MUS 10 Lecture Notes - Lecture 5: George Sand, Robert Schumann, Friedrich Wieck
MUS10 Lecture 5 – Early Romantics
The Early Romantics
• Beethoven started and was part of the early romantic period
• Carl Maria von Weber (1786-1826)
o Godfather of the romantic movement, composer, pianist, and conductor
o Der Freischutz opera contains many elements of romantic music
▪ Young gentleman falls in love with a young woman, but must win a
shooting competition to win her
• He loses the competition
▪ Young gentleman meets a black huntsman who gives him magic gun: he
can control six bullets which allows him to win the shooting competition
and win the young woman
• But the black huntsman gets to decided where the last bullet goes
and he chooses that the bullet shoots the woman
▪ Magic and supernatural
▪ Reflects the common theme of unfulfilled love
• Hector Berlioz (1803-1869)
o His father wanted him to study medicine but he chose composition
▪ Studied at the Paris Conservatory
▪ Beethoven was an important influence on him
o Often included new instruments or unfamiliar and bizarre instruments
o Used counterpoint: reference to old church music
o Symphonie Fantastique (1830) reflects story or programmatic form
▪ Man falls in love and overcome by passion: woman evokes melody that
occurs throughout the piece
▪ Waltz: when he sees his beloved at a ball
▪ Scene in the country and she springs to his mind
▪ Opium hallucinations: he becomes sentenced to the guillotine for
murdering his beloved
▪ Finale: occurs during witches sabbath and the melody of the woman
becomes trivialized to a common dance
• Woman shows up to and joins in the devilish orgy
▪ Reflects his own unfulfilled love with a woman
• Robert Schumann (1810-1856)
o Parents pushed him to study law or medicine but he decided to become a pianist
and composer
o Writer of music and founded his own new magazine for music
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