#romantic era music

[lord-byrons-ghost]

Sir! A pleasure to see you - I am inordinately fond of the Eroica, it calls up such excellent atmospheres.

As for ye starlight of reality - surely you agree that the deuced substance is written about by many scribblers not worth their salt & is damaged beyond repair? I'll certainly scribble more about the shadows of Venezia, if you'd care to peruse that.

[mikrokosmos]

Franck - String Quartet in D Major (1890)

It's been a long time since I updated this blog with a new post. Too long. And to be honest it's been a tough year for me personally. I've gone through different kinds of losses and had lost enthusiasm for this hobby of writing about music. Today was a pretty rough day emotionally and, if I'm allowed to use cliches, music "saved" me. At least this quartet brought me back into a music mindset, and I don't write about Franck that often here. Main reason is that, despite his esteem as a major or great composer of the later 19th century, his reputation relies on a handful of works from much later in his life. This String Quartet was his last completed work and it shows the hallmarks of his self-realized style; very lyrical and melancholic, constantly modulating and flowing through a stream of tonality. He had completed this after studying quartets by Beethoven, Schubert, and Brahms. Especially from Schubert is where we get unexpected modulations. Ironically this last work was the first to get him praise during his lifetime. And as with his other major works, the quartet is cyclical, with themes from each movement returning in the finale. And I hope this music lifts your spirits as well to end off 2023

Movements:

Poco Lento, Allegro

Scherzo: Vivace

Larghetto

Finale: Allegro molto

[pearl-plays-piano]

Butterflies

Giuseppe Concone, Op. 23, No. 5

[mozartcoeur]

I've always thought it was fascinating how the same guy who composed the whimsical "Nutcracker" also wrote things like this that are more contemplative and oddly cathartic.

[lesser-known-composers]

Julius Benedict (1804-1885) : Piano Concerto in E-Flat Major, Op. 89: II. Andante ·

Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra · Howard Shelley ·

[secondhandsorrows]

Storytelling with Music in Mind

Rant incoming! You've been warned.

Like how writers and storytellers often use movies and film to teach structure, character, relationships, foreshadowing, mystery, climaxes, keeping intrigue, and more, we can explore the same things through a musical lens. 

Music can be a big source and tool for not just the tedious writing process, but also for inspiration and story form. Because I’m also a musician, music is one of the biggest factors I use in my writing. Listening to music is a fantastic tool in visualizing your scenes or characters, so it is extremely useful in planning out pacing, tone and atmosphere, as well as observing your characters act out in different ways in different situations. It’s one of my top-favorite ways to envision my ideas or structure my stories (especially thematically). 

Another favorite exercise of mine is taking inspiration from music, namely Classical or Romantic-Era music, for the content or foundation of a story. One of my short stories I’ve finished is structured around the three movements of Debussy’s La Mer, basing my scenes around each movement’s title and general emotional idea. It’s a fun way to distinguish what makes you love a song and how you can incorporate those values into your own storytelling. 

Though music and books are both totally disparate forms of art, there are some ways the two may not be so different. 

There’s a lot of music and genres out there can be inspiring for many different authors: it can be anything. Some of my favorites are folk, rock, classical, neo-classical, video-game, soundtrack… now I’m just listing the top genres on my Spotify Wrapped, but you get the gist. One particular kind of music I’ve been recently obsessed with has its form already structured by story: symphonic poems. A symphonic poem (aka, tone poem) is a romantic-era style of orchestral music that expresses or illustrates an idea, story, content of a poem, or a landscape, which is typically alluded to in its title. The whole idea and term was essentially created by Franz Liszt, who composed a multitude of them (though descriptive and programmatic music had been around for quite a long time before.)

The structure of tone poems often suggests a natural sequence of events. Dvorak's A Hero's Song, op. 111 depicts a nameless protagonist undergoing what could be described as a Hero’s Journey (kind of like the story structure)— facing trials and tragedies before coming out triumphant. Glière’s The Sirens, op. 33 evokes a fantasy-feel with its depiction of blood-thirsty, beautiful sirens. These are just a few examples out of many, and I highly recommend having a listen, if you’re ever in need of expanding your musical playlists. 

