The Romantic Generation

CHARLES

ROSE,N

Haruard Uniuersity Press

Cambridge, Massachusetts 1995

Contents

Preface ix

oNE Music and Sound

Imagining the sound Romantic pedal l.:

Romantic paradoxes: the absent melody 7 . Classical and Conception and realization 27 . Tone color and structure 38

Two

Fragments

Renewal +t . The Fragment as Romantic { lm 48 . Open and closed Jl Words and music 58 . The emancipation of musical language 58 Experimental endings and cyclical forms 78 Ruins 92 Disorders 95 Quotations and memories 98
Absence: the melody suppressed 112

rHREE Mountains and Song Cycles

Horn calls 116 Landscape and music 124 . Landscape and the double time scale 135 Mountains as ruins 142 , Land,scape and memory 150 Music and
memory

thepast 204

165 .

Landscape and death: Schubert 174

The unfinished workings of

Songcycleswithoutwords

220

FouR Formal Inteilude

Mediants 237

Fow-bar phrases 257

FrvE Chopin: Counterpoint and the Narratiue Forms

Poetic inspiration and craft 279 Counterpoint and the single line 285 Narrative form: the ballade 302 . Changes of mode 342 . kalian opera and J. S. Bach -l++

',t\ r'llro.rtrl (\(t(t\('\ rl( n!llY i'),1 lr,l

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r')

.lllrl (lttrtl' tlrolr (\.ll0ll

Nl,'r I'r,l

sr vrf N Obgltin: From thc Miniature Ccnrc

thc Sublimc Styla

,,lli rrrusic? l/O Ilubltt't 41.1 . Modal harmony? 416. Mazurka as Romantic rrrrr .l/() 'lhc latc mazurkas 4.19 Freedom and tradition 152

Preface

t.tIGHr Liszt: On Creation as Performdnce )rrrr.lrUt;rlrlt' grcatness 472 . Die Lorelei: the distraction of influence 474 ' The ,r,',rt;r: rlr(' tlistraction of respectability 479 . The invention of Romantic piano ,rrrrrtl: tlrt. I,lrudcs 491 Conception and realization 506 . The masks ol Liszt 511 ' (tt,rrrrp'sirtg: Sonnet no. 104 517 . Sel{-Portrait as Don Juan 528
l)erlioz: Liberation from the Central Ewropean Tradition tlirrtl itl<rlrters and perfidious critics ,542 . Ttadition and eccentricity: the id6e ixt' f-J(, Chord color and counterpoint 550 Long-range harmony and contraNIN

It is equally fatal to have a system and not to have a system. One must try to combine them.
-Friedrich Schlegel, Athenaeum Fragments

ri

rrrrrtal rhythm: the "Scbne

d'amour"

556

.r.EN Mendelssohn and the Inuention of Religiows Kitsch

Vrrstering Beethoven
.r'n

scnsibility 586

Transforming Classicism Religion in the concert hall sso

.i69

582

Classical form and mod-

The death of Beethoven in 1827 must have given a sense of freedom to the composers born almost two decades earlier: Chopin and Schumann in 1810' Mendelssohn the year before, Liszt the year after. Perhaps only Chopin was not intimidated by the commanding figure of authority that Beethoven represented for generations to come. I think it is probable that Beethoven's death hastened the rapid development of new stylistic tendencies which had already made themselves felt and which, indeed, even influenced his own music. The death of Chopin in 1849 was not so signal an event for the world of music, but it, too, marked the end of an age. Schumann was to die only a few
years later, after entering an insane asylum; in the 1850s Liszt renounced much

ELEVEN Romantic Opera: Politics, Trash, and High Art

l)olitics and melodrama 599

Popular

^rt

602

. Bellini 60B

Meyerbeet

639

of his adventurous early manner, pruned his youthful works of their excesses' and developed new directions of style, many of which would be realized only after his death by musicians who took no account of his experiments. In 1850 the young Brahms arrived upon the scene, and it was clear that there was a
new and more conservative musical philosophy in the air. In these writings on music from the death of Beethoven to the death of Chopin, I have limited myself to those composers whose characteristic styles were defined in the late 1820s and early 1830s, a compact group in spite of widely differing musical ideals and the evident mutual hostility frequently met with among them. Slightly older than the composers born around 1810' Berlioz nevertheless belongs essentially with them. In addition, a consideration of Bellini and (more briefly) Meyerbeer is inescapable for an understanding of the period. On the other hand, Verdi and'Wagner are absent, as their stylistic individuality was fully shaped only in the 1840s; their greatest achievements belong

