Berlioz, Hector

Berlioz, Hector – Chant des Chemins de fer Op. 19 No. 3 for choir and orchestra (Vocal score with French libretto)

For more information about the piece read the preface of the full score:

The romantic generation
Arthur Lovejoy wrote in 1924 that “the word romantic has come to mean so many things that, in itself, it means nothing” (quoted in Abrams, 1975, p. 6)1. According to Walter Frisch in his book Music in the Nineteenth Century (2013)2, it is difficult to chronologically delimit the musical period understood as Romanticism. He points out that only by taking an approach that combines time and context, we can have a complete vision of the “very dense network of composers, interpreters, publishers, promoters, scores, oral traditions, audiences, institutions, cities and nations” that the nineteenth century encompasses (Frisch, 2013, p.12).

Although it cannot be properly considered a school, since they did not develop a cohesive style, the “generation of the 1830s” (Rosen, 1998)3, that consisted of Felix Mendelssohn (1809-1847), his sister Fanny Mendelssohn (1805-1847 ), Franz Liszt (1811-1886), Clara Schumann (1819-1896), Robert Schumann (1810-1856) and Richard Wagner (1813-1883) in the German sphere; Frédéric Chopin (1810-1849), Pauline Viardot (1821-1910) and Hector Berlioz (1803-1869) in the French sphere and Giuseppe Verdi (1813-1901) in Italy, made up the musical elite of the second third of the 19th century, in which the bases of a more direct connection with the public through new compositional and musical strategies (Frisch, 2013) was established. …

Read the English and German preface of the full score  > HERE