We've talked about lots of different kinds of music in the romantic period
and in the past we have also talked about the cantata. Remember we talked
about that with Bach, who is the master the cantata.
Today we're going to look at a cantata
by Johannes Brahms who is a composer from the Romantic Period.
When we think Brahms we often think of symphonies,
we think piano music, because those are things that people hear a lot.
You might even think about one of his works like his
Alto Rhapsody which he wrote for the daughter of Clara Schumann.
So, those are the things you might be more familiar with
from Brahms. The piece we're going to look at though is one of his cantatas and you think, Brahms that..
that's not even.. even a word that comes up into mind. So,
cantata, we've already seen that that's a piece for vocal,
plus orchestra. Usually has aria, recitative,
chorus, just like opera and all the other things we've looked at that were
big
vocal kinds of works. This particular cantata
is what we would think of as a solo cantata. So it's featuring
one singer, also has a chorus, and an orchestra, but the singer, that solo
singer is really the star.
This.. the, in this particular cantata that's for a tenor, so we have a tenor
singer
who is representing the main character of our story,
Rinaldo. One of the things I love about the arts in general
is how we we'll find a story that we really like
and you'll see it pop up all over the place. The story of Rinaldo comes from
a massive literary work
from the year 1581 called, Jerusalem
Delivered. This... this work pops up in
visual art. There are lots and lots and lots of paintings
of characters from this story. It shows up in this particular cantata,
it shows up even in other kinds of literary works. We have lots of plays that
draw from the characters from the story so
I think this is totally cool that we have so much stuff
I mean, you could do a whole class just talking about Jerusalem Delivered in all the
different ways that
it sort of spread its tentacles. So, the part that Brahms's has taken
from this is the character of Rinaldo. The basic story of Jerusalem Delivered
is a tale of the First Crusade.
It's fictionalized, but it's all about, you know, going out and
conquering in the name of the church, so Rinaldo
is considered to be one of the great Christian knights as part of this crusade
and, you know, we have expectations for him.
Well he gets in
some little issues, so he ends up
in this enchanted island. During the Romantic Period we like all that enchantment
right, so we got our supernatural...
supernatural part going, and he
is lured there by a woman named Armida
and her goal is to kill him.
She's obviously on the other side of this crusader fence,
so she wants to kill him and so she brings him to this
island, makes him fall in love with her and she gets him drunk and
basically just takes all the good Christian soldier out of him
and he's just sort of, you know,
drunken, in a stupor, and in love with this woman. I have a painting for you to
see
by Boucher which is his painting of Rinaldo and Armida, so you can see
another one of those examples where that story is taken to visual art.
You can see that he is very much... just sort of debauched here in this
story so,
and she's sort of over him. You know... the positions of the characters...
you can see that she's the one in the power there.
So his... his...
soldier friends come and try to rescue him and try to
get him out of this state that he's in, and make him realize that he has
fallen into this womans trap and that he needs to get out of that and come back to
battle.
So, she gets her own army
so that she can kill him and fight them.
Things don't work out so well. She tries to kill herself.
and then Rinaldo comes along, saves her,
converts her to Christianity, you know, all happy at the end.
This is a fairly long work because we've got this whole story to tell
of Armida and Rinaldo. As you listen to it,
you will see that we have the tenor who is the character of Rinaldo, so he's our
heroic
type and we are in the Romantic Period so the music will be
heroic when it needs to be. When he's
fallen by the wayside, the music will change. So think about that, think about
those elements of romantic style and how
the emotional content changes as the text goes along. You
might also think about how the chorus functions, this has a chorus of men.
This is Rinaldo and his soldiers, so there are no female
parts in there and I guess Armida just gets to be talked about instead of having
her own parts to say in that.
So, I will give you a translation for that so that you can.. can
know exactly what he's singing about throughout, but enjoy this beautiful
cantata,
unexpected... from Johannes Brahms.