Course Information

Music. Learn, enjoy, appreciate.

As the final part of this series on music in Europe in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries begins, we are already several years into the new century, where tensions between the major powers – Germany, Austria, France, Russia and Britain – continue to mount as all five nations jostle for supremacy. While on the surface, events imply a healthy rivalry rather than overt aggression, political undercurrents suggest that Europe may be sitting on a powder keg.

Musically speaking, the situation remains ‘harmonious’, though for some time composers have been employing more overtly ‘nationalist’ material in their compositions. In the relevant area of folk music, a new wax-cylinder recording device facilitates the collection of this highly authentic but fast-disappearing resource. Several composers choose to incorporate folk song into their own music, with Bartók and Kodály in Hungary, and Holst and Vaughan Williams in England, leading the way.

The German school of music is led now by two near contemporaries, Richard Strauss and Gustav Mahler. Although Strauss’s Elektra tempts him to the very edge of atonality, his next opera, the hugely successful Der Rosenkavalier, consciously retreats to a more voluptuous, late-Romantic idiom.

Meanwhile, Mahler’s symphonies grow in size and length, culminating in his so-called ‘Symphony of a Thousand’. Matching it in size and late-Romantic ardour is the cantata Gurrelieder by Mahler’s protégé Arnold Schönberg, who is also, quite separately, exploring the possibilities of composing purely atonal music, a project Mahler actively supports. We also track Mahler’s strategic late move from Vienna to New York, where he conducts at the Metropolitan Opera, before transferring to the New York Philharmonic Orchestra, although by now his health is in serious decline.

Having reduced the competition from his near contemporaries to more-or-less zero, Puccini now reigns supreme in the Italian School, with his La fanciulla del West premiering in New York – the Met’s first world premiere. At the same time, however, Puccini’s private life comes under almost intolerable strain in tragic circumstances.

In the French school, Maurice Ravel increasingly makes his mark with works such as the orchestral Rapsodie espagnole (referencing his Basque heritage), and his challenging piano suite Gaspard de la nuit. At this time, Ralph Vaughan Williams undertakes a three-month period of study with the French composer in Paris.

In England, Elgar composes his First and Second Symphonies, and Vaughan Williams conducts the first performances of his Fantasia on a Theme of Thomas Tallis and his Sea Symphony (No. 1). Meanwhile, in Finland, Sibelius conducts the first performances of his Third and Fourth Symphonies, and in Denmark, Carl Nielsen completes his Sinfonia espansiva (No. 3).

In Russia, Rachmaninov composes his Third Piano Concerto – which he later premieres in New York – while Alexander Scriabin composes two single-movement works: the purely-orchestral Poem of Ecstasy, and Prometheus, the Poem of Fire, the latter involving a huge orchestra with an expanded percussion section and optional chorus, while also adding a revolutionary ‘keyboard of light’, providing coloured lighting effects for the first time in a concert work.

Finally, the brilliant Russian impresario Sergei Diaghilev launches an entirely new venture in Paris with his Ballets Russes company, commissioning from the young Igor Stravinsky – a pupil of Rimsky-Korsakov – three ballet scores that will change the course of ballet history, namely Firebird, Petrushka and The Rite of Spring.

Aims

The aims of this course are to:

• continue to assemble a broad overview of the major strands of European classical music as we move forward into the early years of the twentieth century
• confirm Richard Strauss and Gustav Mahler as the new leaders of the German School: the former, with his two hugely contrasted middle-period operatic masterpieces, Elektra and Der Rosenkavalier; and the latter, extending his remarkable sequence of late-period symphonies, while pausing to add the quasi-valedictory orchestral song cycle, Das Lied von der Erde
• keep a watchful eye on the young Arnold Schönberg – and his pupils Alban Berg and Anton Webern – as they experiment with atonality in their small-scale chamber music, while Schönberg also assembles the cutting-edge Sprechstimme entertainment piece, Pierrot lunaire
• observe that, immediately following a period overflowing with Italian opera premieres, Giacomo Puccini manages to compose only one new work during this period – La fanciulla del West – though that work, with its identifiably ‘New-World’ title, has the honour of becoming the first world premiere at New York’s Metropolitan Opera
• observe that the French school is similarly under-represented during this period, although Jules Massenet has a late success with his Don Quichotte at the Opéra de Monte-Carlo, and Maurice Ravel is considered an important enough new voice for the young Ralph Vaughan Williams to undertake a period of study with him in Paris
• note that Edward Elgar finally joins the ranks of the great symphonists, adding two outstanding examples to the genre. He joins Jean Sibelius, who contributes his Third and Fourth Symphonies, while the Dane Carl Nielsen composes an exuberant third symphony, the Sinfonia espansiva
• compare and contrast the early careers of Sergei Rachmaninov and Alexander Scriabin, the former continuing to favour an extravagant late-Romantic approach, while the latter experiments with a ‘modernist’ but not atonal style in his sequence of tautly constructed late piano sonatas (Nos. 5-10), while also avidly absorbing the teachings of Theosophy and equivalent mystical revelations
• observe the young Igor Stravinsky taking Paris by storm with three highly contrasted ballets – Firebird, Petrushka and The Rite of Spring – all three commissioned by the new impresario Sergei Diaghilev for his newly-formed Ballets Russes company, made up almost exclusively of Russian dancers, choreographers and designers
• acknowledge the extraordinary contribution made by numerous composers – most notably Bartók, Kodály, Vaughan Williams and Holst – throughout this period, to record for posterity the rapidly disappearing folk song material of their respective lands.

