239-513: Robert Schumann ( German: [ˈʁoːbɛʁt ˈʃuːman] ; 8 June 1810 – 29 July 1856) was a German composer, pianist, and music critic of the early Romantic era . He composed in all the main musical genres of the time, writing for solo piano, voice and piano, chamber groups , orchestra, choir and the opera. His works typify the spirit of the Romantic era in German music. Schumann
478-452: A Piano Quintet and a Piano Quartet . During the rest of the 1840s, between bouts of mental and physical ill health, he composed a variety of piano and other pieces and went with his wife on concert tours in Europe. His only opera, Genoveva (1850), was not a success and has seldom been staged since. Schumann and his family moved to Düsseldorf in 1850 in the hope that his appointment as
717-701: A Requiem Mass , described by the critic Ivan March as "long-neglected and under-prized". Like Mozart before him, Schumann was haunted by the conviction that the Mass was his own requiem. All of Schumann's major works and most of the minor ones have been recorded. From the 1920s his music has had a prominent place in the catalogues. In the 1920s Hans Pfitzner recorded the symphonies, and other early recordings were conducted by Georges Enescu and Toscanini. Large-scale performances with modern symphony orchestras have been recorded under conductors including Herbert von Karajan , Wolfgang Sawallisch and Rafael Kubelík , and from
956-587: A "romantic" composer or not, the breadth and power of his work gave rise to a feeling that the classical sonata form and, indeed, the structure of the symphony, sonata and string quartet had been exhausted. Events and changes in society such as ideas, attitudes, discoveries, inventions, and historical events often affect music. For example, the Industrial Revolution was in full effect by the late 18th century and early 19th century. This event profoundly affected music: there were major improvements in
1195-661: A belated homage to his late father-in-law, Bizet took up the Noé manuscript and completed it. Parts of his moribund Vasco da Gama and Ivan IV were incorporated into the score, but a projected production at the Théâtre Lyrique failed to materialise when Carvalho's company finally went bankrupt, and Noé remained unperformed until 1885. Bizet's marriage was initially happy, but was affected by Geneviève's nervous instability (inherited from both her parents), her difficult relations with her mother and by Mme. Halévy's interference in
1434-467: A career as a virtuoso pianist were frustrated by a worsening problem with his right hand, and he concentrated on composition. His early works were mainly piano pieces, including the large-scale Carnaval , Davidsbündlertänze (Dances of the League of David), Fantasiestücke (Fantasy Pieces), Kreisleriana and Kinderszenen (Scenes from Childhood) (1834–1838). He was a co-founder of
1673-478: A colorful orchestral palette. The mystic Alexander Scriabin dreamed of a synthesis of colors, sound and scents. Sergei Rachmaninov wrote melancholic-pathetic piano pieces and concertos full of intoxicating virtuosity, while the piano works of Nikolai Medtner are more lyrical. In the Czech Republic, Leoš Janáček , deeply rooted in the music of his Moravian homeland, found new areas of expression with
1912-491: A composer beyond solo piano works. During 1840 Schumann turned his attention to song, producing more than half his total output of Lieder , including the cycles Myrthen ("Myrtles", a wedding present for Clara), Frauenliebe und Leben ("Woman's Love and Life"), Dichterliebe ("Poet's Love"), and settings of words by Joseph von Eichendorff , Heinrich Heine and others. In 1841 Schumann focused on orchestral music. On 31 March his First Symphony , The Spring ,
2151-477: A concert tour of Russia; her husband joined her. They met the leading figures of the Russian musical scene, including Mikhail Glinka and Anton Rubinstein and were both immensely impressed by Saint Petersburg and Moscow. The tour was an artistic and financial success but it was arduous, and by the end Schumann was in a poor state both physically and mentally. After the couple returned to Leipzig in late May he sold
2390-558: A daughter in September, the first of the Schumanns' seven children to survive. The following year Schumann turned his attention to chamber music. He studied works by Haydn and Mozart, despite an ambivalent attitude to the former, writing: "Today it is impossible to learn anything new from him. He is like a familiar friend of the house whom all greet with pleasure and with esteem, but who has ceased to arouse any particular interest". He
2629-621: A developing reputation. According to Chissell, her concerto debut at the Leipzig Gewandhaus on 9 November 1835, with Mendelssohn conducting, "set the seal on all her earlier successes, and there was now no doubting that a great future lay before her as a pianist". Schumann had watched her career approvingly since she was nine, but only now fell in love with her. His feelings were reciprocated: they declared their love to each other in January 1836. Schumann expected that Wieck would welcome
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#17327725248392868-524: A distinctly Russian national style of classical music . They were often at odds with Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky who favored a more Western approach to classical composition. Led by Mily Balakirev the group's main members also consisted of César Cui , Modest Mussorgsky , Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov and Alexander Borodin . The Belyayev circle was a society of Russian musicians who met in Saint Petersburg from 1885 and 1908 who sought to continue
3107-612: A fascination with Bizet's tragic heroes—Frédéri in L'Arlésienne , José in Carmen —is reflected in Tchaikovsky's late symphonies, particularly the B minor " Pathetique " . Macdonald writes that Bizet's legacy is limited by the shortness of his life and by the false starts and lack of focus that persisted until his final five years. "The spectacle of great works unwritten either because Bizet had other distractions, or because no one asked him to write them, or because of his premature death,
3346-473: A few of his works are quite close to the musical progress of the time. His successor include Walter Braunfels , who mainly emerged as an opera composer, and the symphonist Wilhelm Furtwängler . The opera stage was particularly suitable for increased emotions. The folk and fairy tale operas of Engelbert Humperdinck , Wilhelm Kienzl and Siegfried Wagner , the son of Richard Wagner, were still quite good. But even Eugen d'Albert and Max von Schillings irritated
3585-535: A further attack in late March 1875. At that time, depressed by the evident failure of Carmen , Bizet was slow to recover and fell ill again in May. At the end of the month, he went to his holiday home at Bougival and, feeling a little better, went for a swim in the Seine . On the next day, 1 June, he was afflicted by high fever and pain, which was followed by an apparent heart attack. He seemed temporarily to recover, but in
3824-522: A large orchestra, and prepared four-hand piano versions of two of Gounod's works: the opera La nonne sanglante and the Symphony in D. Bizet's work on the Gounod symphony inspired him, shortly after his seventeenth birthday, to write his own symphony , which bore a close resemblance to Gounod's—note for note in some passages. Bizet never published the symphony, which came to light again only in 1933, and
4063-455: A letter of introduction from a mutual friend, the violinist Joseph Joachim . Brahms had recently written the first of his three piano sonatas, and played it to Schumann, who rushed excitedly out of the room and came back leading his wife by the hand, saying "Now, my dear Clara, you will hear such music as you never heard before; and you, young man, play the work from the beginning". Schumann was so impressed that he wrote an article – his last – for
4302-403: A little son". He was the fifth and last child of August Schumann and his wife, Johanna Christiane ( née Schnabel). August, not only a bookseller but also a lexicographer, author and publisher of chivalric romances , made considerable sums from his German translations of writers such as Cervantes , Walter Scott and Lord Byron . Robert, his favourite child, was able to spend many hours exploring
4541-561: A living from writing music. He accepted piano pupils and some composition students, two of whom, Edmond Galabert and Paul Lacombe , became his close friends. He also worked as an accompanist at rehearsals and auditions for various staged works, including Berlioz's oratorio L'enfance du Christ and Gounod's opera Mireille . However, his main work in this period was as an arranger of others' works. He made piano transcriptions for hundreds of operas and other pieces and prepared vocal scores and orchestral arrangements for all kinds of music. He
4780-509: A loose collection of composers and critics informally led by Franz Liszt and Richard Wagner who strove for pushing the limits of chromatic harmony and program music as opposed to absolute music which they believed had reached its limit under Ludwig van Beethoven . This group also pushed for the development and innovation of the symphonic poem , thematic transformation in musical form , and radical changes in tonality and harmony . Other important members of this movement includes
5019-404: A maturity of style that, had he lived longer, might have been the basis for future great orchestral works. Bizet's piano works have not entered the concert pianist's repertoire and are generally too difficult for amateurs to attempt. The exception is the above-described Jeux d’enfants duet suite; here Bizet avoids the virtuoso passages that so dominate his solo music. The early solo pieces bear
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#17327725248395258-494: A mixed critical reception, both during his lifetime and since, but there is widespread agreement about the high quality of his solo piano music. In his youth the familiar Austro-German tradition of Bach , Mozart and Beethoven was temporarily eclipsed by a fashion for the flamboyant showpieces of composers such as Moscheles . Schumann's first published work, the Abegg Variations , is in the latter style. But he revered
5497-483: A musician with a dramatic root of the matter in him could have achieved." Until Carmen , however, Bizet was not essentially an innovator in the musical theatre. He wrote most of his operas in the traditions of Italian and French opera established by such as Donizetti , Rossini, Berlioz, Gounod, and Thomas. Macdonald suggests that, technically, he surpassed all of these, with a feeling for the human voice that compares with that of Mozart. In Don Procopio , Bizet followed
5736-564: A pianist was evident from an early age: in 1850 the Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung (Universal Musical Journal) printed a biographical sketch of Schumann which included an account from contemporary sources that even as a boy he possessed a special talent for portraying feelings and characteristic traits in melody: From 1820 Schumann attended the Zwickau Lyceum, the local high school of about two hundred boys, where he remained till
5975-401: A pianist, Bizet had showed considerable skill from his earliest years. A contemporary asserted that he could have assured a future on the concert platform, but chose to conceal his talent "as though it were a vice". In May 1861 Bizet gave a rare demonstration of his virtuoso skills when, at a dinner party at which Liszt was present, he astonished everyone by playing on sight, flawlessly, one of
6214-408: A pinnacle in Carmen and suggests that had Clarissa Harlowe and Grisélidis been completed, Bizet's legacy would have been "infinitely richer". As Bizet moved away from the accepted musical conventions of French opera, he encountered critical hostility. In the case of Djamileh , the accusation of "Wagnerism" was raised again, as audiences struggled to understand the score's originality; many found
6453-456: A recurrent throat complaint. A heavy smoker, he may have further undermined his health by overwork during the mid-1860s, when he toiled over publishers' transcriptions for up to 16 hours a day. In 1868, he informed Galabert that he had been very ill with abscesses in the windpipe: "I suffered like a dog". In 1871, and again in 1874, while completing Carmen , he had been disabled by severe bouts of what he described as "throat angina", and suffered
6692-737: A scherzo and a funeral march. The overture has been lost; the scherzo was later absorbed into the Roma symphony, and the funeral march music was adapted and used in a later opera. Bizet's fourth and final envoi, which occupied him for much of 1862, was a one-act opera, La guzla de l'émir . As a state-subsidised theatre, the Opéra-Comique was obliged from time to time to stage the works of Prix de Rome laureates, and La guzla duly went into rehearsal in 1863. However, in April Bizet received an offer, which originated from Count Walewski , to compose
6931-603: A single act to a four-act operetta Marlbrough s'en va-t-en guerre . When the work was performed at the Théâtre de l'Athénée on 13 December 1867, it was a great success, and the Revue et Gazette Musicale's critic lavished particular praise on Bizet's act: "Nothing could be more stylish, smarter and, at the same time, more distinguished". Bizet also found time to finish his long-gestating Roma symphony and wrote numerous keyboard works and songs. Nevertheless, this period of Bizet's life
