Over my Fall Break, I took a trip to Chicago to visit my family who came up from Nashville. The short break was spent catching up with each other and enjoying the huge city. On the second night, we decided to go see the Chicago Joffrey Ballet's performance of Swan Lake at the Auditorium Theatre there in Chicago. I didn't plan on using this performance as a concert report post, but after learning about Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky, I felt like it would be very appropriate.
This was the first time I had ever seen a main stage ballet performance, and I really did not know what to expect. I walked in and was struck by the enormity of the theatre space. The Auditorium Theatre is grand and very impressive, it set a great introduction for the show I was about to see. As the ballet began, it became apparent to me that this was going to be different than what I had imagined. I pictured the traditional Swan Lake enchanted, Grimm's fairytale environment, but the show was set in a 19th century ballet studio. It felt almost like a ballet inside a ballet.
What really brought it together was the music and the choreography synchronized with the music. I didn't know it at the time, but I would learn about the exact composer who wrote Swan Lake, Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky. Just focusing on the music alone, there was a haunted and mesmerizing emotion evoked from the full orchestra. I hadn't heard Swan Lake in its entirety, and experiencing that was magical and even sort of eerie. I had never realized how chilling of a story Swan Lake is!
It really struck me how brilliant the storytelling of this performance was executed. As a theatre major, I am so used to working on dramas and musicals where the stories are told and performed through words. This was something entirely different. The only words throughout the entire three hour performance were the preshow emergency warnings. The story was told through the perfect synchronization of masterful ballet from the dancers at Joffrey, and the full orchestra conducted by Scott Speck.
This is the only way I can explain the emotion and story telling: as you are listening to the music, you feel the intensity and atmosphere that the music wants to put you in. You feel the movement of the music but, just through the music alone, you can't really visualize how the music would be depicted through motion, which is right where the choreography comes alive. From the solos to the large group synchronizations, Joffrey Ballet did an excellent job at translating the music's emotion into actions, telling the story just through motion and music alone.
At the time of the show, in class we had only gotten up to the conclusion of the 18th century Enlightenment Era of classical music. Throughout the entire show I kept listening carefully, trying to identify the different cadences and phrase structure that we had studied through our look into 18th century music, but I kept getting stumped because there were so many slight differences. The phrase structure wasn't like what we had learned. There were varying lengths and elaborate tricks throughout the music. Just recently, I learned that it was confusing to me because it was just how Tchaikovsky put his mark on his music. Romantic Era music has an entirely different taste than 18th century Enlightenment Era music, and I feel like through Joffrey Ballet's Swan Lake, I have come to this realization and the differences have become more recognizable.
As we move past The Enlightenment Era of the 18th century, we've been taking a look at the era of Romanticism. The Romantic Era spanned from 1790-1850, bringing about an entirely new standard of artistic ideals. Romanticism had a strong focus on the artist expressing his feelings, rather than reality. The imagination was a newfound tool, and creativity was only artistic if laws didn't stand in the way. Yudkin does a good job of explaining that: "Romantic artists attempted to capture their view of the exotic, the irrational, and the sublime." The biggest ideals in Romantic Era art are expression of imagination, the power of nature, and the reflection of human emotion.
German artist, Casper David Friedrich, evokes the ideals of 19th century art in his painting, Wanderer above the Sea of Fog. The first representation of this era is seen immediately with the vast openness of the sea. Friedrich portrayed the sea and the fog violently, establishing the true power of nature. The sky and the mountains in the background are boundless and overpowering.
Friedrich places the man in the overcoat in a perfect position. Our eyes are drawn toward him and his powerful stance, but at the same time we are drawn to what this man is looking at and the horizon. With further analysis of the "Wanderer," we can see that his head is pointed down and can assume that he is looking down into the foggy sea, not out into the horizon. If Friedrich had painted his head pointed up, it would have expressed more of a powerful stance, evoking hope, victory, or the call to conquest. With his head pointed down, we perceive him to be reflecting on something personal.
Lastly, perspective and proportion have a huge impact on why this painting characterizes Romantic Era art so well. Our perspective is from the view of behind the Wanderer. This detail is monumental in the separation of this art form from that of The Enlightenment Era. If we were looking at the Wanderer from the front, we would be able to see his face and his expression. We might even be able to identify who he is. By seeing him from behind, we are left in an unknown. The unknown is an important theme Friedrich was trying to depict. The size of the man compared to the size of the sea, the sky, and the mountains gives us a better understanding of how small Friedrich wanted to portray his Wanderer as. In every detail he gave the Wanderer, Friedrich wanted us to realize how insignificant he is compared to the rest of the world; which is exactly what he wanted the viewers of his painting to reflect on.
As we continue our study on The Enlightenment Era, the real focus we've made is on the music phrase structure of the classical music of this time. Some forms are for entertainment and some are for dancing. The most popular form is the sonata form. This form is broken up into three themes within the sentence structure: an exposition, a development, and a recapitulation. The exposition starts with a tonic and ends with a clear open cadence, the development brings in the variety of the sentence, and the recapitulation brings back all of the music in the exposition.
We have looked in depth into three composers who represent the excellence of the sonata form, Beethoven, Mozart, and Haydn. For this post, I have chosen a sonata by Joseph Haydn, the Keyboard Sonata No. 48 in C Major, Hob. XVI: 35: III, Finale. This sonata is relatively short, with an inviting texture to it. The song is kind of jumpy and giddy, it just puts a smile on your face. The sentences in the song are very clearly divided, and the phrases structure is that of a parallel interrupted period. After listening to the song tens of times, I think I've come up with a diagram that makes sense according to the structure of the song that my ear recognizes:
Understand that this diagram is just how I hear it. I am new to training my ear to recognize and dissect these songs, and I feel like I am slowly getting the hang of it, through trial and error at least.
This sonata reflects The Enlightenment Era in a way that pronounces the elegance and stature of its performers and listeners. The song brings out an atmosphere of seriousness, but playfulness all at once. On top of that, it was composed by the great Joseph Haydn, an idol of The Enlightenment Era. Although this is a bit different from the string quartets and symphonies we have been listening to in class, I believe that this sonata still is a prime example of the classical music of the 18th century.
