The complete idiot's guide to classical music (35 page)

Melody was Schubert’s forte. He painted pictures in song; gave chamber music a new burst of lyricism; and his expressive gifts brought the German art song, or lieder, to its greatest heights, his exquisite music exalting even the minor poets whose works he set. Schubert also pioneered the song cycle, groups of integrated pieces usually taken from the lyrics of a single poet, such as “Die Schöne Mullerin” (The Miller’s Beautiful Daughter) or “Die Winterreise” (Winter’s Journey).

Later critics faulted Schubert’s orchestral pieces for structural weaknesses, but none could help marveling at his incredible melodic gifts. It was only after he died, of some pre-penicillin plague variously described as syphilis or typhoid fever, that his place in the pantheon of musical greats was gradually, but unshakably, established. Eleven years after Schubert’s death, his majestic Ninth Symphony found a champion in Schumann, who persuaded his friend Mendelssohn to conduct its premiere. Another quarter of a century would pass before a Viennese conductor found the manuscript of the
Unfinished
Symphony and introduced it to the public; and it wasn’t until 1867 that Arthur Sullivan (still three years away from becoming the other half of the famous Gilbert and . . .) located Schubert’s incidental music to
Rosamunde
stuffed away in a Vienna cupboard.

In several instances, you can enjoy the same melody in vocal and instrumental form: “Die Forelle” is both a short song, and the theme of the Variations movement in the delectably long
Trout
Quintet; you can encounter the “Death and the Maiden” in one of Schubert’s most touching lieder or the radiant String Quartet bearing that title; you can hike along with the singing “Wanderer” or follow his path into the Piano Fantasy (later arranged by Liszt for piano and orchestra).

There are many wonderful piano sonatas, but for shorter keyboard sittings, try the “Moments Musicaux” (Musical Moments). On the symphonic list, your best introduction is the familiar
Unfinished
(no. 8), though the charming Fifth Symphony makes absolutely delightful listening, and the Ninth finds Schubert at his most orchestrally expansive. “All the instruments are human voices,” wrote Schumann after hearing the Ninth, which perhaps explains its unique allure.

We’ve mentioned some of the more famous Schubert songs, but almost any of the hundreds more are equally worth hearing. Then, while you’re browsing in the vocal section, explore some of the masses and other church music, and the exquisite “Shepherd on the Rock” for voice, clarinet, and piano.

 

• Hayden wrote 104 symphonies.
  
 

• Mozart was a child prodigy.
  
 

• Beethoven wrote his Ninth Symphony when he was deaf.
  
 

• Melody was Schubert’s forte.
  

Chapter 16
 
Say You Want a Revolution: The Romantic Era

 

• The age of individualism
  
 

• Art forms
  
 

• Poetic influences
  
 

• Songs
  
 

• The symphonic poem
  
 

• The most famous romantic composers
  

Musicians and other artists in the 18th century more or less played by the rules. In the 19th century, they tried to break free of the old conventions to make their own individual statements. Imaginations soared, passions roared, and legends loomed larger than life. Emotions held sway, replacing the reason and intellect so integral to the Classical era. Moods became the stuff of art: joy and sorrow, hope and despair, love of humanity or homeland, all found their way into musical expression. There was a fascination with the exotic, the supernatural, the sensual. The romantic approach also encouraged a fusion of art forms, with poetry inspiring music and music enhancing the drama. Goethe went so far as to call architecture “petrified music.”

Speaking of Goethe (1749–1832), here was both an early romantic and a Renaissance man, who distinguished himself as much in science and politics as in letters. Already in the mid-1770s, his “Prometheus” set forth the ideal that man must believe in himself rather than submit to the will of the gods; Goethe’s poems “The Erl King” and “Gretchen at the Spinning Wheel” were turned into glorious songs by Franz Schubert, and his play
The Tragedy of Faust
, based on a medieval German legend, served as the basis of Gounod’s most famous opera. Faust, in fact, was the prototype of dozens of later literary characters who sell their souls to the devil in exchange for beauty, riches, fame or (in Faust’s case) youth, then live to regret the bargain. As they soon discover, it’s pretty hard to pry a refund out of Satan.

The word “lieder,” used in English as well as German, is plural for the German word “lied” (pronounced “leed”), meaning song. Beethoven is sometimes heralded as the creator of romantic lieder (and he did write one of the first song cycles), but it was really Schubert who set the pace with his settings of Goethe verses and those by dozens of other poets. Mendelssohn, Schumann, Brahms, Liszt, and Wagner were among the masters who followed in those songful footsteps. Hugo Wolf made the piano a more integral partner in the musical equation and brought in more modern harmonies, for which he was dubbed “the Wagner of the Lied.” Lieder with piano began to wane in popularity toward the end of the 19th century, but Mahler, Richard Strauss, and others solved the problem by giving many of their songs orchestral accompaniments.

The tone poem (or symphonic poem if you want to be a little more elegant about it), is just a fancy-pants title for an orchestral piece inspired by a literary work or an attempt to tell a story in music. Although composers of earlier eras did depict dramatic events in their music, it was Franz Liszt who pioneered the form, writing a
Faust
Symphony and a dozen shorter works attempting to translate images, scenes, and emotions from the printed page to a musical score. Liszt’s list includes
Les Preludes
after Lamartine,
Hamlet
via Shakespeare, and
Tasso
, based on Byron and Goethe verses about the Italian Renaissance poet.

