Romantic

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25We have all banged away on a piano at one time or another. Some of us were subjected to piano lessons, with the obligatory exercises by Clementi and Craemer, all accompanied by our mothers prediction: Someday youll thank me for this! But did you ever stop to think how the piano came to be? In brief, it was invented around 1700 as an alternative to the harpsichord, as a way of giving more dynamics and shading to the musical line. The piano assumed its modern formthe 3-pedal, 88-key, 1,200-pound grandduring the Romantic period.

Just as the symphony orchestra grew in size and power during the nineteenth century, so, too, did the piano, propelled by the new technology of the Industrial Revolution. Mozarts piano was small (only sixty-one keys), and its frame was made of wood (see Fig. 19-7). Nineteenth-century technol-ogy supplied the piano with a frame made of cast iron, allowing for greater tension on the strings. This cast-iron frame supported thicker steel strings, which greatly increased the volume of sound and the punishment the instru-ment could take. (Recall that the forceful Beethoven had frequently broken strings while playing the older wooden-frame pianosee page 211.) But not only could the Romantic piano support louder and more aggressive playing, it also facilitated a gentler, more lyrical style; its hammers were covered with felt, which allowed the instrument to sing with a mellow tone, in contrast to the ping of the pianos of Mozarts day. Like the growing nineteenth-century orchestra, the piano could now produce both a very loud sound ( for-tissimo) and a very soft one (pianissimo). The instruments range increased as well: Mozarts ve-octave piano of the 1780s had grown to an eight-octave one a century later. Foot pedals were also added in the nineteenth century. On the right side was the sustaining pedal, which enabled strings to con-tinue to sound after the performer had lifted his or her hand from the corre-sponding keys. On the left was the soft pedal, which softened the dynamic level by shifting the position of the hammers relative to the strings. Finally, in the 1850s, the Steinway Company of New York began cross-stringing the piano, overlaying the lowest-sounding strings across those of the middle register, and thereby producing a richer, more homogeneous sound. By the mid-nineteenth century, all the essential features of the modern piano were in placethe essential design of the piano has not changed in 150 years.

As the piano grew larger and more expressive, it became something of a home entertainment center, a place where the family could gather to play and sing before the days of television and electronic entertainment. Every aspiring middle-class home had to have a piano, both for family enjoyment and as a status symbolthe high art instrument in the parlor signi ed to visitors that they had entered a cultured home. Parents made sure their children, espe-cially the girls, received lessons, and publishers, eager to pro t from the vogue for the piano, turned out reams of sheet music for pianists of all skill levels.

Spurred by the sudden popularity of the piano, a host of virtuoso perform-ers descended upon the concert halls of Europe with ngers blazing. What

Romantic MusicPiano Music

Download a Supplementary

Listening Guide for piano

pieces by Robert and Clara

Schumann, at the text website.

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Part V | ROMANTICISM, 18201900268

they played was often more a display of technical reworksrapid octaves, racing chromatic scales, thundering chordsthan of mu-sical substance. Happily, however, several of the greatest piano virtuosos of the nineteenth century were also gifted composers.

Frdric Chopin (18101849)In the compositions of Frdric Chopin (Fig. 25-1), the piano and its music have their most perfect union. This poet of the piano, as he was called, was born near Warsaw, Poland, of a French fa-ther and a Polish mother. The father taught at an elite secondary school for the sons of Polish nobility, and it was there that Frdric not only gained an excellent general education but acquired aris-tocratic friends and tastes as well. He then moved on to the newly founded Warsaw Conservatory, where, between 1826 and 1829, he concentrated on the study of piano and composition. During this period, he composed his rst major work, a brilliant set of variations for piano and orchestra on Mozarts duet L ci darem la mano (Give Me Your Hand) from Don Giovanni (on the duet,

see p. 206). After this success, Warsaw seemed too small, too provincial, for a young man of Chopins musical talents. So, in 1830, he departed to seek his fortune in Vienna and Paris. The next year, Polands ght for independence was crushed by Russian troops; Chopin never returned to his homeland.

After an unsuccessful year in Vienna, the twenty-one-year-old Chopin arrived in Paris in September 1831. His inaugural concerts caught Parisians fancy, and his imaginative playing soon became the stuff of legend. But Cho-pin was not cut out for the life of the public virtuoso. He was introverted, physically slight, and somewhat sickly. Consequently, he chose to play at private musicales (musical evenings) in the homes of the aristocracy and to give lessons for a fee only the very rich could afford. I have been introduced all around the highest circles, he said within a year of his arrival. I hobnob with ambassadors, princes, and ministers. I cant imagine what miracle is respon-sible for all this since I really havent done anything to bring it about.

