19th century art song
TRANSCRIPT
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Nineteenth-Century Art Song
42 Romantic Song
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Key Points
• Typical romantic song structures include strophic and through-composed forms; some fall between into a modified-strophic form
• The German art song, or Lied, for solo voice and piano was a favored Romantic genre.
• Composer wrote song cycles that unified a group of songs by poem or theme.
• The poetry of the lied used themes of love and nature; the favored poets were Goethe and Heine
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Types of Song Structure
• The art song met the need for intimate personal expression.
• The form came into prominence in the early decades and emerged as a favored example of the new lyricism.
• Two main song structures prevailed: strophic and through-composed.
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Types of Song Structure
• Strophic form is when the same melody is repeated with every stanza, or strophe of the poem; hymns carols, as well most folk and popular songs are strophic.
• This form accommodates all the stanzas of the text.
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Through-composed form
• The other song type called durchkomponiert, or through-composed form by the Germans proceeds from beginning to end, without repetitions of whole sections.
• The music follows the story line, changing according to the text; thus making it possible for the composer to mirror the shade of meaning in the words.
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Modified-strophic form
• There is also an intermediate type that combines features of both.
• The same melody may re repeated for two or three stanzas, with new material introduced when the poem requires it, generally at the climax.
• This is a modified strophic form.
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The Lied
• Art song was a product of the Romantic era.• The lied (lieder) is a German-texted solo vocal
song with piano accompaniment.• Among the great masters of this genre are
Schubert, Schumann, Brahms & Hugo Wolf.• Women composers who have contributed to
the genre include Fanny Mendelssohn, Clara Schumann and Amy Cheney Beach.
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Lied (cont.)• Some composers wrote groups of lieder that were unified
by a narrative thread or descriptive theme, known as a song cycle.
• The rise of the lied was fuelled by the outpouring of lyric poetry that marked German Romanticism.
• Goethe and Heinrich Heine were the two leading poets who like Wordsworth, Byron, Shelley and Keats in literature favored short, personal, lyric poems; Texts ranged from tender sentiment to dramatic balladry.
• Also included universal themes of love, longing and the beauty of nature.
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Popularity of the piano
• Another circumstance that popularized the Romantic art song was the emergence of the piano as the preferred household instrument.
• Piano accompaniment translated a song’s poetic images into music.
• Voice and piano together fused the short lyric form with feeling and made is suitable for amateurs and artists alike, in both the home and the concert hall.
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43 Schubert and the LiedKey Points
• Franz Schubert was a gifted songwriter who composed more than 600 famous lieder and several song cycles.
• Erlking – a through-composed Lied based on a German legend set in a dramatic poem by Goethe- is one of his most famous songs.
• Schubert died young and impoverished, in part because of his bohemian lifestyle.
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His Life
• Franz Schubert’s life has become a romantic symbol of the artist’s fate.
• He was not properly appreciated during his lifetime.
• He died very young, leaving the world a musical legacy of some 900 works.
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His Life (cont.)
• He was born in a suburb of Vienna, the son of a schoolmaster.
• As a boy, he learned the violin from his father and piano from an elder brother.
• His beautiful soprano voice gained him admittance to the imperial chapel and school where the court singers were trained.
• He was one of the Vienna Choir Boys.• His teachers were astonished at his musicality.
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His Life (cont.)
• Young Schubert tried to follow in his father’s footsteps; he was not cut out for classroom.
• He found escape by immersing himself into the lyric poetry of the budding German Romanticism.
• Everything he touched turned to song; music came to him with miraculous spontaneity.
• Erlking, set to a poem by Goethe, was written while he was still a teenager.
• The song won him immediate public recognition yet he had difficulty finding a publisher.
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Virtuoso – (not!)
• Schubert was not as well known as some composers of his era (the virtuoso Paganini, who received much more attention.)
• He was appreciated by Viennese public and his reputation grew steadily.
• His music was centered in the home, in salon concerts amid a select circle of friends and acquaintances.
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Later Years
• Schubert suffered deeply during his later years, largely owing to a progressive debilitation believed to from advanced stages of syphilis.
• He was often pressed for money and sold his music for much less than it was worth.
• As his youthful exuberance gave way to the maturity of a deeply emotional Romantic artist, he perceived that he had lost the struggle with life.
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Winter’s Journey
• This emotional climate pervades his magnificent song cycle Winter’s Journey in which he introduced a somber lyricism to music.
• Overcoming his discouragement, he embarked on his left efforts.
• In the final year of his life, he composed a Mass in E flat, the String Quartet in C, 3 piano sonatas, (published posthumously) and 13 of his finest songs.
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Dying Wish
• While he was terminally ill, he corrected the proofs of the final part of Winter’s Journey.
• His dying wish was to be buried near the master he worshipped above all others – Beethoven.
• Schubert was 31 when he died in 1828.• His wish was granted.
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His Music
• Schubert’s music marks the confluence of the Classical and Romantic eras.
• His symphonies are Classical in their form; in his lieder and piano pieces he was a Romantic.
• His melodies have a tender and longing quality that match the tone of the poetry they set.
• In his chamber music, he was a direct descendent of Haydn and Mozart. His quartets, piano trios and the Trout quintet end the line of Viennese Classicism.
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Other Works
• In his impromptus and other short piano pieces, the piano sings with a new lyricism.
• There are over 600 songs; many were written at breakneck speed, sometimes 5, 6 , or 7 in a single morning.
• The accompaniments are especially expressive.• The two song cycles Lovely Maid of the Mill and
Winter’s Journey, both on poems by Wilhem Muller convey impassioned feelings of love and despair.