fa song is meaningful to us, we may have a tendency to identify the words as carrying that meaning. But those words are sung, not spoken, and if someone were to read them, we would likely not find the effect nearly as compelling.
This is the power and paradox of song: while it's easy to focus on the text,
the music carries the subtle intensity. Some songs rely on simple musical elements, highlighting the predominance of the voice; others employ greater complexity of melody, texture, and timbre, providing multiple resources for the expression of emotion. Within the music you listen to on a regular basis, you can probably identify a wide range of approaches to text and music. Becoming aware of these different treatments will increase your understanding of the expressive potential of song.
KEY POINTS
* Typical Romantic song structures include strophic and through-composed forms; some songs fall between the two, into a modified strophic form.
* The German art song, or Lied-for solo voice and piano-was a favored
Romantic genre.
* The poetry of the Lied projects themes of love and nature; favored poets were
* Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and Heinrich Heine.
* Franz Schubert wrote more than 600 Lieder and two masterful song cycles. Elf-King (Erkönig), a through-composed Lied based on a Danish legend related in a dramatic poem by Goethe, is one of his most famous songs.
THE LIED
Though songs have existed throughout the ages, the art song as we know it today was a product of the Romantic-era. The Lied (plural, Lieder), as the new genre was called, is a German-texted solo song, generally with piano accompaniment. Prominent composers in this tradition were Franz Schubert, Robert Schumann, and Johannes Brahms, as well as Fanny Mendelssohn Hensel and Clara Wieck Schumann.
In some repertories, the words for a
song are newly written; in others, composers choose preexisting poetry for their musical settings. Composers of the Lied were especially dedicated to the latter method, often releasing "competing" musical settings from the outpouring of poetry that marked German Romanticism.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-
1832) and Heinrich Heine (1797-1856) were two leading figures among a group of poets who, like Wordsworth, Byron, Shelley, and Keats in England, favored short, personal, "lyric" poems. Overall,
the Romantic art song was due in part to the d availability of the piano. A lithograph by Achille the Salon.
Romantic poems range from tender sentiment to ramatic balladry; common themes are love, longing, and the beauty of
nature. Some composers, like Schubert and Robert Schumann (1810-1856), wrote groups of Lieder that were unified by a narrative thread or descriptive theme, known as song cycles.
Another circumstance that made the art song popular was the emergence of the piano as the preferred household instrument of the nineteenth century. Voice and piano together infused the short lyric form with feeling and made it suitable for amateurs and artists alike, in both the home and the concert hall.
Types of Song Structure
In the nineteenth century, two main song structures prevailed. One was strophic form, in which the same melody is repeated with every stanza, or strophe, of the poem; hymns, carols, as well as most folk and popular songs are strophic. This form sets up a general atmosphere that accommodates all the stanzas, all sung to the same tune.
The other song type, through-composed, proceeds from beginning to end without repetitions of whole sections. Here the music follows the story line, changing according to the text. This makes it possible for the composer to mirror every shade of meaning in the words.
In an intermediate type that combines features of the other two, the same melody may be repeated several times, with new material introduced when the poem requires it. This is considered a modified strophic form, similar to what we heard in the lovely first movement of Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata (Chapter 32)
SCHUBERT AND THE LIED
Franz Schubert was a young songwriting prodigy who composed more than six hundred Lieder in his short life. While some of his songs (like Elf-King, examined below) were performed in concert settings, most of his career was built on intimate musical performances in friends' and sponsors' homes, for which Schubert would write not only Lieder but also dances and chamber works. His gift for melodic writing and the subtle interactions he created between vocal part* and accompaniment have made his Lieder a staple of the art-song repertory for both amateurs and professionals ever since.
In Thei Words
66 [Wit you imm good ide pour in: joy. Wit can't ge tormen
and no but boi
Franz Schubert (1797-1828)
Schubert was born in Vienna and educated at the Imperial Chapel, where he sang in the choir that later became the famous Vienna Boys' Choir. Although his father hoped he would pursue a career in teaching, Schubert fell in with a small group of writers, artists, and fellow musicians who organized a series of concerts, called Schubertiads,
where the young composer's newest works could be heard. One of his friends claimed that "everything he touched turned to song."
He wrote Elf-King, as well as other great songs, when he was still a teenager. This work won him swift public recognition; still, he had difficulty finding a publisher for his instrumental works, and he was often pressed for money, selling his music for much less than it was worth. His later works, including the song cycle Winter's Journey, sound a somber lyricism that parallels his struggle with life, made worse by being afflicted with syphilis. Schubert's dying wish, at age thirty-one, was to be buried near the master he worshipped-Beethoven; his wish was granted.
Schubert's music marks the confluence of the Classical and Romantic eras. His symphonies and chamber music are Classical in their clear forms. In his songs, though, he was wholly the Romantic, writing beautiful melodies that match the tone of the poetry he set. To his earlier masterpieces he added, in the final dear of his life, a group of profound works that includes the String Quintet in C, three piano sonatas, and thirteen of his finest songs.
