MUS3508 – Music History Classic to Romantic

What is Classical Music:

- Music written between the years 1750 and 1820 is denoted as music written in the
Classical Era, but ‘Classical Music’ has become an umbrella term for Western Art
music.
Classical (Galant):
- Slow harmonic rhythm
- Simpler homophonic texture
- Periodicity (Q&A); principles of rhetoric applied
- Clear frequent. Also clear hierarchy of cadences delineates form
- Rapid changes of character/mood
- More restrained ornaments
Baroque:
- Fast harmonic rhythm
- More polyphonic
- Fortspinnung (irregular length phrases, constant motives development, sequential
repetition)
- Obscured, infrequent
- Unity of affect (consistent mood)
- Excessive ornaments
New Terms
- Enlightenment… a growing class, the middle class. People with less money were able
to access some things that only the aristocracy were able to
- Galant. Simple, singable and easily approachable
- Sonata form – THE MOST IMPORTANT MUSICAL DEVELOPMENT
- …transition…far-out-point…retransition…double return…

ENLIGHTENMENT:
1) SCIENTIFIC PURSUIT OF TRUTH AND DISCOVERY OF NATURAL LAWS
2) FAITH IN HUMAN REASON RATHER THAN DIVINE PROVIDENCE
3) REFORM IN THE POLITICAL AND SOCIAL REALM
- More middle class aesthetic
- slightly more low brow (easy to understand)
- Eg. Popularity of the divertimento (music meant to divert attention to entertain)
- Valued simplicity/naturalness
- Cult of the natural
- simplicity (avoiding contrapuntal complexity)
- song-like melodies (with periodicity)
- simple accompaniments (eg. Alberti bass)
- accessible to all
- natural and immediately pleasing
- Influence of comic opera
- more middle-class, on every-day topics
Importance of comic opera:
Stylistic features of Classical era first appeared in comic opera. A more low brow opera
- Opera buffa (Italy) / Ballad opera (England)
- Middle-class drama… everyday situations, and plots make fun of aristocrats
- Use of the vernacular (sometimes use of spoken dialogue)
La Serva Padronna (The Maid as Mistress) by Giovanni Batista Pergolesi (1710-1736)
Sonata Form in Historical Perspective:
18th Century:
- Harmonic architecture and phrase structure
- Binary in origin
th
19 Century:
- A thematic mould
- Ternary in design
Other influences on sonata form include ritornello form and trio sonata
Mature Sonata Form (post 1780)
Exposition
Development
Recapitulation

Week 2: (Symphony and String Quartet)

Revision
Enlightenment
- Scientific pursuit of truth and discovery of natural laws
- The extension of natural laws to the political realm
- Faith in Hyman reason rather than divine providence
New Sensibilities
- Simplicity, naturalness
La Guerrero des Bauffons
- Comic opera (pergolesi)
New Styles and Genres
- Galant style
- Opera overture/sinfonia becomes symphony (Sammartini, Stamitz)
- Symphonic cliches in Stamitz at Mannheim
- New forms: sonata form, rondo form…
Sonata form: history and theory
- Rounded binary origin
- 18th Century harmonic focus
- New terminology for sonata form analysis. Eg. Transition, far-out point, retransition
- Hepokoski/Darcy: P, S, MC, EEC, C, ESC
Style Terminology
- Galant (i.e. early classical_
Some other style terms of the period
- Empfindsamer stil (sentimental style)
- Associated with C.P.E. Bach (as a opposed to the galant J.C. Bach)
Characterised by surprising turns of harmony, chromaticism and speech like melodies
- Sturm und Drang (storm and stress)
- Exaggerates the emotional qualities of the Empfindsamer stil, and foreshadows
musical Romanticism
Empfindsamer stil
- The origins of it were literary (kind of proto-Romanticism)
- Espoused a performance style reminiscent of Stanislawski’s method acting
C.P.E. Bach, Sonata in A Major H.186 2nd movt “Poco adagio”
In essence:
- Like instrumental recitative
- An intimate, personal expression
- Often improvisatory
Musical Features:
- Nuanced, variegated surface texture
- Rapid changes of affect
- Rounded binary form with no development
- Age of the Double Return (simultaneous reprise of key and theme)
Piano
Bartolommeo Cristofori invents piano in Florence, 1700
- Hammers strike the strings, allows dynamics
- 2 designs: (1) grand piano; (2) square piano
- Harpsichord and clavichord (continue into 19th c. But gradually die out)
- 18th century pianos are often called fortepianos to distinguish them from later models
Jonathan’s Traffic Signal Analogy and Hepokoski/Darcy Sonata Theory
- “Green man” (walk): primary material proceeds at a regular walking pace
- “Flashing Red Man” (run): transition material involves energy gain
- “Red man” (stop) medial caesura reached
Franz Joseph Haydn
A career under patronage….
