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The Topical Vocabulary of the Nineteenth Century

2012; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 31; Issue: 2-3 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/01411896.2012.682887

1547-7304

Janice Dickensheets,

Digital Humanities and Scholarship

Abstract Since Leonard Ratner's initial introduction of topoi in Classic Music: Expression, Form, and Style, topical analysis has slowly gained acceptance, due largely to the writings of such noted authors as Kofi Agawu, Wye Jamison Allanbrook, Jonathan Bellman, and Raymond Monelle. Ratner provided a succinct lexicon of common eighteenth-century topoi, and while various authors have added nineteenth-century topics to his list, to this point none have offered a specific lexicon of Romantic topics. Similar to their eighteenth-century cousins, Romantic topics feature simple dance types and styles, but expand to incorporate more complex musical dialects such as the Chivalric and Demonic styles—all illustrative of Romantic ideology. Notes 1Leonard Ratner, "Topical Content in Mozart's Keyboard Sonatas," Early Music 19/4 (1991), 616. This lexicon was the first of its kind, providing scholars and performers with a tool for understanding and performing Classical-period compositions. 2Leonard Ratner, Classic Music: Expression, Form, and Style (New York: Schirmer Books, 1980), 9–30. Although many authors have used Ratner's concept of topical analysis to approach various nineteenth-century works, thereby identifying a significant number of Romantic topics, not one has provided a concise lexicon of those topics that were specific to the nineteenth century. V. Kofi Agawu's Playing with Signs: A Semiotic Interpretation of Classic Music (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1991) offers the possibility of using topical analysis for the works of Romantic composers, even listing some topics that abound in Romantic music, and he includes a list of topics, derived largely from my dissertation and the research for this article previously published in The Pendragon Review in Music as Discourse: Semiotic Adventures in Romantic Music (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009). Eero Tarasti identifies nineteenth-century topical styles or moods in Myth and Music (Helsinki: Suomen Musiikkitieteellinen, 1978), paying special attention to their use as signifiers of mythical elements in music. Raymond Monelle, in The Sense of Music (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2000), also discusses topics and their applicability to music outside the Classical period. He recognizes elements of some specific topics (predominantly those tied to the hunt and military), and discusses topical analysis in conjunction with musical semiotics. Among the mythical topics identified by both Monelle and Tarasti are supernatural topics such as demonic and fairy-like music, and styles that include archaizing gestures—particularly those connected to Medieval subjects. Neither author, however, provides a practical lexicon. Keith Jones, in The Symphonic Poems of Franz Liszt (Stuyvesant, NJ: Pendragon Press, 1997), approaches the analysis of Liszt's symphonic poems from a topical and semiotic point of view, including discussion of topoi specific to those works. He identified topics such as the funeral march, military style, pastoral music, recitative, Sturm und Drang, horn-call and fanfare, cantilena, and such national topoi as Hungarian and Polish musics, relating them specifically to Liszt's works. Other significant writings involving topical analysis include Wye Jamison Allanbrook's Rhythmic Gesture in Mozart: Le Nozze di Figaro and Don Giovanni (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1983) and "Two Threads Through the Labyrinth," in Convention in Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-Century Music: Essays in Honor of Leonard G. Ratner, ed. Wye J. Allanbrook, Janet M. Levy, and William P. Mahrt (Stuyvesant, NY: Pendragon Press, 1992); Robert S. Hatten, Musical Meaning in Beethoven (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1994); Elaine R. Sisman, "After the Heroic Style: Fantasia and the 'Characteristic' Sonatas of 1809," in Beethoven Forum 6 (1998) and Mozart: The "Jupiter" Symphony (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993). This article is expanded from research that was partially published in The Pendragon Review 2/1 (Fall 2003). 