7170-508: A slow movement". Its unorthodox structure may have made it less appealing and it is not often performed. Schumann composed six overtures, three of them for theatrical performance, preceding Byron 's Manfred (1852), Goethe 's Faust (1853) and his own Genoveva . The other three were stand-alone concert works inspired by Schiller's The Bride of Messina , Shakespeare's Julius Caesar and Goethe's Hermann and Dorothea . The Piano Concerto (1845) quickly became and has remained one of
7409-578: A sparse and unenthusiastic audience, but in Berlin the performance of Das Paradies und die Peri was well received, and the tour gave Schumann the chance to see numerous operatic productions. In the words of Grove's Dictionary of Music and Musicians , "A regular if not always approving member of the audience at performances of works by Donizetti , Rossini, Meyerbeer , Halévy and Flotow , he registered his 'desire to write operas' in his travel diary". The Schumanns suffered several blows during 1847, including
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7648-471: A style that reminded Brahms. Ralph Vaughan Williams , whose works were inspired by English folk songs and Renaissance music , became the most important symphonist of his country. Gustav Holst incorporated Greek mythology and Indian philosophy into his work. Very idiosyncratic composer personalities in the transition to modernity were also Havergal Brian and Frank Bridge . In Russia, Alexander Glazunov decorated his traditional composition technique with
7887-676: A successful secular oratorio , Das Paradies und die Peri (Paradise and the Peri ), based on an oriental poem by Thomas Moore . It was premiered at the Gewandhaus on 4 December and repeat performances followed at Dresden on 23 December, Berlin early the following year, and London in June 1856, when Schumann's friend William Sterndale Bennett conducted a performance given by the Philharmonic Society before Queen Victoria and
8126-588: A sudden end. Bizet greeted with enthusiasm the proclamation in Paris of the Third Republic . The new government did not sue for peace, and by 17 September, the Prussian armies had surrounded Paris. Unlike Gounod, who fled to England, Bizet rejected opportunities to leave the besieged city: "I can't leave Paris! It's impossible! It would be quite simply an act of cowardice", he wrote to Mme Halévy. Life in
8365-423: A third year, rather than going to Germany, so that he could complete "an important work" (which has not been identified). In September 1860, while visiting Venice with his friend and fellow-laureate Ernest Guiraud , Bizet received news that his mother was gravely ill in Paris, and made his way home. Back in Paris with two years of his grant remaining, Bizet was temporarily secure financially and could ignore for
8604-400: A time he also had cello and flute lessons with one of the municipal musicians, Carl Gottlieb Meissner. Throughout his childhood and youth his love of music and literature ran in tandem, with poems and dramatic works produced alongside small-scale compositions, mainly piano pieces and songs. He was not a musical child prodigy like Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart or Felix Mendelssohn , but his talent as
8843-544: A trend towards playing the orchestral music with smaller forces in historically informed performance . After the successful premiere in 1841 of the first of his four symphonies the Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung described it as "well and fluently written ... also, for the most part, knowledgeably, tastefully, and often quite successfully and effectively orchestrated", although a later critic called it "inflated piano music with mainly routine orchestration". Later in
9082-507: A year Schumann called his Liederjahr (year of song). These are Dichterliebe (Poet's Love) comprising sixteen songs with words by Heine; Frauenliebe und Leben (Woman's Love and Life), eight songs setting poems by Adelbert von Chamisso ; and two sets simply titled Liederkreis – German for "Song Cycle" – the Op. 24 set, consisting of nine Heine settings and the Op. 39 set of twelve settings of poems by Eichendorff. Also from 1840
9321-465: A year before it was finally performed by the Théâtre Lyrique on 26 December 1867. Its press reception was more favourable than that for any of Bizet's other operas; Le Ménestral's critic hailed the second act as "a masterpiece from beginning to end". Despite the opera's success, Carvalho's financial difficulties meant a run of only 18 performances. While La jolie fille was in rehearsal, Bizet worked with three other composers, each of whom contributed
9560-462: Is Franz Schubert , with Erlkönig , however, many other romantic composers have devoted themselves to the lied genre such as Saint-Saëns , Duparc , Robert Schumann , Johannes Brahms , Hugo Wolf , Gustav Mahler , and Richard Strauss . It is Beethoven who inaugurates the romantic concerto, with his five piano concertos (especially the fifth ) and his violin concerto where many characteristics of classicism can still be recognized. His example
9799-492: Is a symphonic poem about the Moldau River in the modern-day Czech Republic , the second in a cycle of six nationalistic symphonic poems collectively titled Má vlast (My Homeland). Smetana also composed eight nationalist operas, all of which remain in the repertory. They established him as the first Czech nationalist composer as well as the most important Czech opera composer of the generation who came to prominence in
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10038-673: Is a stylistic movement in Western Classical music associated with the period of the 19th century commonly referred to as the Romantic era (or Romantic period). It is closely related to the broader concept of Romanticism —the intellectual, artistic, and literary movement that became prominent in Western culture from about 1798 until 1837. Romantic composers sought to create music that was individualistic, emotional, dramatic, and often programmatic ; reflecting broader trends within
10277-537: Is all clarity and vivacity, full of colour and melody". The renowned mezzo-soprano Célestine Galli-Marié (known professionally as "Galli-Marié") was engaged to sing the title role. According to Dean, she was as delighted by the part as Bizet was by her suitability for it. There were rumours that he and the singer pursued a brief affair; his relations with Geneviève were strained at this time, and they lived apart for several months. When rehearsals began in October 1874,
10516-467: Is characteristic of Bizet's mature works. Bizet's first orchestral piece was an overture written in 1855 in the manner of Rossini's Guillaume Tell . Critics have found it unremarkable, but the Symphony in C of the same year has been warmly praised by later commentators who have made favourable comparisons with Mozart and Schubert. In Dean's view, the symphony has "few rivals and perhaps no superior in
10755-476: Is followed by many composers: the concerto rivals the symphony in the repertoire of major orchestral formations . Finally, the concerto will allow instrumentalist composers to reveal their virtuosity, such as Niccolò Paganini on the violin, and Frédéric Chopin , Robert Schumann , and Franz Liszt on the piano. The nocturne is presented as a short-lived confidential piece, which the Irish composer John Field
10994-488: Is free of material or program, is the embodiment of the romantic art idea. Another one of the most important representatives of late classicism and early romanticism is Franz Schubert . Because only with him did romantic features come into the German-language opera with his chamber music works and later also symphonies . In this field, his work is supplemented by the ballads of Carl Loewe . Carl Maria von Weber
11233-577: Is important for the development of the German opera , especially with his popular Freischütz. In addition, there are fantastic-horrious materials by Heinrich Marschner and finally the cheerful opera by Albert Lortzing , while Louis Spohr became known mainly for his instrumental music. Still largely attached to classical music is the work of Johann Nepomuk Hummel , Ferdinand Ries , and the Frenchman George Onslow . Italy experienced
11472-452: Is infinitely dispiriting, yet the brilliance and the individuality of his best music is unmistakable. It has greatly enriched a period of French music already rich in composers of talent and distinction." In Bizet's family circle, his father Adolphe died in 1886. Bizet's son Jacques killed himself in 1922 after an unhappy love affair. Jean Reiter, Bizet's elder son, had a successful career as press director of Le Temps , became an Officer of
11711-554: Is lost; the early Te Deum , which survives in full, is rejected by Dean as "a wretched work [that] merely illustrates Bizet's unfitness to write religious music." Bizet's early one-act opera Le docteur Miracle provides the first clear signs of his promise in this genre, its sparkling music including, according to Dean, "many happy touches of parody, scoring and comic characterisation". Newman perceives evidence of Bizet's later achievements in many of his earliest works: "[A]gain and again we light upon some touch or other in them that only
11950-419: Is music that makes no pretensions to depth, but it is delightful in its simplicity, so unaffected and sincere". By broad consent, Carmen represents the fulfilment of Bizet's development as a master of music drama and the culmination of the genre of opéra comique . After Bizet's death, many of his manuscripts were lost; works were revised by other hands and published in these unauthorised versions so that it
12189-429: Is often difficult to establish what is authentic Bizet. Even Carmen was altered into grand opera format by the replacement of its dialogue with recitatives written by Guiraud, and by other amendments to the score. The music world did not immediately acknowledge Bizet as a master and, apart from Carmen and the L'Arlésienne suite, few of his works were performed in the years immediately following his death. However,
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#173277252483912428-594: Is prominent in the Mazurkas of Chopin". His mazurkas and polonaises are particularly notable for their use of nationalistic rhythms. Moreover, "During World War II the Nazis forbade the playing of ... Chopin's Polonaises in Warsaw because of the powerful symbolism residing in these works". Other composers, such as Bedřich Smetana , wrote pieces that musically described their homelands. In particular, Smetana's Vltava
12667-516: Is still his piano works and songs from the 1830s and 1840s on which his reputation is primarily based. He had considerable influence in the nineteenth century and beyond. In the German-speaking world the composers Gustav Mahler , Richard Strauss , Arnold Schoenberg and more recently Wolfgang Rihm have been inspired by his music, as were French composers such as Georges Bizet , Gabriel Fauré , Claude Debussy and Maurice Ravel . Schumann
12906-541: Is technically challenging for the pianist Schumann also wrote simpler pieces for young players, the best-known of which are his Album für die Jugend (Album for the Young, 1848) and Three Sonatas for Young People (1853). He also wrote some undemanding music with an eye to commercial sales, including the Blumenstück (Flower Piece) and Arabeske (both 1839), which he privately considered "feeble and intended for
13145-401: Is the cycle of short, interrelated pieces, often programmatic , though seldom explicitly so. They include Carnaval , Fantasiestücke , Kreisleriana , Kinderszenen and Waldszenen (Wood Scenes). The critic J. A. Fuller Maitland wrote of the first of these, "Of all the pianoforte works [ Carnaval ] is perhaps the most popular; its wonderful animation and never-ending variety ensure
13384-611: Is the position of the Finn Jean Sibelius , also a symphonist of melancholy expressiveness and clear line design. In Sweden, the works of Wilhelm Peterson-Berger , Wilhelm Stenhammar , and Hugo Alfvén show a typical Nordic conservatism, and the Norwegian Christian Sinding also composed traditionally. The music of Spain also increased in popularity again after a long time, first in the piano works of Isaac Albéniz and Enrique Granados , then in
13623-402: Is the set Schumann wrote as a wedding present to Clara, Myrthen ( Myrtles – traditionally part of a bride's wedding bouquet), which the composer called a song cycle, although comprising twenty-six songs with lyrics from ten different writers this set is a less unified cycle than the others. In a study of Schumann's songs Eric Sams suggests that even here there is a unifying theme, namely
13862-600: Is under the influence of Wagner's progressive ideas, among them, for example, Peter Cornelius . On the other hand, an opposition arose from numerous more conservative composers, to whom Johannes Brahms , who sought a logical continuation of classical music in symphony, chamber music and song, became a model of scale due to the depth of the sensation and a masterful composition technique . Among others, Robert Volkmann , Friedrich Kiel , Carl Reinecke , Max Bruch , Josef Gabriel Rheinberger , and Hermann Goetz are included in this party. In addition, some important loners came on
14101-404: Is where verism developed, an exaggerated realism that could easily turn into the striking and melodramatic on the opera stage. Despite their extensive work, Ruggero Leoncavallo , Pietro Mascagni , Francesco Cilea , and Umberto Giordano have only become known through one opera at a time. Only Giacomo Puccini 's work has been completely preserved in the repertoire of the opera houses, although he
