Music History 220 Lecture Notes: UBC Winter 2016-2017 Term 1

Weeks 2 and 3

Notes: THIS IS NOT A SUBSTITUTE FOR DOING THE READINGS AND ATTENDING
CLASS. Treat this as supplemental to what you’re already doing (and as my way of studying).
If you have something you would like me to include in the notes, please tell me, such as
more detailed analysis on pieces, or focussing on something else entirely. I do like getting
advice.

September 9, 2016 (Tues)

Beethoven: Day One pg. 563-577

 Brief review of the syllabus

 What are tutorials (not explained very well)
 Don’t forget your iClicker, even if he always forgets about them

The 19th Century (1800s)

 The idea of ‘Music History’ as something to be recorded develops
 Beethoven was the first composer to be historically important in his lifetime
 Historical consciousness becomes a key part of identities, personal and nationa;
o This is important to music – influences composition, performance, and
memory of music
 Composer gradually becomes the most important part of a piece
 Performers are not the ends of the composition, but the means of executing
composers’ intent (as opposed to Mozart writing for divas, singers had to figure out
how to do what the composer wanted)
 Audiences begin to attend concerts performing historical music
o Musical canon—music that is recognised as historically important
o Before, music lasted maybe a generation before being forgotten (Bach,
Machaut)
o Now a musical repertory of historical music forms in conjunction with old
music
o In the modern world, old music is performed almost to the exclusion of all else
by major orchestras
 This is the logical extreme of this viewpoint

Beethoven
 Who creates music history?
o The composer? The audience? The scholars?
 o Reception history—the audience’s response to the music. They attend concerts
of the music they want to hear, and listen to it to grant it meaning. This
meaning changes over time
 Is Beethoven the object or subject of history? In different words, did he become
history, or did he intentionally make himself history?
 Beethoven lives at a crossings of many cultural and political shifts in society
o The perfect guy at the perfect time
 We know how he composed, because his sketches for pieces were left behind for
study—first composer we have this kind of history for
 Early compositions: piano sonatas, and then a shift to quartets (where Haydn was
most famous)
 Life’s context:
o Worked in Vienna: “Received the spirit of Mozart from the hands of Haydn”
(no pressure)
o Studied with Haydn, and more importantly, learnt from many obscure
composers in the city
o Studied counterpoint, text-setting, and other older traditions
o A very different Vienna from Mozart’s:
 Mozart’s: ‘enlightened’ monarchy, trying to improve society by
patronising the arts
 Beethoven’s: post-French revolution, monarchies are more
conservative, Vienna and France at war, Napoleon is happening
 The Enlightenment has been radicalised
o Beethoven was part of the Enlightenment tradition, particularly Kant’s
philosophy
o Wars have an influence on patronage
 Great families contributing to war effort
 Less money to patronise the arts (many did not replace their court
musicians)
 Beethoven made money with:
o Private and public concerts (like Mozart)
o Composition by commission
o Publication of complete musical scores, which had never been done before
 Beethoven never became a major operatic composer the way Mozart did, Fidelio
failed twice before succeeding after edits
 Beethoven published major symphonies in full score format for study
 Major patrons: Archduke Rudolph of Habsburg, Prince von Lobkowitz (who
Symphonies 3, 5, and 6 were dedicated to) and Prince Ferdinand von Kinsky
o Dedicated Beethoven a lifelong salary to ensure he stayed in Vienna
o Composer is paid to do whatever he wants
 Music sounded crazy to contemporaries
  Listeners found it difficult rather than enjoyable/easy to listen to

Beethoven’s Philosophy and Aesthetics

 Kant: the idea of the sublime (like in the Creation oratorio
 Hegel
 These two philosophers were the gospels of intellectuals around 1800
 Beethoven may not have read them, but they must have influenced him
 Kant:
o Feelings are an outward process by the individual, influenced by the world
o Individuality comes with revolution
o Composers as the creative minds expressing emotions to the listener
 Beethoven created the idea of pieces being biographical for the
composer
 Hegel:
o Human consciousness as a struggle to a resolution
o A process of opposition in which new thoughts and ideas are synthesised
o Knowledge is the process of thesis and antithesis competing for dominance
o Beethoven is influenced, expands the concept of the development in a
symphony
o Hegel’s ideas are applied to history: it is both linear and dialectic in that it
must always move forward, but is a staging ground for the continuous
competition of ideas
 Heavy on the ideal of Progress
o Historical events that don’t fit this idea of a linear progression are abandoned
for the narrative—popular music, opera, any music that is not ‘intellectual’