- He spent nearly 30 years at the court of Prince Nikolaus Esterhazy
MWW, Haydn’s Duties in the Service of Esterhazy, 252-254
- These detailed duty description depict the social status of the composer as a liveried
servant of the household
Haydn’s Duties:
- Compose music
- Conduct performances
- Train and supervise musical personnel
- Upkeep of musical instruments
Built an orchestra of about 25 players:
- They performed weekly concerts
- Occasional opera performances
- Daily chamber music
A Genius in Isolation
- Although Haydn kept abreast of current musical developments, his isolation at
Esterhazy and the encouragement of his patron helped him to become original
The New Chamber Music
Trio sonatas:
- Dies out, along with use of basso continuo
String Quartets:
- Many quartets were intended for amateurs
- Like a conversation among four instruments
- Like symphonies for four instruments: they use the identical four-movement pattern,
and formal structures
Haydn was the first great master of the genre:
- He wrote some 68 string quartets
Where did the string quartet come from?
Most likely it originated from other 4-part string music, but played one to a part instead of
orchestrally
- Early Italian symphonies (sinfonia)
- 4-part sonatas or concerti (Fr./It.) – a bit like a trio sonata but add a third soloist and
omit the keyboard player
Some interchangeability seems to have existed between early string quartets and
symphonies
Haydn’s first biographer, relates that Haydn invented the string quartet… not necessarily
true
String quartets acted as domestic divertissement.. provide entertainment for the people
playing them
String Quartets of Haydn
- First great master
- Many intended for amateurs
- Convo with 4 instruments
- 68 quartets, growing in length and emotional depth
Op. 33 String Quartets
- Written in a “quite new and special way” (greater equality of parts)
- The works are lighthearted, tuneful, and filled with playful humour
After op. 33, Haydn composed 34 quartets
- 6 of op. 76 reveal experimentation with new forms/techniques
- Foreshadowed Romantic harmony with chromatic progressions and chords
- Minuets of Op. 76 are less playful and sometimes satirical, such as canon of No. 2
String Quartet in Eb Maj. Op. 33 No. 2 (The Joke)
- Written in a “quite new and special way” (greater equality of parts)
Haydn’s Symphonies
Week 3: Comic Styles, Enlightenment and Reform; Mozart’s Operas
J.C. Bach, Piano Concerto in Eb major (1770)
First movement is in a special type of sonata form
- Double exposition: an orchestral exposition followed by a solo exposition
- Retains certain properties of the baroque concerto in that there is some use of a
ritornello
Importance of Comic Opera
More low brow, egalitarian
- Plots often make fun of aristocracy
- Eg. Pergolesi, La serva padrona
Open to stylistic innovation; opera influences instrumental music
- Simpler harmonies and textures
- Rapid changes of character/mood
- Mostly syllabic text-setting
- Less ornate vocal line flop.
