Harald Krebs
- Published in print:
- 1999
- Published Online:
- May 2008
- ISBN:
- 9780195116236
- eISBN:
- 9780199871308
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195116236.003.0001
- Subject:
- Music, Theory, Analysis, Composition
This chapter begins by describing the 19th-century origins of some of the basic ideas that underlie the book's approach: the first metaphorical application of the terms “consonance” and “dissonance” ...
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This chapter begins by describing the 19th-century origins of some of the basic ideas that underlie the book's approach: the first metaphorical application of the terms “consonance” and “dissonance” to rhythmic structures (in the writings of Hector Berlioz); and early examples of the recognition of two basic categories of metrical conflict, based, respectively, on incongruent groupings, and on non-aligned presentation of congruent groupings (in writings of François-Joseph Fétis and Hugo Riemann). The second part of the chapter traces these ideas through the 20th century, referring to writings by Henry Cowell, Charles Seeger, Joseph Schillinger, Wallace Berry, Maury Yeston, and Carl Schachter, among others, and to various earlier discussions of the music of Robert Schumann.Less
This chapter begins by describing the 19th-century origins of some of the basic ideas that underlie the book's approach: the first metaphorical application of the terms “consonance” and “dissonance” to rhythmic structures (in the writings of Hector Berlioz); and early examples of the recognition of two basic categories of metrical conflict, based, respectively, on incongruent groupings, and on non-aligned presentation of congruent groupings (in writings of François-Joseph Fétis and Hugo Riemann). The second part of the chapter traces these ideas through the 20th century, referring to writings by Henry Cowell, Charles Seeger, Joseph Schillinger, Wallace Berry, Maury Yeston, and Carl Schachter, among others, and to various earlier discussions of the music of Robert Schumann.
Harald Krebs
- Published in print:
- 1999
- Published Online:
- May 2008
- ISBN:
- 9780195116236
- eISBN:
- 9780199871308
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195116236.003.0008
- Subject:
- Music, Theory, Analysis, Composition
This chapter analyzes movements or works by Schumann and other composers, using the terminology and concepts developed in the preceding chapters. The works are: Berlioz, Symphonie fantastique (“Un ...
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This chapter analyzes movements or works by Schumann and other composers, using the terminology and concepts developed in the preceding chapters. The works are: Berlioz, Symphonie fantastique (“Un bal”); Schumann, Intermezzi op. 4; Chopin, various works; R. Schumann, “Scherzo in F minor”; Clara Schumann, Piano Trio op. 17 (2nd mvmt.); R. Schumann, Faschingsschwank aus Wien op. 26 (1st mvmt.); Brahms, Piano Sonata in F minor op. 5 (1st mvmt.); R. Schumann, String Quartet op. 41 no. 2 (2nd mvmt.); Ives, “Two Little Flowers”; R. Schumann, Symphony no. 3 op. 97 (1st mvmt.); Schoenberg, Pierrot lunaire op. 21 (“Valse de Chopin”).Less
This chapter analyzes movements or works by Schumann and other composers, using the terminology and concepts developed in the preceding chapters. The works are: Berlioz, Symphonie fantastique (“Un bal”); Schumann, Intermezzi op. 4; Chopin, various works; R. Schumann, “Scherzo in F minor”; Clara Schumann, Piano Trio op. 17 (2nd mvmt.); R. Schumann, Faschingsschwank aus Wien op. 26 (1st mvmt.); Brahms, Piano Sonata in F minor op. 5 (1st mvmt.); R. Schumann, String Quartet op. 41 no. 2 (2nd mvmt.); Ives, “Two Little Flowers”; R. Schumann, Symphony no. 3 op. 97 (1st mvmt.); Schoenberg, Pierrot lunaire op. 21 (“Valse de Chopin”).
R. Allen Lott
- Published in print:
- 2003
- Published Online:
- May 2008
- ISBN:
- 9780195148831
- eISBN:
- 9780199869695
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195148831.003.0004
- Subject:
- Music, History, Western
During his second season in America, Leopold de Meyer came under attack for his manipulation of the press, the staging of ovations by claques, and the filling of concert halls with deadheads as well ...