Beethoven as the Hero

 Due to his circumstances, Beethoven becomes the prototypical 19th century artist
 Hard to distinguish truth from creative expansion in Beethoven’s biographies – he
was idealised in his life
 Beethoven complicates this with his own affectations—deafness combined with
isolation feed the narrative that he is a struggling ‘hero’ fighting to keep going
o His music is read as autobiographical
o He appeared to conceive his life this way in the Heiligenstadt Testament
(1802)
o He is idealised as the struggling hero of Hegel’s philosophy
o Composer vs hearing loss who succeeds in the battle and continues composing
 Titanism: Beethoven as an individual carrying the burden of his defeats, but still
chooses to face his destiny
 Quotes from some guy called Burnham: “Self-conscious hero,” “all-embracing
concepts of self”. He is conscious of his fate but continues to work in a quest for
 personal freedom or destiny—Beethoven feels like he must keep working, but must
overcome his struggles to do that (I may vomit)
 The myth-making process around Beethoven is tied to the bourgeois idea of the self-
made man who is driven to complete his purpose in life (against the ancient régime)

Beethoven’s deafness in Romantic Imagination

 He was in a state of enforced social isolation—interpreted by the public as artistic
asceticism (the start of the idea that the artist must be a tortured social pariah)
 Dialectic opposition to artistic ambition, a deaf man who composes (other examples: a
blind painter or writer, a limbless acrobat, stuff like that)
 Overcoming of a struggle resulting in ‘heroic’ determination to keep pursuing creative
career in spite of disability (I have heard this narrative 900 times and it’s still as
boring as ever)

Beethoven’s Symphony No. 3 Eroica, First Movement (NAWM 126), pg. 303
 Originally “Symphony named for Bonaparte”
 Who is the hero in the Eroica?
o According to the original title, it’s Napoleon
 Chronology of the composition
o 1801: sketches of the first three movements
o 1803: intense work, almost entirely composed in a single summer
o May 1804: Napoleon crowns himself Emperor
o June 1804: initial private performance for Prince Lobkowitz, in a small room
in his palace
o April 1805: first public performance
o November 1805: Napoleon occupies Vienna
o October 1806: published score – dedicated to Prince Lobkowitz
 Hero may be Lobkowitz or Beethoven himself
o No mention of Napoleon at publication
 Symphony may be removed from historical context entirely, and becomes a
symphony about the idea of the hero
 The Creatures of Prometheus (1801)
o Majorly successful ballet in Vienna—particularly the finale
o Theme is reused by Beethoven twice
 A set of contredanses at the end of 1801
 The finale of the Eroica, part of the theme variations
o Why choose to reuse it here?
 Promethus: a Titan who defied Zeus to give fire to humans and was
punished
 A symbol of civilisation
 o Plot of the ballet: Prometheus creates man and woman, who create art and
music of themselves (as opposed to the Muses inspiring them) and enter
Parnassus to bring music to the gods
o A celebration of the power of music
o Hero who has a mission and succeeds in spite of punishment (Prometheus)
 Prometheus/civilisation/creativity may be the hero in Eroica
o People are the source of creativity
 Hero may be art/the artist, Beethoven or otherwise
o Labour of mind, struggle with limitation
 This connection sounds tenuous to me but sure he’s the professor
 How is heroism constructed musically?
o Initial pastoral theme in an unusual triple meter, develops into a fanfare type
thing
o Giant blasts of sound at the beginning to set the tone
o Epic symphony—longest up to the time
o Dimensions play with the listener’s temporal experience
 Hard to take shape and be organised
o Can be labourious to listen to
 Note in the original score: perform at the beginning of a concert or the
audience will tire by the end
o Collapses boundaries between stable/unstable formal areas in the sonata form
 Right after the theme is introduced, there is chromaticism (C# in mm.
6)
 Creates harmonic interest, destabilises E-flat major
 New tonic way too early, but not really
 Beethoven never leaves a chance for the listener to breathe and resolve
 Main theme is immediately passed around the orchestra, and chromaticism gets
played with as the conclusion to the phrase
 In development, the theme is embellished with a counterpoint while it is buried deep
in the texture—the ‘new theme’ is focussed on
o This new theme is really counterpoint to the main theme
 Tonal and metric ambiguity (see above)

