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My life has been usurped by a medical asshat with whom I keep up by turning to piracy; I've spent every spare waking moment with him, which is why I've not been around online much. To make up for my recent absence, here. I've got nothin' right now, but it'll get more complete as the night goes on and I look through my notes and steal Dan's. I'm not real worried about this one, seeing as it's music I actually like and therefore tend to recognize easily, but for all you poor devils out there who prefer Bach and Haydn, I pity you and offer you this study guide.
Listening
Wagner: Die Walkuere, the end of Act III scene 3, "Wotan's Farewell"
Verdi: Otello, Act III, scene 2
Mussorgsky: Boris Godunov, from Act II, the Song of the Parrot, and Boris's Clock Monologue
Brahms: Concerto in D major for violin, opus 77, mvt. 1
Strauss: Don Juan
Mahler: Symphony No. 1 in D major, mvt. 1
Terms and Names
music drama - a term for what Wagners productions post-Das Rheingold became, to differentiate them from operas (both of other composers and his own early ones); they contained all elements of art, and he considered the text and story as important as the music
New German School - A group of musicians in favor of program music and music drama (especially of Berlioz and Wanger), initially gathered around Liszt during his Weimar years and including Hans von Bülow, Peter Cornelius, Joachim Raff, and Carl Taussig, opposed by Brahms
kuchkist - term from kuchka, handful or heap, referring to five self-taught 19th-century Russian composers in St. Petersburg: Balakirev, Borodin, Cui, Mussorgsky and Rimsky-Korsakov; ideal was to create a distinctly Russian school of music and follow in Glinka's footsteps, also incorporating musical realism
Leitmotiv - “leading motif”, musical fragment related to some aspect of the drama that recurs in the course of an opera, combines dramatic and musical functions for emphasis of what is seen on stage or to suggest unseen things, characters' thoughts; used most often in connection with Wagner’s later works
Vladimir Stasov - Russian music and art critic, advisor to the kuchkists and supporter of realism in art and music
symphonic poem - programmatic orchestral work intended to replace the symphony, invented by Liszt in the 1840s and 50s
absolute music - music without programmatic intent, though the dichotomy between program music and absolute music is not as severe as it seems; there are absolute bits in program music, and bits one could interpret as programmatic in absolute music
Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen - 1833-5 Mahler's cycle of four pseudo folk songs, several of which show up as themes in his first symphony, later set with texts inspired by an unhappy love affair
Franz Brendel - editor of Die Neue Zeitschrift while it underwent ideological changes; he coined the term "the New German School"
Alexander Pushkin - heavyweight Russian poet, wrote Eugene Onegin and play on which Boris Godunov was based
program music - music intended to evoke some kind of story or narrative, in the Romantic era mainly program symphonies (programmatic titles or even text to follow) and symphonic poems; also concert overtures, character pieces, sometimes string quartets; exponents include Liszt and Strauss
Bayreuth - Small German town where Wagner built the Festpsielhaus to house the Ring Cycle, meant to be far away from much civilization in order that people could concentrate fully on the Ring while they experienced it there
Eduard Hanslick - German critic and aesthetician, wrote An Musikalisch Schoenen in 1854, arguing musical meaning was specifically musical; beginning of formalism: form gives meaning; archenemy of Wagner, proponent of Brahms
Essays
-Kuchkism, nationalism and folklorism in Boris Godunov
Part of Russian cultural revolution. Critics writing tirades about how Russian art and music and literature should be realist and nationalist. Everyone's writing about peasants and the Russian people and Russian folklorism; still, it's not a populist movement, but a nationalist one. Mussorgsky wrote Boris in the style of Dargomizhsky's The Stone Guest (Don Giovanni story), a realist style of declamation. Musically, it's syllabic, conscious anti-numbered, no Italianate decorations or lyricism, as close to speech as one can get in opera. Mussorgsky takes it a step further; his original version didn't include anything that wasn't realism, but then he added little folklike songs, like the Parrot Song. Boris Godunov is Dargomizhsky PLUS.
