Tchaikovsky’s Romeo and Juliet

Romeo and JulietShakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet has inspired composers from Berlioz to Prokofiev to David Diamond. One of this timeless tragedy’s most popular musical depictions was composed by the 28-year-old Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky (1840-1893). Tchaikovsky called the work an Overture-Fantasy, but it can also be considered a tone poem.

Let’s listen to a live performance with the London Symphony Orchestra conducted by Valery Gergiev. Consider how Tchaikovsky’s music captures the deep emotions at the heart of the story. We hear the character of noble Friar Laurence in the stately Russian Orthodox chorale in the opening. Do you hear anything foreboding in this opening music? In the ferocious fast passages which follow, listen to the way Tchaikovsky pits the woodwinds against the strings in back and forth exchanges. Also notice the cymbal crashes depicting a sword fight (6:30).

One powerful element of the piece is Tchaikovsky’s ability to build and sustain great anticipation. In the passage following 7:01 the resolution we expect is delayed. When the music slips into the familiar “love theme”, we find ourselves in D-flat major, a world away from the previous tumult.

At 11:17 notice the opening chorale theme in the horns (and later the trumpets) as the development section begins. At 14:21 listen to the unrelenting, sustained pedal tone in the base instruments and the increasing tension which results. Pay attention to how this tension resolves. Consider how the final passage from 18:33 to the end captures the essence of the drama. What feelings do the final B major chords evoke?

Listen to Tchaikovsky’s Romeo and Juliet a few times and come back tomorrow for more music relating to Valentine’s Day.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZxOtYNf-eWE

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[quote]My bounty is as boundless as the sea, My love as deep; the more I give to thee, The more I have, for both are infinite.[/quote]

[quote]“See how she leans her cheek upon her hand. O, that I were a glove upon that hand That I might touch that cheek!” [/quote]

[quote]O teach me how I should forget to think…[/quote]

-William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet

Liszt’s Faust Symphony

Eugene Delacroix's painting, "Faust and Mephistopheles"
“Faust and Mephistopheles” by Eugene Delacroix

Forget Elvis. Franz Liszt (1811-1886) was the world’s first rock star. As a virtuoso pianist, Liszt toured Europe performing flashy and dazzling compositions such as the famous Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2. Following in the footsteps of Niccolò Paganini, Liszt helped to usher in the age of the romantic superstar concert artist. An atmosphere of almost supernatural ecstasy surrounded Liszt’s concerts. The hysteria of his fans, which included reports of women fainting and collecting locks of his hair, was known as Lisztomania. In 2008 the Alternative rock band Phoenix released this song and music video with references to Liszt’s rock star magnetism.

Even more significant and enduring was Franz Liszt’s contribution as one of the most innovative composers of the nineteenth century. His influence can be heard in Wagner, Mahler and beyond. He stretched tonality, creating atmospheric music which still sounds shocking and new.

Franz Liszt
Franz Liszt in 1858

Inspired by Goethe’s Faust drama, Franz Liszt wrote A Faust Symphony in Three Character Sketches in 1854. Hector Berlioz had just composed La Damnation de Faust which he dedicated to Liszt. Liszt returned the favor by dedicating his symphony to Berlioz. While Berlioz offered an operatic re-telling of the drama, Liszt’s music is a psychological exploration of the characters of Faust, Gretchen and Mephistopheles. Liszt developed a compositional technique known as thematic transformation in which a musical idea develops throughout the composition by undergoing various changes. Wagner used this technique in his operas, assigning each character a leitmotif. Thematic transformation also occurs throughout John Williams’s Star Wars film scores.

[typography font=”Cantarell” size=”28″ size_format=”px”]Faust[/typography]

Let’s start off by listening to the first movement of the Faust Symphony. Consider how the music evokes the character of Faust, from his gloomy daydreams, to his insatiable thirst for knowledge, to his immense appetite for the pleasures of life. At times, the music may seem schizophrenic, alternating between intense excitement and quiet melancholy. Pay attention to the haunting opening motive which uses all twelve notes of the chromatic scale. What atmosphere does this opening music create? Notice how this motive returns in various guises throughout the movement (6:13, 10:40, 15:59 and 25:58 for example).

Here is a really exciting 1960 studio recording by Leonard Bernstein and the New York Philharmonic:

[ordered_list style=”decimal”]

  1. Faust 0:00
  2. Gretchen 27:29
  3. Mephistopheles 48:19
  4. Final Chorus 1:04:12

[/ordered_list]

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Did the opening motive make you feel lost, as if you were wandering through a slightly unsettling dream? The symphony is in C minor, but this motive’s chromaticism makes it impossible to get a sense of any key. It anticipates the twentieth century twelve tone music of Schoenberg, Berg and others. Maybe you also heard echoes of Wagner’s Tristan and Isolde (0:30-0:37) or Mahler’s symphonies (the stopped horns at 13:22), or a Bernard Herrmann film score (17:06).

