1. Romantic Era

2. The Romantic Opera
The Romantic opera developed distinct national styles in France, Germany, and Italy
France: lyric opera – a merger between grand opera (serious historical dramas) and opera comique (comic opera with spoken dialogue).
Germany: Wagner’s music drama which integrated all elements of opera.
Italy: opera seria (serious opera) and opera buffa (comic opera)
Verdi’s Rigoletto
Wagner’s Die Walkure

3. Exoticism in Opera
Many romantic composers turned to exotic plots for their operas with faraway lands or cultures.
Bizet’s Carmen: romanticizing Gypsy culture in Spain
Puccini: Madame Butterfly: Nagasaki, Japan

4. 20th Century

5. Impressionist Era exotic scales chromatic whole tone
unresolved dissonances
parallel chords
rich orchestral color
free rhythm
Debussy: Prelude to “The Afternoon of a Faun”
opening is chromatic
loose ternary (A-B-A’) form

6. Early 20th Century complex rhythms polyrhythm polymeter
irregular meters
new harmonic concepts
polychords
polytonality
atonality
12-tone method (or serialism) devised by Schoenberg
based on an arrangement o the 12 chromatic tones – tone row
forms: transposed, inversion, retrogade, retrogade inversion
dissonance

7. Early 20th Century
Stravinsky: The Rite of Spring – interaction between rhythm and meter
Schoenberg: Pierrot lunaire – female reciter and 5 players using 8 instruments
Sprechstimme (spoken voice)
Webern: Symphony, Opus 21, Second Mvmt
12 tone based on retrograde inversions of tone row from 1st mvmt
theme and variations

8. 20th Century Nationalism
20th cent. Composers used more authentic folk elements in the nationalistic music then 19th cent. Composers.
National “schools” of composition developed across Europe.
Bela Bartok – Hungarian composer. Collected traditional songs and dances and incorporated them into his compositions.
new scales
new rhythmic ideas
polytonal harmony
Classical forms

9. 20th Century Nationalism
Bartok: Interrupted Intermezzo, 4th mvmt
shifting meters (2/4, 5/8, ¾, 5/8)
polytonal and atonal harmonies
3 contrasting themes
1st is folklike and pentatonic
2nd is lyrical
3rd portrays a Nazi invasion
Charles Ives: The Things Our Fathers Loved
slow diatonic vocal line (Dixie, My Old Kentucky Home, Sweet By-and-By)
piano is independent from vocal line
Copland: Billy the Kid
classic cowboy songs
shifting meters
dissonance and polytonal harmonies