In October 1836, Chopin met Baroness Aurore Dudevant (18031876), a writer who under the pen name of George Sand poured forth a steady stream of Romantic novels roughly akin to our Silhouette Romances. Sand, a bisexual, was an ardent individualist with a predeliction for wearing mens clothing and smoking cigars (see Sand seated behind Liszt in the painting on the cover and Fig. 25-2). Six years Chopins senior, she became his lover and protector. Many of the composers best works were written at Nohant, her summer residence 150 miles south of Paris. After their relationship ended in 1847, Chopin under-took a taxing concert tour of En gland and Scotland. While this improved his depleted nances, it weakened his delicate health. He died in Paris of tubercu-losis at the age of thirty-nine.

Mazurka in B major, Opus 7, No. 1 (1832)Although Frdric Chopin spent most of his adult life in France, he main-tained strong emotional ties to Poland, and his compositions frequently drew upon musical idioms of his native land. Indeed, the expatriate composer be-came something of a national hero in Poland, his music embraced as a way of preserving a national heritage. Consciously, Chopin became an avatar of musical nationalism (see Chapter 29).

Figure 251A superbly Romantic portrait of Chopin by

Eugne Delacroix. It was originally painted

with Chopin next to George Sand (see Fig.

25-2). But in 1870, a vandal slashed the

double portrait, thereby (unintentionally)

creating two canvases.

Figure 252Novelist Aurore Dudevant (George Sand) by

Eugne Delacroix. Both the painter Delacroix

and the composer Chopin often stayed at

her summer estate in Nohant in the south

of France.

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Chapter 25 | ROMANTIC MUSIC: PIANO MUSIC 269

As a youth, Chopin had vacationed with his family in the Polish coun-tryside, where he was introduced to such traditional Polish dances as the mazurka and the polonaise. The mazurka is a fast dance in triple meter with an accent on the second beat. Its melody draws on native folk tunes, some of them of Jewish ancestry, and its harmony suggests the static droning of a vil-lage bagpipe. Chopins Mazurka in B major begins much like a triple-meter waltz, except that the strong accent often falls on beat 2, not beat 1. Yet mid-way through (in section C), the mode switches from major to minor, a strange scale enters in the melody, and a drone appears in the accompanying bass. We have been transported from the world of the Parisian salon to a Polish vil-lage, from the familiar to the foreign. In Chopins day, these mazurkas were experienced as music or as dance: the Parisians listened, the Poles danced.

Chopin was a rarity among Romantic composershe wrote only for the piano or ensemble pieces (including songs) in which he made the piano gure prominently. His works for solo piano includein addition to his mazurkas and polonaises3 piano sonatas, a set of 24 preludes (brief character pieces, one in each of the major and minor keys), 24 etudes (technical studies), and 21 nocturnes. Far better than the other genres for piano, the dream-like noc-turnes embody the essence of musical Romanticism.

Nocturne in C minor, Opus 27, No. 1 (1835)Want to hear music that is almost painfully beautiful? Download a Chopin nocturne. A nocturne (night piece) is a slow, dreamy genre of piano music

Download Supplementary

Listening Guides for several

more Chopin works, including

a polonaise, etude, and

prelude, at the text website.

4/1

Form: ABACA (with repeats)

0:00 Rapid dance with triple-meter accompaniment and accent on second beat (A)0:16 Repeat of A0:34 Lyrical interlude (B)0:47 Return to A1:03 Repeat of B and A1:31 Exotic melody supported by constantly repeating (drone) bass (C)

1:46 Return to A2:03 Repeat of C and A

Frdric Chopin

Mazurka in B major, Opus 7, No. 1 (1832)

Listening Guide 5

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that came into favor in the 1820s and 1830s. It suggests moonlit nights, ro-mantic longing, and a certain wistful melancholy, all evoked through bitter-sweet melodies and softly strumming harmonies. To set a nocturnal mood in his Nocturne in C minor, Chopin begins with a tonic C minor chord spun out as an arpeggio in the bass, like a harp or guitar played in the moonlight. The melody (A) enters in minor but immediately turns to major, by means of an added sharp. As the opening melody repeats again and again in the course of the work, so, too, the harmony shifts expressively, bending back and forth from minor to major, from dark to light. This twisting of mode is one way that the composer creates the bittersweet feeling.

Example 251

Soon the opening melody breaks off, and a more passionate, agitated mood takes hold. A new theme (B) enters and the tempo increases. The bass now begins a long, mostly chromatic ascent. Here Chopin joins a long list of com-posers who have employed rising chromaticism to create a feeling of anxiety and growing tension.

Example 252

A climax is reached at the peak of this line, emphasized by a remarkable chord changea chord with four sharps is immediately followed by one with four ats (see Ex. 22-2). As mentioned earlier (p. 234), the sudden juxtaposition of such distant chords creates bold harmonic shifts of the sort favored by Romantic composers as they strove to fashion a new, more colorful harmonic language. Now a third melody (C) enters, which eventually gives way to A by means of a descending, recitative-like passage.

