17.5 - Robert and Clara Schumann

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Introduction to Classical Music

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Yale University

Introduction to Classical Music

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Using a simple and enjoyable teaching style, this course introduces the novice listener to the wonders of classical music, from Bach fugues to Mozart symphonies to Puccini operas.

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The Bridge From Classical to Romantic

If you could put a soundtrack to the French Revolution, it would surely contain music from Beethoven's "Heroic" period, during which, he “brought sound to symphonies.” We’ll see how Beethoven’s incorporation of new instruments, as well as, his creation of a large orchestra, made his symphonies much louder and "sonically vivid" than those of his predecessors. The point of focus here will be a comparison of the music of Beethoven's "Heroic" period, represented by his Symphony No. 5, with that of his "Late" period, epitomized by his famous Ode to Joy. We'll also consider Beethoven the man, as revealed through primary source accounts of his life at that time. They paint a picture of a disheveled, wild-looking Beethoven, who lived among filth and clutter and was consumed by his work. The ultimate question: in what ways might his life of isolation and his hearing disability affected the nature (style) of the great music he created?As we bid aufwiedersehen to Beethoven, we move on to full-blown musical Romanticism. Romantic music, and indeed all romantic art, was known for its idealistic views on love and nature. Occurring roughly from 1820 to 1900, musical Romanticism saw an evolution of musical style as well as a change of venue (place) for musical performance. In addition to the aristocracy and their royal palaces, a strong middle class arose in Europe during this period. With the music of the ever-lyrical Franz Schubert, we'll step into the parlor of an upper-middle class home, to experience his domestic chamber music and songs. We’ll finish off the module by asking the question: How do we use musical sound to communicate? A look at program music (instrumental music that uses musical gestures to tell a story) will help us figure this out. After a quick auditory review of the workings of program music (we'll follow Vivaldi on a spring day), we'll watch Hector Berlioz go to hell. More accurately, we’ll follow the sequence of musical gestures he employs to re-create a fantastical tale of pursuit, destruction, damnation. Having learned our lesson, we’ll end with a little fun as we try to match themes extracted from various symphonies to the mental images that the composer had in mind. Do you speak the language of program music fluently? Join us and find out!

17.1 - Introduction to Romantic Music7:05

17.2 - Domestic Music-Making of the Middle Class3:46

17.3 - Sketch of the Life and Music of Franz Schubert9:22

17.4 - Schubert's Erlkönig12:49

17.5 - Robert and Clara Schumann22:04

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Craig Wright
Henry L & Lucy G Moses Professor of Music
Department of Music

[MUSIC]

Here we see an early photograph.

A daguerreotype of the 1840s showing Clara and Robert Schumann.

They're music history's only power couple,

each a powerful creator in his or her own right.

Robert Schumann went to university the prestigious University

of Heidelberg in western Germany to study law.

Then, as now parents thought law was a safe profession.

And Schumann did come away with one unique distinction.

He lived in Heidelberg as a law student for a year, but

failed to attend a single class.

He just played around with music.

So music was indeed his true calling.

And off he went to Leipzig, Germany.

And he went there to study piano with the eminent piano teacher Frederique Vica

who just happened to have a beautiful daughter named Clara

who just happened to be a child protege as a pianist.

Clara, by the age of eleven, had already performed in public in Paris.

Robert well he was a nobody.

Young Clara she was an international sensation.

You may know the story despite the strenuous and

legal objects that father Frederick put in their way.

Robert and Clara were married.

In 1840, he was 30, she was about 20.

Soon Clara bore Robert eight children.

Here they are, all gathered together in a Google Doodle.

But look, look at the toll that it took, Clara now 15 years later.

Here they are side by side.

1838 and 1853.

As to Robert here he is at comparable ages to the earlier slides with Clara.

As you may know he suffered from bipolar disorder and

gradually disintegrated mentally.

The climax of which was, pursued by what he thought were demonic voices,

he jumped into the Rhine River near Dusseldorf.

Well, he was pulled to safety by fishermen but

he spent the next three years in a mental institution at his own volition,

where he died in 1856 at the age of 46.

Perhaps as a result of his sometimes unstable mind,

Robert was something of a streak composer.

