through a woman's act of self-sacrifice appears both in Tannhäuser and the Ring; and that of a pre-destined and unbreakable love is central to both the Ring and Tristan and Isolde. In this and several other ways the composition of Der Fliegende Holländer foreshadowed the events of the composer's development as a mature composer.
Wagner's principal source for his opera about the Flying Dutchman was Heinrich Heine's version of the legend in his Aus den Memoiren des Herren von Schnabelewopski, published in 1834; but while Heine's retelling of the legend is ironic, Wagner stripped it of these elements and instead focused on the elements of love and redemption. The composer claimed that the work's inspiration was a stormy crossing from Riga to London in August 1839; however, Wagner's original prose sketch was set not in Norway, but Scotland, and Senta was originally "Anna." Wagner changed the setting to Norway just a few weeks before the opera's premiere (in Dresden, January 2, 1843) in order to distance it from a production of Pierre-Louis Dietsch's Le vaisseau fantôme, which was also a setting of Wagner's libretto (he had sold it to the Paris Opéra in 1841, hoping to gain the commission for himself).
It is likewise not true, as Wagner claimed, that the entire work grew from the "thematic seed" of Senta's Act Two ballad, although elements of the song do appear in the Dutchman's monologue and in Erik's dream. This claim was most likely Wagner's attempt to align this relatively early work with the thematic construction of his later music dramas. However, Der Fliegende Holländer does show Wagner's early moves toward large-scale form, and the blurring of divisions between musical sections.
In many ways, Dutchman resembles its predecessors in German Romantic opera, especially those with supernatural plots. Senta's portentous ballad in Act Two, for example, resembles the prophetic song sung by the heroine of Marschner's Der Vampyr, which Wagner helped prepare for performance in Wurzburg in 1833. Wagner also uses dramatic devices such as the seemingly hypnotic state in which the Dutchman and Senta first encounter each other, to emphasize the unearthly nature and fatedness of the bond between them.
The Dresden premiere of Dutchman was not the success that Wagner had hoped. Having bathed in the exaggerated splendor and grandeur of his Meyerbeerian Rienzi, those in the audience expected a similar spectacle and were somewhat disappointed. However, Der Fliegende Holländer quickly gained in popularity and has remained a favorite. Perhaps the most familiar excerpts from the score are the "Sailor's chorus" from Act Three and the "Spinning chorus" from Act Two, which precedes Senta's ballad (which foretells of the Dutchman's presence), but the Dutchman's joyful aria "Wie aus der Ferne längst vergang'ner Zeiten" and Daland's "Mögst du mein Kind" are also memorable.
Era: Romantic
Year: 1844 (Violin Concerto in E minor, Op. 64)
Form: Concerto
Score: 90
The first 90 of the Romantic Period! For me at least. I really like the melody/bitter-sweetness of this concerto. I also love the dynamics - the lively and the soft, yet none of it dull. Of course that could just be Isaac Stern's fault... he could likely make anything sound amazing.
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Violin Concerto in E Minor, Op. 64, concerto for violin and orchestra by Felix Mendelssohn, one of the most lyrical and flowing works of its type and one of the most frequently performed of all violin concerti. It premiered in Leipzig on March 13, 1845.
Mendelssohn, then conductor of the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra, composed his concerto with violinist Ferdinand David, his concertmaster, in mind. The men had been good friends since they were teenagers. Although Mendelssohn had first mentioned writing a violin concerto in 1838, it was not completed until 1844. On the day of the premiere, David was the soloist, but Mendelssohn, who was ill, could not conduct his new work, so the orchestra was led instead by Mendelssohn’s assistant, Danish conductor and composer Niels Gade.
Mendelssohn used the standard classical structures for the piece, but he made adaptations to better suit both his own tastes and the changing times. These changes include an almost instant introduction of the solo instrument and, until then unusual, a written-out solo cadenza; these were usually improvised by the soloist.
The turbulent first movement, “Allegro molto appassionato,” is written in classic sonata form, having a variety of thematic expositions, a development, and recapitulation of the themes. Rather than bringing this movement to a defined close after the coda, Mendelssohn has a single bassoon playing a sustained tone provide the bridge to the overall restful mood of the second movement, “Andante,” which is in ternary (ABA) form. Again eliminating the standard moments of silence between movements, Mendelssohn immediately starts the third movement, “Allegretto non troppo—allegro molto vivace,” which he composed in hybrid sonata rondo form. He concludes with the sprightly, vibrant, even joyous music he seemed to create so effortlessly throughout his career.
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Evidence from Mendelssohn’s correspondence suggests that he connected the movements into an uninterrupted span of music because he, as a performer, found mid-composition applause to be distracting. It is in part because of Mendelssohn that the modern tradition of holding applause to the end of a work came to be standard practice.