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During his second season in America, Leopold de Meyer came under attack for his manipulation of the press, the staging of ovations by claques, and the filling of concert halls with deadheads as well as being uncooperative with fellow musicians. Highlights of his concerts in New York and Philadelphia were performances of his Marche marocaine and Marche d'Isly as orchestrated by Hector Berlioz, the latter in its world premiere. The arrival of the French pianist Henri Herz sent De Meyer on his inland tour early, during which he forged a successful partnership with the Irish-born violinist Joseph Burke (1817-1902). During his two-season tour of the United States and Canada, De Meyer performed at least eighty-five concerts in twenty-six cities, with his original compositions captivating the musical world surfeited with fashionable operatic fantasias and his flamboyant performance style exciting a public with little experience in hearing exceptional piano playing.Less
During his second season in America, Leopold de Meyer came under attack for his manipulation of the press, the staging of ovations by claques, and the filling of concert halls with deadheads as well as being uncooperative with fellow musicians. Highlights of his concerts in New York and Philadelphia were performances of his Marche marocaine and Marche d'Isly as orchestrated by Hector Berlioz, the latter in its world premiere. The arrival of the French pianist Henri Herz sent De Meyer on his inland tour early, during which he forged a successful partnership with the Irish-born violinist Joseph Burke (1817-1902). During his two-season tour of the United States and Canada, De Meyer performed at least eighty-five concerts in twenty-six cities, with his original compositions captivating the musical world surfeited with fashionable operatic fantasias and his flamboyant performance style exciting a public with little experience in hearing exceptional piano playing.
Steven Huebner
- Published in print:
- 2005
- Published Online:
- May 2008
- ISBN:
- 9780195189544
- eISBN:
- 9780199868476
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195189544.003.0010
- Subject:
- Music, History, Western
This chapter focuses on composer, Ernest Reyer. Reyer's Sigurd also became a fixture on French stages, albeit for only a quarter century or so. Reyer was already sixty-one when Sigurd premiered in ...
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This chapter focuses on composer, Ernest Reyer. Reyer's Sigurd also became a fixture on French stages, albeit for only a quarter century or so. Reyer was already sixty-one when Sigurd premiered in Brussels in 1884. Upon arriving in Paris from Marseille and Alger in the late 1840s, he briefly studied composition with his aunt, the celebrated pianist Louise Farrenc. In large measure, however, he was self-taught. Through camaraderie with writer Joseph Méry, he was introduced to Théophile Gautier and a literary circle that today glows with the highest prestige.Less
This chapter focuses on composer, Ernest Reyer. Reyer's Sigurd also became a fixture on French stages, albeit for only a quarter century or so. Reyer was already sixty-one when Sigurd premiered in Brussels in 1884. Upon arriving in Paris from Marseille and Alger in the late 1840s, he briefly studied composition with his aunt, the celebrated pianist Louise Farrenc. In large measure, however, he was self-taught. Through camaraderie with writer Joseph Méry, he was introduced to Théophile Gautier and a literary circle that today glows with the highest prestige.
Roger Nichols
- Published in print:
- 2008
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780195320169
- eISBN:
- 9780199852086
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195320169.003.0014
- Subject:
- Music, History, Western
With the publication of his Lettres intimes, people have begun to talk once again of Berlioz's venomous nature and bad character. This chapter holds, however that Berlioz was not a cunning person: he ...
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With the publication of his Lettres intimes, people have begun to talk once again of Berlioz's venomous nature and bad character. This chapter holds, however that Berlioz was not a cunning person: he was sincere, and said what was in his heart and his head without thinking about the consequences. It suggests that Berlioz was too fond of Shakespeare, Byron and Goethe, and he unwittingly admitted the fact. It was Lélio that gave Camille Saint–Saëns the opportunity to meet the great man and to win his valuable friendship.Less
With the publication of his Lettres intimes, people have begun to talk once again of Berlioz's venomous nature and bad character. This chapter holds, however that Berlioz was not a cunning person: he was sincere, and said what was in his heart and his head without thinking about the consequences. It suggests that Berlioz was too fond of Shakespeare, Byron and Goethe, and he unwittingly admitted the fact. It was Lélio that gave Camille Saint–Saëns the opportunity to meet the great man and to win his valuable friendship.
Albert R. Rice
- Published in print:
- 2009
- Published Online:
- May 2009
- ISBN:
- 9780195343281
- eISBN:
- 9780199867813
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195343281.003.0006
- Subject:
- Music, History, Western
Chapter five is dedicated to bass clarinet music grouped in the categories: early reported works; notation practice; a chronological description of works from 1834 to 1860 listed by composer; band ...
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Chapter five is dedicated to bass clarinet music grouped in the categories: early reported works; notation practice; a chronological description of works from 1834 to 1860 listed by composer; band music; and music written for the contra bass and contra alto clarinets.Less
Chapter five is dedicated to bass clarinet music grouped in the categories: early reported works; notation practice; a chronological description of works from 1834 to 1860 listed by composer; band music; and music written for the contra bass and contra alto clarinets.
