The Romantic Era + Its Politics
This conservative political order, established by the Congress of Vienna in 1814-15, restored European monarchies after Napoleon's defeat.
What is the Restoration?
This composer wrote 600+ Lieder, failed to get the imperial Kapellmeister post in Vienna, and died of typhoid fever at age 31.
Who is Franz Schubert?
German term for a single art song; its plural form names the genre associated with Schubert and Schumann.
What is Lied (plural: Lieder)?
The Italian operatic aesthetic of the early-to-mid 19th century emphasizing vocal agility, ornamentation, and lyrical beauty; associated with Rossini, Donizetti, and Bellini.
What is Bel Canto?
Brahms took 21 years to complete this symphony, premiered in 1876, which reinvigorated the genre after decade of being considered "academic".
What is Symphony no 1?
This Italian unification movement, spanning roughly 1815-1871, became deeply intertwined with opera and national identity.
What is the Risorgimento?
This New Orleans-born pianist of Jewish and Creole heritage was the first North American composer to make an impact within Western art music.
Who is Louis Moreau Gottschalk?
Wagner's concept of a unified total artwork combining music, text, drama, and visual stagecraft.
What is Gesamtkunstwerk?
In double aria form, this fast brilliant section closes the scene - typically two stanzas set to the same music.
What is the Cabaletta?
This African American voice student from Erie, PA sand plantation songs for Dvorak while he was in New York, directly influencing the themes of the New World Symphony.
Who is Harry T. Burleigh?
Charles X triggered this 1830 French uprising by imposing censorship, passing the Anti-Sacrilege Act, and dissolving the Chamber of Deputies.
What is the July Revolution?
This composer spent 12 years in exile after the 1849 Dresden uprising, during which he developed his theories of music drama and Gesamtkunstwerk.
Who is Richard Wagner?
This term - borrowed from a fashionable Parisian psychiatric diagnosis - describes both Berlioz's recurring musical theme in Symphonie fantastique and the obsessive fixed idea it represents.
What is the Idée Fixe?
Rossini wrote this 1816 opera buffa in less than a month for the Rome Carnival season; its plot is a prequel to the Marriage of Figaro.
What is Il Barbiere di Siviglia (The Barber of Seville)?
Amy Beach's Gaelic Symphony incorporated this Irish folk tune - whose title translates as "the little field of barley" - as a way of bridging concert music with Irish diasporic experience.
What is "Goirtin Ornaidh"?
This 1870-71 conflict between France and Prussia ended in French defeat and led directly to the founding of the Société Nationale de Musique.
What is the Franco-Prussian War?
Born in Bohemia in 1860, this composer converted to Catholicism, codifies concert audience etiquette as director of the Vienna Opera, and later conducted at the MET and NY Phil.
Who is Gustav Mahler?
This is the break or transition zone between a singer's chest voice and head voice; Schubert placed a dramatic climax here in "Gretchen am Spinnrade".
What is the passaggio?
What is the Tempo di Mezzo?
The informal name for the Russian nationalist composer group - Balakirev, Borodin, Cui, Mussorgsky, and Rimsky-Korsakov - expressed solidarity with the New German School.
What is the Mighty Kuchka (the Five / Moguchaya Kuchka)?
This pan-European wave of uprisings in a single year had lasting consequences including the rise of nationalism, labor movements, and mass migration - and forms a key backdrop for the piano virtuosos.
What are the Revolutions of 1848?
Born in London in 1875 to a Sierra Leone Creole father and English mother, this composer wrote his Symphony in A minor as a student at the Royal College of Music and attended the Pan-African Conference in 1900.
Who is Samuel Coleridge-Taylor?
Coined by Franz Brendel, this term names the faction of composers - including Berlioz, Liszt, and Wagner - who championed program music and saw themselves as heirs to Beethoven's dramatic legacy.
What is the New German School?
Wagner's term for his mature operatic genre, in which dramatic and musical continuity is sustained throughout - no stop-start aria/recitative divisions - and the orchestra carries primary meaning.
What is music drama?
Tchaikovsky's Symphony no 6 is formally unprecedented for a post-Haydn symphony because of this feature of its final movement.
What is ending with a slow movement (Adagio lamentoso)?