Comedia dell’arte
- Small cast, easily portable, cheap to move around
- Quick shows, genuinely improvised from archetypes
- Mixed with opera
Opera Seria in Dresden
- The opera house in Dresden, built in 1719, became one of the most prominent
operatic centres in 18th-century Europe, hiring some of te most successful singers
and composers in the continent. Among them, Johann Hasse
- Faustian Borodin: one of the great leading sopranos (Prima Donnas) of the 18th-
century and wife of composer Johann Hasse
- Pietro Metastasio: Principal librettist of 18th-century opera seria. A good librettist
allows room for the music to create the drama
Metastasio and the opera seria
- Rendered number of characters and a simplifies libretto
- 3 acts
- Promotes morality by portraying heroic characters de from Ancient Greek and latin
stories
- The conventional cast includes two pairs of livers
- A disguised allegorical praise of the ruler
- A lie to fine, or happy ending
Musical Features of Opera Seria
- Florid da capo arias which provided a display case for virtuoso sopranos and castrati
- Recitatives develop the action through dialogue
- Most of the dialogue is set to simple recitative
-Dramatic moments use accompanied recitative
- Duets, larger ensembles, and choruses are infrequent
- Elaborate scenery
The “Reign” of singers
- The aria was the primary musical ingredient in opera
- Singers often made arbitrary demands of composers
- Singers added embellishments
Da Capo Arias
New features of Da Capo Arias in Opera Seria:
- Arias began to express a variety of moods
- As in a concerto, the opening ritornello often introduces all of the material to be
sung later
- The simple melodic style of opera buffa was assimilated
- Melodies are usually in 4-measure units
Johann Adolf Hasse
- Most popular and successful opera composer in Europe in the middle of the century
- He spent many years in Italy and worked at the court off the elector of Saxony in
Dresden
- Generally acknowledged as the master if opera seria; most of his operas use
Metastasio librettos; English historian praised for elegant and natural style
Hasse, “dislike ch’io son fedele” from Cleofide (1731)
- Opening ritornello introduces main ideas
- Several different musical ideas in short phrases (contrasting), distinguishes Hasse’s
galant style from that of Baroque predecessors like Alessandro Scarlatti; otherwise,
in many respects Hasse’s style is archaic, owing much to the baroque
- Coloratura/fioratura
Opera Reform
Aimed for:
- Naturalness
- Less rigid structures
- More varied musical styles: eg. Obligato recitative, ensembles, chorus, and orchestra
- Resisted singers demands for virtuosity
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
- Born in Salzburg, with a city of long musical history
- Father was a performer and archbishop of Salzburg
- Leopold the musical lives of young Mozart and his talented sister Nannerl
From Salzburg to Vienna
Salzburg; in the service of the Archbishop
- Composition included church music, piano sonatas, serenades and divertimenti,
concertos for violin and for piano
Move to Vienna (1781)
- Freelancer… but developed financial problems
Mozart’s Late Symphonies
- No. 39, 40 and 41
- Not composed for a commission
Why did he compose them?
- For cultural prestige (as with his “Haydn” string Quartets) As Taruskin says,
“instrumental Music was effectively displacing vocal music as the medium of
greatest cultural prestige.” [OHWM, Vol.2, 539]
Mozart was fascinated by the magic of the theatre. In all, he composed 20 operas, 8 are
Italian, 5 are German
Mozart’s Vocal Music of the Vienna Years
Lorenzo Da Ponte
- Provided librettos for Mozart next 3 operas
- Da ponte was the poet for the imperial court theatre and later came to America,
where he became a professor in New York
- All three operas were comic
- Marriage of Figaro (1786)
- Don Giovanni (1787)
Cosi fan tutte (1790)
Die Zauberflote (Magic Flute)
- Singspiel was composed in latter years of Mozart’s life
- Story contains symbolism, drawn largely from the teachings and ceremonies of
Freemasonry
Lorenzo Da Ponte
- Born an Italian Jewish family but became a Catholic priest
- As part of his training in a Catholic seminary, da Ponte became an expert in classical
languages and Italian poetry
- In the 1780s, he served as the official librettist for Emperor Joseph II in Vienna
- After Mozart’s death, da Ponte’s fortunes declined, and he made his way to London
and then to the US, where he became the first professor of Italian at Columbia
University.
Don Giovanni
- Premiered in Prague
- Mozart took the legendary character Don Juan as a rebel against authority.
