Romantic composers aimed for expression of emotion in their pieces. Romantic music is not just about the emotion of love, it can also be about hate or death. During the Romantic era the composers widened the range of their musical material, with richer harmonies, enthusiastic melodies, and greater use of chromaticism. Ponchielli’s work was typical of a sincerely symphonic spirit with freedom, imagination, and variety to be found in his opera’s making them his own. Ponchielli expressed his emotions in Dance of the Hours when Alvise showcases Laura’s supposed dead body telling a story of good and evil. Dance of the Hours use of rich variety, dramatic, and dynamic climaxes is typical of the Romantic era. Ponchielli’s wasted no time in Dance of the Hours to showcasing his use of chromatism and dramatic contrasts of dynamics occurring immediately after the introduction with the birth of the daytime melody. Throughout the composition his chromatic harmonies continue, combined with the use of thick textures with bold dramatic contrasts, wide range of dynamics and tone display the elements typical of the Romantic era. …show more content…
He was taught the basic of music by his father, a church organist in a village near Cremona. (Osborne 2004). From 1844 through 1854 he studied music conception and composition at Milan Conservatory which in turn influenced his entire career. (Budden et al, 2014). After graduation he settled in Cremona as a music teacher and organist for a local church. Ponchielli was a leading Italian Composer whose works were influenced by the Italian tradition of Opera. Throughout the 1860s Ponchielli made his living as municipal bandmaster at Piacenza (from 1861 to 1864), then at Cremona (from 1864 to 1873). Also during this time, he composed works for wind band, directed several operas and his ballets. (Budden et al,
At the age of 17, Balanchine entered the Conservatory of Music. He studied piano, composition and th...
For almost half a century, the musical world was defined by order and esteemed the form of music more highly than the emotion that lay behind it. However, at the turn of the 19th century, romantic music began to rise in popularity. Lasting nearly a century, romantic music rejected the ideas of the classical era and instead encouraged composers to embrace the idea of emotionally driven music. Music was centered around extreme emotions and fantastical stories that rejected the idea of reason. This was the world that Clara Wieck (who would later marry the famous composer, Robert Schumann) was born into. Most well known for being a famous concert pianist, and secondly for being a romantic composer, Clara intimately knew the workings of romantic music which would not only influence Clara but would later become influenced by her progressive compositions and performances, as asserted by Bertita Harding, author of Concerto: The Glowing Story of Clara Schumann (Harding, 14). Clara’s musical career is an excellent example of how romantic music changed from virtuosic pieces composed to inspire awe at a performer’s talent, to more serious and nuanced pieces of music that valued the emotion of the listener above all else.
Beethoven’s early life was one out of a sad story book. For being one of the most well-known musicians one would think that sometime during Beethovens childhood he was influenced and inspired to play music; This was not the case. His father was indeed a musician but he was more interested in drinking than he was playing music. When his father saw the smallest sliver of music interest in Beethoven he immediately put him into vigorous musical training in hopes he would be the next Mozart; his training included organ, viola, and piano. This tainted how young Beethoven saw music and the memories that music brought. Nevertheless Beethoven continued to do what he knew and by thirteen he was composing his own music and assisting his teacher, Christian Neefe. Connections began to form during this time with different aristocrats and families who stuck with him and became lifelong friends. At 17 Beethoven, with the help of his friends, traveled to Vienna, the music capitol of the world, to further his knowledge and connection...
At the end of 1853 Antonin’s father sent him to Zlonice to extend his studies, and that he did studying with Antonin Liehmann, whom he learned the organ, piano and viola, as well as continuing his violin studies. With Liehmann he also began studying harmony leading him into composition, for Liehmann has his own orchestra to play them in return. Dvorak’s family soon moved to Zlonice at the insistence of their Uncle, then Dvorak was sent of to intensely study the German langua...
While he was taking lessons with Zachau at the Halle Cathedral, Handel became his assistant organist. He followed his father’s wish for him to study law, however after his father died, Handel quit his unwanted pursuit of the career, and eventually moved to Hamburg, Germany which was a major music...
Jean Baptiste Lully made significant contributions to French music. His initial compositions “ballets de cour” didn’t deviate from the Italian forms. (Straughan (a)) They were merely collections of dances and burlesque scenes. (Gregory) “A step in Lully’s progression from ballet to opera was the increased role of music in his ballets.