Other composers were similarly intrigued by the challenge of turning literary works into the sounds of music, with Shakespeare, not surprisingly, a frequent source of inspiration, as witness Berlioz’s
King Lear,
Dvorak’s
Othello,
and Tchaikovsky’s
Romeo and Juliet.

Towards the end of the 18th century, the American and French Revolutions sparked a whole series of social convolutions, and in the 19th, there arose a new wave of nationalistic fervor. You’ll have to glean the historical, geographical, and political particulars from other sources than this modest volume, but musically there was a similar turn toward works that evoked pride in the creator’s homeland. Composers in the Romantic era took special note of traditions in their native countries, giving symphonic life to country folk tunes and rustic dance rhythms, painting tonal landscapes of rivers, mountains, and castles, bringing national poetry and other literary works to bear on their musical instincts. Thus we find classical pieces deriving from local legends (Franck’s
The Accursed Huntsman
and Mussorgsky’s
Night on Bald Mountain
), nature sketches (Smetana’s
The Moldau
and Borodin’s
In the Steppes of Central Asia
), or historic personages (Glazunov’s
Stenka Razin
and Schumann’s
Manfred
). Another major champion of the symphonic poem was Richard Strauss, whose pictorial subjects covered most of the above bases, from Shakespeare (
Macbeth)
to folklore heros (
Till Eulenspiegel
) from a legendary lover (
Don Juan
) to himself (
A Hero’s Life
).

 
Music Words
The terms
symphonic poem
and
tone poem
are interchangeable: they both refer to an orchestral work with a literary antecedent. The work can be a general mood piece, inspired by landscape descriptions, it can portray characters within a novel, play or poem; or it can actually try to convert events from printed word into musical sound descriptions.

 
Bet You Didn’t Know
Somebody once remarked to Strauss that it wasn’t very seemly for a composer to make himself the subject of a musical work, as he did both in
A Hero’s Life
(where he quoted themes from a variety of his earlier compositions to make sure everybody knew for sure who the hero was) and in the
Domestic
Symphony, which includes a love scene between husband and wife. “And why not?” Strauss allegedly snapped back, “I consider myself at least as interesting as Napoleon or Alexander the Great.” He had a point there.

As recently as 1890, an allegedly intelligent critic wrote that “women were not, in general, intellectually capable of grasping the intricacies of music composition.” Putting aside such hogwash, it is sad fact that for many centuries it was deemed a mark of proper upbringing for a young lady to learn the harpsichord, flute, or other instrument of nonthreatening nature, but rather scandalous for her to take her expertise beyond the confines of home and family.

There were, of course, women through the ages who defied this double standard. One of the earliest was Hildegard of Bingen (1098–1197), who managed to combine religious and diplomatic careers, while writing mystical poetry and songs, even “harmonic symphonies of celestial revelation.” Francesca Caccini (1587–1640), a solo singer in church and opera, entered the history books as the first woman opera composer, and possibly the first to cause a national scandal when, during the Florence Carnival of 1619, she dared unveil a work that included the scandalous sight of a pregnant woman on stage.

Two of the most gifted women of the 19th century carry names that are far more indelibly associated with their male kinfolk; indeed, it is only in our own time that their unique composing talents have been fully appreciated and become available to the public.

Born in Hamburg, four years earlier than her famous brother, Felix Mendelssohn (you’ll hear more about him later in this chapter), Fanny Mendelssohn (1805–1847) grew up in the same cultural environment, became an equally fine pianist, and turned to composition at the age of 14, when she wrote a song in honor of her father’s birthday. Thereafter, she wrote some 500 songs and piano pieces, plus a piano trio, string quartet, and other chamber music. Due to the prevailing prejudice against women composers, most of these works remain unpublished to this day.

 
Bet You Didn’t Know
In frustration, Fanny allowed six of her “songs without words” to be printed under her brother’s name; they are of such high quality that only recently have musicologists been able to distinguish which pieces were hers and which were Felix’s.

During the 1830s, some of Fanny Mendelssohn’s passion for music was gratified when she became something of a musical magnet, presiding over salon evenings that were the talk of the town. The major personalities in the arts swarmed to those cultural evenings at which Fanny played—and sometimes conducted—her own latest compositions. Her letters and diaries provide a vivid chronicle of the musical world of her time.

Friedrich Wieck was a martinet, a cruel taskmaster and all around meanie, but realizing that his daughter had extraordinary talent, he made no attempt to keep her from a life on the musical stage. Clara Wieck (1819–1896) gave her first recital in Leipzig at age nine, played in Paris at 12, was a tremendous success with the Viennese at 18, and soon thereafter was appointed Chamber Virtuoso to the Austrian court. Clara blossomed early, and by the time she was 15, one of her father’s students, Robert Schumann, set his sights on her. Her father responded in typical ogre fashion, locking his daughter away and tearing up Schumann’s letters. When that didn’t seem to produce the desired results, Friedrich tried a different approach, introducing the passionate young man to another of his students, Ernestine von Fricken who, we’re told, was “physically luxuriant, emotionally strongly developed, and intellectually insignificant.” Two out of three isn’t bad, so Schumann dallied with Ernestine for a while, before realizing that Clara was the only one for him. We won’t bore you with the gory details, but it took a two year legal battle before old man Wieck allowed the marriage to go forward.