Maybe it's all too easy to say that well, when he was in his manic phase,

he would only write one kind of music.

Only write keyboard music, or only write chamber music, or only write songs.

But it does seem that way.

It does appear at least that almost all of the songs cluster around 1838-1840.

And we'll investigate one in just a minute.

During this period the 1820s and 1830s,

composers would sometimes take a group of poems on a single topic and

set them all together as a unified group.

We call this a song cycle.

A song cycle is similar in concept in, in pop music to a concept album,

say by the Beatles as with the Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band.

Concept album.

A group of songs that tell a story or tie together in some way or another.

One such song cycle is entitled Frauenliebe und Leben,

A Woman's Love and Life.

Here the poet, Adelbert von Chamisso,

depicts the emotions of a young woman as she falls in love.

Becomes engaged and is married.

Our composer has taken eight poems and set them as a group.

Perhaps cuz the text here mirror events in the true life romance of Robert and

Clara Schumann.

The cycle dates from 1840 and the two were finally married in 1840.

Both Robert and Clara Schumann wrote things other than liegers.

She wrote chamber music and songs.

He wrote chamber music, symphonies and even operas.

So Clara too was a composer, at least before she met Robert.

But marriage seems to have brought her career as a composer.

To an end.

Here's what Clara wrote in her diary at that time.

Quote, I once believed that I possessed creative talent, but

I have given up this idea.

A woman must not dare to compose.

There has never been a woman able to do so, should I expect to be that one?

End quote.

Was Clara selling herself short here?

Did she not have the capacity to compose as well as Robert,

to compose as well as her best male contemporaries?

Was it the lack of opportunity and encouragement and

ultimately eight children that held her back?

Well you be the judge.

Let's go do something of a back-to-back comparison of a song by Clara and

one by Robert.

But for this to be a real test you shouldn't know who composed which.

So I've chosen two songs, each set to a lyric poem and each about love.

Again, I'm not gonna tell you who wrote which.

Is the composer Robert, or is the composer Clara?

You identify the composer.

And can you, in fact identify a female composer?

Does music have a female or feminine quality to it?

Might it be less good, or might it be more good in quality?

Okay, let's look at our text again.

Anyway, we're gonna concentrate here on song number four of this cycle Du Ring

an meinem Finger, Oh, You Ring on My Finger.

The woman has just been married and she stares down rapturously at her new ring.

As you can see, there are five strophes to this lead, and

we would expect the composer to set it in strophic form, changing the text.

But continually repeating the music for each new strophe.

But as you can see, our mystery composer here doesn't do that.

He or she repeats the music in a way that creates another well known musical form,

and that is, just looking at the letters there,

that is, well, A B A C A, Rondo form of course.

Rondo form, with a piano coda.

And that's a bit of a surprise.

That's a bit of a surprise.

And what do you think of this text?

Let's focus now on our text and in red you see strophe four

clearly it was written in the days before sexual equality.

Quote, I will serve him, I will live for him,

I will belong to him entirely, and so on.

Wow, I'd never get away with that in my house.

And notice that this strophe four in red

really is the musical high point of the song.

So let me play a little bit at the keyboard here.

Play a little bit of the A material.

And then the B and so on.

Here's the A section.

[MUSIC]

Okay here comes b.

[MUSIC]

And then eventually go back to a.

[MUSIC]

And that brings us to the contrasting c section,

the most dramatic in terms of range, has the highest range, the loudest volume.

It's the most dissonant, this is the climax of the song.

[MUSIC]

And coming off of the climax,

with the retard.

And then back to [INAUDIBLE].

And so on.

So again the climax there is the c section,

where listeners learn that this singer is just absolutely

thrilled to be delighted by her subservient position.

So that's a bit of the background in this art song.

Let's hear song a, from beginning to end.

And for this and our second mystery piece, we're going to move from a concert hall

and we'll have better acoustics and we'll meet our guest.

So here we are, in Yale's Sudner Hall,

little bit better acoustics than what we usually have in the studio,

and we have a guest with us today, it is our own Sylvia Leath.

So Sylvia, tell us please, where do you come from?

>> I'm from Bethesda, Maryland.

>> Bethesda, Maryland, and obviously, you're a singer, so

when did you first start taking singing lessons?

