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Romantic Composers

Romantic Composers. Franz Schubert (1797-1828) Schubert was tremendously prolific. He wrote some 600 Lieder, nine symphonies (including the famous "Unfinished

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Romantic Composers

Franz Schubert (1797-1828)

• Schubert was tremendously prolific. He wrote some 600 Lieder, nine symphonies (including the famous "Unfinished Symphony"), liturgical music, operas, some incidental music, and a large body of chamber and solo piano music. Appreciation of his music during his lifetime was limited, but interest in Schubert's work increased dramatically in the decades following his death at the age of 31

Schubert

• At the age of five, Schubert began receiving regular instruction from his father

• At 7, Schubert began receiving lessons from Michael Holzer, the local church organist and choirmaster. Holzer's lessons seem to have mainly consisted of conversations and expressions of admiration

• He also played the viola in the family string quartet, with brothers Ferdinand and Ignaz on violin and his father on the cello. Schubert wrote many of his early string quartets for this ensemble.[7]

Schubert

• Schubert first came to the attention of Antonio Salieri, then Vienna's leading musical authority, in 1804, when his vocal talent was recognized.[7] In October 1808, he became a pupil at the Stadtkonvikt (Imperial seminary) through a choir scholarship.

• Schubert was introduced to the overtures and symphonies of Mozart.[8] One important musical influence came from the songs of Johann Rudolf Zumsteeg, who was an important Lied composer of the time, which, his friend Joseph von Spaun reported, he "wanted to modernize".[10]

Schubert

• At the end of 1813, he left the Stadtkonvikt, and returned home for studies at the Normalhauptschule to train as a teacher. In 1814, he entered his father's school as teacher of the youngest students. For over two years, the young man endured the drudgery of the work, which he performed with very indifferent success.[14] There were, however, other interests to compensate. He continued to receive private lessons in composition from Salieri. Salieri and Schubert would part ways in 1817

Schubert

• Schubert's most prolific year was probably 1815. He composed over 20,000 bars of music, more than half of which was for orchestra, including nine church works, a symphony, and about 140 Lieder

Schubert

• The compositions of 1819 and 1820 show a marked advance in development and maturity of style[31]. The unfinished oratorio "Lazarus" (D. 689) was begun in February; later followed, amid a number of smaller works, by the 23rd Psalm (D. 706), the Gesang der Geister (D. 705/714), the Quartettsatz in C minor (D. 703), and the "Wanderer Fantasy" for piano (D. 760). Of most notable interest is the staging in 1820 of two of Schubert's operas: Die Zwillingsbrüder (D. 647) appeared at the Theater am Kärntnertor on June 14, and Die Zauberharfe (D. 644) appeared at the Theater an der Wien on August 21.

Schubert

• The works of his last two years reveal a composer increasingly meditating on the darker side of the human psyche and human relationships, and with a deeper sense of spiritual awareness and conception of the 'beyond'. He reaches extraordinary depths in several chillingly dark songs of this period, especially in the larger cycles

Schubert

• In the midst of this creative activity, his health deteriorated. The cause of his death was officially diagnosed as typhoid fever, though other theories have been proposed, including the tertiary stage of syphilis. By the late 1820s Schubert's health was failing and he confided to some friends that he feared that he was near death. In the late summer of 1828, the composer saw court physician Ernst Rinna, who may have confirmed Schubert's suspicions that he was ill beyond cure and likely to die soon. Schubert died in Vienna, at age 31, on November 19, 1828, at the apartment of his brother Ferdinand

Johannes Brahms (1833-1897)

• Johannes Brahms was born in 1833 of German heritage. He began his musical career by playing the piano. He met the important musicians Clara Schumann and her husband Robert Schumann when he was on a tour of Europe.

Brahms

• Robert Schumann and Beethoven were strong influences on Johannes Brahms. His first published work, a piano sonata in C major, combined Schumann's tender lyricism with Beethoven's overwhelming energy. So inspired was he by Beethoven's symphonies that it took Brahms more than 10 years to write his first. It was instantly hailed as "Beethoven's Tenth."

Brahams

• Stylistically, as more time passed, Brahms music became more refined and distinctly stylized from other composers. He often achieved a balance between the Romantic exaggeration and experimentation of the era with the structural clarity of the Classical era. He was a composer of numerous waltzes : No.1, No.2, No.3, No.4, No.5.

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Brahms

• Another famous Brahms composition is Intermezzo Op. 117 No. 1 in Eb Major, and No. 2 in Bb Major. The most dramatic of Brahms' works was the Cantata Rinaldo. After this, he never attempted to compose another opera. His later works are characterized by their warmth and color.

Chopin, Frederic (1810-1849) 

• Fredric Chopin was born in Poland in the year 1810. He began playing the piano at age four, and by age eight, was considered to be a child prodigy. He then toured Warsaw and was greeted by noble gentlemen and women, much like the childhood Mozart had experienced

Chopin

• . He started composing music at age twelve. One of his first well-known compositions was the Rondo in C Minor, which was written when he was fifteen. He composed numerous etudes. One of these etudes, called the Black Key Etude, was written in the key of Gb and used only sharps and flats.

Chopin

• . After he toured more of Europe, young Chopin fell in love with Vienna. After he moved to Vienna, his musical career seemed bleak, as his first public concert did not go well. He became depressed due to the fact that Warsaw had been attacked and occupied by Russia. However, this inspired the composer to write one of his most famous works, the Revolutionary Etude, Opus 10, No. 12.

