Instrumental Music That Has Some Literary or Pictorial Association is Absolute Music

Chapter 43 - An orchestra performs Symphonie fantastique - Theme A in March to the Scaffold’s melodic contour is descending - The bassoon plays a countermelody in Theme A - The fifth movement is the Dies irae theme - The idee fixe, which means “fixed idea” is varied throughout Symphonie fantastique through a process known as thematic transformation - Berlioz was a devoted fan of Beethoven - Movement III- A shepherds’ duet inspires anxiety - Movement IV- The artist is punished for committing a crime of passion - Movement I- The young musician’s passionate daydream about love and suffering - Movement V- The creatures of the underworld introduce the musician’s eternal resting place - Movement II- A dance in which the beloved is glimpsed for a moment - Berlioz wrote a Requiem Mass - Describes the fifth movement: Unusual instrumental effects, prominent use of dissonant and chromatic harmonies, opens with a slow section that gives way to an allegro,woodwinds and strings are featured, it is a transformed version of the Dies irae chant - In the fifth movement of Symphonie fantastique, both the theme of the Beloved, known as the idee fixe, and the Dies irae chant are transformed in character, the melody includes ornament such as trills and grace notes, the melody represents the beloved transformed, the tune features the clarinet in its highest register. - Reveries, Passions, A Ball, Scene in the Fields, March to the Scaffold, Dream of a Witches’ Sabbath - Describes the fourth movement: The movement is programmatic, the timpani are prominently featured, the idee fixe is heard only a the end of the movement - Hector Berlioz: He won the Prix de Rome, He was a genius at orchestration, some of his works have a literary basis - The idee fixe from Symphonie fantastique represents the artist’s beloved - Harriet Smithson was Berlioz’s wife - Instrumental music that has some literary or pictorial association is called program music - The fourth movement is built upon two main themes: a(n) descending major scale in the low strings and a diabolically exuberant march time in the brass and woodwinds. At the very end of the movement, the idee fixe appears in the clarinet, one last recollection of the beloved before the fall of the guillotine’s blade. - The full orchestral fortissimo dynamic that begins this passage signals the arrival of the Beloved with a diabolical brass fanfare. - Program music evokes images and ideas and is distinguished form - Absolute music, which consists of music without literary or pictorial meanings. - The main theme, heard transformed in each movement of Berlioz’s Symphonie fantastique is called the idee fixe. Chapter 44 - A Midsummer Night’s Dream in in sonata allegro form - Mendelssohn’s career: Conductor of the Gewandhaus Orchestra in Leipzig, founder of the Conservatory of Leipzig - Sibelius= Sweden - Albeniz= Spain - Dvorak= Czech Republic - Borodin= Russia - Elgar= England - Felix Mendelssohn’s concert overture is based on a play by William Shakespeare. In the piece Mendelssohn uses various themes in sonata allegro form that also represent characters in the play, such as fairies-who are represented by Theme 1- and young lovers- who are represented by Theme 2. - This is the recapitulation of the sonata allegro form. It differs from the exposition. - Although Grieg composed twenty-two pieces-including preludes and dances- as incidental music for Ibsen’s Peer Gynt, he later extracted eight movements and combined them into two orchestral suites, four movements each. - This excerpt, which appears in the recapitulation, features both the Royal court and Hunting themes, the latter of which is represented by a fanfare figure. - Norwegian composer Edvard Grieg’s Morning Mood was originally used as incidental music for a play by Henrik Ibsen. The sunrise is depicted by a dramatic crescendo. - Edvard was admired and performed by Franz Liszt - Edvard Grieg represents the Scandinavian nationalist school