Professional Documents
Culture Documents
20 DEVELOPMENTS IN ROMANTICISM
TO 1850 • 338
The Context for Romanticism to the Middle of the Nineteenth
Century • 339
Composers' Lifestyles • 340
Composers' Literary and Artistic Activities • 340
Romantic Lyricism in Italian Opera • 342
Style • 343
Performance Practice • 344
Giuseppe Verdi • 344
French Grand Opera • 347
The Cult ofVirtuosity • 348
Son1e "Serious" Perforn1ers • 350
Lyricisn1 and Virtuosity-Chopin • 350
Salons and Drawing Roon1s • 352
Civic Musical Events • 354
Instrumental Genres in Romantic Music • 354
Piano M11sic • 354
Orchestral Music • 355
Romantic Musical Style • 358
Expansion of Sound Vocabulary • 358
Romantic Harmony • 359
Form in Romantic Music • 360
Recognition of the Musical Heritage • 361
The Midpoint of the Nineteenth Century • 363
separated from our own by either geography or, as in this case, time)
brings us into d irect contact ,vith the mental processes and values of
others and thereby enriches our own thinking and our own human
spirit.
This applies to all our musical activities. Performers ,viii present
music more effectively if they know ,vhat purposes and values inform
their music. Composers ,viii enrich their imaginations by understanding
other composers' ,vays of musical th inking and ho,v they have created
solutions to musical problems. Listeners ,viii hear more sensitively and
alertly when they enrich their understanding with knowledge of the
social contexts and philosophical ideas from ,vhich the music arose.
We should approach the study of musical thinking from a historical
perspective for hvo reasons and, correspondingly, ,ve study two kinds of
music history. First, music is inextricably ,voven into the fabric of all
human activity; that is, history affects music and music affects history.
One can, of course, ,vrite a book that is primarily a cultural history of
music in Western civilization. The purposes for music-,vhether to ,vor-
ship, to glorify political powers, or to entertain the common citizen; the
sources of support for music-what people had the necessary peace and
leisure to enjoy it, who had the money to buy it; the philosophical foun-
dations for music-the emphasis on intellectual elegance or intense feel-
ing, the models by ,vhich musicians and listeners expected it to achieve
expressiveness; the art and literature surrounding music-the architec-
tural spaces ,vhere singers and players performed it, the poetry that they
sang; the technological achievements that facilitated music-the means
of reproducing scores, the invention of ne,v instruments: all these and
many more factors enhance and indeed are inseparable from the under-
standing of the music itself. Such factors come and go, reinforce or con-
flict ,vith each other at different times. This book ,viii identify some of
these forces that have shaped musical styles.
One might, alternatively, adopt a more technical vie,vpoint and
compose a history of musical style. Throughout the course of Western
history, musicians, like thinkers in any field, have responded to their past.
Such responses may be positive or negative; they may build on what has
gone before or reject it in favor of ne,v directions. Because ideas take time
to achieve their full development and because there is no one ideal style,
,ve commonlyvie,v the history of music (or history in general) as a series
of contrasting although typically overlapping cultures, each with phases
of conception, development, and maturity. We must acknowledge that
this directional vie,v of history belongs to a particular period in Western
thinking and that it is not necessary to music; some other cultures do not
vie,v human thought as requiring such for,vard motion or history as re-
quiring divisions into successive periods characterized by emergence,
attainment of full stature, and decline. Moreover, ,ve must not allo,v
our generalizations regarding period styles to obscure the complexity
and diversity of a period. Individuals differ, the characteristics of one
Preface xvii
century's music survive into the follow·ing centuries, and ideas that have
been underground reemerge. Neither should ,ve think that the value of
any music depends on its belonging to any particular period or phase
,vithin a period. Different types of music incorporate their own value sys-
tems, and we must not judge music of one type by the criteria that apply
to another. Further, the conception of a new,vay of th inking, the explora-
tion and building up of its possibilities, and its full mastery all have values
of particular kinds.
The history of music presented here takes a balanced approach be-
t\veen consideration of external influences on music and internal changes
,vithin the art itself. This book vie,vs music history through the convic-
tion that the cultural and philosophical contexts in wh ich music lives-
the ideas that surround it-interplay continuously with the styles of the
music itself. At a fundamental level, the manner in ,vhich people thought
and acted in any cultural period manifested itself in music in ways that
necessarily paralleled their other activities in scientific thought, religion
and politics, literature and art. For as long and as widely as those ,vays of
thinking and acting operate, we can speak of a historical culture or a co-
herent style period.
