The Second Half of the Nineteenth Century

1. The Second Half of the Nineteenth Century

2. The New German School • Progressive ideas and styles after 1850 • “The music of the future” — a teleological view of the composer’s role in music history • Freedom from convention • harmonic exploration • unconventional form • programmaticism • Composers • Liszt, Berlioz (by adoption), Wagner

3. Wagner’s music dramas — theories and style • The Artwork of the Future • Gesamtkunstwerk — combines multiple art forms in multimedia “counterpoint” • Based in folklore and mythology — represents values of the culture • Libretto built on Germanic tradition — Stabreim • Symphonic treatment of • themes (leitmotiv) • free motion of harmony • developmental texture

4. After Wagner — representative late Romantic composers and genres • Vienna • Johannes Brahms (1833–1896) — symphony, chamber music, song • Anton Bruckner (1824–1896) — symphony, sacred music • France • Charles Gounod (1818–1893) — lyric opera • César Franck (1822–1890) — symphony, organ music, chamber music • Italian opera • Verdi

5. After Wagner — post–Romantic composers and genres • Hugo Wolf (1860–1903) — song specialist • Gustav Mahler (1860–1911) — song, symphony, vocal-orchestral cycle • Richard Strauss (1864–1949) — tone poem, opera, song

6. Post–romantic opera — realism and verismo • Characteristics • plots set among oppressed-class characters • violent endings • powerful, intense scorings • extreme demands on voice • Some representative works • Georges Bizet, Carmen (1873–1874) • Pietro Mascagni, Cavalleria rusticana (1890) • Ruggero Leoncavallo, I pagliacci (1892) • Giacomo Puccini, Il tabarro from Il trittico (1918)

7. Exoticism • Attempt to reinvigorate music in the context of fin-de-siècleEurope • Draws on style features from distant music cultures — e.g., • Eastern Europe — Gypsy culture • the Middle East • East Asia • Spain • the Americas • Problems of orientalism • colonial appropriation • misrepresentation of “other” musicultures

8. Late nineteenth–century nationalism • Patriotic expression by composers from suppressed cultures on the European periphery • Bohemia • Russia • Scandinavia • Spain • the Americas • National materials • literary and folkloric sources • folk tunes or folk melody styles • dance rhythms • harmonic colorations — modal scales

9. Questions for discussion • Wagner’s musical theories and works generated wide-ranging interest outside strictly musical circles. How can we explain this phenomenon? • How did musical developments in France and Italy after 1850 reflect special situations and/or characteristic interests of those countries? • How did the rise of national styles in the late nineteenth century resemble or differ from the rise of nationally distinct styles in the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries? • Would it be appropriate to refer to some developments in music of the late nineteenth century as mannerist? Why or why not?