,l,wELVE schwmann: Triumph and Failure of tbe Romantic ldeal 'lrc irrational 646 . Theinspiration of Beethoven and clara wieck 658 The inspif Failure rarirrrrof E.T.A.Hoffmann 569. Outof phase 683 . Lyrtcintensity 689
,rrrd

triumph

599

Inder of Names and V/orks 7l I

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bowr-bar 'phrases
The four-bar phrase has had a bad press in our tirttt:. (itorrprtrl',,rll tlrc ltrtrs itt fours is often considered mechanical and even thoughflt'ss, rurtl lristorirttts ol music will hold up three- and five-bar phrases for our aclnriratiort as il tlrcy were gems of inspiration. The periodic phrase-whether in bar groups of thrt't' or (most often) four-is essentially a system of controlling large-scale rlrythttt by imposing a steady, slower beat over the beats of the individual bar. The system of four-bar phrasing was already in frequent use in the early part of the eighteenth century-dance patterns demanded this kind of regularity; by the last quarter of the eighteenth century it dominated almost all composition. The slower beat imposed over the music should not mislead us: the music of the late eighteenth century actually seems to move faster than that of thc Baroque. The rate of change of the harmony was slower; this is reflected in the four-bar groupings, and it controls the sense of large-scale movement. The technique works very like the motor of a car in a higher gear, the motor turns over more slowly, but the car moves faster. The slow harmonic rhythm and the periodic phrase are the main aspects of the move to a higher gear, and they allow the more largely conceived dramatic structures to unfold effectively and avoid the concentration on the small-scale rhythmic motion within the bar. In the late eighteenth century the module of four bars can be altered in various ways. The phrase can be introduced by one or two bars of accompaniment, and the last bar can be extended by echoes. Haydn's String Quartet in C Major, op. 33, no. 3, opens with an example of both of these devices:

qfrusgl.t-;l 6
ilH

d.[FfJ]1

t-

t)l

wo four-bar phrases are extended to six here by one bar of introduction and

I'y lc;rlaying the last bar an octave lower. \7hat makes the repeated note ,rr'cornpaniment of the opening bar so effectives is that it is not mere accomp:rrrir.nent: the melody, too, begins with a repeated G (-lJJ) as if the first bar wt'rc first augmented and then accelerated. In any case, this is essentially a
lorrr-bar phrase extended. l.ater in this movement another method of extension is employed-expandirrg the center of the phrase-a more sophisticated technique quite advanced lor its time:

Allegro moderato
Violino I Violino II Viola
Violoncello

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have been: lior tlrc B major theme above, the commonplace pattern would

This phrase is, of course, derived from the opening theme played twice as fast. The second bar is repeated a half step lower in an obvious echo, and turns a four-bar group into five bars. (\7hen the phrase is repeated, Haydn further surprises us by extending the movement for two more bars.) Mozart was to employ the technique of inner expansion with great subtlety' In the Trio for Piano and Strings in E Major, K.542, the initial theme of the B major second group expands what might have been a four-bar phrase to six
bars:

or in outline:

lrr the six-bar phrase this structure augments the rhythm:

'Ihis gives a commonplace pattern a greatff breadth and more intense characlistener's expecaccounts fo, ihe effect of a line sustained beyond the ,*,
tations. effect of motor For Beethoven, the four-bar rhythm takes on an even greater previous generation' propelling the music energy than for tire composers of the act of will: they forward; his deviations from it seem almost always like an should abandon the general prejudice that ,.q.ri.. an effort. Nonetheless, we stretches of conformity' the deviations are more imporiant than the formidable

"ia

i;-."rh; to

chosen this example because it is what might be called a hard case, a convincing six-bar phrase. Nevertheless, one gets a clear sense in

