Notes from Wednesday, April 2 class session:

Preparation For Wed. April 2:
1. Complete the online eWorkbook assessment Quiz #10 (Romantic Music) in WebCT/Vista/Blackboard by 12 midnight Friday, April 4 (click here for instructions on how to log onto WebCT).

2. Read textbook Chapter 7 (Romantic)--pages 74-76 (Music Guides 34, 46, 52, 55)

3. Listen to "Classical Music Online" examples for 20th-century Art Music.

4. Read Lecture Notes from Mar 31.

-----

LECTURE TOPIC: THEATRICAL/VOCAL MUSIC OF THE ROMANTIC ERA (continued)

(See Chapter 7 for details)

The following bold or bold/italic terms/works/composers were studied:

GERMAN LIEDER
- During Beethoven's lifetime, Schubert wrote German songs [Lieder] that were in a new, lyrical, intensely personal and harmonically-daring Romantic style. (See Music Guide 34/Chapter 7)--Schubert: Erlkonig
- Schubert wrote over 600 such songs between 1814 and 1828 (he died from syphilis at the age of 31)--250 of them in 1815-16.
- With a similar new approach, Schubert also composed 16 operas (most were not staged in his lifetime), 15 string quartets, 10 symphonies, 6 Masses, 20 piano sonatas (some unfinished), and many dance pieces.

-----

RESPONSES TO WAGNER in the later Romantic Era

FRENCH "GRAND OPERA"
- French opera as a tradition of extravagance ever since the middle Baroque; however, in the Romantic era, French opera moved to a massive scale--not only in size/scope, but in expression, exoticism/eroticism/psycho-drama. (See Music Guide 47/Chapter 7)--Bizet: Carmen, which features a highly-colorful orchestra, lavish singing, some spicy action, and spoken French dialogue interspersed at critical moments of the story. Bizet adopts Wagner's concepts of continuous drama, introductory Prelude instead of Overture, and Leitmotifs (on a smaller scale than Wagner).

ITALIAN "VERISMO" OPERA
- The Italians never gave up on beautiful singing, but after Wagner's impact on theatrical world, they did adopt a more realistic sense of continuous drama known as "verismo" [means "true-to-life"]. One of the most famous verismo operas is Puccini's La Boheme (See Music Guide 52/Chapter 7)

POST-WAGNERIAN GERMAN ROMANTICISM
- After Wagner, most German/Austrian composers took his ideals even further in the late 1800s/early1900s. One of the most famous examples of this intense post-Wagnerian German style is Richard Strauss' massive symphonic poem Also Sprach Zarathustra (1895)--See Music Guide 55/Chapter 7). This work depicts the symbolic emergence of a German super race by pitting a massive brass-predominated orchestra with a church organ playing with al the stops open. The brass are so loud, and the timpani pounding so hard, that the organ/strings/winds can be felt but not heard for much of the example we heard in class. (Note: Do not confuse the Richard Strauss [an intense expressionist German Romantic composer] with Johann Strauss [an Austrian Romantic composer of famous Viennese waltzes and light operas].)

-----