Attitudes toward

Romanticism
Richard Strauss, Salome
Mahler, song from Kindertotenlieder
Romanticism vs Modernism
Love / passion
Individual / subjective
Creativity / fantasy
Nature
The exotic
The national
The revolutionary
Individual against society

What’s a modern artist to do with all this?

Richard Strauss (1864-1949), Salome

PILE IT ON, MORE OF THE SAME

Richard Strauss, Salome (1905)
• Shock effect of theme,
music catapulted Strauss to
modernist star status

• Themes:
• Female sexuality,
• Moral depravity,
• Gore

• Music:
• Unheard-of levels of
dissonance, “chaos”
Salome
• Mark 6:21-29 & Matthew 14:6-11
• "When the daughter of Herodias came in and danced, she
pleased Herod and his dinner guests"

• Based on an Oscar Wilde play

• Paris, 1891
• Original version in French
• Wilde in prison at time of premier, 1896, for “gross
indecency with men”
 Characters
• Herod, King of Judea (“Tetrarch”)

• Herodias, his wife (former sister-in-law)

• Salome, her daughter (14)

• John the Baptist (“Jochanaan”)

Operatic/dramatic
• Orchestra
• Wager +

• Salome
• Vocally demanding, mature, Wagnerian
• Must look 14 years old YET sexually attractive

• The “Dance of the Seven Veils”

Opening Day Reviews
Banned in London until 1910

Perf’d New York (Metropolitan Opera), 1907

banned until 1930s

“…one of the most horrible, disgusting, revolting and

unmentionable exhibitions of degeneracy I have ever heard,
read or imagined...”

“…A sewer is a necessity of our everyday life, but the fact of its
existence does not also create the necessity for us to bend
over its reeking filth and inhale its mephitic vapours...”
Final scene
• Disclaimer
• Part 1
• Part 2
• Part 3

Musical elements:
Leitmotifs
Piled up dissonance, many implied tonalities
First consonance: “Maybe it tasted like Love” (m. 22)
Tonal after “What does it matter?”
Fin de siècle
• French for “End of century”
• Implies both END and BEGINNING
• Neither fully 19th (Romantic) nor 20th (modern)
• Spirit of time often seen as
• Decadent: society so mature/advanced as to be decaying
• Full of ennui
• Pessimistic, cynical
• Capitals: Vienna and Paris
Old Burgtheater, Vienna

Gustav Klimt, “Judith”

My aim is to write a symphony “so great
that the whole world is actually reflected
in it – so that one is, so to speak, only an
instrument on which the universe plays.”
- Gustav Mahler
Gustav Mahler (1860-1911)
• World-renowned orchestral
conductor, based in Vienna
• Traveled widely, trips to New York
• Late-Romantic
• Instrumental music closer to
spiritual realm than other art forms
• Wrote 10 symphonies, LARGE
SCALE
Mahler life outline
• Born 1860
• 1880 first Conducting job
• 1888 First Symphony
• 1897 Converts to Catholicism
• 1902 Marries Alma Schindler
• 1907 death of 4 year-old daughter
• 1909 Das Lied von der Erde perf’d New York
• 1910 Meets with Sigmund Freud
• 1911 dies in Vienna
Alma Mahler
Mahler’s Hut, Klagenfurt
 Mahler’s Alpine
Composing Huts

Toblach , here Mahler composed Das

Steinbach
Lied von der Erde
Mahler and the Symphony
Mahler’s symphonys
• Largest scale of all
• Culmination of the romantic symphonic tradition
• End of the line of Austro-Germanic symphony
writing (together with Strauss)
Mahler
Schubert Schumann
Haydn & [Wagner] Brahms
Mozart Mendelssohn
Beethoven

Classical 1760-1820 Romantic 1820-1900

Beethoven and Post-Beethoven
elements in Mahler
symphonies
• Beethoven: • Post-Beethoven
• Multiplicity of themes • Scherzo can be
(think finale of 9th) anything (slow, fast,
• Continues to expand dance, march…)
the orchestral forces • Finales often have
• Most works have 6 voices
horns! • Themes are full-blown
• Voices (becomes the melodies
norm) • Linear/Contrapuntal
focus (rather than
homophonic)
Late Romantics Strauss and
Mahler
• Strauss • Mahler
• Typically programmatic • Typically extendes
• Form emerges from Viennese classical model
story/program • Separate movements
• Especially fond of sound • Usually more than 4
(effects) • Especially fond of
counterpoint

Both composers use huge orchestral

forces
Mahler style periods
• “Folk” period
• Symphonies 1-4
• All, except for #1, use voice in at least one movement
• Often loosely programmatic
• Scherzos often “Laendler” (German folk dance)
• “Classical” period
• Symphonies 5-7
• In the line of Beethoven, Schubert, Brahms
• Focus on absolute forms
• No voices
• Ecclectic period (late)
• Symphonies 8-10
Gustav Mahler (1860-1911)
• Often called the last of the German Romantics (late romantic or post
romantic…)

• Mostly known as a conductor (Vienna State Opera)

• Composed only in summers

• 9 symphonies
• Beethoven still an inspiration: writing a symphony is like constructing “a world”

• Typically favored large instrumental groups (large for the time)

• But used them delicately, as if writing for a chamber group

• 8th symphony “of a thousand” combined elements of symphony, cantata,

oratorio, lied,
• Includes solo voices and a choir
Gustav Mahler, “Nun will die Sonn’ so hell
aufgeh’n” from Kindertotenlieder (1901-04)
• Kindertotenlieder based on poems of Friedrich Ruckert (same
name) – over 400 of them, unpublished

• Meditations on a parent’s loss of a child

• Mahler chose 5 to set as a song cycle for voice and chamber

orchestra

• Orchestral Lied emphasizes contrast and irony

• Explores wide range of timbres
 1 song in cycle
st

A Nun will die Sonn' so hell aufgehn, Now the sun will rise as brightly
Als sei kein Unglück die Nacht geschehn! as if no misfortune had occurred in the night.
A’ Das Unglück geschah nur mir allein! The misfortune has fallen on me alone.
Die Sonne, sie scheinet allgemein! The sun - it shines for everyone.

B Du mußt nicht die Nacht in dir verschränken,
Mußt sie ins ew'ge Licht versenken!
[Long orchestral interlude]
A’’ Ein Lämplein verlosch in meinem Zelt!
Heil sei dem Freudenlicht der Welt!
You must not keep the night inside you;
you must immerse it in eternal light.
[Long orchestral interlude]
A little light has been extinguished in my household;
Light of joy in the world, be welcome.

Each statement of text framed by orchestra

0rch – A1 – orch – A2 – orch – A1’ -- orch -- A2’ – orch – etc.

Long orchestral interlude after “You must immerse it in eternal light”