14340-529: The Neue Zeitschrift für Musik (New Musical Journal) in 1834 and edited it for ten years. In his writing for the journal and in his music he distinguished between two contrasting aspects of his personality, dubbing these alter egos "Florestan" for his impetuous self and "Eusebius" for his gentle poetic side. Despite the bitter opposition of Wieck, who did not regard his pupil as a suitable husband for his daughter, Schumann married Clara in 1840. In
14579-542: The Neue Zeitschrift für Musik titled " Neue Bahnen " (New Paths), extolling Brahms as a musician who was destined "to give expression to his times in ideal fashion". Hall writes that Brahms proved "a personal tower of strength to Clara during the difficult days ahead": in early 1854 Schumann's health deteriorated drastically. On 27 February he attempted suicide by throwing himself into the River Rhine . He
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#173277252483914818-621: The BBC on 12 July 1955, and Le docteur Miracle was revived in London on 8 December 1957 by the Park Lane Group. Vasco da Gama and Ivan IV have been recorded, as have numerous songs and the complete piano music. Carmen , after its lukewarm initial Paris run of 45 performances, became a worldwide popular success after performances in Vienna (1875) and London (1878). It has been hailed as
15057-661: The Cello Concerto (1850) remain in the concert repertoire and are well represented on record. The late Violin Concerto (1853) is less often heard but has received several recordings. Schumann composed a substantial quantity of chamber pieces, of which the best-known and most performed are the Piano Quintet in E ♭ major , Op. 44, the Piano Quartet in the same key (both 1842) and three piano trios,
15296-701: The Conservatoire de Paris at the age of 13. At least one author has suggested that Aimée was from a Jewish family, but this is not substantiated in any of Georges' official biographies. Georges, an only child, showed early aptitude for music and quickly picked up the basics of musical notation from his mother, who probably gave him his first piano lessons. By listening at the door of the room where Adolphe conducted his classes, Georges learned to sing difficult songs accurately from memory and developed an ability to identify and analyse complex chordal structures . This precocity convinced his ambitious parents that he
15535-519: The El Cid story by Louis Gallet and Édouard Blau . He played a piano version to a select audience that included the Opéra's principal baritone Jean-Baptiste Faure , hoping that the singer's approval might influence the directors of the Opéra to stage the work. However, on the night of 28–29 October, the Opéra burned to the ground; the directors, amid other pressing concerns, set Don Rodrigue aside. It
15774-567: The Great C major Symphony . Ferdinand allowed him to take a copy away and Schumann arranged for the work's premiere, conducted by Mendelssohn in Leipzig on 21 March 1839. In the Neue Zeitschrift für Musik Schumann wrote enthusiastically about the work and described its " himmlische Länge " – its "heavenly length" – a phrase that has become common currency in later analyses of the symphony. Schumann and Clara finally married on 12 September 1840,
16013-594: The National Guard and began training. He was critical of the antiquated equipment with which he was supposed to fight; his unit's guns, he said, were more dangerous to themselves than to the enemy. The national mood was soon depressed by news of successive reverses; at Sedan on 2 September, the French armies suffered an overwhelming defeat; Napoleon was captured and deposed, and the Second Empire came to
16252-710: The Neue Zeitschrift , and in December the family moved to Dresden. Schumann had been passed over for the conductorship of the Leipzig Gewandhaus in succession to Mendelssohn, and he thought that Dresden, with a thriving opera house, might be the place where he could, as he now wished, become an operatic composer. His health remained poor. His doctor in Dresden reported complaints "from insomnia, general weakness, auditory disturbances, tremors, and chills in
16491-530: The Prince Consort . Although neglected after Schumann's death it remained popular throughout his lifetime and brought his name to international attention. During 1843 Mendelssohn invited him to teach piano and composition at the new Leipzig Conservatory , and Wieck approached him with an offer of reconciliation. Schumann gladly accepted both, although the resumed relationship with his father-in-law remained polite rather than close. In 1844 Clara embarked on
16730-488: The River Rhine but was rescued and taken to a private sanatorium near Bonn , where he lived for more than two years, dying there at the age of 46. During his lifetime Schumann was recognised for his piano music – often subtly programmatic – and his songs. His other works were less generally admired, and for many years there was a widespread belief that those from his later years lacked the inspiration of his early music. More recently this view has been less prevalent, but it
16969-519: The Roma symphony was performed at the Cirque Napoléon, under Jules Pasdeloup . Afterwards, Bizet informed Galabert that on the basis of proportionate applause, hisses, and catcalls, the work was a success. Not long after Fromental Halévy's death in 1862, Bizet had been approached on behalf of Mme. Halévy about completing his old tutor's unfinished opera Noé . Although no action was taken at that time, Bizet remained on friendly terms with
17208-685: The Second Viennese School being its main promoters and Primitivism with Igor Stravinsky being its most influential composer. Carried to the highest degree by Ludwig van Beethoven , the symphony becomes the most prestigious form to which many composers devote themselves. The most conservative respect to the Beethovenian model includes composers such as Franz Schubert , Felix Mendelssohn , Robert Schumann , Camille Saint-Saëns , and Johannes Brahms . Others show an imagination that makes them go beyond this framework, in form or in
17447-581: The University of Heidelberg which, unlike Leipzig, offered courses in Roman , ecclesiastical and international law (as well as reuniting Schumann with his close friend Eduard Röller who was a student there). After matriculating at the university on 30 July 1829 he travelled in Switzerland and Italy from late August to late October. He was greatly taken with Rossini 's operas and the bel canto of
17686-409: The first and second from 1847 and the third from 1851. The Quintet was written for and dedicated to Clara Schumann. It is described by the musicologist Linda Correll Roesner as "a very 'public' and brilliant work that nonetheless manages to incorporate a private message" by quoting a theme composed by Clara. Schumann's writing for piano and string quartet – two violins, one viola and one cello –
17925-527: The musique de scène for Daudet's play L’Arlésienne (1872): Jeux resulted in the Petite suite of 1873, which has five movements (Marche—Berceuse—Impromptu—Duo—Galop) , while the musique de scène resulted in two suites, one from the year of the premiere compiled by Bizet (Prélude—Menuet—Adagietto—Carillon) and the other from 1879 compiled posthumously by Guiraud (Pastorale—Intermezzo—Menuet—Farandole) . According to Macdonald, in all three Bizet demonstrates
18164-500: The symphony genre in the classical mold, though they would implement their own musical language. The most prominent members of this circle were Johannes Brahms , Joseph Joachim , Clara Schumann , and the Leipzig Conservatoire , which had been founded by Felix Mendelssohn . The Mighty Five were a group of Russian composers centered in Saint Petersburg who collaborated with each other from 1856 to 1870 to create
18403-414: The 1860s. The transition of Viennese classicism to Romanticism can be found in the work of Ludwig van Beethoven . Many typically romantic elements are encountered for the first time in his works. These works stand here in contrast to vocal music and are "purely" instrumental music. According to Hoffmann, the pure instrumental music of Viennese classical music, especially that of Beethoven , since it
18642-748: The 20th century saw increased interest. Don Procopio was revived in Monte Carlo in 1906; an Italian version of Les pêcheurs de perles was performed at the Metropolitan Opera in New York on 13 November 1916, with Caruso in the leading tenor role, and it has since become a staple at many opera houses. After its first performance in Switzerland in 1935, the Symphony in C entered the concert repertory and has been recorded by, among many others, Sir Thomas Beecham . Excerpts from La coupe du roi de Thulé , edited by Winton Dean, were broadcast by
18881-501: The Brahms-oriented Hubert Parry and symphonist, as well as the comic operas of Arthur Sullivan . In late Romanticism, also called post-Romanticism, the traditional forms and elements of music are further dissolved. An increasingly colorful orchestral palette, an ever-increasing range of musical means, the spread of tonality to its limits, exaggerated emotions and an increasingly individual tonal language of
19120-629: The Conservatoire's second prize for piano in 1851, and first prize the following year. Bizet would later write to Marmontel: "In your class one learns something besides the piano; one becomes a musician". Bizet's first preserved compositions, two wordless songs for soprano , date from around 1850. In 1853, he joined Fromental Halévy 's composition class and began to produce works of increasing sophistication and quality. Two of his songs, "Petite Marguerite" and "La Rose et l'abeille", were published in 1854. In 1855, he wrote an ambitious overture for
19359-651: The Dane Niels Wilhelm Gade . In opera, the operas of Otto Nicolai and Friedrich von Flotow still dominated in Germany when Richard Wagner wrote his first romantic operas. The early works of Giuseppe Verdi were also still based on the Belcanto ideal of the older generation. In France, the Opéra lyrique was developed by Ambroise Thomas and Charles Gounod . Russian music found its own language in
19598-521: The German Lied . His affinity with the piano is heard in his accompaniments to his songs, notably in their preludes and postludes, the latter often summing up what has been heard in the song. Schumann acknowledged that he found orchestration a difficult art to master, and many analysts have criticised his orchestral writing. Conductors including Gustav Mahler , Max Reger , Arturo Toscanini , Otto Klemperer and George Szell have made changes to
19837-511: The Halévy family initially disallowed the match. According to Bizet they considered him an unsuitable catch: "penniless, left-wing, anti-religious and Bohemian", which Dean observes are odd grounds of objection from "a family bristling with artists and eccentrics". By summer 1869, their objections had been overcome, and the wedding took place on 3 June 1869. Ludovic Halévy wrote in his journal: "Bizet has spirit and talent. He should succeed". As
20076-484: The Halévy family. Fromental had left two daughters; the elder, Esther, died in 1864, an event which so traumatised Mme. Halévy that she could not tolerate the company of her younger daughter Geneviève , who from the age of 15 lived with other family members. It is unclear when Geneviève and Bizet became emotionally attached, but in October 1867, he informed Galabert: "I have met an adorable girl whom I love! In two years she will be my wife!" The pair became engaged, although
20315-458: The Legion of Honour, and died in 1939 at the age of 77. In 1886, Geneviève married Émile Straus, a rich lawyer; she became a famous Parisian society hostess and a close friend of, among others, Marcel Proust . She showed little interest in her first husband's musical legacy, made no effort to catalogue Bizet's manuscripts and gave many away as souvenirs. She died in 1926; in her will, she established
20554-498: The Opéra was seemingly confirmed by its director, Émile Perrin . Bizet was due to begin his duties in October, but on 1 November, the post was assumed by Hector Salomon . In her biography of Bizet, Mina Curtiss surmises that he either resigned or refused to take up the position as a protest against what he thought was the director's unjustified closing of Ernest Reyer 's opera Erostrate after only two performances. Bizet resumed work on Clarissa Harlowe and Grisélidis , but plans for
20793-424: The Opéra, which rejected it; the work remained unperformed until 1946. In July 1866, Bizet signed another contract with Carvalho, for La jolie fille de Perth , the libretto for which, by Jules-Henri Vernoy de Saint-Georges after Sir Walter Scott , is described by Bizet's biographer Winton Dean as "the worst Bizet was ever called upon to set". Problems over the casting and other issues delayed its premiere for
21032-644: The Opéra-Comique, the style and character of productions had remained largely unchanged since the 1830s. A number of smaller theatres catered for operetta , a field in which Offenbach was then paramount, while the Théâtre Italien specialised in second-rate Italian opera. The best prospect for aspirant opera composers was the Théâtre Lyrique company which, despite repeated financial crises, operated intermittently in various premises under its resourceful manager Léon Carvalho . This company had staged
21271-450: The Opéra-Comique. [Henri] Meilhac and [Ludovic] Halévy are doing my piece". The subject chosen for this project was Prosper Mérimée 's short novel, Carmen . Bizet began the music in the summer of 1873, but the Opéra-Comique's management was concerned about the suitability of this risqué story for a theatre that generally provided wholesome entertainment, and work was suspended. Bizet then began composing Don Rodrigue , an adaptation of
