Lake Ashton Classical Music Program Schedule - Fall - Winter 2023
Note: Romantic composers often wrote "program music," instrumental music that is about a topic.
A famous earlier example is Antonio Vivaldi's 1725 Baroque masterpiece The Four Seasons.
Beethoven's Symphony No. 6 (1808), the "Pastoral", about spending a day in nature, is
another. We will be listening to quite a few famous Early Romantic program music works.
Sept 11 - Review: Mozart & Classicism / Beethoven & Romanticism
Sept 18 - Franz Schubert - 1797 - 1828 (3 weeks)
Schubert died in 1828 at the age 31, a year after Beethoven's death. He left a wealth of great music in
many genres. Like LvB, he is considered a transitional composer between the Classical and Romantic
eras. Besides movements from his best symphonies, chamber and solo piano works, we will listen to a
few of his famous lieder (German art songs for singer and piano). While Beethoven wrote lieder,
Schubert is considered the first great master of the genre. Later important romantic lieder composers
are Robert Schumann, HugoWolf, Johannes Brahms and Gustave Mahler .
Oct 09 - Hector Berlioz's Symphonie fantastique - 1830 (1 week - 2 full hours)
Premiered in Paris in 1830, this masterpeice is often called the first fully Romantic symphony. Leonard
Berstein called it "the first psychedelic symphony." It is the first instrumental work that tells a story. Its
narrative, which unfolds through five movements, is about an artist who longs for a woman who rejects him,
then attempts suicide by drinking opium, but instead hallucinates about killing the woman, being executed
by guillotine (very French), and suffers torture by witches and demons. Romanticism doesn't get any more
romantic than that! We will briefly discuss several of Berlioz's other famous works.
Oct 16 - Franz Liszt - 1811- 1886 (2 weeks)
Like his friend Chopin, Liszt was a virtuoso pianist and great composer. Unlike Chopin, he was outgoing
and flamboyent. Between 1839 and 1847, he crisscrossed Europe many times, playing 1,000 concerts. His
extreme popularity was termed "Lisztomania" by a contempory (much like Beatlemania, except the females
who screamed, fainted, and fought for his clothing were adults, not teenagers). Influenced by his friend
Berlioz, Liszt later turned to composing orchestra works, inventing the symphonic poem genre (single
movement orchestra works of program music).
Oct 30 - Robert Schumann - 1810 - 1856 (2 weeks)
Now considered a great composer of romantic piano music (often highly imaginative program music), and
also a gifted composer of orchestra and chamber music, Schumann was never as famous or successful as
Liszt or Chopin during his lifetime. His fame came after his death at age 46, which followed two years of
being institutionalized over increasing mental instability (probably bi-polarism aggravated by syphilis).
Not making much money, Robert's family was supported by his wife Clara, one of the most famous pianists
of the 19th century and a budding composer whose composing career was stalled by her concert touring
and raising their six children.
Nov. 27 - Felix Mendelssohn - 1809 - 1847 (2 week)
Like Mozart, Mendelssohn was a child prodigy, but his father did not exploit him like Wolfgang's father
did. He was the grandson of Moses Mendelssohn, the most important Jewish philosopher of the Enlighten-
ment. Felix was not as great a composer of piano music as Liszt, Chopin and Schumann, but he excelled in
other genres including symphonies, chamber music, and by writing perhaps the greatest violin concerto of
the Romantic era. He died of a brain hemorrhage from a hereditary condition at age 38 that also killed his
father and sister.
Mendelssohn's sister Fanny was also a talented composer. Being a woman of the era, the small amount of
her many compositions that were published were published under her brother's name. She died at age 41
from a stroke.
Dec 11 - Frédéric Chopin - 1810 - 1849 (2 weeks)
Other than Beethoven, Chopin is usually considered the greatest composer of piano music who ever lived.
Every piece of music he wrote had piano in it. He is most famous for his two piano concerto and many
works of solo piano music in a variety of genres like sonatas, preludes, études, waltzes, ballades, mazurkas,
polonaises, and more. He was a personal friend of Berlioz, Franz Liszt, and other Paris artists in the 1830s.
An excellent pianist but a shy man, he shunned playing before large audiences, preferring to play for the
Parisian elite in the fashionable salons (parties) of the era. Chopin died at age 39 from tuberculosis.
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