3The topics identified by Ratner in Romantic Music: Sound and Syntax (New York: Schirmer Music, 1992) include the following: Alla Breve (p. 260), Barcarolle (pp. 172 and 175), Bolero (p. 60), Bourrée (p. 18), Dies Irae (p. 75), Gavotte (p. 39), March (pp. 97 and 276), Minuet (p. 18), Motet (p. 74), Musette (p. 105), Ombra (p. 70), Romanza (p. 27), Stile Legato (pp. 26, 27, 39, and 229), Style Brisé (p. 276), and Waltz (pp. 153–56). 4 Ratner, Classic Music, 9. 5 Ratner, Classic Music, 9. 6 Jonathan Bellman supports this theory in his article "Aus Alten Märchen: The Chivalric Style of Schumann and Brahms," The Journal of Musicology 13/1 (Winter 1995), stating that nineteenth-century music drew on the "content specific" language of the eighteenth century, both by using gestures (topics), which were exploited during that period, and by incorporating the process of indicating the context of the work by using widely understood musical formulas. Kenneth DeLong discusses the continued use of musical topics as being an essential character of the Biedermeier musical style ("The Convention of Musical Biedermeier," in Convention in Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-Century Music). He argues that the use of referential content is a link to the past and part of what separates this music from the more progressive styles, which were intent on searching for new ideas and breaking from the classic traditions. In his discussion he alludes to new topics that emerge in the early nineteenth century, such as the drawing room waltz and imitations of contemporary operatic gestures. 7 Allanbrook, Rhythmic Gesture in Mozart, 18. Speaking to this, Allanbrook observes that topical materials must be clearly defined and their relationships to each other must be "sharply and dramatically demarcated," and listeners must "embrace the fact of contrast and identify the members involved swiftly and near-automatically." 8 Ratner, Classic Music, 9. 9 See Ratner, Classic Music, 9–16 (his detailed description of "Types" as he defines the dances and marches) and Allanbrook, Rhythmic Gesture in Mozart, 33–60 (her description of the different dance and march types). 10 Ratner, Classic Music, 12. 11 Allanbrook, Rhythmic Gesture in Mozart, 63. 12 Mosco Carner, "Ländler," The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, 2nd ed., ed. Stanley Sadie (London: Macmillan, 2001), vol. 14, 223. 13 Andrew Lamb, "Waltz," The New Grove Dictionary, vol. 27, 74. 14 Allanbrook, Rhythmic Gesture in Mozart, 65–66. 15 Ratner, Classic Music, 9. 16 The four Ratnerian styles most notably left out of this lexicon are sensibility, sturm und drang, galant, and pictorialism. Sensibility and sturm und drang utilize gestures and harmonic elements that become central to the Romantic musical language. The galant style is absorbed by the song styles, and pictorialism is replaced by programmatic music. 17 Ratner, Classic Music, 19. 18 Several additional types of Lied-Style (or Song-Style, as they may also be called) topics exist as well, including the Lullaby, Kriegslied, and Winterlied styles. The latter often has programmatic ties to romantic poetry, and its defining characteristic is its suggestion of a sentimental longing that often includes pain and suffering. George S. Bozarth's article "Brahms's Lieder Ohne Worte: The 'Poetic' Andantes of the Piano Sonatas" (Brahms Studies: Analytical and Historical Perspectives, ed. George S. Bozarth [Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990], 345–78) discusses the relationship between several of Brahms's andantes and Romantic poetry, especially that poetry that is described as Winterlied. 19 Jonathan Bellman, Improvisation in Chopin's Nocturnes (DMA Diss., Stanford University, 1990), 10–15. 20 Ben Arnold, "Piano Music: 1835–1861," in The Liszt Companion, ed. Ben Arnold (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2002), 90. 21 Humphrey Searle, The Music of Liszt (New York: Dover), 56. 22 Robert Schumann, Music and Musicians: Essays and Criticisms, 2nd series, trans., ed., and annotated by Fanny Raymond Ritter (London: William Reeves, 1880), 325. 