Late Romantic — Wagner, Brahms, Mahler

Late Romantic — The Gigantism of Music

From the early Romantic era (Schubert, Mendelssohn, Schumann, Chopin, and Liszt) of the previous article, 1850–1910, the 60 years of the late Romantic period. Music expanded to its extreme:

• Orchestra — 30–40 → over 100 players
• Symphony — 30 → 90 minutes (Mahler No. 3)
• Opera — 3 → 6 hours (Wagner’s Parsifal)
• Harmony — expansion of tonality, extreme chromaticism
• Orchestration — percussion and special instruments in bulk

The idea of “encompassing the whole world in music” is the theme of these 60 years.

“The Split of German Music” — New German School vs. Brahms Faction

In the 1850s, the German music world split into two camps:

New German School

• Liszt, Wagner
• Programme music, symphonic poem, Musikdrama
• The music of the future, innovative
• Centers: Weimar, Bayreuth

Brahms Faction (Absolute Music)

• Brahms, Hans von Bülow (later), the musicologist Hanslick
• The Classical tradition of the symphony and chamber music
• Absolute music — music without extra-musical meaning
• Centers: Vienna, Leipzig, Hamburg

The 1860 “Brahms Manifesto” — a public letter in which Brahms criticized the New German School — sharpened the dispute.

Modern music history values both sides, but at the time music developed in deep antagonism.

Richard Wagner — Perfecter of the Musikdrama

Wilhelm Richard Wagner (1813–1883) was born in Leipzig, Germany. He turned opera into Musikdrama (“music-drama”) and proposed and enacted the Gesamtkunstwerk (“total artwork”), fusing music, poetry, drama, and visual art.

Life (Outline)

• 22 May 1813 — Born in Leipzig (same birth year as Verdi)
• 1836 — Marries the actress Minna Planer (later divorced)
• May 1849 — Participates in the Dresden uprising (revolution); 13 years of exile in Switzerland and Paris
• 1864 — Rescued by King Ludwig II of Bavaria
• 1870 — Marries Cosima (Liszt’s daughter, former wife of Hans von Bülow)
• 13–17 August 1876 — Opening of the Bayreuth Festival Theatre; premiere of the Ring cycle (four evenings, 16 hours)
• 13 February 1883 — Dies of a heart attack in Venice at 69

The Perfection of Musikdrama

Wagner’s main works:

• Der fliegende Holländer (1841) — early
• Tannhäuser (1845), Lohengrin (1848) — Romantic operas
• Tristan und Isolde (1859) — the perfection of chromatic harmony, a direct influence on the 20th century
• Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg (1868) — his only comic Musikdrama
• Der Ring des Nibelungen (1848–1874) — a vast four-evening, 16-hour cycle. Das Rheingold, Die Walküre, Siegfried, Götterdämmerung
• Parsifal (1882) — his last work, on the Grail legend

Leitmotif — Leitmotiv

Wagner’s decisive invention:

• People, objects, emotions, and concepts are each assigned a specific musical theme
• The Ring interweaves more than 100 leitmotifs
• Themes are transformed and combined to tell the story

The direct ancestor of modern film and video-game music. John Williams of Star Wars is a direct descendant.

The Bayreuth Festival Theatre (1876)

Wagner built a theatre dedicated to his own works with the support of King Ludwig. The Ring premiered at Bayreuth in 1876.

• Dark pit (the orchestra completely sunk below the stage) — separating music from vision
• The concept of Festspiel — set apart from ordinary theatres
• Still dedicated to Wagner today — the summer Bayreuth Festival

The origin of a culture of musical pilgrimage. Wagnerians from around the world visit the holy site.

Anti-Semitism and Posterity

Wagner was a fierce anti-Semite, notoriously so in his essay Das Judentum in der Musik (1850).

• Interactions with and break from Nietzsche (the young Nietzsche a Wagnerian, later a vehement critic)
• Connection with Hitler and the Nazis — Bayreuth became a “holy site” for Hitler, a lasting post-war problem
• Wagner is not officially performed in modern Israel (public institutions); private performances possible

“Musical giant” and “anti-Semite” — a duality debated into the 21st century.