Era: Romantic
Year: 1844 (for Mazurkas)
Form: A few, but all piano
Score: 85.5
Hmmm... I don't know if this just isn't my cup of tea or if it's because I came off the high of the last two. It's clearly good stuff. It made me think that virtuoso and good aren't always synonymous, even if that's not fair. idk... did put it a notch above average, but I should be really into this, but I'm not for whatever reason. I feel like I'm having mind games played with me or something... idk how to explain it.
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Although Chopin spent most of his adult life Paris, his roots were Polish. In homage to his homeland, he developed two genres of music, the polonaise and the mazurka. The mazurka takes much of its form from the native folk songs and dances of Poland, specifically the Mazur, the Kujawiak, and the Oberek. The unusual rhythmic patterns and irregular accents provided the basis for 57 mazurkas in total, each unique in character and texture. Because of the different sources of inspiration for the mazurka, each piece is a different combination of several ingredients of rhythm, harmony, tempo, and mood. This particular genre, more than any other, encouraged Chopin to revise and experiment freely. Unlike many of his other mazurkas collections, the pieces of Op. 59 do not contrast greatly amongst themselves. They share similar characteristics and textures, perhaps meant to unify the collection. The first piece in the set is highly chromatic, warm and rich in melodic and contrapuntal nuances. It serves as a tender portrait, the ending as unassuming as the opening. Pleasant and good-natured in its character, the second mazurka features a rich exchange between hands, a hallmark of Chopin's mature style. This piece ends with an ascending, winding lyrical line, which seems to disappear into the clouds. Resembling a polonaise, the third composition is noble and waltz-like in character. Having experimented with different contrapuntal devices, Chopin includes chromaticism, as well as some interesting descending chromatic chords in the accompaniment. While much interesting harmonic material is found in the lower voices, this particular composition is defined by the unaffected, expressive singing melody appears to be unaffected, soaring above the texture below.
This might be my favorite work of Berlioz's possibly tied with Grande Messe des Morts. Not only is the music powerful, but the content is one of the best: Goethe's Faust. A tug of war of reason and nature.
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Despite the hurly-burly and mixed reviews attending the dedication of Beethoven's statue in Bonn in August 1845, organized by his friend Liszt, Berlioz's imagination was stimulated by the journey. His thoughts turned to Goethe's Faust, and, taking the Huit Scènes de Faust -- which he had published in 1829 as his Opus 1 only to recall and destroy every copy he could lay hands on -- as his starting point, he began to flesh out a new musical form. The resulting "légende dramatique," often called a cantata, is in the nature of a concert opera, similar to the "symphonie dramatique" Roméo et Juliette -- salient moments from familiar literary works projected as vocal scenes or by the expressive power of music alone, with plot complications and baneful recitatives elided, to be seen in the mind's eye, thus dispensing with the requirements of staging. This "open" dramaturgy had been one of the revelations of Faust, which Berlioz recalled in the Memoirs -- "The marvelous book fascinated me from the first. I could not put it down, I read it incessantly, at meals, at the theater, in the street." It was what Liszt and Berlioz had spoken of at their first meeting, on the eve of the Symphonie fantastique's premiere in December 1830. Faust, the tormented, suicidal philosopher who suddenly seeks the meaning of life in life itself -- not only in love but in the immense solitude of nature -- struck a chord, so to speak, with the Romantic generation. But reverence for a classic did not prevent Berlioz from finding the "hero" contemptible in his abandonment of the village girl he has, with Mephistopheles' help, seduced. The startlingly vivid, non-Goethean, cinematic Ride to the Abyss -- impossible to stage in Berlioz's day and awkward in ours -- is capped by Faust's screaming plunge into Hell as the soul of his lover, Marguerite, is welcomed by a choir of angels. La Damnation de Faust is dedicated to Liszt, whose own greatest symphonic work, Eine Faust Symphonie, would follow in 1854. Berlioz gave his work, at his own expense, before a half-empty house on December 6, 1846, and again on the 20th with the same result. "Nothing in my career as an artist wounded me more deeply than this unexpected indifference," Berlioz wrote. He was, to boot, financially ruined.
- AllMusic
Last edited by RoundTheBend on 12/07/2019 21:14; edited 1 time in total
FischmanRockMonster, JazzMeister, Bluesboy,ClassicalMasterProfile Land of Enchantment
That Mendelssohn concerto is quite the piece. It makes some rather serious technical demands of the soloist, but never loses its romanticism (in the right hands). Easily one of the best post-Beethoven/Mozart violin concertos.
And there you go again, getting me to appreciate some vocal music I'd generally otherwise dismiss. I never really cared for Wagner. Bit that link was pretty awesome.
Can't quite say the same about the Berlioz though. It was cool and all, but I don't ever see myself putting it above the Symphonie Fantastique.
