Music of the Fin de Siècle Course: 1877-1883

Music. Learn, enjoy, appreciate.

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We are now delivering courses online and in-person. Please check the delivery format of each class before enrolling.

Please note that course materials (excluding prescribed texts) are shared electronically within 48 hours of course commencement. Printing is not available.

In the first part of this new series on music in Europe in the late Nineteenth Century, we weave together the various nationalist strands of orchestral and operatic music composed in this period, which is referred to as the Fin de Siècle. 

We note how the rising young Czech composer Dvorak is influenced by the music of his German mentor Brahms, and how Tchaikovsky also chooses to embrace the familiar forms of contemporary European music. By contrast, the radical Russian group of composers – the so-called ‘Mighty Five’, which includes Borodin and Mussorgsky – vary wildly, even amongst themselves, about how and what a composer should compose. 

During these years, the French school – led by Saint-Saëns, Delibes and Massenet – recovers quickly from the aftermath of the Franco-Prussian War; while the Italian school experiences something of a hiatus following Verdi’s two seemingly valedictory works, Aida and the Requiem. 

After the artistically triumphant, but financially disastrous first production of his epic Ring cycle at Bayreuth, Wagner (having failed to attract the support of the new German Emperor) is forced again to rely on the financial assistance of his long-suffering patron King Ludwig. Meanwhile, he begins work on his final masterpiece, Parsifal, completing it only months before his death in February 1883. 

Aims

The aims of this course are to:

• assemble a comprehensive survey of the five major strands of European classical music – German, French, Italian, Russian and Czech – at the beginning of the tumultuous period known as the Fin de Siècle 
• recognise Brahms’s premier position in the world of purely orchestral German Romantic music, with the addition in this period of two new symphonies and the great violin concerto to his list of masterworks 
• explore Brahm’s support of the up-and-coming Czech composer, Dvorak, who is inspired by and deeply grateful for Brahms’s advocacy and encouragement 
• address the complex issue of the two divergent Russian schools of thought concerning the art of composition: either to espouse the conservatorium-trained approach of Tchaikovsky, who works exclusively with accepted European musical models; or to follow in the footsteps of Liszt, with symphonic poems and other more adventurous (but perhaps less reliable) styles and forms, favoured by the ‘Mighty Five’ 
• assess the musical scene in Third-Republic Paris, six years after the ravages of the Franco-Prussian War and the horrors of the ‘Paris Commune’ which ensued 
• attempt to explain the long hiatus in Verdi’s output following the sensational international success of the Requiem, and to suggest why no other Italian composer stepped into the breach 
• trace the financially challenged final years of Wagner’s life, and to evaluate his revolutionary achievement in the field of opera and music drama.

Outcomes

By the end of this course, you should be able to:

• appreciate the significance of Brahms’s impressive output in this period, and assess the impact of his championing of Dvorak on the latter’s burgeoning career 
• better understand the complex emotional interplay between life and music in Tchaikovsky’s troubled ‘middle period’, especially concerning his failed marriage, the Fourth Symphony, and his Pushkin masterpiece, Evgeny Onegin 
• partly unravel the tangled web of personal and musical relationships within the tightly-knit ‘Mighty Five’ group of Russian composers – featuring, during this period, Borodin’s chaotic attempts to complete Prince Igor and Mussorgsky’s irresolution concerning his final opera Khovanshchina 
• evaluate the success or failure of the operas of Saint-Saëns, Delibes and the young Massenet during this somewhat transitional period, while acknowledging the posthumous triumph of Offenbach’s much-delayed Les Contes d’Hoffmann at the Opéra-Comique 
• identify the personal reasons for the hiatus in Verdi’s output between the Requiem in 1874 and the huge success of the revised Simon Boccanegra in 1881 
• appreciate and begin to evaluate the massive impact of Wagner’s completed oeuvre on European music of the time.

Content

• Brahms’s Second and Third Symphonies, and the Violin Concerto for Joseph Joachim
• Dvorak’s Slavonic Dances and Sixth Symphony
• Opening of new Czech National Theatre in Prague with premiere of Smetana’s Libuše
• Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake, Fourth Symphony and opera Evgeny Onegin, and his failed marriage
• Borodin’s Second Symphony, and his symphonic poem In the Steppes of Central Asia, dedicated to Liszt
• Mussorgsky’s unfinished opera Khovanshchina, and his early death in St Petersburg
• Premiere of Saint-Saëns’s Samson et Dalila in Weimar, conducted by Liszt
• Premieres of Massenet’s Le Roi de Lahore at the new Paris Opéra, and Hérodiade at the Théâtre de la Monnaie in Brussels
• Posthumous premiere of Offenbach’s Les Contes d’Hoffmann, and premiere of Delibes’ Lakmé at the Opéra-Comique
• Premiere of revised version of Verdi’s Simon Boccanegra at La Scala
• Founding of the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra and Amsterdam’s Concertgebouw Orchestra
• Premiere of Wagner’s Parsifal at the Second Bayreuth Festival, and the death of Wagner in Venice

Intended audience

This course would appeal to a wide variety of music lovers.

Prerequisites

None

Delivery style

Presented as a series of informal, face-to-face lectures, illustrated with musical excerpts played on CD.

Materials

A weekly worksheet with a comprehensive synopsis of material being presented is provided.