23 The Declamatory Style was also used by eighteenth-century composers; for example, in the opening section of the first movement of Haydn's Symphony No. 7. 24 This style is one of the clearest descendants of the eighteenth-century Empfindsamer Stil, and Kofi Agawu goes so far as to state that this style is "the poet's natural language" (Playing with Signs, 141). 25 This style is thoroughly explored in Kenneth DeLong's 1992 article, "The Conventions of Musical Biedermeier," in Convention in Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-Century Music, 195–223. 26 Ratner, Classic Music, 24. Elsewhere he mentions the ombra scene from Act III of Verdi's Macbeth, in which the ghosts of the eight kings visit Macbeth (Romantic Music, p. 70). Allanbrook briefly mentions, in Rhythmic Gesture in Mozart, the traditions of ombra that date back to "obligatory" scenes from Hell in sixteenth-century intermedios (p. 361). Birgitte Moyer discusses the Ombra Style in more depth in "Ombra and Fantasia in Late Eighteenth-Century Theory and Practice," included in Conventions in Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-Century Music. There are several fairly consistent characteristics that distinguish the ombra style. These include the use of agitated and melancholy types of musical gestures, minor keys, tremolos (occasionally using diminished chords), rising scales and arpeggios, and dramatic changes in dynamics (pp. 293–302). 27 The association of the trombone with the supernatural goes back to the seventeenth century. Typical orchestral scoring in the ombra scenes of Baroque opera includes the trombone (Moyer, "Ombra and Fantasia in Late Eighteenth-Century Theory and Practice," 302), and this tradition continued with the choirs of trombones in the ombra scenes in Gluck's Orfeo and Mozart's Idomeneo (Allanbrook, Rhythmic Gesture in Mozart, 361). 28 Leonard Ratner, Romantic Music: Sound and Syntax (New York: Schirmer Books, 1992), 18–276. The references are scattered throughout his various discussions. 29 Included in this cluster of topics is Ratner's Learned Style, a style he associates with the church (Classic Music, 23). Another archaizing style discussed by Ratner in Romantic Music is the Motet Style. He suggests Schumann's Symphony No. 3 in E♭ major, op. 97, movement IV, is a recognizable example of this style (Romantic Music, 74). Numerous other topics, both sacred and secular, were used as well to signify an antiquated world: a world remote enough to be archaic, but close enough for nostalgia. 30 Bellman, "Aus Alten Märchen," 117–18. 31 Bellman, "Aus Alten Märchen," 118–19. 32 Bellman, "Aus Alten Märchen," 130. 33 Bellman, "Aus Alten Märchen," 120. 34 John Daverio, "Schumann's Ossianic Manner," Nineteenth-Century Music 21/3 (Spring 1998), 251–58. Daverio identifies several styles that make up what he calls the "Ossianic" mood. These include other-worldly passages, military or hunt styles, and folk styles (p. 257). The alternation of mystical, dreamlike music with military passages and folk songs combines to create an epic-style work. This summarizes his very cogent description of Ossianic-style epic music. I am simply extending his basic premise to include those works not directly tied to Ossianic writings. 35 Ratner describes the plucking of a stringed instrument or the evocation of it as style brise (using the Baroque term), and gives it the status of a topic in Romantic Music (p. 276). Although this can be used by itself, it is most often found in conjunction with other gestures in styles indicating "old" or "folk style." For example, in the Bardic Style it evokes the harp, in the Spanish Style, the guitar. 36 These writings include Jonathan Bellman's The Style Hongrois in the Music of Western Europe (Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1993); The Exotic in Western Music, ed. Jonathan Bellman (Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1998); Ralph Locke's "A Broader View of Musical Exoticism," Journal of Musicology 24/4 (2007), 477–521; and David Korevaar's "Exoticism Assimilated: 'Turkish' Elements in Mozart's Sonata, K. 331 and Beethoven's 'Waldstein' Sonata. op. 53," The Journal of Musicological Research 21/3 (2002), 197–232, to name but a few of the many articles and books that have been published on this subject in the past twenty years. 