21510-481: The Paris musical world, and because Galli-Marié was too upset to appear, that evening's performance of Carmen was cancelled and replaced with Boieldieu 's La dame blanche . More than 4,000 people were present at the funeral on 5 June, at the Église de la Sainte-Trinité , just to the north of the Opéra. Adolphe Bizet led the mourners, who included Gounod, Thomas, Ludovic Halévy , Léon Halévy and Massenet. An orchestra, under Jules Pasdeloup , played Patrie , and
21749-565: The Symphony poems oriented towards Liszt. The symphonies, concerts and chamber music works of Antonín Dvořák , on the other hand, have Brahms as a model. In Poland, Stanisław Moniuszko was the leading opera composer, in Hungary Ferenc Erkel . Norway produced its best-known composers with Edvard Grieg , creator of lyrical piano works, songs and orchestral works such as the Peer-Gynt Suite; England's voice resonated with
21988-606: The US in 1987. She finds the work "full of high drama and supercharged emotion. In my opinion, it's very stageworthy, too. It’s not at all static". Unlike the opera, Schumann's secular oratorio Das Paradies und die Peri was an enormous success in his lifetime, although it has since been neglected. Tchaikovsky described it as a "divine work" and said he "knew nothing higher in all of music." The conductor Sir Simon Rattle called it "The great masterpiece you've never heard, and there aren't many of those now. ... In Schumann's life it
22227-569: The age of eighteen, studying a traditional curriculum. In addition to his studies he read extensively: among his early enthusiasms were Schiller and Jean Paul . According to the musical historian George Hall, Paul remained Schumann's favourite author and exercised a powerful influence on the composer's creativity with his sensibility and vein of fantasy. Musically, Schumann got to know the works of Haydn , Mozart, Beethoven , and of living composers Carl Maria von Weber , with whom August Schumann tried unsuccessfully to arrange for Robert to study. August
22466-484: The city became frugal and harsh, although, by October, there were efforts to re-establish normality. Pasdeloup resumed his regular Sunday concerts, and on 5 November, the Opéra reopened with excerpts from works by Gluck, Rossini, and Meyerbeer. An armistice was signed on 26 January 1871, but the departure of the Prussian troops from Paris in March presaged a period of confusion and civil disturbance. Following an uprising,
22705-441: The city's director of music would provide financial security, but his shyness and mental instability made it difficult for him to work with his orchestra and he had to resign after three years. In 1853 the Schumanns met the twenty-year-old Johannes Brahms , whom Schumann praised in an article in the Neue Zeitschrift für Musik . The following year Schumann's always-precarious mental health deteriorated gravely. He threw himself into
22944-699: The city's municipal authority was taken over by dissidents who established the Paris Commune . Bizet decided that he was no longer safe in the city, and he and Geneviève escaped to Compiègne . Later, they moved to Le Vésinet where they sat out the two months of the Commune, within hearing distance of the gunfire that resounded as government troops gradually crushed the uprising: "The cannons are rumbling with unbelievable violence", Bizet wrote to his mother-in-law on 12 May. As life in Paris returned to normal, in June 1871, Bizet's appointment as chorus-master at
23183-413: The classics of literature in his father's collection. Intermittently, between the ages of three and five-and-a-half, he was placed with foster parents, as his mother had contracted typhus . At the age of six Schumann went to a private preparatory school, where he remained for four years. When he was seven he began studying general music and piano with the local organist, Johann Gottfried Kuntsch , and for
23422-419: The composer Charles Gounod , who became a lasting influence on the young pupil's musical style—although their relationship was often strained in later years. He also met another of Gounod's young students, the 13-year-old Camille Saint-Saëns , who remained a firm friend of Bizet's. Under the tuition of Antoine François Marmontel , the Conservatoire's professor of piano, Bizet's pianism developed rapidly; he won
23661-487: The composer himself. Although during the twentieth century it became common practice to perform these cycles as a whole, in Schumann's time and beyond it was usual to extract individual songs for performance in recitals. The first documented public performance of a complete Schumann song cycle was not until 1861, five years after the composer's death; the baritone Julius Stockhausen sang Dichterliebe with Brahms at
23900-440: The composer), Friedrich Schorr , Alexander Kipnis and Richard Tauber , followed in a later generation by Elisabeth Schwarzkopf and Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau . Although in 1955 the authors of The Record Guide expressed regret that so few of Schumann's songs were available on record, by the early twenty-first century every song was on disc. A complete set was published in 2010 with the songs in chronological order of composition;
24139-515: The convivial atmosphere, and quickly involved himself in the distractions of its social life; in his first six months in Rome, his only composition was a Te Deum written for the Rodrigues Prize, a competition for a new religious work open to Prix de Rome winners. This piece failed to impress the judges, who awarded the prize to Adrien Barthe, the only other entrant. Bizet was discouraged to
24378-447: The couple's affairs. Despite this, Bizet kept on good terms with his mother-in-law and maintained an extensive correspondence with her. In the year following the marriage, he considered plans for at least half a dozen new operas and began to sketch the music for two of them: Clarissa Harlowe based on Samuel Richardson 's novel Clarissa , and Grisélidis with a libretto from Victorien Sardou . However, his progress on these projects
24617-411: The couple's only child, a son, Jacques . Bizet's next major assignment came from Carvalho, who was now managing Paris' Vaudeville theatre and wanted incidental music for Alphonse Daudet 's play L'Arlésienne . When the play opened on 1 October, the music was dismissed by critics as too complex for popular taste. However, encouraged by Reyer and Massenet , Bizet fashioned a four-movement suite from
24856-400: The critic Richard Pohl and composers Felix Draeseke , Julius Reubke , Karl Klindworth , William Mason , and Peter Cornelius . The conservatives were a broad group of musicians and critics who maintained the artistic legacy of Robert Schumann who adhered to composing and promoting absolute music . They believed in continuing along the footsteps of Ludwig van Beethoven of composing
25095-465: The day before her twenty-first birthday. Hall writes that marriage gave Schumann "the emotional and domestic stability on which his subsequent achievements were founded". Clara made some sacrifices in marrying Schumann: as a pianist of international reputation she was the better-known of the two but her career was continually interrupted by motherhood of their seven children. She inspired Schumann in his composing career, encouraging him to extend his range as
25334-412: The death of their first son, Emil, born the year before, and the deaths of their friends Felix and Fanny Mendelssohn. A second son, Ludwig, and a third, Ferdinand, were born in 1848 and 1849. Genoveva , a four-act opera based on the medieval legend of Genevieve of Brabant , was premiered in Leipzig, conducted by the composer, in June 1850. There were two further performances immediately afterwards, but
25573-424: The deepest spirit of the Romantic era ", and concludes: "As both man and musician, Schumann is recognized as the quintessential artist of the Romantic period in German music. He was a master of lyric expression and dramatic power, perhaps best revealed in his outstanding piano music and songs ..." Schumann believed the aesthetics of all the arts were identical. In his music he aimed at a conception of art in which
25812-520: The development of the language melody in his operas. The local sounds are also unmistakable in the music of Zdeněk Fibich , Josef Bohuslav Foerster , Vítězslav Novák , and Josef Suk . On the other hand, there is a slightly morbid exoticism and later classicist measure in the work of the Polish Karol Szymanowski . The most important Danish composer is Carl Nielsen , known for symphonies and concerts. Even more dominant in his country
26051-632: The development of the national Russian style of classical music following in the footsteps of the Mighty Five although they were far more tolerant of the Western compositional style of Tchaikovsky . This group was founded by Russian music publisher philanthropist Mitrofan Belyayev . The two most important composers of this group were Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov and Alexander Glazunov . Members also included Vladimir Stasov , Anatoly Lyadov , Alexander Ossovsky , Witold Maliszewski , Nikolai Tcherepnin , Nikolay Sokolov , and Alexander Winkler . During
26290-454: The earlier German masters, and in his three piano sonatas (composed between 1830 and 1836) and the Fantasie in C (1836) he showed his respect for the earlier Austro-German tradition. Absolute music such as those works is in the minority in his piano compositions, of which many are what Hall calls "character pieces with fanciful names". Schumann's most characteristic form in his piano music
26529-413: The early hours of 3 June, his wedding anniversary, he suffered a fatal second attack. He was 36 years old. The suddenness of Bizet's death, and awareness of his depressed mental state, fuelled rumours of suicide. Although the exact cause of death was never settled with certainty, physicians eventually determined the cause as "a cardiac complication of acute articular rheumatism". News of the death stunned
26768-531: The edge of the repertory". With a large family to support, Schumann sought financial security and with the support of his wife he accepted a post as director of music at Düsseldorf in April 1850. Hall comments that in retrospect it can be seen that Schumann was fundamentally unsuited for the post. In Hall's view, Schumann's diffidence in social situations, allied to mental instability, "ensured that initially warm relations with local musicians gradually deteriorated to
27007-475: The end of his life, represents in person as well as in music almost the prototype of the passionate romantic artist, shadowed by tragedy. His idiosyncratic piano pieces, chamber music works and symphonies should have a lasting influence on the following generation of musicians. Franz Liszt , who came from the German minority in Hungary, was on the one hand a swarmed piano virtuoso, but on the other hand also laid
27246-418: The extent that he vowed to write no more religious music. His Te Deum remained forgotten and unpublished until 1971. Through the winter of 1858–59, Bizet worked on his first envoi, an opera buffa setting of Carlo Cambiaggio's libretto Don Procopio . Under the terms of his prize, Bizet's first envoi was supposed to be a mass, but after his Te Deum experience, he was averse to writing religious music. He
27485-423: The feet, to a whole range of phobias". From the beginning of 1845 Schumann's health began to improve; he and Clara studied counterpoint together and both produced contrapuntal works for the piano. He added a slow movement and finale to the 1841 Phantasie for piano and orchestra, to create his Piano Concerto, Op. 54. The following year he worked on what was to be published as his Second Symphony , Op. 61. Progress on
27724-492: The first movement of a symphony (it was too thinly orchestrated according to Wieck and was never completed). An additional activity was journalism. From March 1834, along with Wieck and others, he was on the editorial board of a new music magazine, Neue Leipziger Zeitschrift für Musik (New Leipzig Music Magazine), which was reconstituted under his sole editorship in January 1835 as the Neue Zeitschrift für Musik . Hall writes that it took "a thoughtful and progressive line on
27963-559: The first opera of the verismo school, in which sordid and brutal subjects are emphasised, with art reflecting life—"not idealised life but life as actually lived". The music critic Harold C. Schonberg surmises that, had Bizet lived, he might have revolutionised French opera; as it is, verismo was taken up mainly by Italians, notably Puccini who, according to Dean, developed the idea "till it became threadbare". Bizet founded no specific school, though Dean names Chabrier and Ravel as composers influenced by him. Dean also suggests that
28202-639: The first performances of Gounod's Faust and his Roméo et Juliette , and of a shortened version of Berlioz 's Les Troyens . On 13 March 1861, Bizet attended the Paris premiere of Wagner 's opera Tannhäuser , a performance greeted by audience riots that were stage-managed by the influential Jockey-Club de Paris . Despite this distraction, Bizet revised his opinions of Wagner's music, which he had previously dismissed as merely eccentric. He now declared Wagner "above and beyond all living composers". Thereafter, accusations of "Wagnerism" were often laid against Bizet, throughout his compositional career. As
28441-560: The first significant applications of the term to music was in 1789, in the Mémoires by the Frenchman André Grétry , but it was E. T. A. Hoffmann who established the principles of musical romanticism, in a lengthy review of Ludwig van Beethoven 's Fifth Symphony published in 1810, and an 1813 article on Beethoven's instrumental music. In the first of these essays Hoffmann traced the beginnings of musical Romanticism to