In the first analysis of the Faust Symphony (from 1862), Richard Pohl suggests that the motives of first movement relate to “Passion, Pride, Longing, Triumph and Love.” (See the Introduction to the Dover score).

For me there are many aspects of this seldom heard piece which I find exciting: the ferocious string passages, the sudden and transformative modulation to C major at 20:13, Liszt’s use of relatively new additions to the orchestra such as harp, trombones and tuba. There are soaring, heroic moments like 11:44 (and 24:38 in the recapitulation) where trombones add a completely new dimension to the sound. At 25:06 the prominent use of trombones also evokes the instrument’s supernatural connotations. In the final bars of the movement there is something ominous about the descending and ascending chromatic line (25:58).

[typography font=”Cantarell” size=”28″ size_format=”px”]Gretchen[/typography]

The second movement, in A-flat major, captures the innocence of Gretchen. Gradually Faust’s themes from the first movement creep in (beginning at 36:07) and eventually merge into a love duet.  In the introduction of the Dover edition of the score, Dr. Alan Walker writes:

[quote]The gentle simplicity of both Gretchen themes belies the fact that they will later become transformed into the “Redemption” motifs in the choral setting of the “Chorus Mysticus” [the final movement].[/quote]

[typography font=”Cantarell” size=”28″ size_format=”px”] Mephistopheles[/typography]

Mephistopheles, or Satan, represents “the spirit of negation”, destruction rather than creation. In the third movement Liszt does not give Mephistopheles his own motives. Instead we hear Faust’s motives from the first movement mocked, caricatured and ultimately torn apart. Only the innocent Gretchen can withstand Mephistopheles’s power. Her themes remain intact (56:38), as we heard them in the second movement.

At the end of the third movement, notice the stunning falling chromatic harmonic sequence (beginning after 1:02:07). In the final measures Liszt again uses the solemn supernatural color of the trombones (1:03:25).

[typography font=”Cantarell” size=”28″ size_format=”px”]Final Chorus[/typography]

Three years after completing the first three movements, Liszt added the climactic Final Chorus for male chorus. In the final measures, the entrance of the organ creates a new, expanded and transcendent sound world. This anticipates Mahler’s use of organ in the Second and Eighth Symphonies. The text is taken from Goethe’s Faust:

[quote]Everything transitory
is only an allegory;
what could not be achieved
here comes to pass;
what no one could describe,
is here accomplished;
the Eternal Feminine
draws us aloft.[/quote]

Summer Nights with Berlioz

Lake Ähtärinjärvi at summer night

French composer Hector Berlioz was an innovator and a revolutionary. He heard strange, shocking new music which had never before been imagined. Berlioz’s song cycle Les nuits d’été (Summer Nights), written in 1841 is deeply psychological and infused with the ideals of Romanticism. This is music of hallucination, at times venturing into the eerie and the supernatural. It plays with our sense of time, sometimes seeming static and unsure, as if wandering through a dream. At other times (as in the fifth song) the music restlessly searches for an allusive goal, remaining quietly apprehensive, unsettled and ghostly. At moments it becomes schizophrenic, taking sudden and unexpected melodic and harmonic turns. 

Summer Nights is a setting of six poems by Theophile Gautier. As you listen, consider how Berlioz captures the atmosphere of each poem through music. Pay attention to the combination of instruments he uses. What musical colors are created and how do these colors make us feel the drama of the text? Can you hear a shadowy, veiled, angelic form passing a ray of light in a dark cemetery in the fifth song? (25:08-25:49) The final chord of this passage is so dissonant that it would not be out of place in the sound world of the twentieth century. Notice the sweeping violin passages evoking a “maritime breeze” in the final song.

Here it is performed by mezzo-soprano Susan Graham with Pierre Boulez conducting the Chicago Symphony:

Les nuits d’été (Summer Nights), Op. 7…Hector Berlioz (1803-1869)

[ordered_list style=”decimal”]

  1. Villanelle 
  2. Le spectre de la rose 
  3. Sur les lagunes 
  4. Absence 
  5. Au cimetière 
  6. L’île inconnue 

[/ordered_list]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mcHOXF6VqvM

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Here is more historical background on Summer Nights and Berlioz’s life. Leave a comment in the thread below and share your thoughts on this song cycle. What did you find striking about the music? What are your favorite moments?