Programme music Research Papers - Academia.edu (original) (raw)

Mendelssohn’s ‘Reformation’ Symphony is something of a problem-piece – biographically for the composer, historiographically in terms of its later reception, and above all aesthetically for our attempts at situating it within the traditional categories of musical criticism. To compound the issue, Mendelssohn’s actual composition is by no means an inconsiderable achievement; to put it bluntly, a very fine work seems to be hiding here within the melange of confused aesthetic criteria and reception history that surrounds it. Most fundamentally, the problem boils down to the symphony’s relationship with an aesthetic dispute concerning the relative status of absolute and programmatic music. This debate is not merely an ‘extramusical’ discourse but is in fact exemplified by the very musical materials used by Mendelssohn, specifically the use of pre-existent or cyclic themes within this symphony and its expressive succession of movements. The present study builds upon research concerning Mendelssohn’s relation to programmatic aesthetics and one of their most significant proponents, A.B. Marx, to explore this work at a deeper analytical level, suggesting finally the complex equipoise this symphony holds between rival aesthetic camps and the implications for our understanding of the music.

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- Nineteenth-Century Music, Mendelssohn, Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy, Program Music

A leitmotif is a representative compositional tool which aids in storytelling. This compositional device was adopted by Richard Wagner in The Ring which premiered in 1876. A century later the leitmotif is used by John Williams in his score for the first film in the Star Wars saga – A New Hope. Due to the scores extreme popularity, Williams would continue his musical relationship with the fantastical universe for the following thirty years. This dissertation examines the use of the leitmotif by Williams with reference to Wagner.
Motifs are representative of character, place and emotion. Parallels of certain aspects of the mythic stories which they embody exist respectively between The Ring and Star Wars – can the same be said for leitmotifs written over a century apart? The employment and deployment of selected motifs will be studied in relation to how they change, how they are representative, and how they relate to each other.
Informed by works by both music and film scholars, this dissertation will examine the effectiveness of the motifs, how they belong to the work and how their meaning is acquired and subsequently used. In essence, how is a German-romantic compositional device employed in a galaxy far, far way?

- by Conor Power
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- Music, Music History, Music Theory, Musicology