September 15, 2016 (Thurs)

Beethoven continued, pg. 577-585

More discussion of Eroica:

 manipulation of temporal experience and periodic construction
o music of epic length—a weird experience for audiences at the time
o harmonic instability in unusual places
o plays with the main theme a lot
  tonal and metric ambiguity
o the C# at the beginning starts to shift the key, but it never goes anywhere
o triple meter becomes duple at various points (lots of hemiola) creating a
destabilised meter
 It all sounds pretty ordinary now, but it was super weird at the time
 ‘propelling’ bass composition instead of clear melodic sections that drive the bass
o The harmony is super important—there is no single line carrying the melody
o Themes throughout are variations of how to break up a triad
o Bass in earlier music was in a supporting roll, now it is absolutely integral to
the sensibility of the music
o Bass line is composed first
 Developing dynamism
o Use of motifs (generative cells) instead of full-fledged themes
 Think the opening of Beethoven’s fifth
o Rhythmic ‘obsessiveness’
 Rhythm rules as the primary element of the music
 Few notes that get played with, it’s all about the musical cells being
broken down
o Apparent self-determination of musical material
 Feeling that the music builds itself up as it goes on
 Begins with very small elements, which develop into the entire
movement or symphony
 Inevitability of the music, rather than immediate fulfillment of music
 Displays musical process rather than presenting completed musical
objects
 The music is ‘at work’
 Presents bare material at the beginning (like in 5) and builds up to
returning to it as the main theme much later

Beethoven, Piano Sonata, Pathétique, first movement (NAWM 125), pg 293

 Where Beethoven starts working with textures and themes
 Unusual slow introduction to a sonata—more like a symphony
 Dark pathos, affecting introduction
 Like a fantasia—lots of showy notes, loose metrical flow, improvisatory style
o Beethoven was a great improviser when he could perform
 Returns to introduction several times throughout movement, and it eventually is
absorbed into the rest of the music
o Some fast passages also evoke the showy parts of the introduction
 ‘rhythmic obsessiveness’ in the left hand
 Many sforzando dynamic jumps to accentuate moments
 Lots of syncopation—unsettled rhythm
  Introduces second theme in the relative minor—plays with the stormy/affective
component—also structurally sound, the recap may be just a transposition
 Theme doesn’t change much at all
 Return of the virtuosic passages at the beginning near the end
 The movement is united and coherent
o Pieces have cyclic form—elements return throughout many sections of a piece
o Later works unite several movements (Symphony 5)
o Rhythmic profile is more important than the notes
 Sense of triumph and grandiosity is part of the fame

Late Style
 He skipped the Romantic period and jumped straight to avant-garde music
 Music becomes extremely experimental
o Studying what he can do with music
o Not about how it sounds, but what can be done with it
 Bach thought in a similar way by that time of his life
 Beethoven withdrew even further from society after his only opera
o Hearing was almost totally gone
 Ill health and family problems, especially with a nephew
 With the final victory over Napoleon, Austrians begin to have an interest in opera
again—now more about private capital to spend on tickets, rather than aristocratic
patronage
o No longer the money/space for large-scale instrumental music in among the
opera
 Beethoven’s audience is small groups of connoisseurs rather than the wider public
 ‘Erodes’ old Classical forms until they are almost unrecognisable
 Everything in the music is traditional, but put together in an unprecedented form
 Experimental, esoteric musical language
o Most people have trouble understanding it
 Unity provided through a higher degree of continuity
o Movements played attaca with no interruption
o Song cycle—collection of songs performed without interruption to form a
whole rather than discrete unities (first song cycle: An die ferne Geliebte,
1816) (compare Lemonade, something like a song cycle, to 25)
 Music ‘for the mind’—meant to be read in score format rather than simply listened to
o Pieces published in score format as well as part format