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RoundTheBendI miss the comfort in being sadProfile Ground Control
Yeah - I agree. Wagner is a unique one because he writes both the libretto and the music. I think because he has 100% control over both, it makes for a better experience as well.
It was hard to rate Berlioz low for putting to music some of the best literature ever written.
This wasn't as great as Der fliegende Holländer. It was long and musically less interesting. It clearly is more story/vocal driven and I didn't watch it/read it, so I had less of holistic experience to truly judge it, but wasn't one over regardless.
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On January 23, 1883, Cosima Wagner wrote in her diary that her husband believed he still owed Tannhäuser to the world. Wagner completed the first version of the opera in 1845 during his tenure as kapellmeister at the royal court of Dresden. No other work in his oeuvre would receive as much constant attention. It seems that Wagner, who considered Tannhäuser a watershed work in his output, was never satisfied with any single version of it.
Tannhäuser, the medieval legend of the knight from Thannhausen, was premièred in Dresden in October 1845. Wagner began the process of revising the work immediately. Dresden audiences saw performances of at least three different incarnations of the opera, and the version of the score Wagner published in 1860 was yet again different. Wagner subjected Tannhäuser to further emendations, including the translation of the libretto into French, for each of the three performances of the work at the Paris Opéra in 1861, and the version first performed in Vienna in 1875 was of a still different score. The early Parisian performances of Tannhäuser have lived in infamy and illustrate the circumstances in which Wagner made the most significant changes to the opera. The Jockey Club had demanded, in keeping with French tradition, that the opera contain a ballet in Act Three. Wagner extended the Venusberg scene at the opening of the opera to include a ballet. Objecting to the early placement of the ballet, the Jockey Club organized a clangorous display of disapproval. Performances of Tannhäuser today generally draw on either the "Dresden" or the "Paris" version.
The orchestra introduces the drama's most important themes in the Tannhäuser prelude. Act One begins at the Venusberg, chromatic swirls and robust orchestration forming the musical backdrop for frolicking fauna at the grotto of the love goddess. The master singer Tannhäuser sings three appeals for Venus to release him to the world beyond her mountain, each appeal one semitone higher than the one preceding, revealing Tannhäuser's heightening intensity. In the valley before the Wartburg resound a shepherd's song and a chorus of older pilgrims making their way to Rome. Wagner constructs the chorus of the pious pilgrims in a four-part chorale setting reminiscent of the Lutheran chorales of J.S. Bach. In the Act Two song contest, Wolfram, Tannhäuser, and Biterolf sing artful songs on the nature of love. Having returned unsuccessfully from his pilgrimage to Rome, Tannhäuser sings to Wolfram of his experiences there, his musical manner alternating between willful expanses in his previous songful vein and recitative utterances. The chromatic Venusberg music returns when Tannhäuser realizes that he has no choice but to live out his destiny of damnation in the service of Venus herself. On learning that Elisabeth has died so that his own sins may be forgiven, Tannhäuser hears the devoutly diatonic music of Elisabeth's funeral procession, which, having purified the Venusberg music of its excessive chromaticism, invites the final triumphal statement of the theme from the pilgrims' chorus as the opera draws to a close.
- allmusic
I actually didn't get a chance to watch this (listened instead), so I'll save this here for now:
I actually found this quite captivating - a simple yet perfectly balanced concerto between soloist and orchestra with a melody that was infectious.
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Robert Schumann followed up his remarkable "year of song" (1840) with another compositional annus mirabilis. 1841 saw the creation of the composer's first works for orchestra, including the Symphony No. 1, Op. 38, the Symphony No. 4, Op. 120 (substantially revised and published a decade later), and the Overture, Scherzo and Finale, Op. 52. In each of these works, thematic unity among movements is of central importance, an idea widely explored in the Romantic period in guises ranging from the idée fixe of Berlioz's Symphonie fantastique (1830) to the leitmotives of Wagner's music dramas.
Schumann's other major work from 1841 is the Fantaisie in A minor for piano and orchestra. Though the Fantaisie as such has ultimately disappeared from the repertoire, it is only because it evolved into the first movement of the composer's Piano Concerto in A minor, completed in 1845. In this year Schumann appended two movements to the revised Fantasie; the composer's wife, the remarkable pianist Clara Wieck Schumann, premiered the result, a complete concerto, in Leipzig on New Year's Day, 1846.
The shifting moods that characterize so much of Schumann's music are clearly evident in the Piano Concerto. Still, as in the composer's contemporaneous works noted above, and despite the interval between the composition of the Concerto's first movement and the remaining two, inter-movement unity is one of the work's primary concerns. There is a quasi-symphonic character to the Concerto, in distinct contrast to the then-prevailing view of the concerto as primarily a vehicle for virtuosic display, exemplified by the concertante works of Franz Liszt and Nicolò Paganini. Indeed, Liszt showed little enthusiasm for Schumann's Concerto and tweaked the composer (who had earlier written a "Concerto Without Orchestra") by referring to it as a "concerto without piano."