28680-421: The fish". Much of the press comment was negative, expressing consternation that the heroine was an amoral seductress rather than a woman of virtue. Galli-Marié's performance was described by one critic as "the very incarnation of vice". Others complained of a lack of melody and made unfavourable comparisons with the traditional Opéra-Comique fare of Auber and Boieldieu . Léon Escudier in L'Art Musical called
28919-547: The foundation for the progressive " New German School " with his harmoniously bold symphonic poems . Also committed to program music was the technique of the Idée fixe (leitmotif) of the Frenchman Hector Berlioz , who also significantly expanded the orchestra. Felix Mendelssohn was again more oriented towards the classicist formal language and became a role model especially for Scandinavian composers such as
29158-631: The four and is influenced by Beethoven and Schubert. The Third Symphony (1851), known as the Rhenish , is, unusually for a symphony of its day, in five movements, and is the composer's nearest approach to pictorial symphonic music, with movements depicting a solemn religious ceremony in Cologne Cathedral and outdoor merrymaking of Rhinelanders. Schumann experimented with unconventional symphonic forms in 1841 in his Overture, Scherzo and Finale , Op. 52, sometimes described as "a symphony without
29397-430: The hero for example), it is to be compared to music with a symphonic program. This musical genre appeared with the evolution from pianoforte to piano during the romantic period. The lied is vocal music most often accompanied by this instrument. The singing is taken from romantic poems and this style makes it possible to bring the voice as close to feelings as possible. One of the first and most famous lieder composers
29636-494: The heyday of the Belcanto opera in early Romanticism, associated with the names of Gioachino Rossini , Gaetano Donizetti , and Vincenzo Bellini . While Rossini's comic operas are primarily known today, often only through their rousing overtures , Donizetti and Bellini predominate tragic content. The most important Italian instrumental composer of this time was the legendary "devil's violinist" Niccolò Paganini . In France , on
29875-582: The individual composer are typical features; the music is led to the threshold of modernity . Thus, the symphonies of Gustav Mahler reached previously unknown dimensions, partly give up the traditional four-sentence and often contain vocal proportions. But behind the monumental facade is the modern expressiveness of the Fin de siècle . This psychological expressiveness is also contained in the songs of Hugo Wolf , miniature dramas for voice and piano. More committed to tradition, particularly oriented towards Bruckner, are
30114-424: The individual" by being composed in ways that were often less restrictive and more often focused on the composer's skills as a person than prior means of writing music. During the Romantic period, music often took on a much more nationalistic purpose. Composers composed with a distinct sound that represented their home country and traditions. For example, Jean Sibelius' Finlandia has been interpreted to represent
30353-514: The influence of Chopin; later works, such as the Variations chromatiques or the Chasse fantastique , owe more to Liszt. Most of Bizet's songs were written in the period 1866–68. Dean defines the main weaknesses in these songs as an unimaginative repetition of the same music for each verse, and a tendency to write for the orchestra rather than the voice. Much of Bizet's larger-scale vocal music
30592-550: The influence of Schumann's". The first movement pitches against each other the forthright Florestan and dreamy Eusebius elements in Schumann's artistic nature – the vigorous opening bars succeeded by the wistful A minor theme that enters in the fourth bar. No other concerto or concertante work by Schumann has approached the popularity of the Piano Concerto, but the Concert Piece for Four Horns and Orchestra (1849) and
30831-432: The instrumentation before conducting his orchestral music. The music scholar Julius Harrison considers such alterations fruitless: "the essence of Schumann's warmly vibrant music resides in its forthright romantic appeal with all those personal traits, lovable characteristic and faults" that make up Schumann's artistic character. Hall comments that Schumann's orchestration has subsequently been more highly regarded because of
31070-500: The judges' initial decision, which was in favour of the oboist Charles Colin. Under the terms of the award, Bizet received a financial grant for five years, the first two to be spent in Rome, the third in Germany and the final two in Paris. The only other requirement was the submission each year of an "envoi", a piece of original work to the satisfaction of the Académie. Before his departure for Rome in December 1857, Bizet's prize cantata
31309-678: The ladies". The authors of The Record Guide describe Schumann as "one of the four supreme masters of the German Lied ", alongside Schubert, Brahms and Hugo Wolf . The pianist Gerald Moore wrote that "after the unparalleled Franz Schubert", Schumann shares the second place in the hierarchy of the Lied with Wolf. Grove's Dictionary of Music and Musicians classes Schumann as "the true heir of Schubert" in Lieder . Schumann wrote more than 300 songs for voice and piano. They are known for
31548-399: The largest I've yet undertaken – it's not an opera – I believe it's well-nigh a new genre for the concert hall". Szenen aus Goethes Faust (Scenes from Goethe's Faust), composed between 1844 and 1853, is another hybrid work, operatic in manner but written for concert performance and labelled an oratorio by the composer. The work was never given complete in Schumann's lifetime, although
31787-540: The later chamber works are the Sonata in A minor for Piano and Violin , Op. 105 – the first of three chamber pieces written in a two-month period of intense creativity in 1851 – followed by the Third Piano Trio and the Sonata in D minor for Violin and Piano , Op. 121. In addition to his chamber works for what were or were becoming standard combinations of instruments, Schumann wrote for some unusual groupings and
32026-737: The later half of the 19th Century, some prominent composers began exploring the limits of the traditional tonal system. Important examples include Tristan und Isolde by Richard Wagner and Bagatelle sans tonalité by Franz Liszt . This limit was finally reached during the Late Romantic period where progressive tonality is demonstrated in the works of composers such as Gustav Mahler . With these developments, Romanticism finally began to break apart into several new parallel movements forming in response, bringing way to Modernism . Some notable movements to form in response to Romanticism's collapse include Expressionism with Arnold Schoenberg and
32265-493: The later works of Haydn and Mozart . It was Hoffmann's fusion of ideas already associated with the term "Romantic", used in opposition to the restraint and formality of Classical models, that elevated music, and especially instrumental music, to a position of pre-eminence in Romanticism as the art most suited to the expression of emotions. It was also through the writings of Hoffmann and other German authors that German music
32504-648: The later years of the 1830s were marked by an unsuccessful attempt by Schumann to establish himself in Vienna, and a growing friendship with Mendelssohn, who was by then based in Leipzig, conducting the Gewandhaus Orchestra . During this period Schumann wrote many piano works, including Kreisleriana (1837), Davidsbündlertänze (1837), Kinderszenen (Scenes from Childhood, 1838) and Faschingsschwank aus Wien (Carnival Prank from Vienna, 1839). In 1838 Schumann visited Schubert's brother Ferdinand and discovered several manuscripts including that of
32743-503: The latter to be staged at the Opéra-Comique fell through, and neither work was finished; only fragments of their music survive. Bizet's other completed works in 1871 were the piano duet entitled Jeux d'enfants , and a one-act opera, Djamileh , which opened at the Opéra-Comique in May 1872. It was poorly staged and incompetently sung; at one point the leading singer missed 32 bars of music. It closed after 11 performances, not to be heard again until 1938. On 10 July Geneviève gave birth to
32982-418: The law as a career, he wrote to his mother on 30 July 1830 telling her how he saw his future: "My entire life has been a twenty-year struggle between poetry and prose, or call it music and law". He persuaded her to ask Wieck for an objective assessment of his musical potential. Wieck's verdict was that with the necessary hard work Schumann could become a leading pianist within three years. A six-month trial period
33221-506: The law as a profession. After his final examinations at the Lyceum in March 1828 he entered Leipzig University . Accounts differ about his diligence as a law student. According to his roommate Emil Flechsig [ de ] , he never set foot in a lecture hall, but he himself recorded, "I am industrious and regular, and enjoy my jurisprudence ... and am only now beginning to appreciate its true worth". Nonetheless reading and playing
33460-488: The leading singers threatened to withdraw from the production did the management give way. Resolving these issues delayed the first night until 3 March 1875 on which morning, by chance, Bizet's appointment as a Chevalier of the Legion of Honour was announced. Among leading musical figures at the premiere were Jules Massenet , Camille Saint-Saëns , and Charles Gounod . Geneviève, suffering from an abscess in her right eye,
33699-403: The level of contemporary French opera". Its many original flourishes include the introduction to the cavatina Comme autrefois dans la nuit sombre played by two French horns over a cello background, an effect which in the words of analyst Hervé Lacombe , "resonates in the memory like a fanfare lost in a distant forest". While the music of Les pêcheurs is atmospheric and deeply evocative of
33938-437: The maestro's most difficult pieces. Liszt commented: "I thought there were only two men able to surmount the difficulties ... there are three, and ... the youngest is perhaps the boldest and most brilliant." Bizet's third envoi was delayed for nearly a year by the prolonged illness and death, in September 1861, of his mother. He eventually submitted a trio of orchestral works: an overture entitled La Chasse d'Ossian ,
34177-493: The main Parisian opera theatres preferred the established classical repertoire to the works of newcomers. His keyboard and orchestral compositions were likewise largely ignored; as a result, his career stalled, and he earned his living mainly by arranging and transcribing the music of others. Restless for success, he began many theatrical projects during the 1860s, most of which were abandoned. Neither of his two operas that reached
34416-488: The mechanical valves and keys that most woodwinds and brass instruments depend on. The new and innovative instruments could be played with greater ease and they were more reliable. Another development that affected music was the rise of the middle class. Composers before this period lived under the patronage of the aristocracy. Many times their audience was small, composed mostly of the upper class and individuals who were knowledgeable about music. The Romantic composers, on
34655-424: The mid-1840s), either because of his declining health, or because his increasingly orthodox approach to composition deprived his music of the Romantic spontaneity of the earlier works. The late-nineteenth century composer Felix Draeseke commented "Schumann started as a genius and ended as a talent". In the view of the composer and oboeist Heinz Holliger , "certain works of his early and middle period are praised to
34894-552: The mid-1990s smaller ensembles such as the Orchestre des Champs-Élysées with Philippe Herreweghe and the Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique with John Eliot Gardiner have recorded historically informed readings of Schumann's orchestral music. The songs featured in the recorded repertoire from the early days of the gramophone, with performances by singers such as Elisabeth Schumann (no relation to
35133-465: The moment the difficulties that other young composers faced in the city. The two state-subsidised opera houses, the Opéra and the Opéra-Comique , each presented traditional repertoires that tended to stifle and frustrate new homegrown talent; only eight of the 54 Prix de Rome laureates between 1830 and 1860 had had works staged at the Opéra. Although French composers were better represented at
35372-498: The most popular Romantic piano concertos. In the mid-twentieth century, when the symphonies were less well regarded than they later became, the concerto was described in The Record Guide as "the one large-scale work of Schumann's which is by general consent an entire success". The pianist Susan Tomes comments, "In the era of recording it has often been paired with Grieg's Piano Concerto (also in A minor) which clearly shows
35611-466: The most popular and frequently performed works in the entire opera repertoire. During a brilliant student career at the Conservatoire de Paris , Bizet won many prizes, including the prestigious Prix de Rome in 1857. He was recognised as an outstanding pianist, though he chose not to capitalise on this skill and rarely performed in public. Returning to Paris after almost three years in Italy, he found that
