Mariano Marcos State University COLLEGE OF TEACHER EDUCATION Laoag City Reporter: John G.

Sinang BSE III-B Title of the Report: Unit XVI: The Nineteenth-Century Art Song, The Romantic Song; Schubert and the Lied, Listening#20: Schubert-Erlkonig: Robert Schuman and the Song Cycle, Listening#21: R Schuman-Dichterliebe,#8. Romantic music or music in the Romantic Period is a musicological and artistic term referring to a particular period, theory, compositional practice, and canon in Western music history, from about 1830 to 1910. Romantic music as a movement evolved from the formats, genres and musical ideas established in earlier periods, such as the classical period, and went further in the name of expression and syncretism of different art-forms with music. Romanticism does not necessarily refer to romantic love, though that theme was prevalent in many works composed during this time period, both in literature, painting or music. Romanticism followed a path that led to the expansion of formal structures for a composition set down or at least created in their general outlines in earlier periods, and the end-result is that the pieces are 'understood' to be more passionate and expressive, both by 19th century and today's audiences. Because of the expansion of form (those elements pertaining to form, key, instrumentation and the like) within a typical composition, and the growing idiosyncrasies and expressivity of the new composers from the new century, it thus became easier to identify an artist based on his work or style. Romantic music attempted to increase emotional expression and power to describe deeper truths or human feelings, while preserving but in many cases extending the formal structures from the classical period, in others, creating new forms that were deemed better suited to the new subject matter. The subject matter in the new music was now not only purely abstract, but also frequently drawn from other art-form sources such as literature, or history (historical figures) or nature itself. Franz Peter Schubert (German pronunciation: [fants ubt]; January 31, 1797 November 19, 1828) was an Austrian composer. Although he died at an early age, Schubert was tremendously prolific. He wrote some 600 Lieder, nine symphonies (including the famous "Unfinished Symphony"), liturgical music, operas, some incidental music, and a large body of chamber and solo piano music. Appreciation of his music during his lifetime was limited, but interest in Schubert's work increased dramatically in the decades following his death at the age of 31. Franz Liszt, Robert Schumann, Johannes Brahms and Felix Mendelssohn, among others, discovered and championed his works in the 19th Century. Today, Schubert is admired as one of the leading exponents of the early Romantic era in music and he remains one of the most frequently performed composers.

MUSIC Schubert wrote almost 1000 works in a remarkably short career. The largest number (over 600) of these is songs. He wrote seven complete symphonies, as well as the two movements of the "Unfinished" Symphony, a complete sketch (with partial orchestration) of a ninth, and arguable fragments of a 10th. There is a large body of music for solo piano, including 21 complete sonatas and many short dances, and a relatively large set of works for piano duet. There are nearly 30 chamber works, including some fragmentary works. His choral output includes six masses. He completed only half of his eighteen operatic projects, and composed no concertos.

Style and reception

In July 1947 the twentieth-century composer Ernst Krenek discussed Schubert's style, abashedly admitting that he at first "shared the wide-spread opinion that Schubert was a lucky inventor of pleasing tunes ... lacking the dramatic power and searching intelligence which distinguished such 'real' masters as Bach or Beethoven". Krenek wrote that he reached a completely different assessment after close study of Schubert's songs at the urging of friend and fellow composer Eduard Erdmann. Krenek pointed to the piano sonatas as giving "ample evidence that [Schubert] was much more than an easy-going tune-smith who did not know, and did not care, about the craft of composition." Each sonata then in print, according to Krenek, exhibited "a great wealth of technical finesse" and revealed Schubert as "far from satisfied with pouring his charming ideas into conventional molds; on the contrary he was a thinking artist with a keen appetite for experimentation."[ That "appetite for experimentation" manifests itself repeatedly in Schubert's output in a wide variety of forms and genres, including opera, liturgical music, chamber and solo piano music, and symphonic works. Perhaps most familiarly, his adventurousness manifests itself as a notably original sense of modulation, as in the second movement of the String Quintet, where he modulates from C major, through E major, to reach the tonic key of C major.[ It also appears in unusual choices of instrumentation, as in the Arpeggione Sonata or the unconventional scoring of the Trout Quintet. If it not infrequently led Schubert up blind alleys, resulting in fragmentary works, it also enabled him to create music unlike anything that had come before, such as his two song cycles of unprecedented scope. While he was clearly influenced by the Classical sonata forms of Beethoven and Mozart (his early works, among them notably the 5th Symphony, are particularly Mozartean), his formal structures and his developments tend to give the impression more of melodic development than of harmonic drama. This combination of Classical form and long-breathed Romantic melody sometimes lends them a discursive style: his 9th Symphony was described by Robert Schumann as running to "heavenly lengths".His harmonic innovations include movements in which the first section ends in the key of the subdominant rather than the dominant (as in the last movement of the Trout Quintet). Schubert's practice here was a forerunner of the common Romantic technique of relaxing, rather than raising, tension in the middle of a movement, with final resolution postponed to the very end.

