What extra-musical media are used to deliver this message? How does the music participate in this process? How does Hensel’s character piece speak to her cultural circumstances? How does Berlioz’s symphony speak to his?

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  1. The concept of program music endows instrumental music with communicative potential. Compare two very different, yet thoroughly programmatic pieces: Hensel’s “September”from Das Jahr with Berlioz’s “Dream of a witches’ Sabbath” from Symphonie fantastique. For each piece what is the program? What extra-musical media are used to deliver this message? How does the music participate in this process? How does Hensel’s character piece speak to her cultural circumstances? How does Berlioz’s symphony speak to his?
  2. During the Romantic era, a composer’s biography provides a way to understand a composer’s music. Explore this phenomenon with the example of Mendlessohn’s Song without Words. What were his biographical characteristics? How can the music be heard as reflective of this image? How and why was this biography-music interpretation utilized in Victorian England? Do a similar exploration of Chopin’s biography andMazurka in the context of Paris.
  3. The concept of program music endows instrumental music with communicative potential. Compare two very different, yet thoroughly programmatic pieces: Hensel’s “September”from Das Jahr with Berlioz’s “Dream of a witches’ Sabbath” from Symphonie fantastique. For each piece what is the program? What extra-musical media are used to deliver this message? How does the music participate in this process? How does Hensel’s character piece speak to her cultural circumstances? How does Berlioz’s symphony speak to his?
  4. Pierre Boulez summed up the Post-WWI, modernist position when he stated that “All art of the past must be destroyed.” Please choose two (2) of the following composers: Weill, Shostakovich, Copland, Norman; select a composition by each and describe the ways in which their music demonstrates a particular way of dealing with the iconoclasm of modernism. What is their position towards Romantic sounds and techniques? Towards modern sounds and techniques? How are these specifically expressed in the music we have studied in class? What cultural forces were at work to influence these decisions?
  5. Opera undergoes an important shift from the nineteenth to the twentieth century. Compare specific excerpts from Bizet’s Carmen or with another specific excerpt from either Weill’s Lindbergh’s Flight or The Threepenny Opera. What are the musical priorities of each example? What do each tell us about the pieces’ social contexts and cultural priorities?