OSH B88 - Aspects of Music and Literature - 19th Century Romanticism

Course Description

German and French Romantic literature permeated 19th-century music in diverse roles, ranging from vocal settings of contemporary poetry to purely instrumental works alluding to literary sources. The lectures focus on representative and familiar works by leading German Austrian and French composers of the period.  (English translation will be provided for the literary sources).

Week 1:    Select Lieder (art songs) by Schubert, as a paradigm of integrative music-poetry relation in early 19th-century German Romanticism.  
Week 2:    Evocative literary sources in “character pieces” for the piano by Schubert, Schumann, and Mendelssohn. 
Week 3:    Hector Berlioz's Symphonie Fantastique and the music-literary concept of “program music.” 
Week 4:    Liszt’s perception of piano and orchestral works as musical projections of literary masterpieces.
Week 5:    Allusions to literary sources in instrumental works by late 19th-century leading French composers (Gounod, Massenet, and Fauré).  
Week 6:    Debussy’s novel approach to “Color and Form” in select piano and orchestral works inspired by literary sources.

Instructor: Dr. Judith Etzion