Pianist and musicologist Bertrand OTT has requested that I make his work available on my Academia.edu portal. The two articles included in this PDF file were previously unpublished. ABSTRACT (French original by Bertrand Ott) Les ballades de Chopin sont des partitions à la fois énigmatiques et bien connues des pianistes et des mélomanes. L’idée que l’on puisse appliquer à cette oeuvre la notion de « musique à programme » est généralement dénié par la musicologie qui met en avant un Chopin plus intéressé par l’approche musicale pure que par les références littéraires. Pourtant, une anecdote rapporte que Robert Schumann tiendrait de Chopin lui-même que la première et la seconde ballade sont inspirées de poèmes du polonais Mickiewicz, sans d’ailleurs préciser lesquelles. Mais encore une fois, cette référence sera perçue comme une vision romantique et séduisante mais sans fondement avant d’être écartée de la plupart des analyses musicologiques. L’article « Les ballades de Chopin et leur secret polonais » se propose de remettre en question cette opinion communément admise et de démontrer une réelle analogie entre les quatre ballades de Chopin et les poèmes de Mickiewicz préférant une analyse sémantique rigoureuse et détaillée à l’analyse structurale. Dans un deuxième article, « Le romantisme selon Chopin » explorera plus largement les raisons du mystère qui entoure les ballades du compositeur. ABSTRACT (Free English translation by Tibor Szász, edited by Gerard Carter). Chopin’s Ballades are as enigmatic as they are well-known to pianists and music lovers. The idea that they could be regarded as « program music » has been usually rejected by musicologists who have tended to emphasize their purely musical aspects rather than their literary context. Robert Schumann, however, maintained that Chopin himself had stated that the first and the second Ballade were inspired by poems by the Polish poet Mickiewicz, without naming their titles. Yet the majority of musicologists saw this romantic vision of the Ballades as unfounded. Titled « Les ballades de Chopin et leur secret polonais » [Chopin’s Ballades and their Polish secret], the present article endeavors to demonstrate a substantial analogy between the four Ballades of Chopin and the four poems of Mickiewicz analyzed from a semantic rather than an exclusively structural point of view. A second article titled « Le romantisme selon Chopin » will explore the broader context of the mystery surrounding the Polish composer’s Ballades. ABSTRACT (French original by Bertrand Ott). Le romantisme de Chopin ne correspond pas à la vision habituelle du romantisme. Chopin est né en Pologne et s’est exilé en France, aussi le romantisme de Chopin est marqué par une douloureuse solitude. Malgré son accueil chaleureux, la haute société française n’offre pas un cadre épanouissant pour cet homme discret et triste qui préfère fréquenter le cercle restreint de ses amis exilés comme lui et les quelques élèves pianistes qui lui assurent son gagne-pain. C’est dans le Berry, auprès de Georges Sand que Chopin va enfin trouver la paix. Et, c’est au milieu de ces paysages reposants que va éclore la violence des quatre ballades. Souvent regardées comme une énigme d’un point de vue musicologique, ces compositions contrastent avec l’image habituelle d’un Chopin pâle et introverti, dont les valses, mazurkas et polonaises entrainent le public des salons parisiens dans des rêves mélancoliques emplis de nostalgie. Ce jeu si intériorisé semble en telle contradiction avec le jeu passionné et intense que demandent les Ballades qu’il ne les joua pas en public sauf la Troisième. Comme l’exprime si bien Robert Schuman, les oeuvres de Frédéric Chopin sont « des canons enfouis sous des fleurs. " Il faut garder cette ambiguïté à l’esprit lorsque l’on interprète sa musique. Au-delà du mystère et de la discrétion d’un Chopin qui semblait jouer presque pour lui-même, derrière la séduction d’une musique à la fois virtuose, sensuelle et mélancolique, se cache à chaque instant l’intensité et la profondeur d’un homme plein de souffrance, de violence et de passion. ABSTRACT (Free English translation by Tibor Szász, edited by Gerard Carter). Chopin’s romanticism did not fit well with the generally accepted concepts of 19th century romanticism. Chopin was born in Poland and went into exile in France, hence his romanticism was marked by a painful loneliness. Although warmly welcomed by upper class French society, their milieu did not offer the fertile ground for the artistic unfolding of this discreet and sad human being who preferred the small company of his exiled Polish compatriots and that of his own piano students. It is in le Berry in the company of Georges Sand that Chopin found the sought after creative environment. Regarded often as an enigma from a musicological point of view, these compositions stand in sharp contrast to the commonly accepted image of a pale and introverted Chopin whose waltzes, mazurkas and polonaises induced in the Parisian salons melancholic reveries full of nostalgia. This introverted playing seemed to be in such contradiction with the passionate and intense tone demanded by most of the Ballades that Chopin performed only the third one in public. The Ballades of Frédéric Chopin are true « cannons buried under flowers » as aptly characterized by Robert Schumann. Beyond the mystery and discretion of a Chopin whose playing produced a pianissimo barely audible to the audience is hidden the intensity and the spiritual depth of a suffering, forceful and passionate human being.

- by Tibor Szasz
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- Piano Music, Romantism, Programme music, Chopin
- by Roberto Scoccimarro
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- Berlioz, Harmony Search, Programme music, Joachim Raff
- by Roberto Scoccimarro
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- Harmony Search, Programme music, Modest Mussorgsky