Robert Schumann(1810 - 1856)

Robert Schumann (June 8, 1810 - July 29, 1856) was the arch-Romantic composer, thoroughly committed intellectually and emotionally to the idea of music being composed to register the feelings, thoughts and impressions garnered by a sensitive spirit on its journey through life. Schumann was born into a devoted family based in Zwickau, 40 miles south of Leipzig. His musical and literary leanings were encouraged by his father who secured a tutor for him; although the lessons were rudimentary, the boy was composing little pieces by the age of seven. He entered Zwickau Gymnasium aged 10, matriculating in 1828; the latter part of his time there was increasingly spent writing, especially poetry. While at the Gymnasium his beloved father died, leaving his mother with no alternative but to place Robert under the guardianship of a family friend. It was decided that Schumann should study law at Leipzig University, which he joined in 1828. From the first, Schumann neglected his law studies, plunging instead into the musical and artistic life of Leipzig. Clearly a romantic and impressionable young man, he was not sparing in his affections towards women, apparently smitten by every pretty girl he encountered. But it was not all play; when he became acquainted with Friedrich Wieck, an outstanding piano teacher (whose daughter, Clara, was already a remarkable pianist), he arranged to take lessons with him. After two years in Leipzig, Schumann persuaded his mother to allow him to continue his studies at Heidelberg University. Again, he neglected his law studies, and in the summer of 1830 wrote to his mother begging her to allow him to take up music full-time. After consulting Wieck, a deeply conservative man whose judgment she felt she could trust, it was agreed that Schumann should move into Wieck's house and submit himself to a year of Wieck's rigorous teaching methods. Wieck's intention was to make Schumann into a concert pianist, but Schumann's obsession with the development of his finger technique led to his damaging the muscles in his third finger so badly that it remained useless for the rest of his life. He turned, instead, to composition. At this time Schumann also suffered an undisclosed crisis with his health which worried him deeply (he even made out his will). This could possibly have been the first signs of the syphilis which ultimately killed him. With the publication of his earliest successful piano compositions, such as Papillons, Op. 2 and the Paganini Caprices, Op. 3, Schumann began to appreciate more clearly the interpretative abilities of 13-year-old Clara Wieck, describing her to one friend as "perfection". The adolescent girl naturally idolized the handsome and romantic 22-year-old. But deeper bonds were in the future: first came the launch of the Neue Zeitschrift fr Musik, a weekly magazine initiated by a group of Leipzig musicians and writers with the express intention of countering the crushingly conservative orientation of Leipzig's music critics. This was to prove a vital outlet for Schumann's writings, and he was sufficiently committed to it to become its proprietor in 1835. In the magazine he made many astute observations and championed the recently deceased and almost forgotten Schubert, whose music he did so much to establish in Germany and beyond. It also carried his famous pronouncement on Frdric Chopin after encountering the composer's Variations on Mozart's L ci darem la mano for Piano & Orchestra, Op. 2: "Hats off, gentlemen! A genius!".

The years 1834-35 were also a turning point in his emotional life; he became engaged to another of Wieck's students, Ernestine von Fricken not the most obvious match he could have made, considering her lack of intelligence and her aristocratic background. This announcement led to Clara displaying her first signs of a strong emotional involvement with Schumann. As he began to cool towards Ernestine by late 1835, he and Clara acknowledged their mutual attraction. When Wieck became aware of the situation, to Schumann's surprise he violently opposed it. An all-out war for the affections of Clara, which provoked staggering depths of vituperation from Herr Wieck, ended in a lawsuit. Wieck lost, which enabled Clara and Robert to marry in September 1840. The following day Clara turned 21. Throughout this period Schumann had composed almost exclusively for the piano. Now there was a tremendous outburst of lieder and the following year, much to the approval of the ambitious Clara, Schumann buckled down to compose his first symphony. Their close working relationship, and the arrival of their first child in 1841 (they produced seven in all), meant that Clara's career suffered. Although she continued her concert tours (they needed the money), she willingly suspended her other musical activities. The marriage at this time was blissfully happy. In the spring of 1841 Schumann's Spring Symphony was premiered. By the following year Clara was on tour again: as women did not travel alone at that time, Robert had to accompany her. Deeply insecure away from domestic routine, his health deteriorated and he began to resent his wife's addiction to the pleasures of concert-giving. His professional career was still in the ascendant, and in 1843, when Mendelssohn provided the impetus for the founding of the Leipzig Conservatory, he also insisted that Schumann be given a teaching role there. Schumann, however, proved to be a diffident teacher; unable to communicate his ideas, he would often sit through an entire lesson without saying a word to his students. He resigned his post in 1844. By then his bouts of depression (he called them "melancholy") were more severe and more prolonged. However, he was still composing prolifically and in 1843 his choral work Das Parodies und die Peri was premiered, Schumann himself conducting. It was an immediate success in Leipzig and also received a warm welcome in Dresden. Yet 1844 brought more problems: a Russian tour by Clara, accompanied by Robert, was a tremendous financial success and both artists were treated with enormous respect. But Schumann experienced frightening physical distress, including temporary blindness and frequent vertigo. He became so deeply depressed that he was often unable to engage in the most basic conversation. One observer noted: "Schumann sat mostly in a corner near the pianowith a sunken head, his hair was hanging in his face, he had a pensive expression, as if he were about to whistle to himself Clara Schumann was a little more talkative; she answered all the questions for her husbandbut one could hardly characterize her as a gracious or sympathetic woman".