Leitmotif In The Romantic Opera

Orchestrally, it is scored for strings, timpani, bass drum, cymbals, two flutes, one piccolo, two oboes, one English horn, two clarinets, two bassoons, four French horns, two trumpets, three trombones, two harps, and one cimbasso. Musically, this opera is very directly vigorous. It sticks to the widely used concepts of arias, duets, finales, and choruses. His fine music often excused the glaring faults in character and plot lines.

The ability of passion to bring destruction upon the lives of the unsuspecting is illustrated in Shakespeare’s Othello with the use of both manipulation and deceit. The curse of fierce passion fell namely on Othello as he transitioned from a respected general to an unstable murderer. His downfall is demonstrated through his increasing self-doubt, lack of ability to articulate, and violence. In the start of the play, he is an accomplished general and happy newlywed, and has yet to be significantly held back due to his being a Moor and outsider in Venetian society. As passion overtakes him, however, Othello truly ingrains the idea that he is less than, and those around him begin to blame his actions on the nature of his ethnicity. He has completely lost his identity to his desires and is unable to think rationally. Shakespeare juxtaposes this version of Othello with his initial composed self in Venice to demonstrate the damage of ignorance to logic and heighten the sense of tragedy. The effects of an overwhelming passion involving love, jealousy, and revenge are shown through Othello’s degradation and loss of stability.

Romanticism. Romanticism is characterized by its impressive expressiveness in harmonic and thematic process with an increasing weight of chromatic and dissonant elements. There is a new tendency to give a particular importance to timber, texture and rhythm. Like the Renaissance after the Middle Ages, Romantic composers want to express the new-found independence of the humanity that is no longer under the constraining influence of the strict model that classical composers follow. Some Romantic compositions express a powerful individualism while others express the beauties and terrors of nature, but the most common theme is nationalism.

This concerto is made up of three movements, with the second movement entitled Larghetto e spiritoso in between two Allegro movements.  Originally intended for two solo violins, violin I, violin II, viola, cello, and bass, this piece has been transposed in various forms and is now commonly performed with two solo violins and piano.  While the other two movements are lively and exciting, the second movement provides a great contrast.  It is in a different key and has a completely different feeling, one of heaviness and melancholy, though its chord progressions and harmonies make it appealing to audiences.  This composition in its entirety gained Vivaldi his greatest popularity as it spread throughout Europe and became a standard for 18th century composers.

Romanticism was the era of passion and feelings, and not just music for the sake of it. Music in the romantic era had a poetic and philosophical meaning. In the lyrics, the composer has tried to convey a story about a boy making sense of a satisfying yet confusing relationship with a rich girl. Simon sings with a passionate yet calm tone in his voice. This portrays the soft and rather philosophical story about money and love the lyrics try to convey. Romanticism has influenced the song since the delivery of Simon’s voice with the blending of the instrumentation support each other in the composer's message. This allows the message to be portrayed in more than one way. However, the biggest influence on this piece is not from romantic music, but from folk music.

Romantic 
Dates: 1800-1900
 
1.  What was going on historically during this era?  What was life like? Profound Political and Social changes going on; many moving into cities for work. Renewed interested in expressing emotion through music. 
2.  Does romantic music continue to use the same forms used in the classical era? No
3.  Explain the Individuality of style. Composers wanted their music to be uniquely identifiable to them. They worked hard on self-expression.
4.  What are the expressive aims and subjects of the pieces?  How is this different than in the classical era? Flamboyance, Intimacy, Unpredictability, Melancholy, Rapture, Longing etc..., Classical Era did not experiment with so many aims.
5.  What is musical nationalism?

However strong the emotional attitude of prejudices may be in Othello, Love is the most powerful emotion and ironically the emotion that leads to the most vulnerability. Loves of all kinds are tested in the tragedy and ultimately all fail to rectify the horrible situation. Marital love for Othello and Desdemona serve as both a heaven and a hell on earth. As Othello portrays by saying,

    The meaningful term “love” can be applied to differing relationships in Shakespeare’s tragedy Othello. In this essay let us examine under a microscope the “love” that we find throughout the play.

The word love can mean many things. Love can be an object, emotion, and a life. However, love could lead to a loss of power, prosperity, and status. In the literary work “Romeo and Juliet” written by William Shakespeare, the readers are introduced to a tragic love story. In this play, readers are also shown the different perspectives of love and the many downfalls it could lead to. The central theme of this work is the recklessness of love. The theme is significant because it is shown throughout the whole story and it’s a strong force that takes place of all the other emotions and values. In this play, Shakespeare uses characters to present different aspects of love. In addition, Nurse, Mercutio, and Romeo completely show what actual love is and what it is like to lose it due to their experiences.

Just so you know before hand, the lyrics to the music came from the CD with trademark of Delta Music Inc. The movement opens agitatedly as the orchestra picks up fragments of one theme after another from the previous three movements, as if seeking a satisfactory vehicle for its expression; but each is discarded in turn. The first seven notes of the main theme to come are tentatively uttered, but it too is abandoned as the search continues. Once again the theme begins, this time in the woodwinds, but it soon breaks off. Finally, the theme emerges decisively in the basses for a subdued first statement. The second statement is calm, tranquil, confident, and the theme continues onward in the various voices of the orchestra, broad and flowing. The winds make a strong statement of the theme. The flow of the music abruptly halts--there are rapid shifts--great agitation, until the orchestra introduces the baritone singing the first three lines of the poem, rejecting the feverish discords of the previous passage, calling for a different music, whose nature is suggested by the strings beneath his voice:

The Renaissance and Baroque era entailed very different characteristics, due to the Renaissance composers writing more freely and being more individual then those of the Baroque era where they followed more ‘rules’ and experimented less. This essay will show the difference in two pieces by different composers, even though they were written less than a century apart.

As stated by Burkholder, Grout and Palisca, Weber’s Der Freischutz’s “rustic choruses, marches, dances and airs”; multisectional aria form (influence from Rossini) and florid vocal lines were all common characteristics of the Italian Opera. Meanwhile in Verdi’s Otello, Wagnerian influence could be seen. Verdi used melodic motives to show the characters’ emotions. In Act 4 scene 3, the orchestra was used to heighten the dramatic moment instead of the voice, which was a breakthrough in the history of Italian Opera. It is apparent that both Italians and Germans knew how to blend the musical elements and text well to demonstrate the Romantic traits in their opera.

Orfeo ed Euridice by Gluck, was written in 1762 and The Marriage of Figaro by Mozart was written in 1786. It is interesting to analyse the changes and developments from opera seria to these two examples.

One of the most characteristic features of Romanticism is the concoction of artistic genres, a fusion that carries the latent desire for the unity of arts through the prism of music and whose culmination can be found in the works of Richard Wagner. The two juxtapositions in Romantic music, the grandiose display of sounds while preserving intimacy and sentimental confession, and the image of a man against nature while idealizing it at the same time, effectuate their conciliation in the Lied. Romanticism seeks sensibility, insight, and transcendence in poems by adding a musical setting to them. As Susan Youens put it: "Lieder begin with words; they are born when a composer encounters poetry", therefore it is an on-going duet between poetry and music

This work was composed during the Classical period, 1750- 1820. One aspect of the classical music style beign applied to this work includes the reoccurance of two or more contrasting themes. Another is the use of short and clearly defined musical phrases. Lastly, this piece, on a purely musical level, was simply more to hum along to. This type of melody took over the complex polyphony of the Baroque period.