In keeping with a general tendency in music history, this book steers
away from references to historical periods by some unfortunately
common anachronistic and misleading catchwords. In general, time ref-
erences identify specific centuries or decades, ,vithout use of the no,v
antiquated n icknames that often simply mischaracterize music. For ex-
ample, the name "Middle Ages'' for music of the vast period between the
fall of Rome and the fifteenth century ,vould have had no meaning to
musicians of those many generations, and so I have discarded it. The
name "Classic'' for the music of the second half of the eighteenth century,
a term that in any case did not become applied to that music until the
nineteenth century, is largely replaced here by "Enlightenment," ,vhich
,vould have made sense in that time. The ,vord "Baroque,'' not used for
music until the twentieth century and then at best as a some,vhat forced
attempt to align music ,vith visual art, I have likew·ise replaced in appro-
priate contexts ,vith "Rationalist," a term that thinkers and musicians of
the seventeenth century understood to represent their culture.
If ,ve ,vant to understand the music of other times and cultures, we
must orient ourselves to their ideas about ,vhat sorts of things music
should do and ho,v it should do them. It makes sense on this basis to ap-
proach music through the conceptual models that musicians have ad-
opted to guide and to explain their music. As you will read, each of the
major periods in Western music history has had its own models; in the
centuries before the fifteenth, musical thinking and musical style focused
on cosmological, mathematical, and symbolic models, and in later times
they became literary models, in turn poetic, rhetorical, dramatic, and
narrative. Each of these conceptual frame,vorks gave ,vide-ranging unity
to the music of a cultural environment, and each allo,ved opportunities
xv111 Preface
Along ,vith the main story in th is book you will find a number of add i-
tional features. Most important of these are the many 1nusic examples.
These should help to clarify aspects of musical styles that are much more
tedious to describe in prose. Sing and play them as you go. Feel free to
mark them up ,vith ,vhatever analytical cues help you-circling and la-
beling melodic details, dra,ving arrows to reinforce voice leading, adding
harmonic symbols, and so on.
Preface xix
A CK N OW LED GM ENT S
This book has profited immensely from the contributions of many people
other than its author. Numerous classes of students worked with it in its
draft stages and its previous editions, patiently noting typographical and
factual errors and making suggestions. Many teachers who have used the
earlier versions provided useful comments, including especially my col-
leagues at The Florida State University, Elias Dann,Jeffery Kite-Po,vell,
Charles Bre,ver, and Denise Von Glahn, and our graduate teach ing as-
sistants ,vho have been willing to teach from the book and offer ideas.
My heartiest thanks go to all of them. For work on the nuts and bolts of
Preface xxi
this book over the past several years, I thank my graduate assistants:
Kurt Carlson, Emily Allen, Ryan Wh ittington, and Rebekah Taylor.
I extend my ,varm gratitude to colleagues ,vho have read the book
in typescript and offered wonderfully insightful and constructive
comments and suggestions: Daniel Dominick, Austin College; James
Grymes, University of North Carolina at Charlotte; Jonathan Gibson,
James Madison University; Melanie Lo,ve, Vanderbilt University;
Virginia Boaz, East Texas Baptist University; and one anonymous
revie,ver.
The editorial support and assistance that I have received from
Oxford Un iversity Press has been outstanding. Richard Carl in,
Executive Editor, has been supportive and ahvays patient with the
occasionally grumpy author. His assistants, Meredith Keffer and Erin
Janosik, were ever reliable and efficient, as ,vas Simon Benjamin's man-
agement. Praise and gratitude go to the fine production team led by
Michael B. Kopf, Production Editor, including Susan Brown for copy-
editing and Linda Westerhoff for proofreading.
Finally, my thanks and my love to my wife, Gayle, for her ,visdom
and her encouragement, ,vhich make everything possible.
Music in Classical Antiquity
The music of antiquity serves as the basis for much in later musical
thinking. The Greek principle of musical ethos related music's power
over human character to features of style. Greek music theory related
acoustics to pitches in musical practice. The Romans later created an
in1portant framework for music in education.