I have deliberately
listening to

it of a phrase being stretched out, with a resulting increase of

of Mozart's themes there is an increase in harmonic motion after the second or fourth bars. Consider the opening theme of this trio, for example:
tension. In the majority

if we were to reproach considered more creative than using itlmaginatively-as u i.* five- o. three-beat measures into his a composer for not throwing standard 414 or common time' has extended on the whole, it is clear that by the 1820s the four-bar period The large-scale structure may no its dominion over musical composition. i""g.t U. said simply to organize the rhythm shaped by the.periods: it is now elements of iil."iorrr-Uu. p..iod, themielves which have become the basic bar a1d to the whole musical material, as attention is deflected away from the from the four-bar grouping tend' therefore' to phrase as a unit. Deviations for the i.u.top very different aspects from those I have sketchily summarized fine example of the late eiihteenth century. thopint G Major Prelude has a new technique:

seem odd

that deviating from the four-bar system should

be

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in reality, affect the periodic :T"ttl:tl it is only a r.trllato.Theorchestrawaitsbrieflywhilethesingeraddsahttleexpressrve is obvious' particularly in its rlccoration. The operatil origin of this passage
l'he extra bar does not,

i;,;-*d"n..,

*h.."

the lecoration becomes more elaborate:

After the tvvo bars of introduction, only bar 11 is an exception to the four-bar pattern, and interrupts the regularity set up by bars 3-6 and 7-10. Bar 11 is not, however, an extension in the classical sense, either echo or further development. It simply prolongs the harmony of bar 10, acting as a fermata over the upbeat back to the strong bar that opens the next phrase. Bar 11 is a kind of rubato, an expressive suspense.l A similar example may be found in the Scherzo in B flat Minor by Chopin. The middle section opens with a new twenty-bar sostenuto theme, repeated immediately with one extra bar:

of the four-bar phrase under What these examples show is that the suppleness ro a cert;i; rigidity: the four-bar period is no

Mozart glr., *"y ff"yi" ""amalleabl.;,; .;riiy i;ft; so

a extensible, but it can sdll be inflected bv shape' ,ny?n.ni. freedom which does not alter the basic or' more rarely' in three) is' The danger of p.rlodl. fh,"'i"g (in four bars' invariable downbeat on bar 1' of course, monotony' Jo* uff thJ sense of the or-when the deviations It is when the system J.-ptoytd with understanding' to the larger plan, that the are not merely local eccentricities but contribute phrase lengths are uniform' the rnusic tends to b" *o,i-"'ltt"ft'l' \rhen the

sense

of the bar' and of monotony t";;;;;t"ntered by v"'yittg the accent *""k b1-t-:-The interplay avoiding the relentlesr'"ltt"t"tio" of i'ong'u"d

1. Carl Schachter

has interestingly analyzed bar

1 as an augmentation

of the important motif

;.i[;ph"se
with freedom.

his structure length and accent allows the composer to organize

of the melody E-D in bar 3, in Music Forum V (New York, 1980), pp. 202-21.0.

(,'l
'We

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can see this in the sinrplest 1)ut nlost sl)r'clrtcrrl;rr lorur rrr tlrt'l:urrorrs ritrno di tre battute from the Scherzo of lleethovcrr\ Nirrth Syrrrplrorry:
Rhythnus von 3 Takten.

Ntho di o@n d&rle

Rhythw von 4 Telten.

by th9 motto' lies on At the beginning of the passage, the emphasis' defined Then the t-qhT^i: shifts' and the first of the three-b"; ;t""pt ibars 177-206)' sets (bars 207-224), and then the motif is found on thJsecond of the three-bar on the second of ;ild;;";" back to the first bar (225). putting the accent miniarure ternary ;;;; ;;r, is a destabilizing force, and Beethoven creates a grouping (bar return to four-bar structure of stability-i"tilfiriry-riability. The motto on each of the four bars in succession' iltl;;.h.ved by placing the of harmony' It is tvpical of and the quadruple thd; it atn*a by shifts rhythm is ietermined almost solely by the way Beethoven that each ririfi "f I have.chosen this exceptional three-bar rhythm ,fr. p.l".ip"l motif it fi"..a.