Chopin

• Since Vienna did not suit him, he moved to Paris, France. When in Paris, his music grew more appreciated and was praised by the other well-known composers of the era. After his childhood sweetheart, Maria Wodzinska, refused his hand in marriage, he became depressed. Again, Chopin rose above his tribulation and wrote the famous waltz, Les Adieux, about lovers who part.

Chopin

• His last concert was held in the Salle Pleyel in Paris in February of 1848. Although he was sick, he finished the concert. Chopin died a year and a half later. Chopin was the master of the piano of his generation. In his lifetime, he composed over 200 piano pieces. He turned the piano into a more emotional tool then was ever thought possible.

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Franz Liszt (1811-1886)

• was a Hungarian virtuoso pianist and composer. He studied and played at Vienna and Paris and for most of his early adulthood toured throughout Europe giving concerts. His virtuosity earned him approbations by composers and performers alike throughout Europe. His great generosity with both time and money benefited the lives of many people: victims of disasters, orphans and the many students he taught for free.

• His piano compositions include works such as his Piano Sonata in B minor, and two piano concertos, which have entered the standard repertoire. He also made many exuberant piano transcriptions of operas, famous symphonies, Paganini Caprices, and Schubert Lieder. As would be expected from a pianist-composer of Liszt's virtuosity, many of his piano compositions are amongst the most technically challenging in the repertoire.

Franz LisztMusical style and influence

The majority of Liszt's piano compositions reflect his advanced virtuosity; however he was a prolific composer, and wrote works at several levels of difficulty, some being accessible to intermediate- (and even beginner-) level pianists. Abschied (Farewell) and Nuages Gris are examples of this less virtuosic style, as are at least some of the six Consolations.

In his most popular and advanced works, he is the archetypal Romantic composer. Liszt pioneered the technique of thematic transformation, a method of development which was related to both the existing variation technique and to the new use of the leitmotif by Richard Wagner. He also largely invented the symphonic poem, or tone poem, in a series of single-movement orchestral works composed in the 1840s and 1850s. His poems all came from classical literature, including "Ce qu'on entend sur la montagne," based on a Victor Hugo poem of the same title, and "Les preludes" from Lamartine. Liszt's "First Mephisto Waltz" was based on Lenau's Faust, and he composed a second waltz from the poem in 1881. Other pieces are based on works by Lord Byron, Goethe and Dante. Liszt's symphonic poems, although successes, were criticised because they were not Absolute music. His transcriptions met with less criticism. As a transcriber of even the most unlikely and complicated orchestral works, he created piano arrangements which stood on their own merits; many other pianist-composers followed his example.

Felix Mendelssohn (1809-1847)

• Felix Mendelssohn is regarded by classical music aficionados and critics alike, as one of the most prolific and gifted composers the world has ever known.  Even those who could not name any of his works have heard it, as his "Wedding March" from "A Midsummer Night's Dream", which has accompanied many a bride down the aisle. Whether he was born with his incredible talent or was the product of an artistically and intellectually-inclined family will remain a mystery, but like all prodigies, Mendelssohn showed signs of true genius from childhood. 

• Regarded by some critics as the 19th century equivalent of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, and others as a great composer who's contribution would have been greater, had his life been marred with more hardships

Hector Berlioz (1803-1869)

• Sent to Paris by his father to study medicine, Berlioz instead studied music, supporting himself by writing about music and giving lessons. Berlioz may well have been the first great composer to not be able to play a musical instrument, nor to have shown any musical talent at an early age. But he perservered, and became interested in the vast possibilities of orchestration and the different combinations of instrumental sounds. In 1844, he wrote a book on orchestration (Traite de l'Instrumentation - Treatise on Orchestration), which is still widely regarded as one of the best in the field. Berlioz' advances in this area contributed greatly to the growth and development of the modern symphony orchestra.

Berlioz (1803-1869)

• In 1830, only three years after the death of Beethoven, Berlioz composed his most famous work, the programmatic Symphonie fantastique. Having an autobiographical basis, the piece is a highly romantic program symphony in five movements, the story of which tells of an artist who, unhappy in love, takes an overdose of opium and dreams of his own passions and desires, his beloved, her murder, and his own death. Berlioz had seen the Irish actress Harriet Smithson perform in Shakespeare's Hamlet and had fallen passionately, even hysterically in love with her. He intended to immortalize his love in music with his symphonie. The artist's beloved is represented throughout the work by a melodic motif known as the idée fixe, a device which serves to unify the disparate elements of the symphony. The fourth movement is entitled "March to the Scaffold," and depicts the protagonist's dream of his own execution for having killed his faithless beloved. The symphony was wildly successful at its premiere, and made a name for its young composer, if not a fortune.

Berlioz (1803-1869)

• Berlioz' remarkable gift for orchestration resulted in sounds never before heard from a symphony orchestra. Greatly criticized during his lifetime for his orchestral extravagance, the brilliance and overwhelming effect of such instrumental excerpts as the Rakoczy March from the dramatic cantata The Damnation of Faust and the Royal Hunt and Storm from Berlioz' immense grand opera Les Troyens (The Trojans), have earned Berlioz lasting fame as a composer who was definitely ahead of his time. His theories and creative use of the symphony orchestra influenced such composers as Franz Liszt and Richard Wagner, but his greatness was not clearly recognized in his own country until the advent of the French composers of the late nineteenth century.