Erling Sandmo
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- September 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780199588541
- eISBN:
- 9780191741845
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199588541.003.0018
- Subject:
- Classical Studies, Literary Studies: Classical, Early, and Medieval
Roman history was peripheral to what is usually termed ‘romantic’ opera, i.e., works written between c.1830 and 1900. This chapter, however, insists on seeing musical romanticism as contemporary with ...
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Roman history was peripheral to what is usually termed ‘romantic’ opera, i.e., works written between c.1830 and 1900. This chapter, however, insists on seeing musical romanticism as contemporary with literary romanticism, thus pushing its beginnings back to the late eighteenth century. In doing so, it analyses how late opere serie such as Mozart's (1791) and Joseph Martin Kraus' Aeneas i Cartago (1791) conformed to romantic aesthetics of the gesamtkunstwerk, and were received by an audience of romantics. Compared with Kraus' innovative, even historicist Aeneas, the greatest Virgilian opera, Berlioz' Les Troyens (1863), was self-consciously neo-classicist, looking back towards ancien régime ideals of sacrifice and civic virtues. In conclusion, the chapter discusses why classical mythology and history in general, and the Roman setting in particular, disappeared from the romantic operatic stage, a result both of the use of Roman history as the imagery of the French Revolution and of the rise of romantic historicism.Less
Roman history was peripheral to what is usually termed ‘romantic’ opera, i.e., works written between c.1830 and 1900. This chapter, however, insists on seeing musical romanticism as contemporary with literary romanticism, thus pushing its beginnings back to the late eighteenth century. In doing so, it analyses how late opere serie such as Mozart's (1791) and Joseph Martin Kraus' Aeneas i Cartago (1791) conformed to romantic aesthetics of the gesamtkunstwerk, and were received by an audience of romantics. Compared with Kraus' innovative, even historicist Aeneas, the greatest Virgilian opera, Berlioz' Les Troyens (1863), was self-consciously neo-classicist, looking back towards ancien régime ideals of sacrifice and civic virtues. In conclusion, the chapter discusses why classical mythology and history in general, and the Roman setting in particular, disappeared from the romantic operatic stage, a result both of the use of Roman history as the imagery of the French Revolution and of the rise of romantic historicism.
Mark Everist
- Published in print:
- 2021
- Published Online:
- March 2021
- ISBN:
- 9780197546000
- eISBN:
- 9780197546031
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780197546000.001.0001
- Subject:
- Music, History, Western
The history of music is most often written as a sequence of composers and works. But a richer understanding of the music of the past may be obtained by also considering the afterlives of a composer’s ...
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The history of music is most often written as a sequence of composers and works. But a richer understanding of the music of the past may be obtained by also considering the afterlives of a composer’s works. Genealogies of Music and Memory asks how the stage works of Christoph Willibald Gluck (1714–1787) were cultivated in nineteenth-century Paris, and concludes that although the composer was not represented formally on the stage until 1859, his music was known from a wide range of musical and literary environments. Received opinion has Hector Berlioz as the sole guardian of the Gluckian flame from the 1820s onwards, and responsible—together with the soprano Pauline Viardot—for the ‘revival’ of the composer’s Orfeo in 1859. The picture is much clarified by looking at the concert performances of Gluck during the first two thirds of the nineteenth century, and the ways in which they were received and the literary discourses they engendered. Coupled to questions of music publication, pedagogy, and the institutional status of the composer, such a study reveals a wide range of individual agents active in the promotion of Gluck’s music for the Parisian stage. The ‘revival’ of Orfeo is contextualized among other attempts at reviving Gluck’s works in the 1860s, and the role of Berlioz, Viardot, and a host of others re-examined.Less
The history of music is most often written as a sequence of composers and works. But a richer understanding of the music of the past may be obtained by also considering the afterlives of a composer’s works. Genealogies of Music and Memory asks how the stage works of Christoph Willibald Gluck (1714–1787) were cultivated in nineteenth-century Paris, and concludes that although the composer was not represented formally on the stage until 1859, his music was known from a wide range of musical and literary environments. Received opinion has Hector Berlioz as the sole guardian of the Gluckian flame from the 1820s onwards, and responsible—together with the soprano Pauline Viardot—for the ‘revival’ of the composer’s Orfeo in 1859. The picture is much clarified by looking at the concert performances of Gluck during the first two thirds of the nineteenth century, and the ways in which they were received and the literary discourses they engendered. Coupled to questions of music publication, pedagogy, and the institutional status of the composer, such a study reveals a wide range of individual agents active in the promotion of Gluck’s music for the Parisian stage. The ‘revival’ of Orfeo is contextualized among other attempts at reviving Gluck’s works in the 1860s, and the role of Berlioz, Viardot, and a host of others re-examined.