Beethoven, String Quartet in C# Minor, first and second movements (NAWM 127), pg. 343
 7 movements that bear little resemblance to a formulaic quartet
 Opens with an fugue, unusual for the form—counterpoint was meant for sacred music
 Second movement sounds like the finale of a quartet
  Very odd fugue, not at all Baroque
 Fugue subject is for notes ending with a sforzando—no closure
 Answer is in subdominant after four opening statements of the subject
 Unusual and complex harmonic trajectory that summarises the keys of the quartet: C#
minor, E major, G# minor, B major, A major, D major, C# minor
o no attempt at normal modulation practice
o large-scale connections to the other movements
 final statement of the subject is in augmentation, like in Renaissance music
 influence looks forward to the 20th century

September 20, 2016 (Tues)

Italian Opera, pg. 587-593 and 653-666 (don’t worry, we’ll be back for the pages in between)

One of the term’s tutorials will involve writing a concert review for a concert you attend

Opera! Textbook is by genre, but the course is organised chronologically

This is what went down in opera right after Beethoven happened

Rossini opera clip, act finale

 nonsensical lyrics, chaotic confusion, expressing feelings of characters
 amusing, confusing song and staging
 the music is conditional on a particular dramatic situation
 we’re looking at what happens in Italian opera from both musical and dramatic
perspectives
 this is a standard act finisher in a comedy, because no one has any idea what’s
happening

Italian Opera
 The theatres are layers of boxes that are rented out for the entire season
o How operas made a lot of money
o Imperial/royal box at the back of the theatre in many opera houses
 Theatre is designed with status in mind
o The most powerful sit close to the back and have a good view of the stage
o Lower aristocracy have boxes further from royal box and see less of the stage
 Floor seats are sold daily for tourists and middle class, and the galleries are even
cheaper, mostly for servants
 Aristocrats would host guests in their boxes during intermissions, so they had servants
with them
 People go to the opera to show themselves off in public
o Meant to be see and be seen by society (look up “The Opera” from Natasha,
Pierre, and the Great Comet of 1812 for a good example)
  Opera houses were extremely expensive to run
o Huge numbers of skilled workers, not even counting musicians
 Ticket prices scale based on the solo singers, newness of the opera, and
location/prestige of the opera house

The Opera Industry

 Pretty much a marketplace for entertainment
 Similar industry to Hollywood
o New operas need to succeed to keep money coming in
 All about the profitability of the opera
 Italy was split into many city-states, and each state had major opera houses,
encouraging the industry
o Huge demand for opera, companies travelled around Italy
o Centres of business also had opera seasons
 Where many singers started their careers
 Operas are central to popular culture, published in score and transcribed for piano
and voice for performance at home—the only way your average person can
experience the music (like how I get to obsessively listen to Hamilton with no chance
at tickets)
 Impresario—the head of the company, the investor—not the owner of the theatre,
just the manager
 Money comes in from:
o Public or private endowments
o People give money to the theatre to run a season (like a float)
o Ticket sales—this never pays for the whole thing, maybe 1/3
o Other business in the opera house—gambling in particular (Las Vegas, as Dr.
Law said)
 Impresarios were why composers got famous—Domenico Barbaja (1778-1841) in
particular
o Rossini made money by getting a percentage of the profits from the gambling
 Impresario manages several opera houses in several countries as failsafes for each
other
 Cartellone (Bill)—the Impresario’s responsibility
o Programme for the season
o New operas (often commissioned at the last minute)
 Audience wants to see novelty (like a movie theatre)
o Revivals
 The cast was more important than the composer
o Rossini changes this paradigm
 Conventions of the medium—think how film language works now (Hollywood 3-act
films, film shorthand for character building, etc.)
 o Working tools for the composer: how an opera could be composed in a few
weeks
o Allows for communication with the audience: there is a code for how things
always go
 i.e. a comedy act finale is often a confusion scene to summarise how
everyone is feeling
o Structure of musical numbers (the diagram we looked at in class)
o Standardised dramatic situations
o Vocal roles (the soprano is in love with the tenor and the baritone is the
villain)
o Distribution of music among singers (soloists > minor characters)
o Conventions may be applied in both comic and serious operas

