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

• lyrical 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

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

• A “musical Mont Everest”