Romantic Period

Bruckner’s Fifth Symphony: An Awe-Inspiring Contrapuntal Edifice

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“Music is liquid architecture; architecture is frozen music,” said the eighteenth century German writer, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. Anton Bruckner’s Symphony No. 5 in B-flat Major may be the most architectural symphony ever written. Constructed with monumental building blocks which are assembled according to principles of balance, proportion, and repetition, its four movements add up to a majestic and soaring musical structure. It takes us on a gradual, time-altering procession which requires that …

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Beethoven’s “Razumovsky” Cycle: String Quartet No. 8 in E Minor, Op. 59, No. 2

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The revolutionary nature of Beethoven’s three Op. 59 “Razumovsky” String Quartets is documented in this excerpt from an 1807 review: Three new, very long and difficult Beethoven string quartets…are attracting the attention of all connoisseurs. The conception is profound and the construction excellent, but they are not easily comprehended. Written in 1806, six years after the composer’s initial Op. 18 set, the Op. 59 String Quartets elevated the genre to a cosmic …

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Puccini’s “La Bohème”: The Love Duet, “O Soave Fanciulla”

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The duet, O soave fanciulla (“O gentle maiden”) is heard in the closing moments of the first Act of Giacomo Puccini’s 1896 opera, La Bohème. It is in this moment that the struggling poet, Rodolfo, and the seamstress, Mimì, realize that they have fallen in love with one another. The opera’s love leitmotif emerges as they sing in unison, A! tu sol comandi, amor! The leitmotif is heard earlier in Act I in Rodolfo’s aria, Che gelida …

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Schumann’s Third Symphony, “Rhenish”: A Majestic Musical Portrait

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In 1850, Robert Schumann moved with his family to Düsseldorf to accept a position as music director of the city’s orchestra and chorus. The composer, who from birth had lived in Saxony, reveled in a new, picturesque landscape dominated by the majestic Rhine River. In her diary, Clara Schumann described a cruise down the river which revealed the Gothic splendor of the still unfinished Cologne Cathedral. She wrote, “We were enchanted…by the …

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Schumann’s Piano Trio No. 1 in D Minor, Op. 63: Passionate Romantic Currents

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From the opening bars of Robert Schumann’s Piano Trio No. 1, we are swept into a drama filled with soaring passion and turbulence. An expansive and restless melody emerges in the violin’s darkest register. It rises and falls, propelled by swift, ever-changing arpeggiating currents in the piano. Downbeats and phrase endings vanish amid swirling canonic counterpoint between the violin and the piano’s bass register. After reaching heroic and euphoric heights, the music …

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Chopin’s Nocturnes, Op. 27: Enharmonic Dreamscapes

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Frédéric Chopin’s Op. 27 Nocturnes inhabit a serene, sensuous, and melancholy dreamscape. The two pieces for solo piano, composed in 1836, are among twenty-one surviving Nocturnes written by Chopin. The form originated a generation earlier with the English composer-pianist, John Field (1782-1837). Chopin’s Nocturnes become magical and atmospheric “songs of the night.” They are bel canto arias without words, in which the piano is transformed into a singing instrument. They are harmonically …

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Tchaikovsky’s Sérénade Mélancolique: A Russian Lament

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In January of 1875, Tchaikovsky met the great violinist and pedagogue, Leopold Auer. Tchaikovsky, who at the time was putting the finishing touches on his First Piano Concerto, accepted Auer’s request for a piece for violin and orchestra. The result was the single-movement Sérénade mélancolique, Op. 26. Auer’s initial rejection of Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concerto led the composer to remove the dedication to Auer from both works. The first performance of the Sérénade …

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