35850-436: The movements of Romantic literature , poetry , art, and philosophy. Romantic music was often ostensibly inspired by (or else sought to evoke) non-musical stimuli, such as nature, literature, poetry, super-natural elements, or the fine arts. It included features such as increased chromaticism and moved away from traditional forms. The Romantic movement was an artistic, literary, and intellectual movement that originated in
36089-457: The music "dull and obscure ... the ear grows weary of waiting for the cadence that never comes". There was, however, praise from the poet Théodore de Banville , who applauded Bizet for presenting a drama with real men and women instead of the usual Opéra-Comique "puppets". The public's reaction was lukewarm, and Bizet soon became convinced of its failure: "I foresee a definite and hopeless flop". For most of his life, Bizet had suffered from
36328-426: The music for a three-act opera. This was Les pêcheurs de perles , based on a libretto by Michel Carré and Eugène Cormon . Because a condition of this offer was that the opera should be the composer's first publicly staged work, Bizet hurriedly withdrew La guzla from production and incorporated parts of its music into the new opera. The first performance of Les pêcheurs de perles , by the Théâtre Lyrique company,
36567-420: The music pretentious and monotonous, lacking in both rhythm and melody. By contrast, modern critical opinion as expressed by Macdonald is that Djamileh is "a truly enchanting piece, full of inventive touches, especially of chromatic colour." Ralph P. Locke, in his study of Carmen's origins, draws attention to Bizet's successful evocation of Andalusian Spain. Grout, in his History of Western Music , praises
36806-421: The music's extraordinary rhythmic and melodic vitality, and Bizet's ability to obtain the maximum dramatic effect in the most economical fashion. Among the opera's early champions were Tchaikovsky , Brahms , and particularly Wagner, who commented: "Here, thank God, at last for a change is somebody with ideas in his head." Another champion of the work was Friedrich Nietzsche , who claimed to know it by heart; "It
37045-535: The music, which was performed under Pasdeloup on 10 November to an enthusiastic reception. In the winter of 1872–73, Bizet supervised preparations for a revival of the still-absent Gounod's Roméo et Juliette at the Opéra-Comique. Relations between the two had been cool for some years, but Bizet responded positively to his former mentor's request for help, writing: "You were the beginning of my life as an artist. I spring from you". In June 1872, Bizet informed Galabert: "I have just been ordered to compose three acts for
37284-420: The name of her home town, Asch . The Symphonic Studies are based on a melody said to be by Ernestine's father, Baron von Fricken, an amateur flautist. Schumann and Ernestine became secretly engaged, but in the view of the musical scholar Joan Chissell , during 1835 Schumann gradually found that Ernestine's personality was not as interesting to him as he first thought, and this, together with his discovery that she
37523-535: The nerves with a German variant of verism. Erotic symbolism can be found in the stage works of Alexander von Zemlinsky and Franz Schreker . Richard Strauss went even further to the limits of tonality with Salome and Elektra before he took more traditional paths with the Rosenkavalier. In the style related to the works of Strauss, the compositions Emil Nikolaus von Rezniceks and Paul Graeners are shown. In Italy, opera still dominated during this time. This
37762-701: The new music of the day". Among the contributors were friends and colleagues of Schumann, writing under pen names: he included them in his Davidsbündler (League of David) – a band of fighters for musical truth, named after the Biblical hero who fought against the Philistines – a product of the composer's imagination in which, blurring the boundaries of imagination and reality, he included his musical friends. During successive months in 1835 Schumann met three musicians whom he regarded with particular respect: Felix Mendelssohn , Chopin and Moscheles. Of these, he
38001-468: The one hand, the light Opéra comique developed, its representatives are François-Adrien Boieldieu , Daniel-François-Esprit Auber , and Adolphe Adam , the latter also known for his ballets . One can also quote the famous eccentric composer and harpist Robert Nicolas-Charles Bochsa (seven operas). In addition, the Grand opéra came up with pompous stage sets, ballets and large choirs. Her first representative
38240-447: The opera's Eastern setting, in La jolie fille de Perth , Bizet made no attempt to introduce Scottish colour or mood, though the scoring includes highly imaginative touches such as a separate band of woodwind and strings during the opera's Act III seduction scene. From Bizet's unfinished works, Macdonald highlights La coupe du roi de Thulé as giving clear signs of the power that would reach
38479-599: The operas of Mikhail Glinka and Alexander Dargomyschski . The second phase of high romanticism runs in parallel with the style of realism in literature and the visual arts. In the second half of his creation, Wagner now developed his leitmotif technique , with which he holds together the four-part ring of the Nibelungen , composed without arias ; the orchestra is treated symphonically, the chromaticism reaches its extreme in Tristan and Isolde . A whole crowd of disciples
38718-463: The operas, ballets and orchestral works of Manuel de Falla , influenced by Impressionism. Finally, the first important representatives of the United States also appeared with Edward MacDowell and Amy Beach . But even the work of Charles Ives belonged only partly to late Romanticism - much of it was already radically modern and pointed far into the 20th century. The New German School was
38957-400: The orchestra had difficulties with the score, finding some parts unplayable. The chorus likewise declared some of their music impossible to sing and were dismayed that they had to act as individuals, smoking and fighting onstage rather than merely standing in line. Bizet also had to counter further attempts at the Opéra-Comique to modify parts of the action which they deemed improper. Only when
39196-479: The organist improvised a fantasy on themes from Carmen . At the burial which followed at the Père Lachaise Cemetery , Gounod gave the eulogy. He said that Bizet had been struck down just as he was becoming recognised as a true artist. Towards the end of his address, Gounod broke down and was unable to deliver his peroration . After a special performance of Carmen at the Opéra-Comique that night,
39435-488: The other a worldly realist – both in love with the same woman at a masked ball. Schumann had by now come to regard himself as having two distinct sides to his personality and art: he dubbed his introspective, pensive self "Eusebius" and the impetuous and dynamic alter ego "Florestan". Reviewing an early work of Chopin in 1831 he wrote: Schumann's pianistic ambitions were ended by a growing paralysis in at least one finger of his right hand. The early symptoms had come while he
39674-473: The other hand, often wrote for public concerts and festivals, with large audiences of paying customers, who had not necessarily had any music lessons. Composers of the Romantic Era, like Elgar , showed the world that there should be "no segregation of musical tastes" and that the "purpose was to write music that was to be heard". "The music composed by Romantic [composers]" reflected "the importance of
39913-477: The parties in composition. Verdi also reached the way to a well-composed musical drama , albeit in a different way than Wagner. His immense charisma made all other composers fade in Italy, including Amilcare Ponchielli and Arrigo Boito , who was also the librettist of his late operas Otello and Falstaff. In France, on the other hand, the light muse triumphed first in the form of the socio-critical operettas of Jacques Offenbach . Lyrical opera found its climax in
40152-497: The pianist Graham Johnson partnered a range of singers including Ian Bostridge , Simon Keenlyside , Felicity Lott , Christopher Maltman , Ann Murray and Christine Schäfer . Pianists for other recordings of Schumann Lieder have included Gerald Moore, Dalton Baldwin , Erik Werba , Jörg Demus , Geoffrey Parsons , and more recently Roger Vignoles , Irwin Gage and Ulrich Eisenlohr . Romantic music Romantic music
40391-546: The piano occupied a good deal of his time, and he developed expensive tastes for champagne and cigars. Musically, he discovered the works of Franz Schubert , whose death in November 1828 caused Schumann to cry all night. The leading piano teacher in Leipzig was Friedrich Wieck , who recognised Schumann's talent and accepted him as a pupil. After a year in Leipzig Schumann convinced his mother that he should move to
40630-580: The piano. Stockhausen also gave the first complete performances of Frauenliebe und Leben and the Op. 24 Liederkreis . After his Liederjahr Schumann returned in earnest to writing songs after a break of several years. Hall describes the variety of the songs as immense, and comments that some of the later songs are entirely different in mood from the composer's earlier Romantic settings. Schumann's literary sensibilities led him to create in his songs an equal partnership between words and music unprecedented in
40869-591: The piece was not the success Schumann had been hoping for. In a 2005 study of the composer, Eric Frederick Jensen attributes this to Schumann's operatic style: "not tuneful and simplistic enough for the majority, not 'progressive' enough for the Wagnerians ". Franz Liszt , who was in the first-night audience, revived Genoveva at Weimar in 1855 – the only other production of the opera in Schumann's lifetime. Since then, according to Kobbé's Opera Book , despite occasional revivals Genoveva has remained "far from even
41108-421: The poetic was the main element. According to the musicologist Carl Dahlhaus , for Schumann, "music was supposed to turn into a tone poem , to rise above the realm of the trivial, of tonal mechanics, by means of its spirituality and soulfulness". In the late nineteenth century and most of the twentieth it was widely held that the music of Schumann's later years was less inspired than his earlier works (up to about
41347-501: The point where his removal became a necessity in 1853". During 1850 Schumann composed two substantial late works – the Third ( Rhenish ) Symphony and the Cello Concerto . He continued to compose prolifically, and reworked some of his earlier works, including the D minor symphony from 1841, published as his Fourth Symphony (1851), and the 1835 Symphonic Studies (1852). In 1853 the twenty-year-old Johannes Brahms called on Schumann with
41586-418: The press, which had almost universally condemned the piece three months earlier, now declared Bizet a master. Bizet's earliest compositions, chiefly songs and keyboard pieces written as exercises, give early indications of his emergent power and his gifts as a melodist. Dean sees evidence in the piano work Romance sans parole , written before 1854, of "the conjunction of melody, rhythm and accompaniment" that
41825-454: The production of its full effect, and its great and various difficulties make it the best possible test of a pianist's skill and versatility". Schumann continually inserted into his piano works veiled allusions to himself and others – particularly Clara – in the form of ciphers and musical quotations. His self-references include both the impetuous "Florestan" and the poetic "Eusebius" elements he identified in himself. Although some of his music
42064-458: The proposed marriage, but he was mistaken: Wieck refused his consent, fearing that Schumann would be unable to provide for his daughter, that she would have to abandon her career, and that she would be legally required to relinquish her inheritance to her husband. It took a series of acrimonious legal actions over the next four years for Schumann to obtain a court ruling that he and Clara were free to marry without her father's consent. Professionally
42303-407: The quality of the texts he set: Hall comments that the composer's youthful appreciation of literature was constantly renewed in adult life. Although Schumann greatly admired Goethe and Schiller and set a few of their verses, his favoured poets for lyrics were the later Romantics such as Heine , Eichendorff and Mörike . Among the best-known of the songs are those in four cycles composed in 1840 –
42542-460: The rising nation of Finland, which would someday gain independence from Russian control. Frédéric Chopin was one of the first composers to incorporate nationalistic elements into his compositions. Joseph Machlis states, "Poland's struggle for freedom from tsarist rule aroused the national poet in Poland. ... Examples of musical nationalism abound in the output of the romantic era. The folk idiom
42781-510: The scene, among whom Anton Bruckner particularly stands out. Although a Wagner supporter, his clear-form style differs significantly from that of that composer. For example, the block-based instrumentation of Bruckner's symphonies is derived from the registers of the organ. In the ideological struggle against Wagner's adversaries, he was portrayed by his followers as a counterpart of Brahms. Felix Draeseke , who originally wrote "future music in classical form" starting from Liszt, also stands between
43020-472: The second half of the 18th century in Europe and strengthened in reaction to the Industrial Revolution . In part, it was a revolt against social and political norms of the Age of Enlightenment and a reaction against the scientific rationalization of nature. It was embodied most strongly in the visual arts, music, literature, and education, and was in turn influenced by developments in natural history. One of
