1850 – 1870 Liszt and Wagner

This is the generation of Verdi and Brahms, not just Liszt and Wagner. Liszt introduces the symphonic poem and Wagner the music drama.

Music Drama

The logical extreme of the program symphony, traits of Wagner's late operas were

(a) his own librettos on medieval German myths (first used in Dutchman),

(b) continuous music through continual modulation and avoidance of perfect cadences,

(c) no clear-cut arias and expanded recitative (first in Rheingold),

(d) thick romantic orchestration,

(e) a system of themes, called leitmotifs, connected to persons, objects or ideas in the drama (also first in Dutchman), and

(f) equal importance of visual and dramatic arts in the Gesamtkunstwerk.

Tannhäuser (1845) and Lohengrin (1850) were still number operas. Though he began composing the Ring in 1853, Tristan und Isolde (1865) was the first music drama to be produced, followed by Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg (1868). The four operas of Der Ring des Nibelungen, 1. Das Rheingold (1869), 2. Die Walküre (1870), 3. Siegfried, and 4. Die Götterdämmerung were produced together in Bayreuth in 1876.

Italian Opera

Italian opera was dominated by Giuseppe Verdi (1813-1901) who capitalized on the strengths of Grand Opera in melodramatic plots, popular melodies and effective vocal display pieces. His mature operas began with Rigoletto (1851) and included Il Trovatore (1853), La Traviata (1853), Un Ballo in Maschera (1859), Don Carlos (1867) and Aida (1871).

French Opera

Grand Opera continued in Meyerbeer's L'Africaine (1865). Popular sentimental operas were Mignon (1866) by Ambroise Thomas (1811-96) and Faust (1859) and Roméo et Juliette (1867) by Charles Gounod (1818-93). Berlioz' Béatrice et Bénédict (1862) and Les Troyens (Part II 1863, Part I 1890) failed to establish him as an opera composer.

Opéra Bouffe

Jacques Offenbach (1819-80) created the prototype for the operetta in his Orpheus in the Underworld (1858) and La Belle Hélène (1864).

Czech Opera

The Bartered Bride (1866) by Bedrich Smetana (1824-84) began the second nationalist school in Czechoslovakia.

Oratorio

The most important oratorios were Berlioz' L'Enfance du Christ (1854) and Franz Liszt's (1811-86) Christus (1856) and Legend of St. Elizabeth (1857-62). Ein deutsches Requiem (1868) by Johannes Brahms (1833-97) can also be considered an oratorio.

Lied

Lieder were by Liszt, Peter Cornelius (1824-74), Adolf Jensen (1837-79), Robert Franz (1815-92) and Brahms, especially his Magelone (1861) cycle. Wagner's cycle, Wesendonck Lieder (1857-8), was composed in both piano and orchestral versions.

Orchestra

Wagner's orchestra benefited from the newly improved woodwinds with the Böhm key system and the recently perfected valve horns and valve trumpets first used in Halévy's La Juive (1835). Wagner's standard orchestra was three of each woodwind (with the third player doubling on piccolo, English horn, bass clarinet or double bassoon), four horns, three trumpets, three trombones, tuba, timpani, harp and strings. For the Ring he added another flute, oboe, clarinet, trumpet and trombone along with four more horns which doubled on Wagner tubas, another pair of timpani and other percussion, six harps and augmented strings.