Peter Szendy
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- May 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780823267057
- eISBN:
- 9780823272303
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Fordham University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5422/fordham/9780823267057.003.0021
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Aesthetics
A brief history of orchestra conducting, right up though the electrification that affords long-distance transmission.
A brief history of orchestra conducting, right up though the electrification that affords long-distance transmission.
Bernard D. Sherman
- Published in print:
- 2003
- Published Online:
- January 2010
- ISBN:
- 9780195169454
- eISBN:
- 9780199865017
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195169454.003.0020
- Subject:
- Music, History, Western
Since the 1960s, John Eliot Gardiner has spent much of his career conducting two groups he founded in his native England, the English Baroque Soloists and the Monteverdi Chorus. It has become ...
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Since the 1960s, John Eliot Gardiner has spent much of his career conducting two groups he founded in his native England, the English Baroque Soloists and the Monteverdi Chorus. It has become obvious, though, that to categorize him as an English choral conductor and early music specialist would be unfair. Not only was he conducting opera at Sadler’s Wells in 1969; he has performed alongside such composers as Georges Bizet and Emmanuel Chabrier with the opera of Lyon (whose orchestra he founded), and he has more recently turned his attention to even later music. Concerning the use of early instruments in Romantic music, some observers have dismissed experiments in this field as simple empire-building by the historical-performance movement. Yet Hector Berlioz himself wrote that “at no period in the history of music has there been greater mention made of instrumentation” than in his own. This chapter presents an interview with Gardiner on Berlioz and Johannes Brahms, 19th century music, orchestras and period instruments, the use of violins, tone color in music, and the use of vibrato and portamento.Less
Since the 1960s, John Eliot Gardiner has spent much of his career conducting two groups he founded in his native England, the English Baroque Soloists and the Monteverdi Chorus. It has become obvious, though, that to categorize him as an English choral conductor and early music specialist would be unfair. Not only was he conducting opera at Sadler’s Wells in 1969; he has performed alongside such composers as Georges Bizet and Emmanuel Chabrier with the opera of Lyon (whose orchestra he founded), and he has more recently turned his attention to even later music. Concerning the use of early instruments in Romantic music, some observers have dismissed experiments in this field as simple empire-building by the historical-performance movement. Yet Hector Berlioz himself wrote that “at no period in the history of music has there been greater mention made of instrumentation” than in his own. This chapter presents an interview with Gardiner on Berlioz and Johannes Brahms, 19th century music, orchestras and period instruments, the use of violins, tone color in music, and the use of vibrato and portamento.
Melina Esse
- Published in print:
- 2021
- Published Online:
- January 2022
- ISBN:
- 9780226741772
- eISBN:
- 9780226741802
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226741802.003.0006
- Subject:
- Music, Opera
Chapter Five examines Pauline Viardot: a singer, composer, and pedagogue who performed as both Sapho in Gounod’s Sapho, and Orpheus in Berlioz’s Orphée. Both projects illuminated the limits and ...
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Chapter Five examines Pauline Viardot: a singer, composer, and pedagogue who performed as both Sapho in Gounod’s Sapho, and Orpheus in Berlioz’s Orphée. Both projects illuminated the limits and possibilities for women composer-performers in the mid-nineteenth century by highlighting the changing meanings of operatic collaboration, with Viardot’s own biography overlapping with the Sappho myth itself. The author explores Viardot’s own creative impact on the texts she helped create and the biographical drama of Viardot’s collaboration with Gounod, suggesting that close working relationships began to be viewed in a different light in which the muse slid into the role of a courtesan, rather than one of Renaissance unattainability. The author argues that this shift contributed to the widening and increasingly gendered gulf between creators and interpreters.Less
Chapter Five examines Pauline Viardot: a singer, composer, and pedagogue who performed as both Sapho in Gounod’s Sapho, and Orpheus in Berlioz’s Orphée. Both projects illuminated the limits and possibilities for women composer-performers in the mid-nineteenth century by highlighting the changing meanings of operatic collaboration, with Viardot’s own biography overlapping with the Sappho myth itself. The author explores Viardot’s own creative impact on the texts she helped create and the biographical drama of Viardot’s collaboration with Gounod, suggesting that close working relationships began to be viewed in a different light in which the muse slid into the role of a courtesan, rather than one of Renaissance unattainability. The author argues that this shift contributed to the widening and increasingly gendered gulf between creators and interpreters.