The return to A is especially rich and satisfying, as the harp-like accom-paniment and plaintive melody seem to rise from the depths of the fading bass. Chopins simple formal plan is now clear: statementdigressionreturn, each section with its own evocative atmosphere. The lyrical expressive (A) gives way to the passionately anxious (B and C), which yields to the initial lyricism (A). The returning A is extended by means of an exquisite little coda. At the very end, a painful dissonance sounds and then resolves to consonance (5:185:23), as the fears of the nocturnal world dissolve into a heavenly major

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more Chopin nocturnes at the

text website.




realm. As the German poet Heine said of Chopin, He hails from the land of Mozart, Raphael, and Goethe. His true home is in the realm of Poetry.

Franz Liszt (18111886)Franz Liszt was not merely a musician, he was a phenomenon, perhaps the most amboyant artistic personality of the entire nineteenth century. Hand-some, supremely talented, and equally self-con dent, he strutted across the stage as the musical sex symbol of the Romantic era (Fig. 25-3). But he could also play the piano, and like no other.

Franz Liszt was born in Hungary of German-speaking parents. In 1822, his ambitious father took him to Vienna and then Paris to be the next child prodigy, the latest musical Wunderkind. But his father died suddenly, and the

Genre: Nocturne

Form: ABCA

Performer: Polish-born Arthur Rubinstein (18871982), universally recognized as the greatest interpreter of Chopin of the twentieth century

0:00 Arpeggiated chord sets harmony in bass 0:10 A Plaintive melody enters quietly in upper register

0:45 Melody continues

1:26 Plaintive melody begins again with countermelody now added (1:29) in middle voice

2:04 Melody breaks off but accompaniment continues

2:16 B New passionate theme enters and gets louder above chromatically rising bass

2:40 Bold harmonic shift from four sharps to four ats

2:48 Passionate theme continues and rises

3:02 C New, more heroic melody enters

3:25 Very loud repeated chords, then fermata (hold)

3:29 Loud, recitative-like passage descends deep into bass

3:49 A Arpeggiated accompaniment, then plaintive melody reemerges as dream-like reminiscence

4:41 Coda, entirely in major mode

5:18 Dissonance resolves to consonance (5:23)

Frdric ChopinNocturne in C minor, Opus 27, No. 1 (1835)

Listening Guide


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young pianists career languished. Liszts life took a dramatic turn on April 20, 1832, however, when he attended a concert given by the great violin virtuoso Niccol Paganini (see p. 239). What a man, what a violin, what an artist! Oh, God, what pain and suffering, what torment in those four strings. Liszt vowed to bring Paganinis technical virtuosity to the piano. Practicing four to ve hours a dayunusual dedication for a prodigyhe taught himself to play on the piano what had never been played before: tremolos, leaps, double trills, glissandos, and simultaneous octaves in both hands, all at breathtaking speed. When he returned to the stage for his own concerts, he over-whelmed the audience. He had become the greatest pianist of his time, and perhaps of all time.

In 1833, Liszts life took another unexpected turn. He met the Countess Marie dAgoult (at his feet in the painting on the cover and Fig. 25-4) and decided to give up the life of the per-forming artist in exchange for domestic security. Although she was already married and the mother of two children, Marie and Liszt eloped, rst to Switzerland and then to Italy. Resid-ing in these countries for four years, the couple had three chil-dren of their own. (Their youngest daughter would become

the wife of Richard Wagner; see Fig. 27-3.)Beginning in 1839, and continuing until 1847, Liszt once more took to

the road as a touring virtuoso. He played more than a thousand concerts: from Ireland to Turkey, from Sweden to Spain, from Portugal to Russia. Ev-erywhere he went the handsome pianist was greeted with the sort of mass hysteria today reserved for rock stars. Audiences of 3,000 crowded into the larger halls (Fig. 25-5). Women tried to rip off his silk scarf and white gloves, and fought for a lock of his hair. Lisztomania swept across Europe.

Despite their obvious sensationalism, Liszts concerts in the 1840s estab-lished the format of our modern-day piano recital. He was the rst to play entire programs from memory (not reading from music). He was the rst to place the piano parallel with the line of the stage so that neither his back nor his full face, but rather his extraordinary side pro le, was visible to the audience. He was the rst to perform on the stage aloneup to that point, concerts traditionally had included numerous performers on the program. These solo appearances were called rst soliloquies and then recitals, sug-

gesting they were something akin to personal dramatic recitations. As Liszt modestly claimed in his adopted French, Le concert, cest moi!