From Death to Life, dating from the autumn of 1914, is both Parry’s last major orchestral work and the only such example expressly designated by the him as a symphonic poem. Parry was not generally drawn towards the Lisztian model of the symphonic poem and From Death to Life might appear at face value anomalous within his oeuvre in suggesting an affiliation with programme music rather than the more traditional genres with which he had primarily been concerned, most evidently the post-Brahmsian symphony. Such a clear-cut distinction between programmatic and absolute music, unsurprisingly, proves on closer investigation to be anything but watertight, for the composer’s preceding symphonies had already been heading in this less abstract direction. From Death to Life in fact provides an ideal opportunity to explore a cluster of important themes in Parry’s musical aesthetics, the history of the genre, and at the broadest level, the relation of formal analysis to programmatic hermeneutics. Written in the opening months of the First World War, the expressive import of the work may obviously be related to the European conflict which was just beginning, but this piece further provides rich ground for interrogating the broader aesthetic relation between more abstract or ‘purely musical’ values and questions of expressive meaning. Specifically, the current paper interrogates Parry’s stated views on instrumental form and the relation of form to expressive content, particularly as these matters relate to the congruity or otherwise between the relatively straightforward design of the work and the programme provided at its première – a feature which allows a partial reassessment of recent analytical theories of musical form and meaning stemming from James Hepokoski.

- by Benedict Taylor
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- British Music, Program Music, Programme music, 19th Century British Music
- by Mariateresa Storino
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- Franz Liszt, Programme music, Dante Symphony

The study deals with Vladimír Helfert’s relationship towards the work of Antonín Dvořák. The musicologist Vladimír Helfert (1886–1945) developed his relationship. After absorbing Hostinský’s theory on Dvořák’s operatic work, Helfert, as a pupil of Nejedlý, strongly sided with the Smetana supporters in the famous fi ghts over Dvořák which culminated at the end of 1912. Together with Josef Bartoš, Helfert started a sharp campaign against Dvořák, which Nejedlý, as a supporter of his students, joined only later. In his ideas, Helfert's continued the theories of Hostinský and Nejedlý, and especially developed Hostinský’s note on Dvořák’s musicianship and folkishness. He labelled Dvořák as the top representative of this style, noting that his work did not bring anything new to the development of musical form. Together with Bartoš, they criticized contemporary dramaturgy of musical institutions in Prague that focused on the productions of Dvořák’s works and suppressed the works of the generation of younger composers (the criticism of the slogan „more of Dvořák“ which came up after the success of Dvořák’s works abroad.) After Helfert moved to Brno in 1919, he started to change his opinion of Dvořák slowly, among others also in connection with his works on the music at the Jaroměřice castle. Helfert reassessed his opinions and published them in the treatise Česká moderní hudba (Czech Modern Music) in 1936 as well as in other texts in which he elevated so-called „musicianship“ stream of the Czech music to the level of the form-creating stream, meaning he put Dvořák on the same level as Bedřich Smetana. He admitted his mistakes from the time of the battle over Dvořák, which he led under the infl uence of his teacher, in a letter to Otakar Šourek, an outstanding Dvořák’s researcher, in 1929.

- by Veronika Vejvodová
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- Music, Music History, Musicology, Audience and Reception Studies

Frédéric Chopin was first recognized as an exceptional pianist-composer with the Variations on "Là ci darem la mano", Op.2. Variation set for piano and orchestra improvised and notated in 1827-1828, interpreted on 1829 August 11 in Vienna at the Theater am Kärntnertor (Carinthian Gate Theatre) and published in 1831. The presence of scribbles on the manuscript clearly shows that this musical composition echoes reflections that have took shape on the piano as is the case of the necessary sketches for the finished product in painting. The roughly drawn bust of Mozart coincides well with the idea that one can have of the perception of the relationships of the real world with that of the spirit.

- by Pierre-François Puech
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- Mozart, Beethoven, Piano Music, Pianists and Piano Literature

Composed in 1937, Paul Ben-Haim’s String Quartet Op. 21 was one of the first works composed by the composer in the Land of Israel, and one of his works he was most satisfied with. This article presents and examines a programmatic autobiographic interpretation to the quartet related by Ben-Haim’s colleague, Haim Alexander and by Ben-Haim’s student, Ben-Zion Orgad to Michael Wolpe. The interpretation places the otherwise seemingly classically molded quartet within contemporary historical context, composed as a response to the plight of European Jews.