- The plot mixes characters from opera seria and buffa
- Both types can be scene in opening scene
- Leporello opens the scene complaining in an opera-buffa style
- Donna Anna and Don Giovanni sing in a dramatic opera-seria style, while Leporello
frets in a buffa style
- The ensuing duel ends in a death, as choking scene in comic opera
- A powerful trio laments the turns of events
- At the end, Don Giovanni and Leporello revert to comic banter

PODCAST
Produce an historical overview and explanation of one of the following genres or topics:
String quartet
Symphony
Lieder
Program music
Nationalism in music
Wagnerian Music Drama
Week 5: Romanticism
An early 19th cent. Literary movement
- English poets such as Wordsworth, Coleridge, Shelley, Keats and Byron
- In Germany Goethe (1749-1832) was a towering figure but also Tieck, E.T.A. Hoffman
Connotations/associations of the word “Romantic”
- Ideas of strangeness, remoteness and imaginative qualities
- The world of the fantastic and legendary that featured in the literature of the
medieval romance
- Romanticism – going back to the literature of medieval times (triumph, inner
turmoil, high emotion)
Common Romantic Themes (in poetry and music)
The Supernatural:
- Obsession with the macabre
- Often programmatic (i.e. Schubert The Erkling, or Berlioz’s Symphonie Fantastique)
Romantic Love – i.e. Schumann’s Dichterliebe
Revolution
Individual feelings, expression
Love of nature
The Essence of Romanticism
Fundamentally it entails emotional and inspired rather than rational and expression
- Warrack, in his article “romantic” asserts that “romanticism represents the period of
an apparent domination of instinct over reason, of imagination over head, of
Dionysus over Apollo”
The music is characterised by extremes of expressiveness and originality (chromaticism)
Program Music
Music that
- Tells a story
- Paints a picture
- Relates to something outside of music
The program and the music a parallel attempts in different art forms to express the abstract
world of feelings and emotions
Program Music is one of the most universal traits of the period:
- According to Grout, the belief “that all music had trans musical content was one of
the cherished if not always acknowledged beliefs in the 19th century.
Inspiration vs. explanation
- Sometimes composers used literary sources as inspiration and sometimes they
added the program after composing the piece. Programs were even added to the
works of earlier composers.
Romanticism and Idealist Philosophy
IDEALISM IN A NUTSHELL
“Art and the external world are consonant with one another not because art imitates that
world, but because both reflect a common, higher ideal. Through idealism, the work of art
became a central means by which to sense the realm of the spiritual, the infinite” (Bonds)

IDEALISM
Expansion, stretching and distortion of classical convention
Formal types
- Expanding and distorting Classical formal types
Chromatic harmonies
- Exploring the boundaries of functional tonality
- Frequent modulation, and to more remote keys
- Leads to harmonic ambiguity, and the colouristically (non-functional_ use of chords
for the expressive qualities of their intrinsic sounds
Melody:
- Less regular in phrasing (often very long and expressive)
- More use of non-chord tones and expressive wide leaps
Large extremes
- Bigger orchestral forces, bigger and louder pianos, bigger concert halls, longer
symphonies
Small extremes
- Miniatures composed for intimate soirées in the salons of fashionable socialites
(especially in Paris)
Use of Rubato
Key Genres of the Romantic Period
Symphonies
- Hugely expanded orchestra
- Often stretching and changing classical forms
- Could be programmatic
Symphonic Poems
- Like a one movement, programmatic symphonie
- It is often constructed using Leitmotives, rather than classical forms
Concertos
- Often still using classical forms, but Romantic in orchestration, harmony, tone, etc.
Opera
- Dramatic scenes rather than individual.