Johannes Brahms — Heir of the Classical Tradition

Johannes Brahms (1833–1897) was born in Hamburg and worked in Vienna. He saw himself as Beethoven’s successor and centered his output on absolute music (symphony, chamber music, concerto). Uniquely for a 19th-century composer, he wrote no operas at all.

Life

• 7 May 1833 — Born in Hamburg (son of a double-bass player)
• 1853 — At 20, visits the Schumanns; Robert Schumann publishes New Paths in the music paper, launching Brahms as “a Messiah”
• 1854 — Schumann’s suicide attempt. Brahms supports the 6-years-older Clara Schumann for the rest of her life
• 1856 — Schumann dies. Brahms and Clara maintain a deep friendship (understood as platonic)
• 1868 — Fame established with A German Requiem, Op. 45
• 1876 — Completes Symphony No. 1 in C minor, Op. 68 after 21 years, called “Beethoven’s Tenth”
• May 1896 — Clara Schumann dies
• 3 April 1897 — Dies of liver cancer in Vienna at 63, eleven months after Clara

Main Works

• Symphonies Nos. 1–4 (1876–1885) — the peak of the Classical tradition
• Piano Concerto No. 1 in D minor, Op. 15 (1858)
• Piano Concerto No. 2 in B-flat, Op. 83 (1881) — four movements (usually three), a “piano symphony”
• Violin Concerto in D major, Op. 77 (1878)
• Double Concerto (violin and cello), Op. 102 (1887)
• Ein deutsches Requiem, Op. 45 (1868) — in German scripture, not Latin
• Hungarian Dances (1869–1880) — 21 pieces, hugely popular worldwide
• Intermezzi, Rhapsodies, and short pieces Op. 76, 79, 116–119 — late introspective piano miniatures

“In Beethoven’s Shadow”

Brahms was haunted by the shadow of Beethoven’s Ninth and took 21 years to write his First Symphony. After its premiere Hans von Bülow acclaimed it as “Beethoven’s Tenth.”

“To continue Beethoven while asserting one’s own voice” — the shared problem of late-19th-century German composers. Brahms was its best answer.

Friendship with Clara

Brahms’s 43-year friendship with the 14-years-older Clara Schumann. Once thought a love affair; modern research holds it a platonic and profound friendship.

Eleven months after Clara died (May 1896), Brahms died. The two are buried at the Bonn Old Cemetery beside the Schumanns.

Gustav Mahler — “Giant Symphonies”

Gustav Mahler (1860–1911) was born in Bohemia (now the Czech Republic) into a Jewish family. Ten symphonies and 40 songs, a few instrumental works. He said “a symphony must encompass the world” and wrote extremely large works.

Life

• 7 July 1860 — Born in Kaliště, Bohemia (Jewish)
• 1875–1878 — Vienna Conservatory
• 1880s–1890s — Conducts opera houses across central Europe
• 1897 — Music director of the Vienna Court Opera; converts to Protestantism for the post (Jews were barred by antisemitic law)
• 1902 — Marries Alma Schindler (19 years younger, a gifted composer and famous beauty)
• 1907 — Death of daughter Maria; diagnosed with heart disease; resigns from Vienna
• 1908 — Conducts the Metropolitan Opera and the New York Philharmonic
• 18 May 1911 — Dies of heart disease in Vienna at 50

“A Threefold Exclusion” — Mahler’s Anguish

Mahler himself:

“I am three times without a home: as a Bohemian among Austrians, as an Austrian among Germans, and as a Jew throughout the world.”

The identity crisis underlies his music.

Ten Symphonies

• No. 1 in D major, “Titan” (1888)
• No. 2 in C minor, “Resurrection” (1894) — 90 minutes, with soloist and chorus
• No. 3 in D minor (1896) — 95 minutes, 6 movements, Mahler’s longest — “the world within”
• No. 4 in G major (1900) — heavenly life, with soloist
• No. 5 in C-sharp minor (1902) — the Adagietto (famous from Visconti’s Death in Venice)
• No. 6 in A minor, “Tragic” (1904)
• No. 7 in E minor, “Song of the Night” (1905)
• No. 8 in E-flat, “Symphony of a Thousand” (1906) — 8 soloists, giant chorus, huge orchestra — approaching “a thousand” performers
• Das Lied von der Erde (1908) — a symphonic song cycle
• No. 9 in D major (1909) — a presentiment of death, deep
• No. 10 in F-sharp (1910, unfinished) — completions exist