David Roberts
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- August 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780801450235
- eISBN:
- 9780801460975
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Cornell University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7591/cornell/9780801450235.003.0004
- Subject:
- Art, Art History
This chapter explores the recreation of the union of art, religion, and politics in Athenian tragedy in music drama, just as the modern synthesis of the arts, in which the orchestra takes the place ...
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This chapter explores the recreation of the union of art, religion, and politics in Athenian tragedy in music drama, just as the modern synthesis of the arts, in which the orchestra takes the place of the Greek chorus, is intended to give life and body to the vision of social synthesis. It analyzes the works of Saint-Simon, Mazzini, Balzac, Berlioz, and Wagner. It argues that the centrality of Wagner to the history and the idea of the total work of art is twofold: his theory of the Gesamtkunstwerk forms the central directing inspiration of his music dramas; his manifestos Art and Revolution (1849) and The Artwork of the Future (1849) fuse in the heat of revolutionary fervor the various anticipations since the French Revolution of the artwork to come into a powerful vision of the regeneration of man, society, and art. Beyond that, however, Wagner’s aesthetic conception of politics complements Rousseau’s political conception of art.Less
This chapter explores the recreation of the union of art, religion, and politics in Athenian tragedy in music drama, just as the modern synthesis of the arts, in which the orchestra takes the place of the Greek chorus, is intended to give life and body to the vision of social synthesis. It analyzes the works of Saint-Simon, Mazzini, Balzac, Berlioz, and Wagner. It argues that the centrality of Wagner to the history and the idea of the total work of art is twofold: his theory of the Gesamtkunstwerk forms the central directing inspiration of his music dramas; his manifestos Art and Revolution (1849) and The Artwork of the Future (1849) fuse in the heat of revolutionary fervor the various anticipations since the French Revolution of the artwork to come into a powerful vision of the regeneration of man, society, and art. Beyond that, however, Wagner’s aesthetic conception of politics complements Rousseau’s political conception of art.
Roger Nichols (ed.)
- Published in print:
- 2008
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780195320169
- eISBN:
- 9780199852086
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195320169.001.0001
- Subject:
- Music, History, Western
Camille Saint–Saëns is a memorable figure not only for his successes as a composer of choral and orchestral works, and the eternally popular opera Samson et Dalila, but also because he was a keen ...
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Camille Saint–Saëns is a memorable figure not only for his successes as a composer of choral and orchestral works, and the eternally popular opera Samson et Dalila, but also because he was a keen observer of the musical culture in which he lived. A composer of vast intelligence and erudition, Saint–Saëns was at the same time one of the foremost writers on music in his day. From Wagner, Liszt and Debussy to Milhaud and Stravinsky, Saint–Saëns was at the center of the elite musical and cultural fin de siecle and early 20th Century world. He championed Schumann and Wagner in France at a period when these composers were regarded as dangerous subversives whose music should be kept well away from the impressionable student. Yet Saint–Saëns himself had no aspirations to being a revolutionary, and his appreciation of Wagner the composer was tempered by his reservations over Wagner the philosopher and dramatist. Whether defending Meyerbeer against charges of facility or Berlioz against those who questioned his harmonic grasp, Saint–Saëns was always his own man: in both cases, he claimed, it was “not the absence of faults but the presence of virtues” that distinguishes the good composer. Saint–Saëns’ writings provide a well-argued counter-discourse to the strong modernist music critics who rallied around Debussy and Ravel during the fin de siecle. And above all, they demonstrate a brilliantly sharp and active brain, expressing itself through prose of a Classical purity and balance, enlivened throughout with flashes of wit and, at times, of sheer malice.Less
Camille Saint–Saëns is a memorable figure not only for his successes as a composer of choral and orchestral works, and the eternally popular opera Samson et Dalila, but also because he was a keen observer of the musical culture in which he lived. A composer of vast intelligence and erudition, Saint–Saëns was at the same time one of the foremost writers on music in his day. From Wagner, Liszt and Debussy to Milhaud and Stravinsky, Saint–Saëns was at the center of the elite musical and cultural fin de siecle and early 20th Century world. He championed Schumann and Wagner in France at a period when these composers were regarded as dangerous subversives whose music should be kept well away from the impressionable student. Yet Saint–Saëns himself had no aspirations to being a revolutionary, and his appreciation of Wagner the composer was tempered by his reservations over Wagner the philosopher and dramatist. Whether defending Meyerbeer against charges of facility or Berlioz against those who questioned his harmonic grasp, Saint–Saëns was always his own man: in both cases, he claimed, it was “not the absence of faults but the presence of virtues” that distinguishes the good composer. Saint–Saëns’ writings provide a well-argued counter-discourse to the strong modernist music critics who rallied around Debussy and Ravel during the fin de siecle. And above all, they demonstrate a brilliantly sharp and active brain, expressing itself through prose of a Classical purity and balance, enlivened throughout with flashes of wit and, at times, of sheer malice.