MAJOR WORKS: More than 600 Lieder, including Erlkönig (Elf-King, 1815), Die Forelle (The Trout, 1817), and the song cycles Die schöne Mullerin (The Lovely Maid of the Mill, 1823) and Winterrise (Winter's Journey, 1827) • Nine symphonies, including the Unfinished (No. 8, 1822) • Chamber music, including quintets, string quartets, piano trios • Piano sonatas • Seven Masses • Other choral music • Operas and
incidental music.
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Elf-King (Erlkönig)
This masterpiece of Schubert's youth (EL 24) captures the Romantic
"strangeness and wonder" of the poem, a celebrated ballad by Goethe, in which a " father and his sick child are riding through a forest on a windy night. Elf-King is based on a Danish legend that whoever is touched by the king of the elves must die.
The eerie atmosphere of the poem is first established by the piano. Galloping triplets are heard against a rumbling figure in the bass. This motive, perhaps suggesting a horse's pounding hooves (or maybe a child's fast heartbeat?), pervades the song, helping to unify it. The poem's four characters-the narrator, father, child, and seductive elf-are all sung by one singer but vividly differentiated through changes in the melody, register, harmony, rhythm, and accompaniment. The child's L terror is suggested by clashing dissonance
e Elf-King (c. 1860), as portrayed by Moritz von Schwind ood friend of Schubert's.
and a high vocal range. The father calms his son's fears with a more rounded vocal line, sung in a low register. And the ElI-
King cajoles the child in suavely melodious phrases set in a major key. repetition, instead changing the accompaniment for each stanza of Goethe's poem, and shaping his music to follow the action of the story with a steady rise in tension-and pitch-that builds almost to the end. The work of an eighteen-year-old, Elf-King was a milestone in the history of musical Romanticism:
Schubert chose it as his first work to be published (though he had written many other songs), and it quickly became one of the most popular songs of the nineteenth century.
Schubert and the other great song composers created a unity of expression between text and music (and voice and piano) that enhanced the words of the poems they chose, giving them meanings beyond what their poets had envisioned.
This is the nature of song, and the reason why we still thrill at its power.
Fire and Fury at the Keyboard: Chopin and Romantic Piano Music
musical tradition. From the nineteenth century onward, the instrument was increasingly hailed as equally suited to amateurs and professionals, to the home and to the concert hall. Before the arrival
of recorded sound, families and communities alike gathered around the piano to make and hear music. Learning to play has long been a staple of refined education, and you may have taken at least a few lessons yourself. One of the most valued aspects of the piano is its suitability for polyphonic and homophonic textures, whether on its own or by accompanying voices or instruments. It can also create a variety of dynamic and resonant effects. Today the piano is still considered the most expressive instrument available to most musicians, and we owe this to the skilled individuals who refined the technologies of construction and performance in the early nineteenth century.
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KEY POINTS
* Technical improvements to the nineteenth-century piano led to the development of the modern concert grand piano.
* Polish composer Frédéric Chopin dedicated his entire compositional output to the piano; he is said to have originated the modern piano style.
* Chopin's works include études (virtuosic study pieces), meditative nocturnes, preludes, and dances (especially Polish mazurkas and polonaises), as well as piano sonatas and concertos. His music calls for the use of rubato, or "robbed time."
* The Revolutionary Etude (Op. 10, No. 12) is one of Chopin's most popular works; its highly emotional quality has been linked to the composer's distress over his native Poland's war with Russia.
THE NINETEENTH-CENTURY PIANO
The rise in popularity of the piano helped shape the musical culture of the, Romantic era. It proved especially attractive to amateurs because melody and harmony could be performed on one instrument, as they couldn't on strings or winds. The piano thus played a crucial role in the taste and experience of the new mass public. Hardly less important was the rise of the virtuoso pianist. At first, the performer was also the composer; Mozart and Beethoven introduced their own piano concertos to the public. With the developing concert industry, however, a class of virtuoso performers arose whose only function was to dazzle audiences by playing music composed by others.
The nineteenth century saw a series of crucial technical improvements that led to the development of the modern concert grand, mandated by Romantic composers' quest for greater power and dynamic range. Piano manufacturing eventually moved from the craft shop to the factory, allowing a huge increase in production at a significantly reduced cost. A standardized instrument was developed that had a metal frame supporting increased string tension, as well as an improved mechanical action and extended range of notes-from five octaves to seven or more. At the Paris Exhibition of 1867, two American manufacturers took the top awards, one of them Steinway, maker of some of today's finest pianos. By the early twentieth century, the piano had become a universal fixture in the homes of middle-class and upper-class families.
THE SHORT LYRIC PIANO PIECE
With its ability to project melodious and dramatic moods within a compact form, the short lyric piano piece, or character piece, was the instrumental equivalent to the song. Composers adopted new and sometimes fanciful terms for such works. Some titles-Prelude, Intermezzo (interlude), Impromptu (on the spur of " the moment), and Nocturne (a night piece), for example-suggest free, almost improvisational forms. The étude, once considered a technical study piece, jose to new heights of virtuosity in the hands of Frédéric Chopin and Franz List.