Song Cycles

• Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen (1885)
• Des Knaben Wunderhorn (1892–1901) — folk songs made art
• Kindertotenlieder (1904) — five songs

“The Curse of the Ninth”

Beethoven, Schubert, Dvořák, Bruckner — all stopped after their ninth symphony (they died after completing the ninth). Mahler intentionally did not number Das Lied von der Erde as his ninth. But he died after his ninth (really his tenth) with the Tenth unfinished — the curse is not broken.

“Mahler Rediscovered” — the 1960s

Mahler was rarely performed for the half century after his death in 1911. In the 1960s, Bernstein, Solti, and Kubelík revived him worldwide through complete cycles and concerts:

• The 1971 Visconti film Death in Venice with the Adagietto of the Fifth
• The Mahler boom of the 1960s onward — Mahler now sits at the center of modern symphonic programming

Richard Strauss — “The Last Romantic”

Richard Strauss (1864–1949) — a German composer and conductor roughly contemporary with Mahler. A master of tone poem, opera, and lied.

Main Works

• Don Juan, Op. 20 (1888)
• Tod und Verklärung, Op. 24 (1889)
• Till Eulenspiegel, Op. 28 (1895)
• Also sprach Zarathustra, Op. 30 (1896) — the opening is famous from Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)
• Don Quixote, Op. 35 (1897)
• Ein Heldenleben, Op. 40 (1898)
• Operas Salome (1905), Elektra (1909) — expressionist, extreme
• Der Rosenkavalier (1911) — a return to Classical beauty
• Four Last Songs (1948) — at 84, a year before his death

Longevity and the Nazis

Strauss lived to 84 and remained in Germany under Nazi rule (1933–1945). He was president of the Reich Music Chamber 1933–1935. Yet this served to protect his Jewish daughter-in-law and her family, and politically he was passive. Post-war “denazification” was a temporary problem, later resolved.

Other Major Composers

Anton Bruckner (1824–1896)

Austrian organist and composer. Nine symphonies, huge (60–80 minutes), churchly, solemn. A Wagnerian, in opposition to Brahms.

Antonín Dvořák (1841–1904)

Czech composer. Famous for the New World Symphony (No. 9). A representative of nationalism (next article).

Edvard Grieg (1843–1907)

Norway. Peer Gynt, Piano Concerto in A minor.

Gabriel Fauré (1845–1924)

France. Requiem (1888), nocturnes, barcarolles. A bridge to Impressionism.

Traits of Late Romanticism

Gigantism

• Orchestras of over 100 (Mahler’s Symphony of a Thousand really approached 1000)
• Symphonies and operas of great length
• Larger halls — the culture of the concert hall develops (see the earlier articles)

Extreme Chromaticism

• Wagner’s Tristan chord in Tristan — on the verge of the collapse of tonality
• Mahler’s extension of tonality
• A direct road to Schoenberg’s atonality (next article)

Reinforced Nationalism

• Bohemia (Smetana, Dvořák)
• Russia (next article)
• Finland (Sibelius, next article)
• Hungary (Bartók, still young)

Integration of “Music, Poetry, Philosophy”

• Wagner — myth and philosophy
• Mahler — life and death, cosmos
• R. Strauss — literature, autobiography

Modern Impact

• Film music — Wagner’s leitmotif is a direct ancestor
• Opera houses — the Bayreuth model, modern festival culture
• Conductors — Mahler and R. Strauss themselves were great conductors and shape the 20th-century conductor’s image
• Symphonic culture — Mahler and Bruckner are at the center of the modern concert repertoire
• Romantic psychology and philosophy — deeply embedded in 21st-century culture

From This Article to the Next

We have surveyed the late Romantic era. The next article turns to nationalism and opera. Tchaikovsky (1840–1893) in Russia, Dvořák (1841–1904) in Bohemia, Sibelius (1865–1957) in Finland, Grieg (1843–1907) in Norway — the flowering of national music. Add Verdi (1813–1901) and Puccini (1858–1924) in Italian opera, and we trace the golden age of opera.