^,-i.',.,ppt.nesscharacterizesBeethoven'Spracticewiththemorecommon four-bar form. '";;;;r"c. D.958, written from the finale of Schubert's sonata in c Minor, ,h;;rt ;;?rre his death in 1828, shows a very different interplay between u...rra and phrase length, but one of equal mastery:

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tlr,. .,ir1'r tlnlro,,rlrorr ol .r l,u1it'r lilttl slowt't llt'ltt tllt llrt rrrrrr,r. lo rt'.rlrzt'.r n{ \\' l( nrl!(,r.rl 1,,'rr,l)('(lrv('<ltt lltt'ctttirc fi)rlll. l'lrt' sct lt'l ol :rvortlrrl,, nr()nol{)ry wrtlr tlrt' lirtrr-lrlr rnodule was to vary the .r((('nl :ur(l tlrt'wt'ililrl ol llrt'lr;rrs lo:rvoicl giving a similar emphatic accent on tlrt'lirst lr;rr'of cvcry gr()ul), rrs if ()ne were accenting a downbeat. After llt't'r lrovcrr rrrrcl lrcfore Brahnrs, perhaps the greatest master of the technique wrrs ( lhopin, rrs one can see from the opening of the Nocturne in D flat Major, rylr,r r.tl,llrtr',
1

r>;t.

)7, tr<>.2, of 1836:

This lyrical interlude in this tarantella movement consists of two phrases' of fifteen and seventeen bars respectively-or 4 + 11 and 8 + 8 + 1. There is no suggestion of irregularity in performance, however, as the accent remains steady: the strong bar here is always the odd-numbered one. The contrast is one of a trochaic structure followed by an iambic one. In other words, in the first part of the theme, an accented bar is followed by an unaccented one: bars 247-250 have a feminine ending with the accent on the first and third bars, and bars 251,-257 continue the pattern. The second part of the theme (bars 258-273) is the reverse: an accented bar is preceded by an unaccented one. Bar 273 leads back to the opening pattern. It is not merely that the whole passage adds up to thirty-two bars which gives the impression of regularity, 'We Lut that the irregularities balance symmetrically and keep the pulse steady' must remember that (exactly asin4l4 time) bars l and 3 are generally strong (or downbeat), bars 2 and 4 weak (or upbeat). (Bars 258 to 273 start with a fourth bar accent.) Schubert retains the regularity of the module but varies the
accent of the phrases. It should be evident that in the 1820s, at least in the work of a master like

After a bar of introductory accompaniment (which hints at the contour of the rnelody), we find a five-bar phrase followed by a three-bar answer-or better, four and a half bars followed by three and a half. Basically, the fourth bar of the melody (bar 5) has been lengthened. Instead of

Schubert, the deviation from the four-bar module can have as systematic a purpose as the standard form. The basic distinction should not be between composers who slavishly followed the standard form and those who abandoned it creatively, but between those who employed it (or not) unthinkingly

we find a surprisingly long Al with a wonderfully expressive effect, and this forces an accelerated movement in the following bar with a sense of greater passion. The Etude in E Major, op. 10, no. 3, also opens with a similar group of five and three bars, but different forces are at work:

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Bar 6, which should be a second or weak bar, has the weight of a downbeat, and crowding the whole second phrase into three bars creates an agitated contrast with the simpler opening. 'We can see that the module of four is generally constant with Chopin but that it is partly independent of the length of the phrase, which Chopin can vary with great suppleness. The opening of the Scherzo no.2 inB flat Minor, op. 31, shows a very sophisticated use of syncopation within the four-bar pattern:

or first bars of the group are placed at.5,9,13, 17,21, and 5 and 13 have powerful fortissimo accents but act almost as upbeats t<r the next bars, and the ties from 6 to 7 and 14 to 15 are essentially syncopations. Bar 17 is much weaker than 13; bar 21 has no accent at all, rnerely sustaining a tied note; and bar 25 commences as a void. Nevertheless, there is no sense of irregularity, and the larger four-bar rhythm is relentless. 'fhis makes possible the effect in bars 22 and 45, where a violent off-beat rlccent in a "weak" measure results in a double off-beat effect. It is evident that this syncopation requires a strict tempo; any expressive freedom can take place only within the four-bar group, but the first bar must always arrive with metronomic regularity, and bars 16 to 24 permit no freedom at all to be
2.5. Bars

'f

'he downbeats

completely intelligible. In the fourth scherzo in E Major, op. 54, what seems to be an irregular nine-bar phrase after a brilliant climax (bars 384-393) is in fact an absolutely strict carrying out of an eight-bar pattern:

270

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scen by his notation

How concerned Chopin was for the large-scale beat to be perceived can be of the end of the scherzo:

Ped"

Herethefirstbarsordownbeatsofthephrasesareat3S3)361"369'377'

Strong bars, and at 384 Chopin the downbeat of the phrase. Bars 384 and h;;;;g"" the phrase a'bar before ryrr.op"t.d; they anticipate the metrical accents and act as upbeats. ;az is not lengthened as ^;r This dramatic effect *ork, onty ir the pause in bar 383 to heave a long it so often is in concert, since most pianists find it convenient should be ,igh of r"lr"f after the uirtrro,lty of ba" 369 to 382' The temptation jg: h considerably more expressive if it sounds resisted, as the phrase 3g4 to phrase reaplike a syncop"tio., to the central beat. when this introductory middle once again by an arpeggio that begins within the

:ss' u,'a 393. Bafs 385.and 387 aretherefore

The scale, which must be played more or less as fast as one can, is still measured out by Chopin in four bars, each beginning with a note of the tonic triad.

Chopin's mastery comes from his ability to retain the four-bar grouping while varying the metrical significance of the bars. The opening of the Nocturne in G Minor, op.37, no. 1, reveals his ability to manipulate a commonplace
technique:

;;;r;, i; l, p?.."d.d
of

"

fo,rr-b"r group' arching over the systematic rhythm:

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L3

The first phrase seems to be over at bar 4, but is then extended and carried forcefully into what follows. Bar 5 appears to be the completion of this process,

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but then suddcnly with thc sccontl lrcat bcconrcs ir r'('rurrr,,l rlrc lirst lorrr brrrs, now more drarnatic and more expressive.'I'he ncw forr't.t,nrt.s lxrrtly frorn Chopin's ability to fuse the two playings of the theme into one, to make bar 5 both a resolving completion and a new beginning. Chopin's exquisite manipulation of the inner accents of a four-bar group can be demonstrated with extraordinary clarity in the central section of the B flat Minor Scherzo in a passage shortly after the one quoted earlier:

l'rrt. lr;rt 1',rorrp tlrt' ;l(r('nt,, .r( r('\'( r.,,'.1, witlr tlrt' relcrtsc ttrt thc first bar, the crrrplrrrsis orr tlrt'rlrirtl. (Wc toultl torrsitlcr-tltis wlrole passage as three four-bar t',r'()ul)s lirlkrwccl by two six.brrr gr()Lrps, but this does not alter the essential rlrytlrrrr of four bars.) ll'pcrlirrrned correctly, this passage has the effect of an cxprcssivc syncopation, a shift from a fully stable version to an unstable one
t<rrrrparable
llcetl-roven's

to the form observed in the ritmo di tre battute we found in Ninth Symphony. Few composers were capable of this craftsman-

',

--

ship.

lf we keep in mind this ability both to retain and to override the four-bar lhythm, we can understand the more complex of Chopin's experiments, like
tlre second nocturne of opus 37,inG major. This is one of Chopin's rare of a three-bar period:
uses

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.r1.r *-

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JJIJ_fJ
JJ

Here the same motif is used both for emphasis:

and for release:

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The emphasis is placed initially on the first bar of the four-bar groups, or the downbeat, the release on the third. This pattern is played three times. The fourth time, the third bar is also given the emphatic form, and in the next

274

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In these three-bar periods of bars 1,-1,2, the left and right hands are out of phase, the left being consistently a half bar ahead of the right. The left hand tegins a new period with bar 4 while the right hand ends its phrase (and this
process continues through bar L2, the left hand always ahead of the right). Bar 4 is therefore a new first bar and a fourth bar at the same time, and what is

implied is an overlapping system of four-bar groups so reduced to three. At the second half of bar 13, the pattern changes to an open four-bar phrase, which ends on bar 17, but a new four-bar pattern overlaps here starting on the second sixteenth note. An analysis may be fussy, but the result of Chopin's play of rhythmic structure is a fluid motion that enhances the barcarole character of this nocturne. This kind of mastery was denied to Schumann, but in his concern to make the four-bar structure interesting, he was forced into solutions that are as original as chopin,s, and perhaps more dramatic. The eighth piece of the
Dauidsbiindlertiinze is in seven-bar phrases:

