A Brief Overview of the Programmatic Fantasy Involving Keyboard Works from the Late 1700s to the 1900s

    A subcategory of the non-operatic fantasy, the

programmatic fantasy, was prominent in both the eighteenth and

nineteenth centuries, although such fantasies could be found as

earl as the seventeenth century (Parker, The Clavier Fantasy

From Mozart 108).  This is usually a piece on a non-operatic

subject or subjects, describing a person, a story, a dream

or an idea, whether or not the word ‘fantasy’ appeared in

the title (e.g., the Dante Fantasy of Franz Liszt or the

Phantasiestücke of Robert Schumann or Johannes Brahms).

   Daniel Gottlieb Türk’s Klavierschule (1789) gives the

reason for the development of this piano genre:

         Forms, and colours, in brightest array,

    [envelop] us; and if the transient glance of

    a good composition happen to unite them, we

    should give any price to fix, and appropriate

    the scene (312, qtd. in Annette Richards 75).

    Part of the development of the programmatic pieces

came from the early French composers.

    The Les Cyclopes (1724) of Jean-Philippe Rameau (1683-

1764) was one of the famous early programmatic pieces. It

is in a style of a toccata in a bourrée-like fashion, with

da capo, depicting the mythological figure hammering at the

hot irons. The piece is in the key of D minor and in a fast

alla breve time. Another French composer, Louis-Claude Daquin

(1694-1772), was famous for his rondeau called Le Coucou

(1735?). The piece, in E minor and in 2/4 meter, is famous with

the two-note motive of the cuckoo call in the left hand that

permeates almost the entire piece.

   

    Daniel Steibelt (1765-1822) showed his programmatic fantasy

style that imitated Beethoven’s and Chopin’s musical styles  

(Parker, The Clavier Fantasy 79). He was "arrogant and

uncouth [...] something of the charlatan-virtuoso that

appeared now and then in the nineteenth century [...] In

1820 he had a brief run-in with Beethoven who vested him as an

advisor (Suttoni, Piano and Opera 106)."

    His Rule Britannia, which was composed around 1797, was

a fantasy that depicts a naval battle between the Dutch a

and the British, was perhaps one of the best of any of his

programmatic fantasies. Nicholas Temperley gave the full

title of the fantasy as follows, which resembles the long

titles often used in dissertations:

    

     Britannia: An Allegorical Overture in

    Commemoration of the Signal Naval Victory Obtained

    by Admiral Duncan Over The Dutch Fleet The 11th

    Of October, 1797: Composed For The Pianoforte

    and Humbly Inscribed To The Most Gracious

    Majesty The King of Great Britain by Daniel

    Steibelt (The London Pianoforte School, p.

    243: v. 6).

    Temperley then gives a detailed background on why

Steibelt composed Rule Britannia:

         This historical naval victory celebrated

   here is the Battle of Camperdown, which was

   fought in the North Sea a few miles of Kamper-  

   duin on the Dutch Coast [..] Holland was under

   French rule, and a large fleet had been as-

   sembled in the Texel channel on July 1997 with

   the object of invading Ireland. On 3 October

   the British fleet under Admiral Adam Duncan

   (1731-1804) put into Yarmouth to refit. The

   Dutch, under Admiral de Winter, abandoned the

   invasion plan and put to sea on 7 October

   with the object of engaging the British."

(The London Pianoforte School xxiv: v. 6)   

   In this programmatic fantasy, pianistic effects here are

plentiful and widely varied. Full forte chords in imitative

effect between the hands imitate a volley of ships' cannon

shots; slow, descending chromatic scales in the right

hand over a left hand pedal point indicate the lamenting and

suffering of the fleets' wounded; legato downward scales over a

pedal point indicate the falling of the masts.  In other cases,

the songs of the navy sailors, or sea shanties, are given a 6/8

meter, and are somewhat less in barcarolle or siciliana style

and more in pastoral style, and Britain's victory cry, ending

the naval battle, is done through contrary arpeggio figuration

in fortissimo, in C major.

    In addition to Steibelt's original material, the fantasy

uses these four transcriptions, often interspersed in the

composer's musical depiction of the battle scenes:

"Britons, strike home"(from Purcell's Bonduca, 1695)

"Britain's Best Bulwarks Are Her Wooden Walls" (unknown)

"Rule Britannia" (from Thomas Arne's Alfred, 1740)

"God Save The King" (British national anthem, unknown)

(Temperley, The London Pianoforte School xxv: v. 6)

     The fantasy ends with a reformulation of "God Save The

King", which is varied only briefly, in E-flat major, which

turns out to be the key that began the whole fantasy.

