An Outline of The History of Western Music Grout ... - The Reel Score

1: a continuous succession of orchestrally accompanied recitatives, solo arias,
duets, ensembles, and choruses all contribute to advancing the plot
2: his style combines an inexhaustable flow of melody with snappy rhythms, clear
phraseology, and well shapped though sometimes unconventional structure of
the musical period
2. Vincenzo Bellini (1801-1835)
a) preferred drama of passion with fast gripping actions
b) his favorite librettist - Felice Romani - did not limit action to recitative passages but
built it into the arias and provided opportunities for lyrical moments within the
recitatives
3. Gaetano Donizetti (1797-1848)
a) one of the most prolific Italian composers of the second quarter of the century
b) most enduring works were the serious operas - within which he was Verdi's
immediate forerunner
4. Giuseppe Verdi (1813-1901)
a) his career constitutes practically the history of Italian music for the 50 years
following Donizetti
b) like his Italian predicessors (Rossini, Bellini, & Donizetti) he concentrated on the
human drama in opera - contrasting with the German emphasis on romanticized
nature & mythological symbolism
c) Verdi maintained a resolute independence in his own musical style and deplored
foreign influences - especially German - in the work of his younger compatriots
1: some of the early operas contain choruses that were politically inflammatory,
thinly disguised appeals to his compatriots struggling for national unity and
against foreign domination during the Risorgimento
2: by 1859 his name had become a patriotic symbol
d) Verdi's librettists adapted works by Romantic authors including Schiller, Victor
Hugo, Dumas the Younger, & Byron, Spanish dramatists, Shakespere, Arrigo
Boito, and the French Egyptologist A.F.F. Mariette (Aida)
e) influences
1: up to La battaglia di Legnano (1849) he cultivates a blunt and populist adaption
of the conventions of Rossini, Bellini, & Donizetti
2: culminating with La traviata (1853) he reaches new heights of dramatic
compression and intensity with subsequent operas becoming longer & more
expansive
3: culminating with Aida (1871) the influence of French Grand opera is strong
f) music
1: his middle style was marked by experimentation and the use of "reminiscence
motives" - themes and motives introduced earlier in the score
2: already common among other composers the reminiscence motive help to unify
the work both dramatically and musically
C. France
1. The French Revolution, the Napoleonic Empire, and the success of Gluck made Paris
the operatic capital of Europe during the 1st half of the 19th century
a) following Napoleon's defeat at Waterloo, the Bourbon monarchy was restored in
1815
1: musical life reawakened and new theater was built in 1821
2: the Bourbon family failed to gain support of the growing and powerful middle
class and in 1830, Louis-Philippe of the Orléans line on the throne as a