Ian Bradley
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780195327342
- eISBN:
- 9780199852727
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195327342.001.0001
- Subject:
- Music, History, Western
Many of the most famous composers in classical music spent time in spa towns. At Baden bei Wein, Mozart wrote his Ave Verum Corpus, and Beethoven sketched out his Ninth Symphony. Johannes Brahms ...
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Many of the most famous composers in classical music spent time in spa towns. At Baden bei Wein, Mozart wrote his Ave Verum Corpus, and Beethoven sketched out his Ninth Symphony. Johannes Brahms spent 17 summers in Baden-Baden, where he stayed in his own specially built composing cavern. Berlioz conducted in Baden-Baden for nine seasons, writing Beatrice and Benedict for the town's casino manager. Chopin, Liszt, and Dvorak were each regular visitors to Carlsbad and Marienbad. And it was in Carlsbad that Beethoven met Goethe. To this day, these spa towns continue to host major music festivals. This book explores the music making that went on in the spas and watering places in Europe and the United States between the early eighteenth and the mid-twentieth centuries. Music was an important part of the experience of taking a spa cure. Bands played during the early morning and late afternoon while people took the waters and bathed. Spa orchestras and ensembles entertained those gathering socially or resting in assembly rooms, pump rooms, gardens, and parks. The author draws on original archival material and the diaries and letters of composers. The book begins with Bath in England and Baden near Vienna, which both flourished in the eighteenth century, continuing through Baden-Baden, the Bohemian spas, and Bad Ischl in the nineteenth century, and on to Buxton and Saratoga Springs in the early twentieth century. A concluding chapter features a review of the musical activities taking place in spa towns today.Less
Many of the most famous composers in classical music spent time in spa towns. At Baden bei Wein, Mozart wrote his Ave Verum Corpus, and Beethoven sketched out his Ninth Symphony. Johannes Brahms spent 17 summers in Baden-Baden, where he stayed in his own specially built composing cavern. Berlioz conducted in Baden-Baden for nine seasons, writing Beatrice and Benedict for the town's casino manager. Chopin, Liszt, and Dvorak were each regular visitors to Carlsbad and Marienbad. And it was in Carlsbad that Beethoven met Goethe. To this day, these spa towns continue to host major music festivals. This book explores the music making that went on in the spas and watering places in Europe and the United States between the early eighteenth and the mid-twentieth centuries. Music was an important part of the experience of taking a spa cure. Bands played during the early morning and late afternoon while people took the waters and bathed. Spa orchestras and ensembles entertained those gathering socially or resting in assembly rooms, pump rooms, gardens, and parks. The author draws on original archival material and the diaries and letters of composers. The book begins with Bath in England and Baden near Vienna, which both flourished in the eighteenth century, continuing through Baden-Baden, the Bohemian spas, and Bad Ischl in the nineteenth century, and on to Buxton and Saratoga Springs in the early twentieth century. A concluding chapter features a review of the musical activities taking place in spa towns today.
Roger Nichols
- Published in print:
- 2008
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780195320169
- eISBN:
- 9780199852086
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195320169.003.0015
- Subject:
- Music, History, Western
This chapter describes Berlioz as a paradox made flesh. If there is one quality that cannot be denied in his works, and which his most determined enemies have never contested, it is the brilliance, ...
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This chapter describes Berlioz as a paradox made flesh. If there is one quality that cannot be denied in his works, and which his most determined enemies have never contested, it is the brilliance, the extraordinary coloring of his instrumentation. The instruments seem to be organized in defiance of common sense. His Orchestration Treatise is itself a deeply paradoxical work. It begins with an introduction of several lines, unconnected with the subject, in which the author rails against composers who abuse the art of modulation and have a taste for dissonances. Then he proceeds to a study of the instruments of the orchestra, offering some absolutely solid truths and wise advice. Meanwhile, Roméo et Juliette seems to be Berlioz's most characteristic work, and the one that deserves to find most favor with the public.Less
This chapter describes Berlioz as a paradox made flesh. If there is one quality that cannot be denied in his works, and which his most determined enemies have never contested, it is the brilliance, the extraordinary coloring of his instrumentation. The instruments seem to be organized in defiance of common sense. His Orchestration Treatise is itself a deeply paradoxical work. It begins with an introduction of several lines, unconnected with the subject, in which the author rails against composers who abuse the art of modulation and have a taste for dissonances. Then he proceeds to a study of the instruments of the orchestra, offering some absolutely solid truths and wise advice. Meanwhile, Roméo et Juliette seems to be Berlioz's most characteristic work, and the one that deserves to find most favor with the public.