Depending on the content of which they want to express, composers would often use different, specific approaches according to the subject matter and the story or emotions they wanted to convey, such as instrumentation, dynamics, rhythms, rests, gestures, timbre, texture, what have you. Recurring themes can be sprinkled throughout, including variations to portray change or different events. I won’t get much into this, as this isn’t a composition post, but I mention these because the process is rather similar to the story writing process. We convey what we want to convey using themes, tone, dialogue, plot devices, and, in the more technical sense, word choice, grammar, paragraph structure, etc., which all create a kind of musical rhythm when put together. 

We can look at all the ways we can interpret and utilize music — from its form and structure, to its inspirational and emotional facets — into our stories. How it can all gets us to feel.

Putting it simply, the idea of incorporating music with story is, in its best terms, to explore idea generation, story structure, and character arc, in a way that impacts the reader emotionally, subverts (or sometimes mindfully adheres) to expectations, and keeps intrigue and relatability. We relate not to just the concrete content of a piece, or a song, or a story, but also the abstract emotion it gives us. Furthermore, this kind of music exists not just in the idea or the story, but also as the words on the page: the musical-sounding phrasing, the sentences, structure, word choice, rhythmic flow…

Speaking of, I’ll leave this off with a fantastic quote from Gary Provost’s “100 Ways to Improve Your Writing” (which I haven’t read, but found this quote interesting and just had to share):

“Writing is not a visual art any more than composing music is a visual art. To write is to create music. The words you write make sounds, and when those sounds are in harmony, the writing will work. Read aloud what you write and listen to its music. Listen for dissonance. Listen for the beat. Listen for gaps where the music leaps from sound to sound instead of flowing as it should. Listen for sour notes. Is this word a little sharp, is that one a bit flat? … There are no good sounds or bad sounds [in writing], just as there are no good notes or bad notes in music. It is the way in which you combine them that can make the writing succeed or fail.” - (100 Ways to Improve Your Writing, by Gary Provost)

Thus concludes my little rant — I just love getting to talk about music whenever I get the chance to. Thanks for reading!

[clove-pinks]

Les Muses: La Musique by Paul Gavarni, 1839.

Slightly obsessed with this because she is listening to a mechanical device producing music—a real 1830s boom box!

It's a hand-cranked barrel organ, of course, but still small enough to be held in her lap!

This c. 1830 barrel organ sold at auction plays eight songs!

Another barrel organ made c. 1835 is described as playing "four dance sections." Given the focus on social dancing at the time, and the need for dance instruction, I wonder if something like this small barrel organ was the sound system for dancing classes.

Illustration from an 1830s French social dance manual (Victoria & Albert Museum).

[ariaovon]

🎶

[burningvelvet]

ATTENTION ROMANTICS, JANEITES, BYRONISTS, GEORGIANS, & OTHER 19TH CENTURY NERDS!

this website jane austen's music has resources all about the music jane austen composed by hand, like a link to this song captivity.

this website romantic-era songs has recordings of a bunch of music that was popular in the romantic era, including recordings of poetic works that were originally intended to be set to music. examples incl. lord byron's famous poems vision of belshazzar (a real banger!) & she walks in beauty (not what i expected having read it beforehand without it's music, but it was byron's own favorite to listen to). i really love this one the waters of elle by lady caroline lamb, also composed by isaac nathan. he was a famous jewish-english musician who later relocated to australia and introduced classical music there, & is thus sometimes called "the father of australian music" (apparently, according to his wiki, he was also the first person in the southern hemisphere to die in a tram incident after he got there... oddly specific factoid, but alright).

[composer-smash-or-pass]

[swiftiesoliloquies]

when Style comes on:

[pearl-plays-piano]

Sonatina in F Major

Anton Diabelli, Op. 151, No. 3

[mephistovalse]

parties with the romantics must’ve gone crazy…

[ladygabes]

old drawing!

Guess everybody prefers a tomboy.

[historytheone]

I just can't stop loving you, and if I stop then tell me just what will I do...