-Different ways that Verdi and Wagner transformed opera
Verdi has no clear ideological break like Wagner; he never set out to change opera, working in a popular and successful genre, unlike Wagner working in a vacuum. Verdi often complained about the conventions of Italian opera and ignored them to various and increasing degrees in his operas: the cabaletta singers' showoffy aria determining the dramatic course of a scene. In 1850s he wrote Rigoletto, Il Trovatore and La Traviata, pivotal and watershed works of his with his own conventional structure: 3 principals, two lovers and a father figure, conflict between love and societal convention. La Traviata's duet contains a cantabile and a cabaletta at the same time, a subtle break with the scena ed aria, used for purposes that express dramatic considerations. His later operas are more contiguous, and less number-like. Wagner is opposite; starts with no national operatic tradition, an ambitious kid trying out the major operatic styles in the world: German, Italianate, French. Settles on German Romantic opera, writes three, and brings the idea to its height and finishes it out. Then he started to write an opera on the Nibelung story, which ended up requiring a prequel, then another... the Ring came out of it, in backwards chunks, but not before Tristan and Die Meistersinger, which explore love, death, and making fun of people you don't like. Then, after the Ring cycle, a hyper-purism opera, Parsifal. The point: no breaks, arias, recits, choruses; hyperrealism in a different way. Gesamtkunstwerk meant art in every aspect; he was in charge of everything except conducting. He believed uniting the arts would create a master artwork; poetry, music and drama had to come together.
-The New German School, program music, and the symphonic poem
Starts when Liszt stops selling himself out to piano music and starts selling himself out to other things, moving to Weimar and composing orchestral music, Tone Poems, with the idea of appropriating classical genres for use as nationalist genres and vehicles of programmatic romantic expression. Others follow; in the tone poem, Strauss brings it to its height, writes German operas following Wagner, very programmatic, tied to text or image, extramusically expressive message.
-How classical forms were used by late nineteenth-century orchestral composers
same essay as previous, with the inclusion of Mahler and his appropriation of sonata form and retro-chic compositions at the end of the 19th century.
Listening
Wagner: Die Walkuere, the end of Act III scene 3, "Wotan's Farewell"
Verdi: Otello, Act III, scene 2
Mussorgsky: Boris Godunov, from Act II, the Song of the Parrot, and Boris's Clock Monologue
Brahms: Concerto in D major for violin, opus 77, mvt. 1
Strauss: Don Juan
Mahler: Symphony No. 1 in D major, mvt. 1
Terms and Names
music drama - a term for what Wagners productions post-Das Rheingold became, to differentiate them from operas (both of other composers and his own early ones); they contained all elements of art, and he considered the text and story as important as the music
New German School - A group of musicians in favor of program music and music drama (especially of Berlioz and Wanger), initially gathered around Liszt during his Weimar years and including Hans von Bülow, Peter Cornelius, Joachim Raff, and Carl Taussig, opposed by Brahms
kuchkist - term from kuchka, handful or heap, referring to five self-taught 19th-century Russian composers in St. Petersburg: Balakirev, Borodin, Cui, Mussorgsky and Rimsky-Korsakov; ideal was to create a distinctly Russian school of music and follow in Glinka's footsteps, also incorporating musical realism
Leitmotiv - “leading motif”, musical fragment related to some aspect of the drama that recurs in the course of an opera, combines dramatic and musical functions for emphasis of what is seen on stage or to suggest unseen things, characters' thoughts; used most often in connection with Wagner’s later works
Vladimir Stasov - Russian music and art critic, advisor to the kuchkists and supporter of realism in art and music
symphonic poem - programmatic orchestral work intended to replace the symphony, invented by Liszt in the 1840s and 50s
absolute music - music without programmatic intent, though the dichotomy between program music and absolute music is not as severe as it seems; there are absolute bits in program music, and bits one could interpret as programmatic in absolute music
Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen - 1833-5 Mahler's cycle of four pseudo folk songs, several of which show up as themes in his first symphony, later set with texts inspired by an unhappy love affair
Franz Brendel - editor of Die Neue Zeitschrift while it underwent ideological changes; he coined the term "the New German School"
Alexander Pushkin - heavyweight Russian poet, wrote Eugene Onegin and play on which Boris Godunov was based
program music - music intended to evoke some kind of story or narrative, in the Romantic era mainly program symphonies (programmatic titles or even text to follow) and symphonic poems; also concert overtures, character pieces, sometimes string quartets; exponents include Liszt and Strauss
Bayreuth - Small German town where Wagner built the Festpsielhaus to house the Ring Cycle, meant to be far away from much civilization in order that people could concentrate fully on the Ring while they experienced it there
Eduard Hanslick - German critic and aesthetician, wrote An Musikalisch Schoenen in 1854, arguing musical meaning was specifically musical; beginning of formalism: form gives meaning; archenemy of Wagner, proponent of Brahms
Essays
-Kuchkism, nationalism and folklorism in Boris Godunov
Part of Russian cultural revolution. Critics writing tirades about how Russian art and music and literature should be realist and nationalist. Everyone's writing about peasants and the Russian people and Russian folklorism; still, it's not a populist movement, but a nationalist one. Mussorgsky wrote Boris in the style of Dargomizhsky's The Stone Guest (Don Giovanni story), a realist style of declamation. Musically, it's syllabic, conscious anti-numbered, no Italianate decorations or lyricism, as close to speech as one can get in opera. Mussorgsky takes it a step further; his original version didn't include anything that wasn't realism, but then he added little folklike songs, like the Parrot Song. Boris Godunov is Dargomizhsky PLUS.
-Different ways that Verdi and Wagner transformed opera
Verdi has no clear ideological break like Wagner; he never set out to change opera, working in a popular and successful genre, unlike Wagner working in a vacuum. Verdi often complained about the conventions of Italian opera and ignored them to various and increasing degrees in his operas: the cabaletta singers' showoffy aria determining the dramatic course of a scene. In 1850s he wrote Rigoletto, Il Trovatore and La Traviata, pivotal and watershed works of his with his own conventional structure: 3 principals, two lovers and a father figure, conflict between love and societal convention. La Traviata's duet contains a cantabile and a cabaletta at the same time, a subtle break with the scena ed aria, used for purposes that express dramatic considerations. His later operas are more contiguous, and less number-like. Wagner is opposite; starts with no national operatic tradition, an ambitious kid trying out the major operatic styles in the world: German, Italianate, French. Settles on German Romantic opera, writes three, and brings the idea to its height and finishes it out. Then he started to write an opera on the Nibelung story, which ended up requiring a prequel, then another... the Ring came out of it, in backwards chunks, but not before Tristan and Die Meistersinger, which explore love, death, and making fun of people you don't like. Then, after the Ring cycle, a hyper-purism opera, Parsifal. The point: no breaks, arias, recits, choruses; hyperrealism in a different way. Gesamtkunstwerk meant art in every aspect; he was in charge of everything except conducting. He believed uniting the arts would create a master artwork; poetry, music and drama had to come together.
-The New German School, program music, and the symphonic poem
Starts when Liszt stops selling himself out to piano music and starts selling himself out to other things, moving to Weimar and composing orchestral music, Tone Poems, with the idea of appropriating classical genres for use as nationalist genres and vehicles of programmatic romantic expression. Others follow; in the tone poem, Strauss brings it to its height, writes German operas following Wagner, very programmatic, tied to text or image, extramusically expressive message.
-How classical forms were used by late nineteenth-century orchestral composers
same essay as previous, with the inclusion of Mahler and his appropriation of sonata form and retro-chic compositions at the end of the 19th century.
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