19th-century Opera Pieces

 Multi-movement—alternate how much dramatic action is happening (static—
character focussed, alternates with dynamic—plot-focussed)
 Analysis of pieces slide on Connect, in the Week 3 folder (we should all know it by
now)
 Acts start with introduzione
 Several arias and duets
 Central, or Act Finale, brings full cast on stage to sing
 We focus on arias, but they are very similar to all the rest anyway
o Duet includes additional tempo d’attaco—characters sing melody and share
ideas, another dynamic sequence (think “For Good” in Wicked, where both
characters experience shifts in how they think)
 Emotionally driven plot—characters explain their motivations and their motivations
make them act to move the plot forward

19th-century Opera Aria

 Single principal singer who may have supporting characters or chorus with them
 Delineation of dynamic and static moments is like in opera seria—recitative and aria
respectively
 Scena has no rhyme structure and irregular rhythm: poetry that imitates speech
o Characters have dialogue in Scena
 Rossini inherited these forms from earlier composers and standardised them until
they became ubiquitous for opera
o Rossini was considered extremely important in his time, more than Beethoven

Rossini
 Wrote operas for only 19 years in his entire life
 All of them use the standard aria form
  Wrote in the bel canto style, characterised by effortless technique and beauty of voice
 Wrote his first opera at 18, his last at 37, and then lived for 40 years after that
 The ‘Rossini crescendo’ which builds up the energy by repeating a phrase several
times

Rossini, “Una voce poco fa” Il barbiere di Siviglia (NAWM 145), pg. 620
 Successfully and consistently performed since its composition, despite an initial
failure
 Character alone on stage
 Has a presentational function for Rosina, it’s her first time on stage
o Cantabile: her current emotional state and other people
o Stretta/Cabaletta: her personality and what she’s going to do
o Comparable modern examples: “The Wizard and I” from Wicked, “Satisfied”
from Hamilton, “A Dream is a Wish Your Heart Makes” from Cinderella
 Cantabile discusses how she feels about Lindoro and her Guardian
 Stretta is where she reveals who she is
o Cabaletta specifically describes the section that repeats
 First stanza is almost recitative-like
 Second stanza is like a patter—the idiom of buffo characters, monotone, brief lines
(while she’s talking about her Guardian, a buffo character)
 Stretta about her:
o First stanza is her sweetness, dolce melody
o Second is her ‘darker’, more character-moving nature, with a very musical line
that is impressive

September 22, 2016 (Thurs)

French Opera pg. 666-670

THE MIDTERM:
 Score identification (3-5 pieces from the anthology)
 Listening identification (same)
 Multiple choice section
 Choose one of 2-3 essay topics to write on
 Largely textbook-based

Today: a review of opera and aria form in Italy, and French opera

Italian Aria
 Flexible multi-movement model
 Shift from Cantabile to Stretta often, but not always, requires a dramatic shift
  Dramatic shifts in the dynamic sections prepare the scene for resolution during the
static sections
 The shift is always justified, even if the model is adjusted
o The way the action shifts for Norma is justifiably different than in Rosina’s
aria

Bellini, “Casta Diva”, Norma (NAWM 146), pg. 634

 The opera is a political power play between the characters
 Outer and inner conflicts covered throughout the aria
 The movements of the aria explicate Norma’s character, cushioned in expository
dramatic action in the dynamic sections
 The entire piece stretches around twenty minutes, unlike Rosina’s aria
 Stage songs that are diegetic (like this one) are often strophic
 Overall structure is the same model as in The Barber of Seville
 Everything in this one is continuous
 “Bellini’s long, long, long, long melodies”
 The melody is a super extended arc
o Fifteen measures, an uneven count that surprises the audience
o Avoids cadential movement with suspensions—delays the end
o Not structured like a standard period, creates a sense of length and continuity
o Two bars where every strong beat has a non-chord tone in the melody
o Only perfect cadence is at the choir entrance
 Musically represents Norma’s emotions
 Comparable modern examples: “My Shot” from Hamilton, “Honor to us All” from
Mulan
 Each movement can be totally different to present different characters, aspects, affects
o Or to let the singer show off
o This Cantabile is about Norma’s outward character, and what she does for her
people, while the Stretta is about her inward conflict
 Bellini’s style develops further with Wagner, and is adapted to piano music by Chopin