Lieder
- Expressing the text
Piano miniatures
- Waltzes, nocturnes, of Chopin
- Character pieces of Schumann
- Songs without words (Mendelssohn)
Larger piano works
- Liszt – transcendental etudes and Sonata in B Minor
Chamber music
Lieder (plural of Lied), songs in the Western Art Music of Classical Tradition
Sometimes translated as “art song”, but this is slightly misleading because Lieder had
humble origins
- Grew out of imitations of German folk song intended for amateur performance by
growing the middle-class musical consumer
- The ballad appeared in Germany toward the end of the 18th century
- Poetic genre imitated folk culture
- Most poems are long and alternate narrative and dialogue
 - Ballads described romantic adventures and supernatural incidents
- The greater length necessitated more varied musical settings
The lied annoyed a brilliant period in the 19th century
- An outlet for intense personal feelings
- The piano became an equal partner with the voice in lieder
- Songs were sometimes grouped into cycles, allowing a story to be told through a
succession of songs
Biedermeier
European style ca. 1815-1848 in literature, musical, visual arts and interior design
- Middle-class
- Low-brow
- Emphasises domestic simplicity
- Unsophisticated
English Songs
Ballads (English)
Parlour songs (American)
Intimate settings
Domestic music-making
- In the middle-class home, Pianos or harp/guitar widespread in these homes
Fashionable parties
- Parisian salons, Viennese Schubertiades
Week 6: The Romantic Piano
Piano: Supreme Romantic Instrument?
Grand pianos
- Growth in range
- Growth in volume
- Technological advances
Upright pianos
- Cheaper, mass-produced
Broadwood in London – 5 8ves expands to 7 8ves in 1810s-1820s
Pleyel in Paris – Used by Chopin
Erard- Invents the double-escapement
Chopin
- Polish composer worked in Paris
- Chopin had a tumultuous love affair with notorious feminist novelist Aurore
Dudevant - known under pen name George Sand
- Played on a Pleyel
Mazurka in Bb Maj Op. 7 No. 1
Period structure:
- Somewhat ambiguous phrasing
- 12-bar period (ending weakened); repeated 12 bar period
- Possible 4-bar phrases are obscured by motivic patterns (which are not in sync)
Form:
- Mazurka’s are often compound ternary (with a da capo like a Minuet)
- The big A section is usually rounded binary
- This one is a hybrid, being in 3 sections AA:BA:CA (note sim to rounded binary to
Rondo)
Folkloric qualities
Dance characters
- Rhythm (dotted rhythm on beat 1 characteristic_
- Accentuation of beat 2
- So called “feminine endings”.
Exoticisms
- Odd dissonances
- Augmented 2nds
- Imitation bagpipes
Exoticism
- Evoking a sense of otherness
- Involves stereotyping.
- Synthetic folk styles, not necessarily imitation of authentic folk music
- Certain”synthetic folk” qualities are tropes of “otherness” in Chopin’s music. They
stand in as substitutes for “Polish” national identity in music.
Nocturne in Db Major Op. 27 No. 2
- Nocturne: a night piece (intimate character)
- “Music trance” – interiority
- Check quote by John Field
- Unusual harmonies – omnibus sequence
Week 9: German Opera
French Overview:
- Grand opera/opera comique/opera bouffe/Opera lyrique
German: Towards a native opera Tradition
- Der Fresichutz (The Accursed Marksman) by Carl Maria von Weber (1786-1826)
established German romantic opera
- Tooted in the tradition of the German singspiel (which had spoken dialogue)
Der Freischutz as Nationalistic Icon
- Came at a pivotal stage in the burgeoning German nationalistic consciousness
- German-speaking states were politically separate but becoming increasingly
culturally unified
- This opera was celebrated by the media, critic s, as archetypal of the German folk….
A theme also developed by Wagner
Weber. Der Freischutz
Agatha – love interest
Max – in love with Agatha, convinced to Kasparov to cast magic bullets to cheat at a
shooting competition in order to win Agatha’s hand
Kaspar – Max’s supposed friend. Does occult spells and his soul to forfeit to the devil. Try’s
to get the devil to accept Max as a substitute in order to buy three years grace
Samuel – the accursed huntsman, and also really the devil
Wolf’s Glen scene NAWM 126
- Midnight, eeriness
- Melodrama – combines saponin dialogue with background music
- While casting seven magic bullets, various terrifying images appear in the dark forest
- Daring harmonies, colourful orchestration and an offstage chorus support
supernatural elements of the plot
Important Features
- Plot based on German folktale (ordinary folk placed centre stage)
- Fascination with the supernatural (Witchcraft/occult/evocation of phantasmagoria)
- Use of folk-like melodies
- Directly programmatic (Unprecedented dramatic depiction of events in the music)
- Chromatic harmonies (prevalence of dim. 7, tritone modulations/cyclic minor thirds
- Orchestration – atmospheric string tremolos
- Extended scenes – through-composed, leading towards Warner’s continuous
melody.
