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.
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.