43259-527: The skies, while on the other hand a pious veil of silence obscures the more sober, austere and concentrated works of the late period". More recently the later works have been viewed more favourably; Hall suggests that this is because they are now played more often in concert and in recording studios, and have "the beneficial effects of period performance practice as it has come to be applied to mid-19th-century music". Schumann's works in some other musical genres – particularly orchestral and operatic works – have had
43498-497: The soprano Giuditta Pasta ; he wrote to Wieck, "one can have no notion of Italian music without hearing it under Italian skies". Another influence on him was hearing the violin virtuoso Niccolò Paganini play in Frankfurt in April 1830. In the words of one biographer, "The easy-going discipline at Heidelberg University helped the world to lose a bad lawyer and to gain a great musician". Finally deciding in favour of music rather than
43737-399: The spirit: the most daring of them being Hector Berlioz . Finally, some will also tell a story throughout their symphonies; like Franz Liszt , they will create the symphonic poem , a new musical genre, usually composed of a single movement and inspired by a theme, character or literary text. Since the symphonic poem is articulated around a leitmotiv (musical motif to identify a character,
43976-576: The stage in this time— Les pêcheurs de perles and La jolie fille de Perth —were immediately successful. After the Franco-Prussian War of 1870–1871, during which Bizet served in the National Guard, he had little success with his one-act opera Djamileh , though an orchestral suite derived from his incidental music to Alphonse Daudet 's play L'Arlésienne was instantly popular. The production of his final opera, Carmen ,
44215-529: The stock devices of Italian opera as typified by Donizetti in Don Pasquale , a work which it closely resembles. However, the familiar idiom is interspersed with original touches in which Bizet's fingerprints emerge unmistakably. In his first significant opera, Les pêcheurs de perles , Bizet was hampered by a dull libretto and a laborious plot; nevertheless, the music in Dean's view rises at times "far above
44454-501: The symphonic poem Vasco da Gama . This replaced Carmen Saeculare as his second envoi, and was well received by the Académie, though swiftly forgotten thereafter. In the summer of 1859, Bizet and several companions travelled in the mountains and forests around Anagni and Frosinone . They also visited a convict settlement at Anzio ; Bizet sent an enthusiastic letter to Marmontel, recounting his experiences. In August, he made an extended journey south to Naples and Pompeii , where he
44693-504: The symphonies of Franz Schmidt and Richard Wetz , while Max Reger resorted to Bach's polyphony in his numerous instrumental works, but developed it harmoniously extremely boldly. Among the numerous composers of the Reger successor, Julius Weismann and Joseph Haas stand out. Among the outstanding late romantic sound creators is also the idiosyncratic Hans Pfitzner . Although a traditionalist and decisive opponent of modern currents, quite
44932-462: The theme on which the variations are based. The use of a musical cryptogram became a recurrent characteristic of Schumann's later music. In 1831 he began lessons in harmony and counterpoint with Heinrich Dorn , musical director of the Saxon court theatre, and in 1832 he published his Op. 2, Papillons (Butterflies) for piano, a programmatic piece depicting twin brothers – one a poetic dreamer,
45171-538: The third section was successfully performed in Dresden, Leipzig and Weimar in 1849 to mark the centenary of Goethe's birth. Jensen comments that its good reception is surprising as Schumann made no concessions to popular taste: "The music is not particularly tuneful ... There are no arias for Faust or Gretchen in the grand manner". The complete work was first given in 1862 in Cologne , six years after Schumann's death. Schumann's other works for voice and orchestra include
45410-483: The wishes of her family who considered him a poor prospect; the Delsartes, though impoverished, were a cultured and highly musical family. Aimée was an accomplished pianist, while her brother François Delsarte was a distinguished singer and teacher who performed at the courts of both Louis Philippe and Napoleon III . François Delsarte's wife Rosine, a musical prodigy, had been an assistant professor of solfège at
45649-622: The work of any composer of such youth". The critic Ernest Newman suggests that Bizet may at this time have thought that his future lay in the field of instrumental music, before an "inner voice" (and the realities of the French musical world) turned him towards the stage. After his early Symphony in C, Bizet's purely orchestral output is sparse. The Roma symphony over which he laboured for more than eight years compares poorly, in Dean's view, with its juvenile predecessor. The work, says Dean, owes something to Gounod and contains passages that recall Weber and Mendelssohn . However, Dean contends that
45888-440: The work suffers from poor organisation and an excess of pretentious music; he calls it a "misfire". Bizet's other mature orchestral work, the overture Patrie , is similarly dismissed: "an awful warning of the danger of confusing art with patriotism". The musicologist Hugh Macdonald argues that Bizet's best orchestral music is found in the suites that he derived from the 12-movement Jeux d’enfants for piano four-hands (1871) and
46127-505: The work was slow, interrupted by further bouts of ill health. When the symphony was complete he began work on his opera, Genoveva , which was not completed until August 1848. Between 24 November 1846 and 4 February 1847 the Schumanns toured to Vienna, Berlin and other cities. The Viennese leg of the tour was not a success. The performance of Schumann's First Symphony and Piano Concerto at the Musikverein on 1 January 1847 attracted
46366-399: The work with a preconceived idea of what an opera must be like, and finding that Genoveva did not match their preconceptions they condemned it out of hand. In Harnoncourt's view it is a mistake to look for a dramatic plot in this opera: Harnoncourt's view of the lack of drama in the opera contrasts with that of Victoria Bond , who conducted the work's first professional stage production in
46605-680: The works of Claude Debussy , the structures dissolved into the finest nuances of rhythm, dynamics and timbre. This development was prepared in the work of Vincent d'Indy , Ernest Chausson and above all in the songs and chamber music of Gabriel Fauré . All subsequent French composers were more or less influenced by Impressionism. The most important among them was Maurice Ravel , a brilliant orchestral virtuoso. Albert Roussel first processed exotic topics before he anticipated Neoclassical tendencies like Ravel. Gabriel Pierné , Paul Dukas , Charles Koechlin , and Florent Schmitt also dealt with symbolic and exotic-oriental substances. The loner Erik Satie
46844-512: The works of Jules Massenet , while in the Carmen by Georges Bizet , realism came for the first time. Louis Théodore Gouvy built a stylistic bridge to German music. The operas, symphonies and chamber music works of the extremely versatile Camille Saint-Saëns were, as were the ballets of Léo Delibes , more tradition-oriented. New orchestra colors were found in the compositions of Édouard Lalo and Emmanuel Chabrier . The Belgian-born César Franck
47083-478: The year a second symphony was premiered and was less enthusiastically received. Schumann revised it ten years later and published it as his Fourth Symphony . Brahms preferred the original, more lightly-scored version, which is occasionally performed and has been recorded, but the revised 1851 score is more usually played. The work now called the Second Symphony (1846) is structurally the most classical of
47322-410: The years immediately following their wedding Schumann composed prolifically, writing, first, songs and song‐cycles including Frauenliebe und Leben ("Woman's Love and Life") and Dichterliebe ("Poet's Love"). He turned his attention to orchestral music in 1841, completing the first of his four symphonies. In the following year he concentrated on chamber music, writing three string quartets ,
47561-738: Was Gaspare Spontini , her most important Giacomo Meyerbeer . Music development has now also taken an upswing in other European countries. The Irishman John Field composed the first Nocturnes for piano , Friedrich Kuhlau worked in Denmark and the Swede Franz Berwald wrote four very idiosyncratic symphonies . The high romanticism can be divided into two phases. In the first phase, the actual romantic music reaches its peak. The Polish composer Frédéric Chopin explored previously unknown depths of emotion in his character pieces and dances for piano. Robert Schumann , mentally immersed at
47800-476: Was a great admirer of Rossini's music, and wrote not long after their first meeting that "Rossini is the greatest of them all, because like Mozart, he has all the virtues". For his 1857 Prix de Rome entry, Bizet, with Gounod's enthusiastic approval, chose to set the cantata Clovis et Clotilde by Amédée Burion. Bizet was awarded the prize after a ballot of the members of the Académie des Beaux-Arts overturned
48039-418: Was a setback to Schumann's career: he had a severe and debilitating mental crisis. This was not the first such attack, although it was the worst so far. Hall writes that he had been subject to similar attacks at intervals over a long period, and comments that the condition may have been congenital, affecting August Schumann and Emilie, the composer's sister. Later in the year, Schumann, having recovered, completed
48278-500: Was a significant loss to French musical theatre. Georges Bizet was born in Paris on 25 October 1838. He was registered as Alexandre César Léopold, but baptised as "Georges" on 16 March 1840, and was known by this name for the rest of his life. His father, Adolphe Bizet, had been a hairdresser and wigmaker before becoming a singing teacher despite his lack of formal training. He also composed a few works, including at least one published song. In 1837, Adolphe married Aimée Delsarte, against
48517-674: Was accompanied by a revival of organ music, which was continued by Charles-Marie Widor , later Louis Vierne and Charles Tournemire . A specific national romanticism had by now emerged in almost all European countries. The national Russian current started by Glinka was continued in Russia by the " Group of Five ": Mily Balakirev , Alexander Borodin , Modest Mussorgsky , Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov , and César Cui . More western oriented were Anton Rubinstein and Pyotr Tchaikovsky , whose ballets and symphonies gained great popularity. Bedřich Smetana founded Czech national music with his operas and
48756-454: Was admitted to the Conservatoire on 9 October 1848, two weeks before his 10th birthday. He made an early impression; within six months he had won first prize in solfège, a feat that impressed Pierre-Joseph-Guillaume Zimmerman , the Conservatoire's former professor of piano. Zimmerman gave Bizet private lessons in counterpoint and fugue , which continued until the old man's death in 1853. Through these classes, Bizet met Zimmerman's son-in-law,
48995-418: Was agreed. Later in 1830 Schumann published his Op. 1, a set of piano variations on a theme based on the name of its supposed dedicatee, Countess Pauline von Abegg (who was almost certainly a product of Schumann's imagination). The notes A-B♭-E-G-G (A-B-E-G-G in German nomenclature, which uses "B" for the note known elsewhere as B♭ and "H" for the note known elsewhere as B[♮]), played in waltz tempo, make up
49234-638: Was also a major influence on the Russian school of composers, including Anton Rubinstein and Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky . Robert Schumann was born in Zwickau , in the Kingdom of Saxony (today the German state of Saxony ), into an affluent middle-class family. On 13 June 1810 the local newspaper, the Zwickauer Wochenblatt (Zwickau Weekly Paper), carried the announcement, "On 8 June to Herr August Schumann , notable citizen and bookseller here,
49473-529: Was also often accused of sentimentality. Despite some veristic works, Ermanno Wolf-Ferrari was mainly considered a revival of the Opera buffa. Ferruccio Busoni , a temporarily defender of modern classicity living in Germany, left behind a rather conventional, little played work. Thus, instrumental music actually only found its place in Italian music again with Ottorino Respighi , who was influenced by Impressionism. The term Impressionism comes from painting, and like there, it also developed in music in France. In
49712-476: Was also, briefly, a music critic for La Revue Nationale et Étrangère , under the assumed name of "Gaston de Betzi". Bizet's single contribution in this capacity appeared on 3 August 1867, after which he quarrelled with the magazine's new editor and resigned. Since 1862, Bizet had been working intermittently on Ivan IV , an opera based on the life of Ivan the Terrible . Carvalho failed to deliver on his promise to produce it, so in December 1865, Bizet offered it to
49951-439: Was an illegitimate, impecunious, adopted daughter of Fricken, brought the affair to a gradual end. According to the biographer Alan Walker , Ernestine may have been less than frank with Schumann about her background and he was hurt when he learnt the truth. Schumann felt a growing attraction to Wieck's daughter, the sixteen-year-old Clara . She was her father's star pupil, a piano virtuoso emotionally mature beyond her years, with
