Concise History of Western Music
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Chapter Index Chapter 1: Music in Ancient Greece and Early Christian Rome Chapter 2: Chant and Secular Song in the Middle Ages, 400Ð1450 Chapter 3: Polyphonic Music from Its Beginnings through the Thirteenth Century Chapter 4: French and Italian Music in the Fourteenth Century Chapter 5: England and Burgundian Lands in the Fifteenth Century: The Beginnings of an International Style Chapter 6: The Age of the Renaissance: Music of the Low Countries Chapter 7: The Age of the Renaissance: New Currents in the Sixteenth Century Chapter 8: Church Music of the Late Renaissance and Reformation Chapter 9: Church Music of the Late Renaissance and Reformation Chapter 10: Opera and Vocal Music in the Late Seventeenth Century Chapter 11: Instrumental Music in the Late Baroque Chapter 12: Music in the Early Eighteenth Century Chapter 13: The Early Classic Period: Opera and Instrumental Music in the Eighteenth Century Chapter 14: The Late Eighteenth Century: Haydn and Mozart Chapter 15: Ludwig van Beethoven Chapter 16: Romanticism and Nineteenth-Century Orchestral Music Chapter 17: Solo, Chamber, and Vocal Music in the Nineteenth Century Chapter 18: Opera, Music Drama, and Church Music in the Nineteenth Century Chapter 19: European Music from the 1870s to World War I Chapter 20: The European Mainstream in the Twentieth Century Chapter 21: Atonality, Serialism, and Recent Developments in Twentieth-Century Europe Chapter 22: The American Twentieth Century
 

Outlines:
  - French Opera
  - Italy
  - Giuseppi Verdi (1813–1901)
  - Germany
  - Church Music
  Quiz
  Listening Guide
Chapter 18: Opera, Music Drama, and Church Music in the Nineteenth Century
Church Music
  1. Romanticism and Church Music

    1. Berlioz
      1. He composed religious works for special occassions.
      2. His Grande Messe des morts (Requiem, 1837) and Te Deum (1855) are dramatic symphonies with voices singing inspiring, liturgical texts.
      3. His works call for huge forces with brilliant orchestral effects.

    2. Liszt
      1. He also composed sacred music for special occassions.
      2. Liszt wrote about his ideal of Romantic sacred music.
        1. He called his new music "humanitarian."
        2. He believed in using contrasting values in these works, for example dramatic and sacred, splendid and simple (see quotation, p. 447, in CHWM)

  2. The Cecilian movement

    1. Named after St. Cecilia, the patron saint of music in the Catholic Church.

    2. Inspired by the Romantic interest in the past
      1. Revived sixteenth-century a cappella style
      2. Inspired the restoration of Gregorian chant

    3. Anton Bruckner (1824–1896)
      1. Organist in Linz and Vienna
      2. Religious person with training in counterpoint
      3. Composed Masses as well as symphonies
      4. Composed motets (e.g., NAWM 115, Virga Jesse)

  3. Other religious music

    1. Rossini composed a Stabat Mater that was banned for its operatic style.

    2. Verdi composed a Requiem (1874) with powerful choruses in memory of a famous author.

    3. Brahms' Ein deutsches Requiem (A German Requiem, 1868)
      1. Inspired by Handel's choral music
      2. Combines sacred and newly-written texts
      3. Nineteenth-century harmonic idiom.

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