Outcomes

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

• understand why Richard Strauss pulls back from the near-atonal atmosphere of the Klytemnästra scenes in Elektra, fearing, no doubt, that his audiences will not be willing to follow him any further in that direction. With his fifth opera, Der Rosenkavalier, he reassures them from the opening bars, which engulf the listener in a gorgeously sensuous late-Romantic musical idiom – both wonderfully singable and highly memorable – helping to guarantee the opera’s triumphal progress across Europe and beyond, while providing him with an ongoing and generous income
• appreciate how Mahler’s life and music continue to intertwine and interact, so that the music seems to bequeath us a remarkably revealing and apparently ‘truthful’ portrait of the man himself. From the crisis year of 1907 – which sees the death of his elder daughter and a diagnosis for himself of a serious heart condition – the story of his life, especially as shared with his much younger wife Alma, becomes ever more complicated and confronting, while the music he composes during this final, deeply challenging period continues to achieve ever-greater heights
• better understand what Arnold Schönberg and his pupils, Alban Berg and Anton Webern, are trying to achieve by attempting to overturn the deeply entrenched methods of composition established over the previous two hundred years
• acknowledge the longevity and tenacity of the symphonic form in particular, as two relative newcomers – Edward Elgar and Sergei Rachmaninov – compose fine new symphonies, while Jean Sibelius and Carl Nielsen add several more to their tally
• appreciate the attraction that the great American cities – especially New York, Boston, Philadelphia and Chicago, all of which boast outstanding orchestras – hold for European composers, who are able to make a great deal of money as touring composer/conductors, while also often introducing newly-composed works written specially for the occasion
• comprehend the extraordinary impact of Sergei Diaghilev and his Ballets Russes company – with its sensational Russian dancers, choreographers and designers – on European culture in general in the years leading up to the cataclysm.

Content

• Strauss’s Elektra and Der Rosenkavalier
• Mahler’s Symphonies 7-9 and Das Lied von der Erde
• Schönberg’s Chamber Symphony No.1, various chamber music pieces and Pierrot lunaire
• Puccini’s La fanciulla del West
• Rachmaninov’s Piano Concerto No.3, and Scriabin’s Prometheus and late piano sonatas
• Sibelius’s Symphony No.3 and Nielsen’s Sinfonia espansiva
• Elgar’s Symphonies Nos1 & 2, and Vaughan Williams’s Sea Symphony (No.1) and his folksong-inspired Norfolk Rhapsody
• Ravel’s Rapsodie espagnole and his piano suite Gaspard de la nuit
• Vaughan Williams’s Fantasia on a Theme of Thomas Tallis and song cycle On Wenlock Edge, both following on from his period of study with Ravel
• Stravinsky’ three ballet scores for Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes, as well as Debussy’s Jeux and Ravel’s Daphnis et Chloé

Intended audience

This course should appeal to a wide range of lovers of music of the late Romantic period.

Prerequisites

None

Delivery style

Lecture style, face-to-face, with musical excerpts played on CD.

Materials

A weekly worksheet with comprehensive synopses of material being presented.

Recommended reading

Historical background

Eric Hobsbawm, The Age of Empire: 1875-1914, (1987) Abacus 1994

William Mulligan, The Origins of the First World War, Cambridge UP 2017

Composer biographies

Anderson, R., 1994. Elgar. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Budden, J., 2002. Puccini. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Day, J., 1998. Vaughan Williams. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Griffiths, P., 1992. Stravinsky. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Jensen, E.F., 2014. Debussy. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Kennedy, M., 2000. Mahler. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Kennedy, M., 1999. Richard Strauss: Man, Musician, Enigma. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Layton, R., 1992. Sibelius. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Norris, G., 2001. Rachmaninov. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Other reading

Blom, P., 2008. The Vertigo Years: Change and Culture in the West, 1900–1914. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson.

Brandstatter, C. (ed.), 2006. Vienna 1900: Art, Life, and Culture. New York: Vendome.

Downes, S., 2010. Music and Decadence in European Modernism: The Case of Central and Eastern Europe. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Frisch, W., 2005. German Modernism: Music and the Arts. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Gaughan, M.I., 2007. German Art 1907–1937: Modernism and Modernisation. Oxford: Peter Lang.

Marshall, G. (ed.), 2007. The Cambridge Companion to the Fin de Siècle. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.