![]() ![]() There is no ‘extra-musical’ inspiration (i.e. beyond the music) from a story or image or title or anything at all outside of the music itself. Examples include symphonies, concertos, sonatas, string quartets etc. in other words, all the traditional forms. This is in contrast to program music, which is a direct response to a story, image, title, character, or whatever else. Examples include Vivaldi’s Four Seasons, Beethoven’s Sixth Symphony (which is about being out in the countryside), Berlioz’ Symphonie Fantastique, and most works by Liszt and Richard Strauss. ![]() In fact, these last two composers invented a new genre, which they called a ‘TONE-POEM’ or ‘SYMPHONIC POEM’, which was a single movement (unlike a symphony which had several movements) and was explicitly pictorial or depicted a narrative.Īs you can probably see, these two genres of music – absolute and program music – stand on opposite ends of a spectrum. ![]() Now, what do you get if you take some over-hyped Romantics spoiling for a fight? The War of the Romantics. This so-called ‘war’ was a deep philosophical split among musicians, music critics, and music-lovers, where one camp believed that the other was perverting, debasing, and contaminating True Art.įrom our perspective it seems fantastically overblown. Could people really get that worked up about something like this? Well, unfortunately we have a tragic parallel in the two great rap artists Biggie and 2Pac. The feud between these musicians resulted in two gang-related homicides, with both men being cut down in their prime. In the 19th Century, the conflict was somewhat more restrained, with only occasional outbursts of physical violence at concerts. ![]() The war was predominantly restricted to vociferous condemnations in print and vocal denunciations at performances.Įast Coast vs. People instinctively want to belong to a group for we are, after all, pack animals. The fact that emotions become disproportional to the issue is indicative of our nature, not the issue. For the Wagnerians, Brahms was accused of being antiquarian, academic, and conservative, because he returned to the old forms that they believed were now obsolete. Contrarily, for the Brahmsians, Wagner was appealing to the masses with degenerative, manipulative, and grandiose drivel, while their hero was preserving the venerated and sacred genres of Beethoven (who incidentally, interchanged genres unperturbed whenever it fit his creative inspiration in the moment.). Here is the truth: Both were innovators Wagner forged new genres and Brahms infused established genres with a modern musical vocabulary, which made them new again.Īt any rate, Wagner was the emblem of program music, Brahms of absolute. Neither one was self-proclaimed but rather, co-opted by the different factions. Both composers actually had a grudging respect for one another, though the spectacularly pompous Wagner would never have admitted it. (Brahms, who was less pretentious, actually bought the expensive handwritten autograph copy of one of Wagner’s scores.)īoth men viewed themselves as the rightful heir of Beethoven. Wagner believed the Great Master had achieved all their was to achieve in the purely instrumental forms. As substantiation, Wagner pointed to the fact that even Beethoven felt this, because he added voices to the Ninth Symphony in seeking expression beyond mere notes. For Wagner, it therefore followed logically that vocal music was where the future lay. ![]()
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