Adrian Streete
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- March 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780748635238
- eISBN:
- 9780748652297
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9780748635238.003.0009
- Subject:
- Literature, Shakespeare Studies
This chapter reports that both Hector Berlioz and Giuseppe Verdi were dominant presences in the European obsession with opera in the nineteenth century. An analysis of some complex confluences of ...
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This chapter reports that both Hector Berlioz and Giuseppe Verdi were dominant presences in the European obsession with opera in the nineteenth century. An analysis of some complex confluences of Shakespearean history, politics and performance is presented. The chapter then explores in detail the genesis and first performances of Otello. Some of the major recorded interpretations of the role of Otello during the twentieth century are reviewed. It also shows that the performance history of Otello is as contested and complex as the original play upon which Verdi and his team of collaborators drew. Today, the world's opera houses offer only one of many outlets for operatic performances. There are any number of iconic singers whose interpretations of the canonical Shakespearean operas either on recordings or on film deserve wider exposure and further examination beyond the remit of classical music and opera scholars.Less
This chapter reports that both Hector Berlioz and Giuseppe Verdi were dominant presences in the European obsession with opera in the nineteenth century. An analysis of some complex confluences of Shakespearean history, politics and performance is presented. The chapter then explores in detail the genesis and first performances of Otello. Some of the major recorded interpretations of the role of Otello during the twentieth century are reviewed. It also shows that the performance history of Otello is as contested and complex as the original play upon which Verdi and his team of collaborators drew. Today, the world's opera houses offer only one of many outlets for operatic performances. There are any number of iconic singers whose interpretations of the canonical Shakespearean operas either on recordings or on film deserve wider exposure and further examination beyond the remit of classical music and opera scholars.
Gundula Kreuzer
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- January 2019
- ISBN:
- 9780520279681
- eISBN:
- 9780520966550
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of California Press
- DOI:
- 10.1525/california/9780520279681.003.0004
- Subject:
- Music, Opera
First imported to Europe in the 1780s, Chinese gongs (or tam-tams) are shown in this chapter to have migrated between commerce, science, theater, orchestra, technology, and stage prop. Their novel ...
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First imported to Europe in the 1780s, Chinese gongs (or tam-tams) are shown in this chapter to have migrated between commerce, science, theater, orchestra, technology, and stage prop. Their novel sound effect was adopted into opera in London and Paris for a range of music-dramatic situations that are discussed here as “gong topoi.” Yet the tam-tam’s unusually loud, non-pitched resonance challenged conceptions of musical tone, while its European dissemination required either costly imports or metallurgical experiments. By midcentury, Berlioz and Wagner were experimenting with more subtle playing techniques that might enhance their orchestration while masking the instrument’s metallic timbre. Less nuanced, the chapter proposes, were the theater practitioners who gratuitously struck the gong to enhance climaxes or cover stage noises, rendering it an all-purpose sound technology. Puccini’s Turandot consummated the tam-tam as audiovisual prop. Its loudness was subsequently reconciled with musical aesthetics in twentieth-century music, both popular and avant-garde.Less
First imported to Europe in the 1780s, Chinese gongs (or tam-tams) are shown in this chapter to have migrated between commerce, science, theater, orchestra, technology, and stage prop. Their novel sound effect was adopted into opera in London and Paris for a range of music-dramatic situations that are discussed here as “gong topoi.” Yet the tam-tam’s unusually loud, non-pitched resonance challenged conceptions of musical tone, while its European dissemination required either costly imports or metallurgical experiments. By midcentury, Berlioz and Wagner were experimenting with more subtle playing techniques that might enhance their orchestration while masking the instrument’s metallic timbre. Less nuanced, the chapter proposes, were the theater practitioners who gratuitously struck the gong to enhance climaxes or cover stage noises, rendering it an all-purpose sound technology. Puccini’s Turandot consummated the tam-tam as audiovisual prop. Its loudness was subsequently reconciled with musical aesthetics in twentieth-century music, both popular and avant-garde.
Gabriela Cruz
- Published in print:
- 2020
- Published Online:
- August 2020
- ISBN:
- 9780190915056
- eISBN:
- 9780190915087
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780190915056.003.0004
- Subject:
- Music, Opera
The far-reaching transformation of grand opera into a modern medium of spectacle was inaugurated by Giacomo Meyerbeer’s Robert le diable. In the Act III ballet, with the theater darkened, the dead ...
