how to listen to music if you don’t know your Beethoven from your Bach, XVI – on Chopin

The Old Burgtheater, 1888 - 1889 - Gustav Klimt

       “The Old Burgtheater“ (1888 – 1889)  

                  Gustav Klimt

                        _______

  

having brought up nocturnes and ballades

in my last instalment, however peripherally, 

I’ll dig into these deeper, to illustrate the 

impact Romanticism had on music, on 

fine arts as well, and literature, in the 

West, as it highlighted emotions as a 

requirement of the audiences that 

funded them

 

the French Revolution had happened,

the idea of individual rights, liberty,

equality, fraternity, spread across 

even autocracies, czars, kaisers, 

kings were threatened

 

theatres were becoming, because of 

the growth of the Middle Class, what 

had been the salons of the aristocrats,

people were paying for what the nobility

had been seeing, in concert halls, see

above

 

but the audience wanted their money’s 

worth, both in spectacle, and personal

contact, easy ingenuity was out, they

had to be impacted, get them howling,

whooping, just like today

 

but to return to ballades and nocturnes,

they were the answer, plangent appeals

to the heart, which had not been a 

concern of the earlier Classical Period,

where prestidigitation, technical

wizardry, had been the requirement

of the courtly courts  

 

ballades, nocturnes, preludes, didn’t 

exist before the Romantic Period, 

essentially, music that hadn’t a 

formal structure, hadn’t a set of 

compositional rules, but spoke, 

rather, from a place of intimacy,

unconstrainedly

 

here’s a ballade, for instance, here’s 

a nocturne, both of Chopin, as 

identifiable as Shakespeare, van 

Gogh, in each their own particular 

vocabulary, wearing his heart on

his sleeve, and always absolutely 

extraordinary 

 

enjoy

 

 

R ! chard