Chamber Music: An Essential History

8. Champions of Tradition: Mendelssohn, Schumann, and Brahms

eight Champions of Tradition: Mendelssohn, Schumann, and Brahms the role of chamber music in nineteenth-century culture The lifestyles of professional musicians changed radically in the early days of the historical style period that we generally call the Romantic era. Until about the middle of the eighteenth century, the typical musician might have expected to ‹nd employment in the home of a wealthy aristocrat, or in some ecclesiastical organization. The events of the later eighteenth century made both of these career opportunities obsolete. As a result of the Enlightenment, the power of the aristocracy and the Christian church were declining. Logic and reason replaced the dogma and divine right. Music patronage was only one aspect of nineteenth-century life that was altered as a result of the great importance placed upon human intelligence . The development of a systematic method of inquiry led to technological advances that in›uenced all aspects of western European society. Farm machinery made it possible for a few individuals to do the work that had previously been accomplished only by the labor of many hands. Owing to the new relationship between personnel and productivity, many farmhands became super›uous. These displaced agrarians migrated en masse to growing urban centers. After their relocation, these people became the middle-class merchants and factory workers of Europe and America. The physical layout of middle-class, urban homes differed from the homes of the landed aristocrats. The use of wrought iron in Europe and of 114 steel in the United States, the numerous structural applications of reinforced concrete, Richard Trevithick’s improvements in the design of steam engines, the development of generators and electric motors by Michael Faraday, the safe and practical implementation of elevators by Elisha G. Otis, and other technological advances made it possible for residential dwellings to be stacked one on top of another rather than being placed side by side on large plots of land. As a result of the Industrial Revolution, a single acre of land in an urban context could easily provide relatively comfortable residences for scores of people. This populace found their entertainment in the rapidly increasing number of music halls and opera houses that appeared in Europe and America. These venues for music, similar in many ways to a mass medium, depended upon contemporaneous advances in science and technology. Concert halls and opera houses were “of their time,” but they were poorly suited to chamber ensembles. In these concert halls, audiences lost their identities. Musicians could no longer write for known listeners in the way that Haydn composed his baryton trios for Prince Esterhazy, or that Beethoven wrote the Archduke Trio for his friend Rudolf. As a result, composers were forced to write according to their own inclinations rather than those of aristocratic or ecclesiastical patrons; hence, Romantic compositions tend to be highly personal . The cool logic and formal balance apparent in the music of the Age of the Enlightenment can already be seen fading into the distance in many of Beethoven’s works. During the course of the nineteenth century, musical scores of a highly distinctive nature gradually came to replace the generic compositions of the late eighteenth century; consequently, the present-day music lover is more apt to know details about Beethoven’s personal life—like the Heiligenstadt Testament, the phantom “Immortal Beloved,” the composer’s af›iction with syphilis, his tragic loss of hearing, and so on—than about Haydn’s or J. C. Bach’s private affairs. The persona of a particular Romantic composer is often manifested in chamber works with force equal to that in more stupendous works like Berlioz’s Symphonie fantastique. It is for this reason that our discussions of Romantic chamber music will include more re›ections upon the events of individual composer’s lives than has been typical of our account up to this point. The great vanguards of romanticism—composers like Berlioz, Wagner , Verdi, and Liszt—were little concerned with the understated genres of chamber music. All four were progressives. Their activities were not limited to composition, but also embraced aesthetic theory, philosophy, and even politics. Their eyes were ‹rmly ‹xed on the future. At the same time that the avant-garde composers were proclaiming the Champions of Tradition • 115 music of the future, a growing number of scholars, performers, and composers began to examine historical and ethnological repertories with an academic rigor comparable to that already accepted as a...