37 John Daverio, Robert Schumann: Herald of a New Poetic Age (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997), 140. 38 Two excellent examples of works dealing with this type of analysis are Eric Sams's The Songs of Robert Schumann (New York: Norton, 1969) and Paul Merrick, Revolution and Religion in the Music of Liszt (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987). 39 Colin Mason, "Brahms' Piano Sonatas," The Music Review 5/2 (May 1944), 115–16. 40 James Parakilas's book Ballads Without Words (Portland: Amadeus Press, 1992) provides invaluable information regarding the common characteristics of Chopin's Ballades, as well as Brahms's own Op. 10 Ballades. Similarities can be drawn between this sonata movement and Chopin's techniques for composing Ballades. Although Brahms most likely would not have known Chopin's Ballades, Parakilas states that he would not have needed them as a model for his own Ballades (p. 141). Similarities to Chopin's works in the movement under consideration include naked octaves representing the narrator (on p. 58 Parakilas discusses this aspect of Chopin's works), strongly symmetrical structure that is almost stanza-like, and clear-cut characters in dialogue with each other. All of these traits are discussed by Parakilas. 41 Structurally, the movement has Ballade-like symmetry. Of the four initial repetitions of the theme, three are four bars long and the last is five with the ending elongated. Each repetition of the theme is changed somewhat in the ending bars. An agitated scalar figuration interrupts these repetitions, setting up the conflict that is necessary for all ballads (Parakilas, Ballads Without Words, 35). Another repetition of the four-bar theme is followed by two repetitions of the second half of the thematic material, each up a third. The first is two bars long and the second is three. This is followed by two bars of closing material that is similar to the earlier agitated interruption. The second key center and defining theme (character two) also consists of nine sections and the transition and closing sections are divided into three sections each. The overall structure of the exposition suggests a stanzaic symmetry. 42 Of all the analyses studied, only William S. Newman (The Sonata Since Beethoven [Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1969], 333) concurs with my analysis of the origin of this theme. (Even though Newman indicates mm. 110–15 rather than the closing theme material in mm. 95–98, I believe he is referring to the same material.) Admittedly, this theme also resembles Clara's theme in Schumann's Impromptu on a Theme by Clara Wieck, op. 5, but I believe that this is coincidental, as Brahms was reported to have been unfamiliar with Schumann's works until several years later (Jan Swafford, Johannes Brahms: A Biography [New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1997], 73). 43 The autobiographical elements are too intriguing to ignore, even in this short analysis. Two sides of the poet's character, middle-class simplicity (symbolized by the Lied Style), and popular folk elements (portrayed by the Style Hongrois) in a decidedly low style, all watched over by the shadow of Beethoven, pose the possibility that the poet is indeed Brahms himself. 44 This discussion is expanded in chapter 6 of my dissertation, The Nineteenth-Century Sonata Cycle as Novel (University of Northern Colorado, 2004). Topical analysis of the entire piece revealed strong connections to E.T.A. Hoffmann's Kater Murr and Jean Paul Friderich Richter's Flegeljahre. 45 Over the past few decades, topical studies have appeared by Jonathan Bellman (Chopin's Polish Ballade: Op. 38 as Narrative of National Martyrdom [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010]), George Bozarth ("Lieder Ohne Worte"), John Daverio ("Schumann's Ossianic Manner"), Owen Jander ("Beethoven's 'Orpheus in Hades': The Andante Con Moto of the Fourth Piano Concerto," Nineteenth-Century Music 18/3 [Spring 1985], 195–212), and Kofi Agawu (Music as Discourse). 46 Leonard Ratner, The Musical Experience: Sound, Movement, and Arrival (New York: W.H. Freeman and Company, 1983), 61–71; and Music, The Listener's Art (New York: McGraw-Hill Book Company, 1977), 123–28.