- by Yoel Greenberg
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- Program Music, Programme music, Israeli Music, Paul Ben-Haim

This study deals with the performances and reception of two compositions by Leoš Janáček in the character of suites for string orchestra, the Suite (1877) and Idyll (1878), and it focuses on analysis and interpretation of programmatic readings of the two works written by Janáček’s friend Berthold Žalud. These programmatic interpretations represent a serious problem for the usual understanding of these compositions as pieces of absolute music.

- by Miloš Zapletal
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- Czech music, Programme music, 19th Century Music Criticism, Leoš Janáček

The history of programme music stretches back centuries, but only in the nineteenth century did it enter into widespread use. Indeed, seminal compositions by Ludwig van Beethoven and Frédéric Chopin to Arnold Schoenberg and Jean Sibelius have helped programme music to secure a position within the artistic pantheon, albeit not without bringing a significant amount of controversy in tow. Yet despite its ubiquitous presence in the nineteenth century, scholarship has not adequately articulated the full extent of programme music’s range and impact. This volume explores the diverse ways in which programme music was defined, historicized, practiced, disseminated, and judged. It considers how biography, tradition, and function informed the compositional approaches taken by Beethoven, Joseph Joachim, Ethel Smyth, and Zygmunt Noskowski, among others. It draws on extra-musical elements—novels, poems, lithographs, and other forms of creative expression—to determine the ontological profile of works by Chopin, Franz Liszt, Antonio Pasculli, Piotr Tchaikovsky, and Leoš Janáček. It situates compositions by Johannes Brahms, Gustav Mahler, Sibelius, and Schoenberg within the ongoing discourse around Hanslickian absolute and Lisztian programme music. And it visits major European cities to highlight the critical streams of reception toward the end of the century. Throughout, it repeatedly engages with questions of generic identity (with special attention given to the symphonic poem), issues of narrativity and topicality, and considerations of form and structure.

- by Jonathan Kregor
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- Reception Studies, Audience and Reception Studies, Brahms, Hanslick
- by Duygu Tardü
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- Music, Musicology, Philosophy, Friedrich Nietzsche

The long nineteenth century is bounded by conflicts that significantly altered the relationship between war and music. One musical genre to benefit early on was the instrumental battle piece, whose decline in popularity most scholarship assigns to around 1815. In fact, it can be argued that it survived for another century, transformed from a conveyor of heroic mythology to a politicized palimpsest of national and personal trauma through a process of disavowal, in which authors consciously projected chaos and disorder. Most battle pieces famous in the early nineteenth century, such as Kotzwara’s The Battle of Prague and Beethoven’s Wellingtons Sieg, feature a set of common ingredients that were poeticized and de-historicized toward mid-century in works such as Spohr’s Fourth Symphony. The tokenistic appearance of the traditional battle elements in Tchaikovsky’s “1812” Overture, Bartók’s Kossuth, and Debussy’s En blanc et noir suggests a widespread ontological subversion of the battle-music narrative in the generation leading up to the First World War.

- by Jonathan Kregor
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- Musicology, Nineteenth Century Studies, Beethoven, Debussy
- by Michael Allis
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- Literature and Music, British Music, Music and Literature, Percy Bysshe Shelley
- by Mathieu Schneider
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- Richard Strauss, Symphony, Programme music, Symphonic Poem

Of the various musical re-figurings of the works of Dante Gabriel Rossetti, the relatively unfamiliar symphonic poem Sister Helen (1897) by the Scottish composer William Francis Stuart Wallace (1860–1940), based on Rossetti’s poem of the same name, is one of the most fascinating. Connections between Rossetti and Wallace are unsurprising, given that both men demonstrated a wide-ranging interest and expertise in the creative arts in general. However, Wallace’s views on the benefits of a ‘subjective’ approach to representing a text musically, in preference to an ‘objective’ event-driven narrative might suggest that the musical re-figuring of a ballad was an unlikely project for him. After tracing the background of both poem and orchestral work, this article offers an in-depth analysis of Wallace’s music, confirming that although a central rotational structure offered an effective representation of the driving narrative of Rossetti’s text, Wallace rebalanced his musical re-figuring by i...

- by Michael Allis
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- Cultural Studies, Musicology, Victorian Studies, Interdisciplinarity