Page 147 - (DK) The Classical Music Book - Big Ideas Simply Explained

ROMANTIC 1810–1920 145

The premiere of Johann Strauss II
Giuseppe Verdi’s writes The Blue Johannes Brahms’s The brutal plot of Giacomo
La traviata in Venice Danube, a waltz First Symphony premieres Puccini’s opera Tosca
shocks audiences by with a rich symphonic in Karlsruhe, Germany, typifies verismo (“realism”),
taking a fallen woman sound that takes recalling the Classical a form of opera popular in
as its subject matter. Europe by storm. style of Beethoven. Italy and France.

1853 1867 1876 1900

1857 1876 1896 1908

Franz Liszt’s Faust The fourth part of Inspired by Nietzsche’s Gustav Mahler
Symphony, inspired by Richard Wagner’s Ring novel, Richard Strauss writes Das Lied
Johann Wolfgang von Cycle opens in Bayreuth, composes Also sprach von der Erde, a
Goethe’s play of the marking the end of his Zarathustra, a symphonic contemplation on
same name, premieres “total artwork,” composed poem that rejects the inevitability
in Weimar, Germany. over 26 years. Romantic conventions. of death.

symphonies, a trend that was Johann Strauss I and II, father and matter and aiming for a more
taken up later by many composers, son, played on this nostalgia with convincing form of dramatic
especially Franz Liszt, who their waltzes, but other composers representation. Others followed his
developed a form known as the also felt the lack of discipline in lead: Bizet in France, the giants of
symphonic poem, or tone poem. Romantic music. Foremost among Italian opera, Verdi and Puccini,
Liszt was also famous as a them was Johannes Brahms, who pursued a new kind of realism
young man for his virtuosity when who moderated expression within in opera, and in Germany, Richard
performing his own piano pieces, stricter Classical forms. Another Wagner, whose operas were on the
and he gained a large and devoted was Felix Mendelssohn, whose grandest of scales and stretched
following. These solo piano recitals oratorios harked back to the musical language. With his
were popular entertainment of the Baroque period, reviving German innovatory harmonies, Wagner
period, especially when given by and English choral traditions laid challenged the idea of tonality,
Romantic characters such as down by Handel and Bach. which had been the foundation
Liszt or Frédéric Chopin, whose of musical form since the end of
more delicate and lyrical style of Romantic opera the Renaissance.
composition appealed particularly Opera, with its combination of Wagner inspired what is now
to French audiences. literature and music, was ideally known as the late Romantic style,
suited to portraying Romantic exemplified by composers such as
Exceptions to the rule themes and ideas. Carl Maria von Anton Bruckner, Gustav Mahler,
Despite the popularity of Romantic Weber established the template and Richard Strauss. This heralded
music, some composers missed for Romantic opera by choosing the beginning of modern music in
the elegance of Classicism. In German folklore rather than which the old rules of harmony no
fashionable Vienna, for example, Classical mythology as his subject longer applied. ■

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