Relive Europe's revolutionary century with this classical playlist
Updated: Aug 26
Romanticism, nationalism, and revolution converge in the quills of great composers from Europe.
European history textbooks sing variations of the same theme: as romanticism and nationalism rose, the 1800s saw political turmoil across the continent as revolutionaries, philosophers, and artists sought territorial and cultural expressions for developing national identities. The resulting tensions erupted into unprecedented waves of revolution and warfare that redrew Europe's political and cultural boundaries.
Although words only go so far in conveying the stakes of this contentious period, the celebrated romantic music offers much more vivid insight into both the individual emotions and collective struggles associated with nationalist movements. The 2-hour playlist below presents six works written in the aftermath of political events across Europe, showcasing a range of ethnic styles and cultural ideals.
Frédéric Chopin: Four Mazurkas, op. 17
In the November Uprising of 1830, rebels from Chopin's home country, Poland, attempted to overthrow Russian rule. Their failure meant the Poles would remain a stateless nation for another eight decades before the formation of the Second Polish Republic in 1918. Shortly after the rebellion, the young composer Chopin wrote four mazurkas for solo piano inspired by their namesake Polish dances known for the triple meter and forceful accents. Chopin’s mazurkas ask the question, “How can one write national music for an ethnicity without political representation?”
Franz Liszt: Symphonic poem no. 8: Heroïde funèbre
The revolutions of 1848 swept throughout Europe, including in Liszt's native Hungary, where parliamentary forces nearly succeeded in transforming the country into a democratic constitutional monarchy. To celebrate bravery of those who died fighting for revolutionary efforts, Liszt returned to his sketches for a symphony he began in 1830, originally in response to the July Revolution. The culminating work, the symphonic poem “Heroïde Funèbre,” marks part of Listz's contribution to the genre of program music, in which a composition traces an extra-musical meaning often derived from a story, poem, or painting.
Camille Saint-Saëns: Marche héroïque, op 34 & Gabriel Fauré: Violin Sonata in A, op 13
Two decades later, it was France’s turn to suffer a major political crisis during the 1870-1871 Franco-Prussian War. In memory of his friend, painter Henri Regnault, who died while defending France in the Siege of Paris, Saint-Saëns composed his heroic march.
Ultimately, though, France's crushing defeat prompted its composers to re-establish French musical life under the Ars Gallica movement that sought to maintain artistic independence from the dominant German styles of the 19th Century. Fauré’s Violin Sonata in A, for example, formed a cornerstone of the movement with its transparent lyricism and subtle harmonic innovation marked by chromatic basslines and the avoidance of heavy cadences.
Bedřich Smetana: String quartet no. 1 in E minor From my life
Meanwhile, Czech nationalism was also brewing in Central Europe, with Bedrich Smetana pioneering a cultural revival of Czech music through works like the Moldau and the opera The Bartered Bride. That said, his equally significant first string quartet was a more personal response to his declining hearing the death of his wife. The programmatic content includes a high E mimicking the ringing in his ears. Though more autobiographical and intimate than the rest of the program, the work nevertheless showcases Czech national styles like the à la polka second movement. In fact, the perception of the quartet as a private work allowed it to become more frequently performed than his other, more overtly nationalist, and thus politically threatening, compositions.
Anton Bruckner: Helgoland
We end the program with Anton Bruckner’s last completed work, the 1893 cantata Helgoland for orchestra and men’s choir, written shortly after Great Britain handed the island of Heligoland back to Germany in exchange for the island of Zanzibar. Though Bruckner earned most of his fame from his sacred music and symphonies, the little-performed cantata also demonstrates his output of patriotic music. The German nationalism espoused by Bruckner and many of his composer colleagues would have grim consequences two decades later when the first world war erupted in 1914. Helgoland's people, ironically, will face the reality of ethnic strife when the German government deported them for allegedly sympathizing with the British during the conflict.
Conclusion
In sum, the music's romantic century could not have unfolded in its full color without the backdrop of the era’s political turmoil. Nor could we fully understand the emotional dimensions of the period's political movements without appreciating its rich artistic output. Music may be the wordless language for geopolitics after all.
References
Henken, John. "String Quartet No. 1 in E Minor ('From My Life')." LA Philharmonic. https://www.laphil.com/works/string-quartet-no-1-in-e-minor-from-my-life.
Lafarge, Annik. "Frédéric Chopin in Exile: The Making of a Romantic." Literary Hub. Last modified August 11, 2020. https://lithub.com/frederic-chopin-in-exile-the-making-of-a-romantic/.
Lizst, Franz. Héroïde Funèbre. 1856. https://vmirror.imslp.org/files/imglnks/usimg/f/fa/IMSLP112774-PMLP43117-S102-Heroide.pdf.
Nouvelle Histoire de la Musique en France (1870-1950). Under "La Société Nationale de Musique," by Michel Duchesneau. https://emf.regroupement-rcms.org/nhmf-1871/.
Rüger, Jan. Heligoland : Britain, Germany, and the Struggle for the North Sea. Oxford University Press, 2017.
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