The Second Half of the Nineteenth Century

The New German School

• Progressive ideas and styles after 1850• “The music of the future” — a teleological

view of the composer’s role in music history

• Freedom from convention– harmonic exploration– unconventional form– programmaticism

• Composers– Liszt, Berlioz (by adoption), Wagner

Wagner’s music dramas — theories and style

• The Artwork of the Future• Gesamtkunstwerk — combines multiple

art forms in multimedia “counterpoint”• Based in folklore and mythology —

represents values of the culture• Libretto built on Germanic tradition —

Stabreim • Symphonic treatment of – themes (leitmotiv)– free motion of harmony– developmental texture

After Wagner — representative late Romantic composers and

genres• Vienna– Johannes Brahms (1833–1896) —

symphony, chamber music, song– Anton Bruckner (1824–1896) — symphony,

sacred music• France– Charles Gounod (1818–1893) — lyric opera– César Franck (1822–1890) — symphony,

organ music, chamber music• Italian opera– Verdi

After Wagner — post–Romantic composers and genres

• Hugo Wolf (1860–1903) — song specialist• Gustav Mahler (1860–1911) — song,

symphony, vocal-orchestral cycle• Richard Strauss (1864–1949) — tone

poem, opera, song

Post–romantic opera — realism and verismo

• Characteristics– plots set among oppressed-class characters– violent endings– powerful, intense scorings– extreme demands on voice

• Some representative works– Georges Bizet, Carmen (1873–1874)– Pietro Mascagni, Cavalleria rusticana (1890)– Ruggero Leoncavallo, I pagliacci (1892)– Giacomo Puccini, Il tabarro from Il trittico

(1918)

Exoticism

• Attempt to reinvigorate music in the context of fin-de-siècle Europe

• Draws on style features from distant music cultures — e.g.,– Eastern Europe — Gypsy culture– the Middle East– East Asia– Spain– the Americas

• Problems of orientalism – colonial appropriation– misrepresentation of “other” musicultures

Late nineteenth–century nationalism

• Patriotic expression by composers from suppressed cultures on the European periphery– Bohemia– Russia– Scandinavia– Spain– the Americas

• National materials– literary and folkloric sources– folk tunes or folk melody styles– dance rhythms– harmonic colorations — modal scales

Questions for discussion• Wagner’s musical theories and works

generated wide-ranging interest outside strictly musical circles. How can we explain this phenomenon?

• How did musical developments in France and Italy after 1850 reflect special situations and/or characteristic interests of those countries?

• How did the rise of national styles in the late nineteenth century resemble or differ from the rise of nationally distinct styles in the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries?

• Would it be appropriate to refer to some developments in music of the late nineteenth century as mannerist? Why or why not?