Late Romanticism: Brahms, Tchaikovsky, Mahler, Strauss

In the second half of the 19th century Romanticism did not fade away: it grew, thickened and branched out. Orchestras swelled, symphonies lengthened, harmony became saturated with chromaticism. The composers of this generation had grown up with Beethoven, Schubert and Chopin, and they all faced the same question: what is left to say after them? Each one answered in his own way, which is what makes the period, from around 1860 to the First World War, so rich.

Two quarrelling camps

Around 1860 German musical life split in two. On one side stood the "New German School" of Liszt and Wagner: music should tell a story, follow a poem or a drama, and harmony should dare ever more. The prelude to Tristan und Isolde (premiered in 1865), with its famous chord that never really resolves, became the emblem of this daring. On the other side were those who believed music was sufficient in itself, without a programme: Johannes Brahms was placed in this camp, often against his will. The quarrel gripped critics and newspapers; with hindsight we mostly hear two complementary ways of carrying the Romantic legacy forward.

Brahms the builder

Born in Hamburg in 1833 and settled in Vienna, Brahms was discovered young by Robert and Clara Schumann; Robert introduced him in a glowing article in 1853. Brahms worked slowly and destroyed a great deal: his First Symphony was premiered only in 1876, after years of hesitation, so heavily did Beethoven's shadow weigh on him. He wrote four symphonies, as well as A German Requiem, concertos, a wealth of chamber music and many songs.

His music is dense and warm: lots of inner voices, deep basses, and a taste for ambiguous rhythms. His favourite device is the hemiola: in triple time he groups the notes in twos, so that two bars of 3 briefly sound like three bars of 2. Listen to the effect: the lilt wobbles, then lands back on its feet.

M:3/4
L:1/4
Q:1/4=100
K:C
G, C E | G2 F- | F E2 | D3 | C3 |]

In bars 2 and 3 each note lasts two beats and straddles the bar line: three "big beats" spread across two bars (an example written for this lesson). Brahms uses it constantly, from the Waltzes Op. 39 to the symphonies. In the following century Arnold Schoenberg admired the way Brahms could grow a whole piece out of a small, constantly varied motif.

Tchaikovsky the melodist

Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky (1840–1893), trained at the brand-new Saint Petersburg Conservatory, blended European craft with Russian lyricism. He was one of the few great symphonists who also wrote for dance: Swan Lake (premiered in 1877), The Sleeping Beauty (1890) and The Nutcracker (1892) made ballet a musical genre in its own right. His last symphony, the Pathétique, was premiered in 1893, a few days before his death. Here is the swan theme, given to the oboe above shimmering strings:

M:4/4
L:1/8
Q:1/4=80
K:Bm
f4 B c d e | f3 d f3 d | f3 B d B G d | B4- B e d c |]

A long held note, a rising scale, repeated notes like sobs: all of Tchaikovsky is there, a melody that sings and suffers.

Mahler and Strauss: the giant orchestra

Gustav Mahler (1860–1911) was first of all a famous conductor: he ran the Vienna Court Opera from 1897 to 1907 and composed mostly during the summer. His nine completed symphonies are whole worlds in which folk songs, military bugle calls, sour waltzes, chorales and silences live side by side. His Eighth Symphony, premiered in Munich in 1910 with hundreds of performers, was nicknamed the "Symphony of a Thousand".

Richard Strauss (1864–1949) took further the symphonic poem invented by Liszt: an orchestral piece that tells a story or depicts an idea (Don Juan, Till Eulenspiegel, Also sprach Zarathustra, whose opening became famous through the film 2001: A Space Odyssey in 1968). In opera, Salome (1905) and Elektra (1909) brush the limits of tonality, before Der Rosenkavalier (1911) returns to a dreamt-up Vienna of waltzes.

What to listen for

• A huge orchestra: eight horns, tubas, harps, plenty of percussion, sometimes an organ and choirs. Contrasts range from a whisper to a roar.
• Highly chromatic harmony: chords slide by a semitone, modulations follow one another, and the home key is sometimes lost from view.
• Vast durations: a Mahler symphony often lasts more than an hour.
• Long, intense melodies, often given to the strings or brass, with great surges climbing towards a peak.
• Rubato (see the glossary): the tempo breathes, slows down, surges forward.

Listening list

• Brahms: Symphony No. 4, Intermezzi Op. 117 and 118 for piano, A German Requiem.
• Tchaikovsky: Swan Lake, Piano Concerto No. 1, Symphony No. 6 "Pathétique".
• Mahler: Symphony No. 1 (the third movement turns the children's round Frère Jacques into a minor-key funeral march), the Adagietto from Symphony No. 5.
• Richard Strauss: Don Juan, Four Last Songs.