But Liszt was a complex man with many facets to his personality. He thought of himself not only as a showman-pianist but also as a serious composer. So, in 1847, he suddenly quit the lucrative concert circuit and settled in Weimar, Germany, to serve the ducal court as music director and composer-in-residence. Here he concentrated on writing orchestral music. All told, he composed a dozen tone poems, as well as two pro-gram symphonies and three piano concertos. In 1861, Liszt again sur-

prised the world: he moved to Rome, entered Holy Orders in the Roman Catholic Church, and took up residence in the Vatican! Abb Liszt, as the

composer now styled himself, had replaced Don Juan. While in Rome, Liszt wrote the bulk of his sixty religious works including two oratorios. He died at the age of seventy- ve in Bayreuth, Germany, where he had gone to hear the latest opera of his son-in-law, Richard Wagner.

Figure 253The young, charismatic Franz Liszt, the pre-

eminent pianist of the Romantic era.

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Figure 254Countess Marie dAgoult in 1843. She was a

novelist in her own right, and some of the

tracts on music that appeared under Liszts

name were probably penned by her. Like

many female writers of the day, including

George Sand and George Eliot, she wrote un-

der a masculine nom de plume, Daniel Stern.

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Despite Liszts interest in religious music and programmatic works for orchestra, his reputation as a composer rests primarily upon his sensational piano music, particularly his Hungarian Rhapsodies. Liszt had large hands and unusually long ngers with very little web-like connective tissue between them (Fig. 25-6), which allowed him to make wide stretches with relative ease. He could play a melody in octaves when others could play only the sin-gle notes of the line. If others might execute a passage in octaves, Liszt could dash it off in more impressive-sounding tenths (octave plus third). So he wrote daredevil music full of virtuosic display.

To build suf cient technique to tackle Liszts dif cult showpieces, per-formers practiced a musical genre called the etude. An etude is a short, one-movement composition designed to improve one or more aspects of a performers technique (fast scales, more rapid note repetition, surer leaps, and so on). Before 1840, dozens of composers had published books of technical exercises that became the cornerstone of piano instruction for the burgeon-ing middle class. Chopin and Liszt took this development one step further. They added beautifully crafted melodies and unusual textures to what previ-ously had been merely mind-numbing nger work, thereby demonstrating that an etude might embody artistry as well as mechanics.

Liszts most dif cult pieces of this sort are his twelve Transcendental Etudes (1851). As the title suggests, these works require transcendent, indeed super-human, technical skill. Ironically, these etudes by Liszt are not useful studies for the average pianistthey are so dif cult that the performer must already be a virtuoso to play them! As composer and critic Robert Schumann said, The Transcendental Etudes are studies in storm and dread designed to be per-formed by, at most, ten or twelve players in the world.

Transcendental Etude No. 8, Wilde Jagd (Wild Hunt; 1851)Among the most technically dif cult of Liszts Transcen-dental Etudes is No. 8, Wilde Jagd (Wild Hunt). The title suggests a nocturnal chase in a supernatural forest of the sort often evoked in German Romantic litera-ture. The similarly supernatural demands placed on the pianist are intended to develop skill in playing bro-ken octaves in the left hand and simultaneous chro-matic runs in both hands (Ex. 25-3). Occasionally, a lyrical melody shines forth in the dark forest of digital dangers. In these moments, the pianist must project the expressive melody while keeping the dif cult ac-companiment up to tempo, performing simultaneously the roles of poet and technical virtuoso. Today this etude serves as a musical Mount Everestdozens of young virtuosos can be seen on YouTube trying to scale it.

Figure 255Lisztomania, as depicted in 1842. A recital by

Liszt was likely to create the sort of sensation

that a concert by a rock star might generate

today. Women fought for a lock of his hair,

a broken string from his piano, or a shred of

his velvet gloves.

Figure 256The aged Liszt, still dazzling audiences and

destroying pianos. As a critic of the day said

of his slash-and-burn technique, He is as

much a piano slayer as a piano player.



more Liszt selections at the

text website.

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Example 253 (0:34)

Franz LisztTranscendental Etude No. 8, Wilde Jagd (1851)

Genre: Etude

0:00 Racing octaves followed by crashing chords with short-long rhythm

0:34 Simultaneous chromatic scales in both hands (see Ex. 25-3)0:40 Racing octaves and crashing chords return1:11 Short-long rhythm transformed into folk-like tune1:41 Lyrical melody appears in top of right hand (soprano line)

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1:55 Lyrical melody moved octave higher

2:28 Lyrical melody set to more complex accompaniment and grows in intensity

2:56 Racing octaves and crashing chords return and are developed harmonically

3:59 Lyrical melody returns

4:15 Lyrical melody rises in melodic sequence to climax

4:24 Arpeggios ascend and then crashing chords descend to end


Key wordssustaining pedal (267)soft pedal (267)cross-stringing (267)

mazurka (269)nocturne (269)Lisztomania (272)

recital (272)etude (273)

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