Music Appreciation Week 10 - Romanticism and Wagner

MUSIC APPRECIATION WEEK 10: ROMANTICISM

We will begin this week's bog with something different. Here is documentary on Romantic literature. We've discussed Romanticism in music quite a bit in class and to give you some context I'd like you to see watch this rather spicy documentary on some Romantic writers.

I think you'll enjoy The Romantics. Warning: this gets into some "mature" subject matter and some rather graphic scenes of medical proceedures (but then this is a nursing school so its probably easy for you to take).

The Rock band Rush set part of Coleridge's poem to music in their epic "Xanadu". Check out this live performance and listen for how they set the text.

Now that we have taken time to rock, let's get back to our documentary:

RICHARD WAGNER (1813 - 1883)

The king of the operatic spectacle, Wagner is legendary in the history of opera. Here is a radio broadcast about the premiere of The Ring. This is from a series called "13 Days When Music Changed Forever." If you like this episode, you should check out some of the others, too. Please click the link below:

Wagner's Ring

Here is a scene from John Adam's Nixon in China, mentioned in the broadcast above.

The next group of videos we watched in class but I thought you might want to see them again:

Here is a clip from Wagner's Die Walkure "Ride of the Valkyries":

From Verdi's Rigoletto "La donna e mobile"

This features Luciano Pavarotti in the lead role. Please click below:

Rigoltetto

Here are some excerpts from Tchaikovsky's Nutcracker ballet:

This is the March:

Here is a scene from Disney's Fantasia Featuring "Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy"

Finally, here is Trepak from the ballet:

You are now ready to take this week's quiz.

Music Quiz #8