The culture of ancient Greece has provided the philosophical and intel-
lectual roots for much oflater Western culture. Time and again, thinkers The importance
have returned to the ideas of the great early philosophers to revitalize ofandrnt Gr~d::
music
and redirect contemporary imagination. This once led the philosopher
Alfred North Whitehead to speak of all later Western philosophy as a
series of footnotes to Plato.1 In the sense that it provides a model or stan- In tlit. st me that
dard, we refer to the culture of ancient Greece as "classic." U providts a modtl
Greek writers had much to say about music, and ,ve will find that or standard, wt
rt/tr lo lht. culturt.
their ideas have influenced Western music at several important stages in of ancient Gruce as
its history. Unlike Greek thought, however, ancient Greek music has not "classic."
1
2 CHAPTER 1: Music in Classical Antiquity
Example 1.1 One of the earliest p ieces of music that has survived from Greek
antiquity is a fragment of papyrus from ca. 230 BCE containing a few phrases
from a speech by the Chorus in Euripides's d rama Iphigenia at Au/is (ca. 407 BCE).
The complete sentence would read, "[Oh! may t here never appear] to me or to
my [child ren's children the p rospect] that t he rich Lydian women [and t he brides
of Phrygia will have, as t hey talk at their looms] together. Who [will p luck this fair
blossom] from her ruined country, [tightening his grip on my lovely t resses until
t he tears flow]?" Text from Euripides, Euripidis fabulae, vol. 3, ed. Gilbert Murray
(Oxford: Clarendon, 1913), lines 784- 92; music from Thomas J. Mathiesen, Apollo's
Lyre (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1999), 113.
II II
mC• 1c e · moi mC· IC e · mois{i) p:> · lu· chru - i:oi Lu· dai
ta · de es al· 1e- I.as: Tis arraJ ta· nu· sas pat • l'i • dQS ol - lufmenasl .. .
— Tunnette katumusta?
Toinen koettelemus
— Kenelle.
— Ah, hitto! En olisi salannut sitä teiltä, ei kai olisi tultu toimeen
ilman sitä, mitä arvelette? Tipahti vain pois muististani.
— Mutta kuitenkin.
— No, sieppasin sen turvaksi koiria vastaan. No, oli pimeä… Niin
no, kaiken varalta.
— Mutta hyväinen aika, herrat! No, minä otin survimen… No, miksi
otetaan tämmöisissä tapauksissa jotakin käteen? Minä en tiedä
miksi. Sieppasin ja lähdin juoksemaan. Siinä kaikki. Hävettää, herrat,
passons, muuten, minä vannon sen, lakkaan kertomasta!
5.
Kolmas koettelemus
Vaikka Mitja olikin alkanut puhua kiivaasti, niin hän nähtävästi
entistä enemmän koetti parastaan, ettei unohtaisi eikä jättäisi
esittämättä ainoatakaan piirrettä kerrottavasta. Hän kertoi, miten oli
kiivennyt isänsä puutarhan aidan yli, miten oli mennyt aina ikkunan
luokse asti ja viimein kaikesta, mitä oli tapahtunut ikkunan alla.
Selvästi, täsmällisesti, melkeinpä iskevästi hän kertoi tunteistaan,
jotka kuohuttivat hänen mieltään niinä hetkinä puutarhassa, jolloin
hänen niin hirveästi teki mieli saada tietää, oliko Grušenjka hänen
isänsä luona vai eikö. Mutta omituista: sekä prokuraattori että
tutkintatuomari kuuntelivat tällä kertaa hirveän hillitysti, katsoivat
kuivasti, tekivät paljon vähemmän kysymyksiä. Mitja ei voinut
päättää mitään heidän kasvoistaan. »Ovat suuttuneet ja
loukkaantuneet», ajatteli hän, »no, hitto heistä!» Kun hän kertoi,
miten hän lopulta oli päättänyt antaa isälle merkin, että Grušenjka oli
tullut ja että hän avaisi ikkunan, niin prokuraattori ja tutkintatuomari
eivät ollenkaan kiinnittäneet huomiota sanaan »merkin», aivan kuin
eivät olisi ymmärtäneet, mikä merkitys sillä sanalla tässä oli, niin että
Mitja sen ihan huomasi. Tultuaan viimein siihen hetkeen, jolloin hän
näki isänsä kurottautuvan ikkunasta ulos ja viha kuohahti hänessä ja
hän tempasi taskustaan survimen, hän äkkiä aivan kuin tahallaan
pysähtyi. Hän istui ja katsoi seinään ja tiesi, että toisten katseet olivat
tiukasti kiintyneet häneen.
— Eikö ollut?
— Avoimena.
— Kuka sen sitten oli saattanut avata, jos te ette itse sitä avannut?
— hämmästyi Mitja yhtäkkiä hirveästi.