50190-457: Was apprehensive about how this breach of the rules would be received at the Académie, but their response to Don Procopio was initially positive, with praise for the composer's "easy and brilliant touch" and "youthful and bold style". For his second envoi, not wishing to test the Académie's tolerance too far, Bizet proposed to submit a quasi-religious work in the form of a secular mass on a text by Horace . This work, entitled Carmen Saeculare ,
50429-406: Was awarded jointly to Bizet and Charles Lecocq , a compromise which years later Lecocq criticised on the grounds of the jury's manipulation by Fromental Halévy in favour of Bizet. As a result of his success, Bizet became a regular guest at Offenbach's Friday evening parties, where among other musicians he met the aged Gioachino Rossini , who presented the young man with a signed photograph. Bizet
50668-412: Was born in Zwickau , Saxony, to an affluent middle-class family with no musical connections, and was initially unsure whether to pursue a career as a lawyer or to make a living as a pianist-composer. He studied law at the universities of Leipzig and Heidelberg but his main interests were music and Romantic literature . From 1829 he was a student of the piano teacher Friedrich Wieck , but his hopes for
50907-465: Was brought to a halt in July 1870, with the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian War . After a series of perceived provocations from Prussia, culminating in the offer of the Spanish crown to the Prussian Prince Leopold of Hohenzollern , the French Emperor Napoleon III declared war on 15 July 1870. Initially, this step was supported by an outbreak of patriotic fervour and confident expectations of victory. Bizet, along with other composers and artists, joined
51146-451: Was brought to the center of musical Romanticism. The classical period often used short, even fragmentary, thematic material while the Romantic period tended to make greater use of longer, more fully defined and more emotionally evocative themes. Characteristics often attributed to Romanticism: In music, there is a relatively clear dividing line in musical structure and form following the death of Beethoven. Whether one counts Beethoven as
51385-422: Was delayed because of fears that its themes of betrayal and murder would offend audiences. After its premiere on 3 March 1875, Bizet was convinced that the work was a failure; he died of a heart attack three months later, unaware that it would prove a spectacular and enduring success. Bizet's marriage to Geneviève Halévy was intermittently happy and produced one son. After his death, his work, apart from Carmen ,
51624-480: Was developed throughout the 19th century, especially by composers such as Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky in Russia and Léo Delibes in France. Georges Bizet Georges Bizet ( né Alexandre César Léopold Bizet ; 25 October 1838 – 3 June 1875) was a French composer of the Romantic era . Best known for his operas in a career cut short by his early death, Bizet achieved few successes before his final work, Carmen , which has become one of
51863-471: Was finally performed in 1935. In 1856, Bizet competed for the prestigious Prix de Rome . His entry was not successful, but nor were any of the others; the musician's prize was not awarded that year. After this rebuff, Bizet entered an opera competition which Jacques Offenbach had organised for young composers, with a prize of 1,200 francs . The challenge was to set the one-act libretto of Le docteur Miracle by Léon Battu and Ludovic Halévy . The prize
52102-411: Was generally neglected. Manuscripts were given away or lost, and published versions of his works were frequently revised and adapted by other hands. He founded no school and had no obvious disciples or successors. After years of neglect, his works began to be performed more frequently in the 20th century. Later commentators have acclaimed him as a composer of brilliance and originality whose premature death
52341-550: Was in contrast with earlier piano quintets with different combinations of instruments, such as Schubert's Trout Quintet (1819). Schumann's ensemble became the template for later composers including Brahms, Franck , Fauré , Dvořák and Elgar . Roesner describes the Quartet as equally brilliant as the Quintet but also more intimate. Schumann composed a set of three string quartets (Op. 41, 1842). Dahlhaus comments that after this Schumann avoided writing for string quartet, finding Beethoven's achievements in that genre daunting. Among
52580-473: Was intended as a song to Apollo and Diana . No trace exists, and it is unlikely that Bizet ever started it. A tendency to conceive ambitious projects, only to quickly abandon them, became a feature of Bizet's Rome years; in addition to Carmen Saeculare , he considered and discarded at least five opera projects, two attempts at a symphony, and a symphonic ode on the theme of Ulysses and Circe . After Don Procopio , Bizet completed only one further work in Rome,
52819-544: Was likely to distress all concerned and reduce the chances of recovery. Friends, including Brahms and Joachim, were permitted to visit Schumann but Clara did not see her husband until nearly two and a half years into his confinement, and only two days before his death. Schumann died at the sanatorium aged 46 on 29 July 1856, the cause of death being recorded as pneumonia . Baker's Biographical Dictionary of Musicians (2001) begins its entry on Schumann: "[G]reat German composer of surpassing imaginative power whose music expressed
53058-458: Was marked by significant disappointments. At least two projected operas were abandoned with little or no work done. Several competition entries, including a cantata and a hymn composed for the Paris Exhibition of 1867 , were unsuccessful. La Coupe du Roi de Thulé , his entry for an opera competition, was not placed in the first five; from the fragments of this score that survive, analysts have discerned pre-echoes of Carmen . On 28 February 1869,
53297-458: Was most influenced in his compositions by Mendelssohn, although the latter's restrained classicism is reflected in Schumann's later works rather than in those of the 1830s. Early in 1835 he completed two substantial compositions: Carnaval , Op. 9 and the Symphonic Studies , Op.13. These works grew out of his romantic relationship with Ernestine von Fricken [ de ] , a fellow pupil of Wieck. The musical themes of Carnaval derive from
53536-404: Was never completed; Bizet later adapted a theme from its final act as the basis of his 1875 overture, Patrie . Adolphe de Leuven , the co-director of the Opéra-Comique most bitterly opposed to the Carmen project, resigned early in 1874, removing the main barrier to the work's production. Bizet finished the score during the summer and was pleased with the outcome: "I have written a work that
53775-403: Was not a great success in Schumann's lifetime and has continued to be a rarity in the opera house. From its premiere onwards the work was criticised on the grounds that it is "an evening of Lieder and nothing much else happens". The conductor Nikolaus Harnoncourt , who championed the work, blamed music critics for the low esteem in which the work is held. He maintained that they all approached
54014-400: Was not particularly musical but he encouraged his son's interest in music, buying him a Streicher grand piano and organising trips to Leipzig for a performance of Die Zauberflöte (The Magic Flute) and Carlsbad to hear the celebrated pianist Ignaz Moscheles . August Schumann died in 1826; his widow was less enthusiastic about a musical career for her son and persuaded him to study for
54253-418: Was often flexible about which instruments a work called for: in his Adagio and Allegro , Op. 70 the pianist may, according to the composer, be joined by either a horn, a violin or a cello, and in the Fantasiestücke , Op. 73 the pianist may be duetting with a clarinet, violin or cello. His Andante and Variations (1843) for two pianos, two cellos and a horn later became a piece for just the pianos. Genoveva
54492-566: Was on 30 September 1863. Critical opinion was generally hostile, though Berlioz praised the work, writing that it "does M. Bizet the greatest honour". Public reaction was lukewarm, and the opera's run ended after 18 performances. It was not performed again until 1886. In 1862, Bizet had fathered a child with the family's housekeeper, Marie Reiter. The boy was brought up to believe that he was Adolphe Bizet's child; only on her deathbed in 1913 did Reiter reveal her son's true paternity. When his Prix de Rome grant expired, Bizet found he could not make
54731-549: Was one of the first to cultivate. Immersed in the climate of the night, an atmosphere privileged by romantics, it is often of ABA structure, with a very flexible and ornate melody , accompanied by a left hand with undulating arpeggios . The tempo is usually slow, and the central part is often more agitated. Frédéric Chopin has set the most famous form of the nocturnes. He wrote 21, from 1827 to 1846. First published in series of three (opus 9 and 15), they are then grouped in pairs (opus 27, 32, 37, 48, 55, 62). The Romantic ballet
54970-443: Was performed at the Académie to an enthusiastic reception. On 27 January 1858, Bizet arrived at the Villa Medici , a 16th-century palace that since 1803 had housed the French Académie in Rome and which he described in a letter home as "paradise". Under its director, the painter Jean-Victor Schnetz , the villa provided an ideal environment in which Bizet and his fellow-laureates could pursue their artistic endeavours. Bizet relished
55209-419: Was premiered by Mendelssohn at a concert in the Gewandhaus at which Clara played Chopin's Second Piano Concerto and some of Schumann's works for solo piano. His next orchestral works were the Overture, Scherzo and Finale , the Phantasie for piano and orchestra (which later became the first movement of the Piano Concerto ) and a new symphony (eventually published as the Fourth, in D minor ). Clara gave birth to
55448-414: Was ready to begin studying at the Conservatoire even though he was still only nine years old (the minimum entry age was 10). Georges was interviewed by Joseph Meifred , the horn virtuoso who was a member of the Conservatoire's Committee of Studies. Meifred was so struck by the boy's demonstration of his skills that he waived the age rule and offered to take him as soon as a place became available. Bizet
55687-406: Was rescued by fishermen, and at his own request he was admitted to a private sanatorium at Endenich , near Bonn , on 4 March. He remained there for more than two years, gradually deteriorating, with intermittent intervals of lucidity during which he wrote and received letters and sometimes essayed some composition. The director of the sanatorium held that direct contact between patients and relatives
55926-471: Was still a student at Heidelberg, and the cause is uncertain. He tried all the treatments then in vogue including allopathy , homeopathy , and electric therapy, but without success. The condition had the advantage of exempting him from compulsory military service – he could not fire a rifle – but by 1832 he recognised that a career as a virtuoso pianist was impossible and he shifted his main focus to composition. He completed further sets of small piano pieces and
56165-416: Was stronger in his praise of Mozart: "Serenity, repose, grace, the characteristics of the antique works of art, are also those of Mozart's school. The Greeks gave to 'The Thunderer' a radiant expression, and radiantly does Mozart launch his lightnings". After his studies Schumann produced three string quartets, a Piano Quintet (premiered in 1843) and a Piano Quartet (premiered in 1844). In early 1843 there
56404-571: Was the creator of spun piano pieces and idol of the next generation. Nevertheless, Impressionism is often attributed to the epoch of modernity, if not seen as its own epoch. Hubert Parry and the Irishman Charles Villiers Stanford initiated late Romanticism in England, which had its first important representative in Edward Elgar . While he revived the oratorio and wrote symphonies and concerts, Frederick Delius devoted himself to particularly small orchestral images with his own variant of Impressionism. Ethel Smyth wrote mainly operas and chamber music in
56643-415: Was the most popular piece he ever wrote, it was performed endlessly. Every composer loved it. Wagner wrote how jealous he was that Schumann had done it". Based on an episode from Thomas Moore 's epic poem Lalla Rookh it reflects the exotic, colourful tales from Persian mythology popular in the nineteenth century. In a letter to a friend in 1843 Schumann said, "at the moment I'm involved in a large project,
56882-415: Was unable to be present. The opera's first performance extended to four-and-a-half hours; the final act did not begin until after midnight. Afterwards, Massenet and Saint-Saëns were congratulatory, Gounod less so. According to one account, he accused Bizet of plagiarism: "Georges has robbed me! Take the Spanish airs and mine out of the score and there remains nothing to Bizet's credit but the sauce that masks
57121-488: Was unimpressed with the former but delighted with the latter: "Here you live with the ancients; you see their temples, their theatres, their houses in which you find their furniture, their kitchen utensils..." Bizet began sketching a symphony based on his Italian experiences, but made little immediate headway; the project, which became his Roma symphony , was not finished until 1868. On his return to Rome, Bizet successfully requested permission to extend his stay in Italy into
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