    The outline of the fantasy can be given thus:

Outline of Steibelt's Britannia

Measure(s)         Brief Indication in the Passage

Part I--Before The Battle

1-11              --The Stillness of the Night

36-40             --Advice from Captain Trollope

Part II--The Battle

41-77             --Sailing of the Dutch Fleet

78-99             --Beat to Arms

100-118           --Setting the Sails

119-148           --"Britons Strike Home"

149-156           --The Sailing of the Fleet

157-176           --The Roaring of the Sea

177-186           --Joy on Fight of the Enemy

187-192           --Signal to Engage

193-205           --Approach to the Enemy

206-211           --Cannon (shots)

212-219           --Engagement

220-235           --Discharge of Small Arms

236-247           --Falling of the Mast

248-262           --The Cries of the Wounded

263-275           --"Britain's Best Bulwarks"

276-279           --The Heat of the Action

280-291           --The Falling of the Mast

292-303           --The Cries of the Wounded

304-309           --More Cannon Shots

310-317           --Second Engagement

318-323           --Second Exchange of Small Arms

324-333           --Cry of Victory

Part III--Victory After The Battle

334-341           --"Rule Britannia"

342-356           --Distense of the Vanquished

357-384           --Sailing After Victory

385-403           --Rejoicing of the Sailors

404-419           --Return to Port and Acclimation of the

                      Populace

420-452           --"God Save the King" (finale)

    Often, a programmatic fantasy is used in a keyboard

setting in a rondo format. Beethoven's Rondo a

capriccio, op. 120, subtitled as 'The Rage Over A Lost Penny',

can be described by the present writer as "A galop-rondo in 2/4

where the fast rhythmic drive of the eighth notes (punctuated

by the running-effect of the sixteenth notes) gives a

effect of a moto perpetuo, where the depiction of the piece

suggests two market-shoppers fighting

penny at a German produce shop." Like the Haydn C Major

Fantasy, it is in rondo form, but the use of mediant rela-

tionship in the Beethoven work are more pronounced than that

of the Haydn. Progression in chromatic harmony in the Rondo

a capriccio permeates over half of the work so that it seems a

little more like a fantasy than a traditional rondo.

    In Chopin's Nocturne in D-flat, op. 27, no. 2 (1835), the

passage on mm. 18-23 shows an example of a call-and-response

pattern that definitely imitates two different singing

characters in an dramatic opera. That is, the octave melody

is one character, and the single-line melody, the other

(F. Chopin 45). Although the nocturne had no programmatic

title, most of the programmatic imagination in this and

most other Chopin pieces (especially his polonaises) are

implied.

    Liszt's Il Pensieroso (a programmatic piece as part of

his Years of Pilgrimage: Second Year, Italy) focuses mainly

on dotted rhythms. Almost similarly, Carl Czerny's Die Nacht

(c. 1837), which depicted the "midnight bell" by the use of

middle c (in dotted rhythms also),  has almost a marcia funebre

effect (Parker, The Clavier Fantasy 121).

    Robert Schumann (1810-1856) was adored highly for his

program music. For instance, in the "Kind in Einschlummern"

(no. 12 of Kinderscenen, op. 15, 1837), Robert describes the

sleeping child counting sheep as one dreams of a fairy tale.

The piece starts in E minor, but then Robert concludes the

piece on a iv6, almost like the ending of Beethoven’s

                  4

Seventh Symphony in the Andantino movement. In the following

piece, "Furchtenmachen" (no. 13 of Kinderscenen), Schumann

depicts a fairy tale again, read to a child, about a boy who

during a dream sees an innocent environment (key: G major), and

is suddenly frightened by an impromptu stalker who is out to

terrify the child (key centers: E minor, C major). The frights

here happen two times. Schumann resolves the dream as the

stalker does not frighten the child again and out of sight,

repairing the boy’s lost innocence as the dream ends.

     Like Felix Mendelssohn, Sigismond Thalberg (1812-1881)

composed some programmatic piano music. One of them is the

Neopolitan Song. This barcarolle was perhaps a reaction to the

three barcarolles Mendelssohn used as part of his Lieder ohne

Worte. Thalberg’s Neopolitan Song starts off with a seven-

measure introduction, then an inner melodic line between two

textures starts off the barcarolle. At measure 55 onward,

the melody transfers into a higher texture, in octaves, while

the obbligato has a mixture of eighth and sixteenth notes,

taking up the second half of the composition. In another of

Thalberg’s programmatic pieces, Romance sans paroles, this 44-

measure piece is in a style of a nocturne, perhaps in the style

of John Field. In the key of E-flat major, the melodic upper

line sounds slightly Chopinesque.

falling on the major seventh of the E-flat scale. The piece is

basically in ABA form.