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The far-reaching transformation of grand opera into a modern medium of spectacle was inaugurated by Giacomo Meyerbeer’s Robert le diable. In the Act III ballet, with the theater darkened, the dead left their graves, and, phantom-like, haunted the stage. Those “ghosts” of deceased nuns clad in white ushered in a new genre, the ballet blanc, while another phantom—Robert’s mother—bestowed on grand opera the gift of lyric spectrality when Alice, in Act V, relayed the woman’s last words. Parisian mélomanes regarded this moment of song with special reverence after the 1830s and, arguably, its lyrical qualities guided efforts to reform singing in the 1830s and 40s. But, at the same time, Robert ushered in a new understanding in Paris of opera as an art of dream-like states: indeed, it was the visual procedures of phantasmagoria and diorama that inspired the radical change in Meyerbeer’s art of composition.Less
The far-reaching transformation of grand opera into a modern medium of spectacle was inaugurated by Giacomo Meyerbeer’s Robert le diable. In the Act III ballet, with the theater darkened, the dead left their graves, and, phantom-like, haunted the stage. Those “ghosts” of deceased nuns clad in white ushered in a new genre, the ballet blanc, while another phantom—Robert’s mother—bestowed on grand opera the gift of lyric spectrality when Alice, in Act V, relayed the woman’s last words. Parisian mélomanes regarded this moment of song with special reverence after the 1830s and, arguably, its lyrical qualities guided efforts to reform singing in the 1830s and 40s. But, at the same time, Robert ushered in a new understanding in Paris of opera as an art of dream-like states: indeed, it was the visual procedures of phantasmagoria and diorama that inspired the radical change in Meyerbeer’s art of composition.
Clive Brown
- Published in print:
- 2003
- Published Online:
- October 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780300095395
- eISBN:
- 9780300127867
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Yale University Press
- DOI:
- 10.12987/yale/9780300095395.003.0046
- Subject:
- Music, History, Western
During the last decade of his life, Felix Mendelssohn and his works began to be appraised with increasing regularity in biographical encyclopedias and journals. These critical appraisals articulated ...
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During the last decade of his life, Felix Mendelssohn and his works began to be appraised with increasing regularity in biographical encyclopedias and journals. These critical appraisals articulated a number of issues that persisted in later assessments and often drew upon common sources for their material. Two musical accounts of Mendelssohn's career, published in German during the second half of the 1830s, were provided by Rudolf Hirsch in Gallerie lebender Tondichter (1836) and Gustav Schilling in Encyclopädie der gesammten musikalischen Wissenschaften (1837). In France, François-Joseph Fétis's Biographie universelle des musiciens offered a biographical and critical account of Mendelssohn's career up to 1838. In 1845, the Wiener allgemeine Musik-Zeitung journal published an account by Alfred Julius Becher appraising Mendelssohn's position as a composer by comparing him to Hector Berlioz.Less
During the last decade of his life, Felix Mendelssohn and his works began to be appraised with increasing regularity in biographical encyclopedias and journals. These critical appraisals articulated a number of issues that persisted in later assessments and often drew upon common sources for their material. Two musical accounts of Mendelssohn's career, published in German during the second half of the 1830s, were provided by Rudolf Hirsch in Gallerie lebender Tondichter (1836) and Gustav Schilling in Encyclopädie der gesammten musikalischen Wissenschaften (1837). In France, François-Joseph Fétis's Biographie universelle des musiciens offered a biographical and critical account of Mendelssohn's career up to 1838. In 1845, the Wiener allgemeine Musik-Zeitung journal published an account by Alfred Julius Becher appraising Mendelssohn's position as a composer by comparing him to Hector Berlioz.
Mark Everist
- Published in print:
- 2021
- Published Online:
- March 2021
- ISBN:
- 9780197546000
- eISBN:
- 9780197546031
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780197546000.003.0002
- Subject:
- Music, History, Western
Although Gluck’s works for the French theatre were absent from the stage after 1830, Gluck’s music was widely known through various forms of concert: the concert historique, the concert series and ...
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Although Gluck’s works for the French theatre were absent from the stage after 1830, Gluck’s music was widely known through various forms of concert: the concert historique, the concert series and freely-promoted concerts. Of great importance were the initiatives of François Delsarte who not only programmed large amounts of Gluck but who also developed a realistic mode of delivery which was to spill over eventually into the theatre.Less
Although Gluck’s works for the French theatre were absent from the stage after 1830, Gluck’s music was widely known through various forms of concert: the concert historique, the concert series and freely-promoted concerts. Of great importance were the initiatives of François Delsarte who not only programmed large amounts of Gluck but who also developed a realistic mode of delivery which was to spill over eventually into the theatre.