- Samuel never sings – he is not human
Life of Wagner
1813 – born in Leipzig, grows up in Dresden
1832 – composes first opera
1834 – begins career of conductor in opera theatres
1839 – moves to Paris to advance his career
1842 – first success: Rienzi performed in Dresden, hired there as a conductor
1849 – flees to Zurich following an uprising in Dresden
1859 – separation from wife, period of travel begins
1864 – invited to Munich by King Ludwig II
1865 – returns to Switzerland
1872 – moves to Bayreuth, construction of festival theatre
1876 – premiere of Der Ring dudes Nibelungen
1883 – dies in Venice, buried in Bayreuth
Important Compositions by Wagner
Operas – Der fliegende Hollander, Tannhauser, Lohengrin, Tristan und Isolde, Parsifal
Orch. – overtures, marches, early symphonies, Siegfried Idyll for chamber orch.
Songs – include Five Poems for Female Voice to texts by Mathilda Wessendonk
Piano – early sonatas and character pieces (Albumblatter)
Key Writings
- Die Kunst und die Revolution (Art and revolution) 1849
- Das Kunstwerk der Zukunft (Artwork of the future) 1849
- Oper und Drama (Opera and Drama) 1859
Wagner’s Over-arching Goals
- Brought German romantic opera to new heights
- Created music drama
- Gesamkuntswerk (Total Artwork)
- poetry, scenic design, staging, action, music… diminishes the importance of
virtuosic singing
- Wagner’s influence: more has been written about Wagner than any other musician
Wagner’s Innovations
- Continuity
Leitmotives: A history
In 1876, Wagner authorised:
Hans von Wolzogen to compile and publish
Leitmotifs (symbolic musical themes, thematic transformation of small motives)
- An idea associated with a person/thing/emotion/idea/drama
- Established first time it is mentioned
- A leitmotif can be transformed and varied as the plot develops
- Similarities along leitmotifs may indicate connections between the subjects they
signify
Der Ring des Nibelungen
- Wagner composed four music dramas based on Teutonic and Nordic legends
- Das Rheingold, Die Walkure, Siegfried, Gotterdammerung
- First performance of the complete Ring cycle was in 1876 at Bayreuth (purpose-built
theatre)
Bayreuth
1872, Wagner constructed a theatre in the town of Bayreuth, to be devoted exclusively to
performance of his own works
In 1876, the first performance of the Ring cycle was given
Acoustically superb, sunken orchestral pit, and the lights were dimmed during

Wagner and Antisemitism

- Essay on Judaism in Music. Reprinted in full ion Richard Wagner Stories and Essays
- Musical caricatures – Jews as dwarfs in Der Ring Das Nibelungen
- Sixtus Beckmesser’s singing as imitation of Jewish chant in Die Meistersinger
- Famous Jews include – Mendelssohn, Meyerbeer (whose success Wagner resented)
- Reception History of Wagner’s music
Tristan und Isolde
- Wagner write the libretto, basing it on a 13th cent. Romance by Gottfried von
Strassburg
- The tale of illicit love reflects the conflict between Will and Appearance
- Act 1, scene 5 shows the intertwining of action scenery, and musical forces
- The passage uses a number of leitmotifs
- A rising chromatic motive represents longing
- Tristan’s honour is developed throughout the section
- The melodic idea at measure 64 is associated with the love potion.
Week 10:
Exam: Fri 9th June 8:30am
Listening
Multi-choice
Short answer – 6 questions, dot points, 4-5 points.