I
with a wonderfully eccentric There is clearly a bar missing in these phrases, f 1) is at the same time both an answer effect. This is because bat 4(andbar a beginning io,fr. pr"..aing bar, in f","ittt with bar 2.(andwith bar 9l'and the end of the harmonic rhythm to of a new four_bar pt."ri1t", accelerates with his final bar, which the seventh bar. schumann underlines the eccentricity only do we feel that a bar is missing, is a one,beat bar in a two-beat metric. Not also disappeared' but-when the repeat b.git', "' it should-a beat has phrases plus one four-bar phrase extended This structure-three seven-bar byawritten.outritarilandointofiuebars-ithabeatloppedoffisunusualfor and in some
Even more typical' Schumann; what is typical is the extravagance'

'-?-.--

N'8

t
t

attempts to inflect the ways equall y ,*rr^u^g;*, is -schuma'i"'' f"qo""t emphasis on weak beats rhythm by obscuring ,f,. Jo*"Ututs with an insistent seventh piece of the or else with a continuous employment of rubato' The examples: Dauidsbi)nd'lertiinze provides one of the finest
Nicht schnell. Mil iiussers{ slnrhel F)mpfirrdung'

{ t

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The indicatiott ritenuto arrives even beforc tcttlp() ()r l):lsrr rlrytlrrrr lr:rs lrrttl rt chance to establish itself, and is repeated every two birrs.'l'hc,tbsctlce of att indication a telnpo is also typical of Schumann. It does llot mean that thc original tempo should not return, but it is evidently impossible to make clear 'What comes out to ih" litt"ner just where the tempo has been reestablished. most convincingly is a flexible movement in which the rhythm is continuously bent accordittg iothe caprice of the performer' on whom the coherence depends as well. In songs, the four-bar phrase can be ambiguously treated: the piano can add bars to the singer's fonr-tar phrase, and the extra bafs most often sound as if they were in a different rhythmic space, subordinate to the principal one. In Der Einsame (The Solitary Man) by Schubert, the vocal part is perfectly regular in sets of four half bars. The interruptions of the piano make it more complex' but the regularity is not genuinely upset:

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Nevertheless, the interruption of the accompaniment can be integrated with the vocal melody to form a unified phrase together as in Schubert's An die Musik (To Music):

Siugstimme.
wie
viel gruea

Pianoforte.

bem

wil- derKris lnstrickt, li-ger Ac-cord von dir, ta

Nacht,im spit er - wiirmten Heril,

ai*

s-lU il,fr

^it

"ur

- gi:iig-tim Siru rertraulich zu der

The first vocal phrase is four bars in length. The second phrase overlaps with the first and starts in the piano; three bars of voice continue the line to form a new four-bar version, more expressive and more complex, of the first phrase. S7ith greater intensity, the interruption of the piano part can appear to begin a new four-bar group, and then the return of the voice starts a new four-bar phrase of its own, half independent and half integrated with the initial piano line, as in "Der'Wegweiser" (The Signpost) from Winterreise:
M[ssig.

Singstinme.

di-r

"it,

i"h ririt turguig-tbm Sim ver - trau - lich zu

Pianoforte.

278

The Romantic Generation

-!vas

ver -

neiil' ich denn die

][re

ge,

wo die

audern

l,\-aldrer

gehn,

mir versteck-te Ste

ge durchver-ectureite Fel-sen

- htjha?-

su-che

ge durch ver - scbaei-tre-Fel- sen - hiilur, durch Fel - sen-hijhn?

There is no way to decide, from bars 1.0 tr> 14, whether we have a four-bar or a five-bar phrase: both have equal claims. (For anothef example of this impressive technique from Im Frl;hllng, see p. 62). Bars 15 to 19 ate a four-bar phtur. lengthened to five by a repetition of the third bar' The forrr-ba, phrase enlarged the time scale of music. In the newly systematic use developed ln the early nineteenth century, it turned short pieces into genuine miniatures, as if Chopin's Prelude in G Major were only seven bars not thirry (that is, seven times four plus one bar of introduction and io.rg

".rd one"baf of suspension).

It

gave

a larget

sense

of motion to long works and

altered the significance of the smaller details. Eventually this larger sense was to make potribl. the gigantic forms of the'wagnerian music dramas.