Although the foundation of his career is as a virtuoso violinist and composer of string chamber works, his involvement at S. Petronio led him to contributing immensely to the development of trumpet repertoire. While it is not known whether he studied under Leonardo Brugnoli or Bartolomeo Laurenti while building his career as a performer, they were both S. Petronio players and ultimately led to his involvement
Opera in the Romantic Period was a time when opera changed drastically, especially in the country of Italy. The recognition of singers as being important, almost irreplaceable, in the art of “bel canto” opera changed the idea of a vocalist in opera forever. A singer’s voice was prized and Italian composers, like Rossini, Donizetti, and Bellini, wrote operas and works to showcase the voice, it’s color, range and agility. These Italian composers were moving away from the normal style of composition of the time, and the composer Rossini, who set the stage for many other followers. Many of the operas written during this time are still performed today and are highly acclaimed.
Baroque music is characterized by its development of tonality, elaborate use of ornamentation, application of figured bass, and the expression of single affections. A considerable philosophical current that shaped baroque music is the interest in Renaissance ideas that spawn from ancient Greece and Rome. Ancient Greeks and Romans considered music to be an instrument of communication that could easily stimulate any emotion in its listeners. Therefore, musicians became progressively knowledgeable of the power one’s composition could have on its audiences’ emotions. Because of this, one of the primary goals of baroque art and music was to provoke emotion in the listener, which is closely connected to the “doctrine of affections”. This doctrine, derived from ancient theories of rhetoric and oratory, was the theory that a single piece of art or a single movement of music should express one single emotion. Intrinsically, instead of music reflecting the emotions, composers aspired to cause emotions in the listener. Ma...
His astonishing understanding of musical rudiments was further cemented at age seven by his first teacher Otto Friedrich Willibald Cossel, with piano literature ranging from Bach to Schubert to Clementi (Musgrave 10). The young gifted talent quickly matured, with his compositions being sedulously characterized in craft similar to the seasoned taste of aged liquor. Following in the wake of Beethoven, his style of romanticism seemed restrained, and viewed as being confined to classical forms. With his preference towards absolute music, his works demonstrated “as [Ian] McEwan/ [Clive] Linley would have it, at the intersection of emotion and reason” and of “powerful intellect and of passionate expressivity” (Platt and Smith 4). However, being the headstrong romantic that he is, he manipulated the limiting factor into an area of expanse, in which he developed his music into seriously emotional, imaginative works of art.... ...
In 1829, he left his hometown and started his music tour to Italy, France and England. During this period of time, he published many significant compositions, which included the overture Die Hebriden (1829), the Reformation Symphony (1830) and the Italian Symphony (1832) etc.
In many respects, and with hindsight, it seems natural that the Romantic composers and writers would take a new direction in their approach to expression, reacting against the classical and neo-classical ideas of reason and order from the previous age. It was a revolt against classicism, and against the pre-prescribed rules that defined it. The main catalyst for this change was the French Revolution in 1789, where the French monarchy and aristocracy was overthrown by a rebellion of the people and France became a republic. This, in a musical sense, had an immediate impact on French opera, with the emphasis of the stories now beginning to be drawn into the present as opposed to the ancient world, and the old hierarchy of the Gods and feudal systems. T...
Roughly from 1815 to 1910, this period of time is called the romantic period. At this period, all arts are transforming from classic arts by having greater emphasis on the qualities of remoteness and strangeness in essence. The influence of romanticism in music particularly, has shown that romantic composers value the freedom of expression, movement, passion, and endless pursuit of the unattainable fantasy and imagination. The composers of the romantic period are in search of new subject matters, more emotional and are more expressive of their feelings as they are not bounded by structural rules in classical music where order, equilibrium, control and perfection are deemed important (Dorak, 2000).
Beethoven was born in Bonn Germany. At 14, he held the occupation of a court organist. Sadly, his father was a drunken singer, and barely supported his family. Consequently, the money Beethoven earned assisted his family. In 1778, he traveled to Vienna and met Wolfgang A. Mozart who instantly acknowledged his brilliance. However, on account of his mother’s illness, he returned to his home town, and had to support his brothers after her death. He gave music lessons in Bonn, in addition to playing the viola in the theater orchestra. Settling in Vienna in 1792, he studied with masters such as Joseph Haydn. He appeared as a pianist and gaine...
The definition of Dark Romanticism varies. It is used by different people in diverse situations. Some may describe it as a Gothic novel from the eighteenth -century while others remember the word being used to describe pop music from the 60’s and 70’s. Consulting a dictionary to find the actual meaning of the word, it was a surprise to not find the term “Dark Romanticism”. However the terms “dark” and “romantic” were there. The definitions gave an understanding that the term Dark Romanticism is in fact, a contradiction. The dictionary stated that dark romantic may be sentiment...