Chapter 22:Romantic Music: Piano Music

The Piano• Improved by the new technologies of the Industrial

Revolution – Range extended to 88 keys– Cast-iron frame– Thicker, stronger strings– Sustaining Pedal and Soft Pedal added– Cross-stringing for a richer sound

• More expressive• Home music making• Great virtuoso pianist/composers of the 19th-century

– Technical fireworks: Rapid octaves, racing chromatic scales, thundering chords

Robert Schumann: Carnaval (1834) • Collection of 21 short piano pieces written

while a student in Leipzig• “Carnivalesque goings-on:” Musically

depicted colorful characters, including mardi gras characters, Clara, Chopin, and Paganini

• Signs of bipolar disorder already evident here– “Eusebius” is meek and sensitive while

“Florestan” is assertive, even fiery

• Started the high-end music magazine Die neue Zeitschrift für Musik– Wrote both as Eusebius and Florestan

Frédéric Chopin (1810-1849)• “The Poet of the Piano”• Born in Warsaw, Poland• Physically slight and somewhat sickly• Introverted and hated performing in public• Made his career in Paris– Remained in Paris after Russia crushed

Poland’s independence– Became a voice for Polish musical nationalism

• Primarily composed for the piano–Many based on Polish folk dances

• Use of Tempo Rubato

Nocturne in Eb major, Op. 9, No. 2 (1832)

• Nocturne: “Night Piece”– Slow, dreamy genre of piano music popular in

the 1820’s and 1830’s– Suggests moonlit rooms, romantic longing,

and wistful melancholy

• Sensuous melody weaves around a regular accompaniment

Franz Liszt (1811-1886)• Flamboyant artistic personality

– Lisztomania• Compositions demand great virtuosity • Established the modern piano recital

– Played entire program from memory– Placed the piano parallel to the stage– Performed alone on stage

• Etude: A short, one movement composition designed to improve a particular aspect of a performer’s technique– Liszt’s etudes were intended for virtuoso players, not

students• Novel approach to musical form, harmonic

progressions, and foreshadows musical practices of the 20th-century

Transcendental Etude No. 8 “Wilde Jagd” (1851)

• Transcendental Etudes are Liszt’s most difficult pieces– Studies in storm and dread

• “Wilde Jagd” = “Wild Hunt” suggests a German Romantic scene of a nocturnal chase in a supernatural forest

• A “musical Mont Everest”