French Grand Opéra

 The decline of royal patronage requires opera that the new middle class will pay to
attend
 Rossini is hired in Paris as director of the Italian opera house
o Wrote operas for this house
o Composed operas for commission (see below)
o Blends French and Italian opera in Guillaume Tell, leading to the creation of
the grand opéra tradition

Paris Opera Industry

  Centralisation: all theatres must receive an official patent for theatre performance
o Each theatre in Paris produces a single dramatic genre
o Each theatre has a monopoly on that type of theatre
o Provincial theatres must apply to Paris theatres to put on their shows
 Close association of genres and theatres:
o Académie Royal de Musique: fully sung opera in French
o Opéra-Comique: opera with spoken dialogue in French
o Théatre Italien: fully sung opera in Italian
 How Italian composers moved to Paris
 Académie commissioned them following a success at the Italien, pays
much better than the Italien
 Donizetti is the compser to take full advantage of this

Grand Opéra
 THE significant musical development of the 1830s and 40s
o Extremely ambitious works
o Performed rarely now, for various reasons, particularly that they’re HUGE
 Fully sung in French, and therefore controlled by the Académie
 Reflects French tradition and cosmopolitanism
o Direct precursor is the tragédie en musique from last term
o 5 acts (sometimes four)
o Inclusion of ballet—unlike divertissements, they are part of the dramatic
action
o Often about larger, social, community issues (*coughLESMISERABLEScough*)
o Ballets include a tinge of the culture the opera is based in (Guillaume Tell
features Swiss dance)
o Importance of the chorus
 They represent larger communities
o Reliance upon stunning visual effects
 New elements
o Historical subject, issues of religious, social, erotic freedom
 Community conflict drives individual plots, rather than history being
presented as the framing device for a love story
 Comes from a veeery liberal phase of the ongoing French Revolution (July Monarchy,
1830)
 Heavily censored outside of France
o Les Huguenots was moved to Italy, and changed to be about inter-family
politics, when produced in Austria
 Mixture of tragedy and comedy
o Romantic integration of styles and genres
o Comedic characters placed in tragic settings
  Mixture of French and Italian types of musical numbers
o Formal form of aria is integrated
o Audiences want to hear Italian styles
 Immediate precursors
o Rossini, Le Siège de Corinthe, 1826
o Rossini, Moïse et Pharaon, 1827
o Not really grand opéra, just Italian operas changed to French
 Important grands opéras (1828-1840)
o Daniel Auber, La muette de Portici, 1828 (protagonist is a dancer only)
o Rossini, Guillaume Tell, 1829 (Google “The Mom Song”, you won’t regret it)
o Meyerbeer, Robert le Diable, 1831
o Meyerbeer, Les Huguenots, 1835
o Fromental Halévy, La Juine, 1836
o Donizetti, Les Martyrs, 1840
o Donizetti, La favorite, 1840
 Composers are mostly foreign, several are Jewish
o Often imported from Italy
 REALLY LONG operas—3.5-5 hours

Meyerbeer, Conclusion of Act II, Les Huguenots (NAWM 147), pg. 647
 The Centrale is a lot like an aria, but often introduced by something, a chorus or
instrumental
o In this case, the court enters to an instrumental accompaniment
 The main difference with a normal aria is the number of people on stage singing
 Focus on the Stretta—like the Rossini video from Tuesday
o Difference: each character expresses a different affect while singing together
o Marcel in particular sings melody from Ein Feste Burg, a Protestant chorale
and part of the overture
 Musical signifier for the Protestants
 Comes in in the bridge of the Stretta, rather than varying the melody
 Comparable modern examples: “Non-Stop” from Hamilton, “Masquerade/Why So
Silent” (more of an introduzione) from The Phantom of the Opera, and “Defying
Gravity” from Wicked.