     In the late eighteenth century, Moritz Moskowski

(1854-1925) composed the eight-piece series called Eight

Characteristic Pieces, op. 36 (1886), One programmatic

piece was in the set was highly admired by Russian concert

pianist Vladimir Horowitz. It was Etincelles (Sparks), op.

36, no. 6, the sixth piece in the set. The piece can be

described as a short programmatic scherzo that depicts sparks

dancing lively from a fire. The staccato passages are put in

such a way that it resembles something like a spiccato

etude that he could compose the piece for violin solo. The

reason: Martha Easlich states that Moskowski can play quite

well not only on the piano, but also the violin (New Grove

II 189-190: v. 17). In the key of B-flat major and in

3/8 meter, descriptive effects include staccato notes (to

describe the sparks themselves), running legato scales

(to depict flames rising from the ground that lead to the

sparks), and running passage-work (to depict the sparks

floating up and dying away). Etincelles also shows some

correlation to the style of Liszt because at one time he

befriended Moskowski (Martha Easlich, Ibid). Horowitz adored

improvising on the classical piano as much as Liszt, so he often

gave his own ending to Etincelles that was different than its

original version. It was one of several of his favorite

encore pieces.

    Programmatic pieces went on past the eighteenth century.

There were so many to list here but we must not leave out the

piano program music of Leopold Godowsky (1870-1938). According

to Charles Hopkins:

         Like Busoni, who observed that, besides

    himself, Godowsky was the only composer to have

    added anything of significance to keyboard

    writing since Liszt [...] By the age of five

    he had already started to compose, as well as

    being proficient on both piano and violin. He

    have his first piano recital when he was nine,

    and subsequently toured through Lithuania

    and East Prussia. After studying briefly

    with Ernst Rudorff at the Berlin Hochschule

    für Musik he left for America, where he made

    his first appearance, in Boston, in 1884

    ("Godowsky", New Grove II 74: v. 10)

    Hence, his musical life almost resembled that of Louis

Moreau Gottschalk, a nineteenth-century American pianist.

    The Symphonic Metamorphosis on the Johann Strauss’s

Waltz "Kunstlerleben" (1912?) was Godowsky’s greatest ac-

complishment in the milieu of the contemporary programmatic

piece. The piece combines the improvisation seen in earlier

programmatic salon music with the virtuosity of some operatic

fantasies of earlier times. Moreover, the piece pushes the

element of virtuosity into the most extreme level possible,

with three-part textures so difficult that it would take

slow-learning pianists many years to perfect the piece. Some

of the virtuosic passages in the piece even seem to dwarf

the virtuosity of Liszt (and definitely hint at the composi-

tional style of Busoni) such as the use of the false trill

(borrowed from Liszt use of the false octave). Even

the introductory bars, on the A-flat pedal point (the dominant

of D-flat, the main key center for the piece), has some

marginal hallucination similar to that of Maurice Ravel’s

La Valse, which was composed about that time. The work takes

over ten minutes to perform; yet the general idea is that the

audience is taken into a wonderful, imaginary environment in

Strauss’ time—-in Vienna, where the Viennese Waltz was

assumed to be born.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Easlich, Martha. “Moritz Moszkowski.” The New Grove Dictionary

of Music and Musicians, Ed. Stanley Sadie. London:

Macmillian Publishers Ltd., 2000. Vol. 17: 189-190.

Hopkins, Charles. “Leopold Godowsky”. The New Grove Dictionary

of Music and Musicians, Ed. Stanley Sadie. London:

Macmillian Publishers Ltd., 2000. Vol. 10: 74.

Parker, Jesse. The Clavier Fantasy from Mozart to Liszt: A Study in Style and Content. Dissertation. Stanford University, 1974. Cf. also appearing in Google Books, website, <http://books.google.com/books/about/The_clavier_fantasy_from_Mozart_to_Liszt.html?id=dNJGAAAAIAAJ>.

Richards, Annette. Fantasy and Fantasia: A Theory of the Musical Picturesque in Late 18th and 19th Century Culture. Dissertation, Stanford University, 1994

Suttoni, Charles. Piano and Opera: A Study of the Piano Fantasias Written on Opera Themes in the Romantic Era. New York, 1973.

Temperley, Nicholas, ed. The London Pianoforte School 1776-1880: Clementi, Dussek, Cogan, Field, Pinto, Sterndale, Bennett, and Other Masters of the Pianoforte. 20 Volumes. London: Garland, 1983-1987.

Turk, Daniel Gottlob. School of Clavier Playing (Klavierschule), or, Instructions in Playing the Clavier for Teachers and Students. 1789.