Many composers produced keyboard versions of dances like the Polish mazurka and polonaise and the Viennese waltz, as well as the lively scherzo. They sometimes chose more descriptive titles for character pieces that depict a mood or scene, such as Wild Hunt, The Little Bell, and Forest Murmurs (all by Liszt). Nineteenth-century composers who refined the piano miniature-schubert, Chopin, List, Felix Mendelssohn, Fanny Mendelssohn Hensel, Robert and Clara Schumann, and Brahms-showed inexhaustible ingenuity in exploring the technical resources of the instrument and its potential for expression.
Étude, Op. 10, No. 12 (Revolutionary), by Chopin Chopin's music, rooted in the heart of Romanticism, made this era the piano's golden age. His style was entirely his own-there is no mistaking it for any other
—and he remains one of the most original artists of the nineteenth century. His entire creative life revolved around the piano, and he is credited with originating the modern piano style. Chopin's music calls for the use of rubato, or "robbed time," in which certain liberties are taken by the performer without upsetting the basic pulse. He taught his students that the left hand should remain steady while the right-hand melody might hesitate a little here and hursy forward there. We will hear one of the composer's most popular works-the so-called Revolutionary Étude (EL 25) —although the mood and propulsion of this particular piece may make any rubato more diflicult to hear.
Frédéric Chopin (1810-1849)
Chopin was born outside Warsaw to a French father and a Polish mother. He studied at the Conservatory of Warsaw, but in 1831 left for Paris, where he spent the - remainder of his career. Paris in the 1830s was the center of the new Romanticism, and the circle in which Chopin moved included the most famous composers, writers, and artists in France.
Through the virtuoso pianist Franz Liszt, Chopin met the novelist George Sand, •
with whom he had a long relationship. He spent his summers at Sand's estate in Nohant, where she entertained prominent artists and writers. These were productive years for the composer, although his health grew progressively worse and his relationship with Sand ran its course from love to conflict, jealousy, and hostility. He died of tuberculosis in Paris at the age of thirty-nine.
Chopin's works, central to the pianist's repertory, include four epic ballades, the thoroughly Romantic Sonatas in B-flat Minor and B Minor, and two piano concertos.
The nocturnes are melancholic and meditative. The preludes are visionary fragments, and in the études, which crown the literature of the study piece, Chopin's piano technique is transformed into poetrv. The mazurkas, derived from a Polish peasant dance, evoke the idealized landscape of his youth, and the polonaises revive the stately processional dance in which Poland's nobles hailed their kings.
MAJOR WORKS: Two piano concertos • Piano music, including four ballades, three sonatas, preludes, études, mazurkas, polonaises, scherzos, waltzes, impromptus, and nocturnes • Chamber music, all with piano • Songs.
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Chopin composed his first set of études —twelve virtuoso showpieces — between 1829 and 1832, while on a European tour: first to Vienna, where he stayed for eight months, and then on to Paris, where he remained for the rest of his life. Just one week after his arrival in the Austrian capital, he learned of the disastrous Polish uprising in Warsaw against Russian domination. The homesick musician wanted to return to his native land, but was advised by family and friends to stay away. In Paris salons, where he was alreadyl famous as a composer and pianist, he met the virtuoso pianist Franz Liszt, to whom he dedicated his étude collection.
Chopin's études, generally regarded as Chopin's études, generally regarded as the finest of the genre, explore a wide range of technical problems for the pianist; but far more than practice studies, they are established works for the concert repertory-albeit not for every pianist. The German critic Ludwig Rellstab found them highly difficult, noting that "those who have distorted fingers may put them right by practicing these studies, but those who have not should not play them... without having a surgeon at hand."
The last étude in the set, dubbed the
Sprising in Warsaw 1830, an event that inspired Chopin's ary Etude, by Georg Benedikt Wunder (1786-1858).
Revolutionary, is believed to have been inspired by the composer's strong feelings
for his homeland and for the Polish cause. The work is a stormy outpouring of emotions, from beginning to end: while the left hand races through dazzling for his homeland and for the Polish cause. The work is a stormy outpouring of emotions, from beginning to end: while the left hand races through dazzling sixteenth-note figurations, the right hand delivers an impassioned dotted-rhythm melody that develops increasing rhythmic complexities. The brooding C minor key contributes to the feeling of conflict throughout; the coda suggests resolution, but then a torrential downpour of notes drives the piece toward its forceful final chords— the last one, surprisingly, in C major.
When Poland was finally defeated, Chopin wrote: "All this has caused me so much pain. Who could have foreseen it!" Schumann praised the expressive depth of Chopin's music, suggesting he was a "poet." And to this day, his music is revisited around the world by pianists of all abilities, each finding a unique way to revitalize the composer's extraordinary connection with this most technologically versatile of instruments.