5 points for each genre
Brief history of Sonata form or historical overview of symphonic works/lieder/it opera and
how genre changed over time to reflect cultural contexts
Later Aesthetic Wars (late 19th Cent.):
The Formalists vs. “The New Germans”
Hanslick/Brahms idealised “absolute music” “abstract structures of pure instrumental music
(without text) was thought to be the ideal in terms of transporting the listener to other
realms
Wagner/Berlioz/Liszt idealised the idea that music is referential (music accumulates
meaning through extra musical association through text, or story, or program) Structure
dictated by the story

Europe in the late 19th Cent.

Industrialisation
- Growth of the Bourgeoisie (life expectancy/population growth/wealth)
- Mass consumption
- Modern corporation
- New technologies
- A shrinking globe (railroads/steamboats/colonisation)
Revolutions and the Nation State
- 1848, France toppled King Louis
Nationalism
- Throughout Europe, people attempted to unify themselves into nations based on
common language, shared culture and other characteristics
- France/Britain/Russia, nationalism supported the status quo.
- Germany (under Bismarck) and Italy (Victor Emmanuel II) unification movements
were strong
- Variety of ethnic groups worked against political unity in Austria-Hungary, caused
many Eastern groups to strive for independence
- Music played a role in promotion of nationalism and vice versa.
Rise of National Styles
18th Cent. Rise – rise of an international style, could speak to any European language
19th cent. Rise – movement towards nationalism
- Emphasis on native literature/linguistic traditions
- Interest in folklore
- Patriotism
- Craving for independent identity
Musical nationalism was particularly strong on the fringes of Europe.
Identity and 19th Cent ‘isms’
Romanticism
- Idealising the individual self, the “I”
Nationalism
- Idealising the collective self, the “we”
Exoticism
- Stereotyping the “other”
Orientalism
- A type of exoticism, stereotyping the non-Western cultures from the Orient (the
east)
Nationalists in Overview
Russia – Glinka (father figure), Borodin, Mussorgsky, Rimsky-Korsakov… Westernisers
include Tchaikovsky
Bohemia – Smetana, Dvorak
Norway – Grieg
Finland – Sibelius
England – Elgar
France – Franck (Wagnerian), Faure (French native, neoclassical)
Bedrich Smetana
- Bohemia was an Austrian crown land (now Czech Republic)
- Created a nationalist sound in his String Quartet No. 1
- M’a vlast (My Country) is a cycle of six symphonic poems. I.e. Moldau (depicts the
river), T’abor (symbol of Czech oppression)
Key Points
- Born in Bohemia, but ethnically German
- A devoted disciple of the New German School
- Became a celebrated Czech nationalistic icon
The Enigma of Smetana’s Nationalism
- Raised as ethnically German, but came to be a Nationalistic Icon (but how?)
- Was it his exploration of folk melody? His inner genius? Right place at the right time?
The Nationalist Compact
- A cultural phenomenon; cultural arrangement between composer and public, two-
way unwritten agreement
Like a knighthood, the arr. Is mutually beneficial… the chosen one must be:
1. Successful
2. Internationally respected and renowned
3. Identify with the relevant Nationality
4. Interested in exploiting this nationalist identity to further their career
The Moldau Melody: A bizarre Reception History
- A Swedish folk song (documented to have been heard by Smetana)
- Uses it unwittingly forgetting its folk origins
- Later co-opted for an arr. Of selected Moldavian folk songs
- Spotted by Samuel Cohen, fitted to words by Polish born Hebrew prophet
National Trends: Russia
Mikhail Glinka, father figure of Russian nationalism mvmt. Self-taught, like many Russian
composers
- First internationally recognised Russian composer
Operas:
- Life for the Tsar (Distinctly Russian with Russian language)
- Russian and Lyudmila – exotic scales/whole tone

Czar Alexander II freed serfs in 1861, seeking to modernise Russia (it was backward)
- Nationalists idealised Russia’s distinctiveness
- Westernisers adapted Western technology and education… Anton Rubinstein
founded St. Petersburg school and Tchaikovsky