>> I started taking lessons probably when I was in middle school,

I did a lot of musical theater, and then when I was in high school I started

studying with a teacher who taught classical technique.

And I started doing classical repertoire and that was when I was 14.

Most teachers won't take on students who are younger than 16,

15, 14, because before that the body and

the voice is not really mature enough to work with, I guess.

And I think 14 is supposed to be considered a little bit young for

starting, a lot of my friends at Yale who do opera started when they were 16 or 17.

>> Uh-huh, really?

That's very interesting.

So singers really don't start studying classical music

seriously until really their advanced teenage years.

And it probably, as Sylvia was saying, has to do with the length of the vocal cord

and the development of the vocal cord and that sort of thing.

So here you are now at Yale University and what year are you?

>> I'm junior.

>> You're a junior.

Your third year here.

And what's your major?

>> I'm a German major.

>> German major.

Well that's good for us because we've obviously got some German lieder to deal

with today, and you'll be able to execute that diction just perfectly, I'm sure.

>> I hope so.

>> So we're going to start now, I think we're going to go ahead and

visit our friends Robert and Clara Schumann, and

we're going to have first song a, and then song b.

[MUSIC]

Now song b, with lyrics by Friedrich Ruckert in four strophes.

As you can see here I've heightened the word nichts 0.

In the first three strophes of this poem,

the lady tells us what she doesn't want to be loved for.

Oh don't love me for my beauty, and no don't love me for my youth, and

no don't love me for my money.

And finally in the fourth stanza, don't love me for any of these, but

yes just love me for love, just for love alone.

So nicht and ja are the keywords here.

And each time they appear, they do so

in the context of a shocking minor chord insertion.

I'll play it at the piano.

[MUSIC]

So again.

[MUSIC]

So listeners will wanna be on the look out for that.

Also notice in the song that although it's strophic, the music for

each strophic is slightly modified.

And so we have here what's called obviously modified strophic form.

So I think we can see on the screen here, by the s's I mean strophe one and

strophe two, slightly modified strophe three, slightly modified and so on,

there are four strophes.

And a piano coda at the end, and how does this operate?

Well you can see by the musical examples there Let's go on to

the last four measures of each and I'll play them here.

It's really a question of changing the rhythm towards the end and

changing the course of the melody towards the end.

I think you'll be able to hear the difference.

Here's the last four measures of the top example

[MUSIC]

And then, the last four measures of the bottom example.

[MUSIC]

Slightly different, slight variation there, modified the musical line.

And two other points here.

Notice by this slide that the accompaniment here is rather complicated,

rather dense by the standards of the lied.

It's good counterpoint, remember both Robert and

Clara Schumann had spent a great deal of time in the city of Leipzig.

She grew up there and the two were married there.

And what composer spent the bulk of his career in Leipzig?

Well yes, J S Bach.

So indeed, the music and the spirit of Bach with its counterpoint and

chromaticism in the inner lines hovers over the music of the Schumann.

Here's the Bach-like chromaticism.

[MUSIC]

You can see that on the screen with the rising blue lines, now once again.

[MUSIC]

And then down a little bit lower.

[MUSIC]

And then finally this idea of consonance to dissonance that occurs in the coda.

We have music moving from a dissonance to a consonance all by chromatic half-steps.

The bass holds the note down here, [SOUND] and the upper parts which are here.

[MUSIC]

Slide in this fashion.

[MUSIC]

Dissonance to consonant here.

An intensity and then ultimately a very pleasing ending.

All right, that's a bit of song b.

Let's go back now and hear our guest,

Sylvia Leith, as she performs for us, song b.

[MUSIC]

>> [FOREIGN]

[MUSIC]

[FOREIGN]

[MUSIC]

[FOREIGN]

[MUSIC]

>> So which song was by Robert Schumann and which was by Clara Schumann?

Could you tell the difference?

Was one better than the other?

Was there a feminine touch in the music in any way?

Aside from that, which did you like better and why?

Well, there are two quizzes here at the end of this segment.

One asking you to tell us which composer

wrote which song and which song you preferred.

And the other quiz asks you to review in effect the following important

ten terms from this session.

And to tell us where we are in this session,

let me play this, a final cadence.

[MUSIC]

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