Though the work's technical demands are not inconsiderable, they are almost wholly subservient to thematic interest and structural clarity. The Concerto opens with a downward-surging, darkly martial introductory gesture. The first theme, marked by a high-minded dignity, becomes the prime source of melodic material, spawning closely related themes that alternately brood and, in the major mode, provide respite from the sober atmosphere. The development caroms from one mood to the next in almost dizzying fashion, all the while exploring the ambiguities of the themes' various components. Schumann cannily uses the lengthy cadenza as a battleground for further emotional conflict before ending the movement with a decisive return of the lofty first subject.
The second movement, Intermezzo: Andantino grazioso, amply displays Schumann's immanent melodic sense within a spectrum ranging from genial to poetic to lushly yearning. The Allegro vivace finale commences without pause via an affirmative major-key return of the first movement's main theme. In various episodes, Schumann makes striking use of the finale's joyful, upward-leaping theme, as when it becomes the subject of a fugato. Metric and rhythmic ambiguities abound, coloring the dance-like spirit, and the prevailing mood is one of unfettered optimism that ultimately swells to exuberant triumph.
The 21 nocturnes span almost the entirety of Chopin's career, beginning in 1827, when he was a student at the Warsaw Conservatory, and ending in 1846, when his health was in serious decline from tuberculosis and his relationship with his lover George Sand (Aurore Dupin Dudevant) was falling apart. Chopin was well suited to the nocturne genre, which he helped to develop as much as did the Irish composer, John Field, who wrote 18 such works.
Many of the nocturnes are popular, beginning with the three from the Op. 9 set (1830 - 1831), which are also Nos. 1, 2 and 3 in the series. The last of these, the B major, is probably the most often played of the trio. Its graceful gloom invokes nocturnal images of emotional warmth, even of tender liaisons with a lover. The 4th Nocturne in F major, Op. 15, No. 1, features one of Chopin's most touching melodies. It is stately yet gentle in its march-like melancholy. The other two (F sharp major and G minor) in this set (1830 - 1833) are also attractive and offer evidence of the composer's utter consistency in this realm.
The next two, coming from Op. 27 (1835), are in C sharp minor and D flat major, respectively. There are hazy mists surrounding them and gentle undercurrents of tension, but both are somewhat emotionally cool. The 9th and 10th Nocturnes (1836-37) make up the Op. 32 set. They are less-often performed but are still of high quality.
The 11th and 12th comprise the Op. 37 effort (1838 - 1839). The former (G minor) is gentle and features a melancholy, slightly hesitant main theme, while the latter (G major) is perhaps the brightest and liveliest of all the nocturnes. In fact, "playful" and "sunny" would be apt adjectives to describe its opening, though it turns quite nocturnal in mood thereafter.
The Op. 48, Nos. 1 and 2 (1841) are the next nocturnes here. The first, in C minor, is slow and profound, while its F sharp minor sibling is livelier and features dark, flowing lyricism in its main theme. The 15th and 16th Nocturnes, Op. 55 (1843), in F minor and E flat major, respectively, are both attractive, the former slightly arid for Chopin, the latter featuring a lovely, songful main theme. The Op. 62 pair of nocturnes (1846) are largely gentle, melancholy works whose expressive depth may not become evident at first hearing.
The 19th Nocturne, Op. 72/1, in E minor, was actually Chopin's first. It is brilliantly atmospheric in its dark hues and subtle keyboard shadings, already divulging his mastery of the genre. The C sharp minor 20th Nocturne was written in 1830, and is the second chronologically. It begins solemnly, but then presents one of those lovely, intimate themes Chopin was justly famous for. The C minor 21st Nocturne is, like the 20th, an orphan, bearing no opus number. It is short and pretty, but is emotionally remote in its dark and atmospheric writing.
I'm not sure I'd ever really listened to that Schumann piano Concerto before. What a delight!
Those historical performance clips often have sketchy sound quality, but in this case, who cares; What a performance!
I love how the delicate oboes introduce the first movement, followed by the lovely melody in the piano and the that oh-so-rich combo of grand strings with the piano gallantly rolling through the foundation they provide.
The second movement most masterfully employs gloriously simple musical themes to great effect and then, whoa, Nellie! Bring the virtuosity in the third! But what marvelously crafted virtuosity! Spectacular.
I probably shouldn't have rolled direct from that to those Chopin miniatures. That wasn't fair. I may have to listen to the Chopin again, but with fresh ears and a clear mind.
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Fischman
RoundTheBend
