• Ei tuloksia

The Italian born composer and virtuoso guitarist, Mauro Giuliani (1781-1829) arrived in Vienna in 1806. By 1819 he had made a successful career both as a performer and a composer and elevated the status of the guitar from a mere accompanying instrument to a versatile musical device capable of expressing grand scale works such as the concerto or the sonata (Heck 2013, an electric source, which will be referred only as Heck 2013 from now on).

This study aims to connect the collection of Giuliani’s works that he composed during his Vienna years to their social and stylistic context. The works presented belong through conventions to different social situations, embracing either the public or private side of the musical discourse.

They also tend to emphasize either popular or serious style, a distinction that became clearer during the first decades of the 19th century.

In the beginning of the 19th century, Vienna was the third largest city in Europe after Paris and London, and a vivid cultural center attracting people from all over Europe (Hanson 1985, 8).

The capital of the Habsburg Empire, Vienna was a melting pot of people with diverse cultural background due to the flow of foreigners and the representation of various ethnical minorities residing in the Empire's constituent lands.

When Giuliani arrived in Vienna in 1806, the city's musical life was at a turning point. The Hauskapellen (private orchestras) of the aristocracy had mostly disappeared and private music was centered in salons. Public concerts were primarily benefit concerts arranged by individuals or charity organizations. Institutional concerts, which promoted solely serious music, started

appearing. Nevertheless, most of musical activities occurred still in private (Denora 1997, 37-51;

Morrow 1989, 1). By the time he left the city in 1819, public concerts had become more common, and in the 1820s Vienna was in par with Paris and London in the number of public concerts arranged in the city (Hanson 1985, 83).

Since the mid-18th century the middle class started to participate and influence music life throughout Europe. First, their role was relatively passive as wealthy aristocratic households were responsible for most concert activity. However, starting from about 1780s, their involvement in organizing musical events grew and became a significant force after 1815 (Weber 1975, 4-6). This development gradually changed the profession of music. Artists, who had been previously solely dependent on patronage or civic employers, received a new audience and supporters from the middle class and thus could expand their work field. Music played a significant role in different social situations that took place in urban areas, such as salons, ballrooms, opera and concert stages.

Domestic music performance became a popular past-time activity for the middle class and was not anymore a privilege of the aristocracy (see for example Weber 1975).

In the 19th century so-called art music became distinguished from other genres for the first time. The music of the 19th century could fall into two distinct camps: popular or serious (Weber 1975, 19-20). This was progressively mirrored in the concert life, as popular and serious music attracted their own audiences. However, during Giuliani's stay in Vienna distinctions between popular and serious styles were still developing and concerts or single compositions could easily emphasize both styles to a certain degree.

In this study, I investigate on how the different levels of popular and serious, private and public music are reflected in four works of Mauro Giuliani. The selected compositions are his dance collections, the 12 Walzers op.21 and the 12 Ländlers op. 44; the first movements of Sonata Brilliant op. 15, and the Concerto no. 1 op. 30. The goal of this research is to explore what kind of music Giuliani composed for different social occasions taking place in Viennese musical life at the time. To understand the social and stylistic background of these works, I discuss the music

environment of Vienna during the late 18th and early 19th centuries, i.e. the public and private concert life, dance music, and domestic music; identify what kind of music was performed in those contexts and investigate the stylistic distinction between popular and serious music.

I discuss the essential historical background focusing on how the rising activity of the middle class affected the Austro-Hungarian musical life at the turn of the 18th and 19th centuries in section 2.1, the general distinction of the late 18th century and early 19th century music to popular and serious music in section 2.2, and the musical life in the late 18th and early 19th century and Giuliani’s participation in it in chapter 3.

After identifying the social aspects of Viennese musical life, I represent the aforementioned selection of Giuliani's music, and identify the social context they were composed for, and analyze what kind of compositional choices he made in them. My music analysis is focused on the musical topics he uses and what kind of musical narrative he builds from them. The topics are analyzed from their social context, i.e. what kind of stylistic associations each topic presents (high, middle, low style), and whether they originate from public or private musical discourse and whether they emphasize the popular (Liebhaber) or serious (Kenner) ends of the stylistic spectrum. In addition, in the analysis of the concerto and the sonata, I will reflect Giuliani’s compositional choices on the late 18th century view on the two styles of instrumental music, namely the sonata and the

symphonic style.

The topical analysis of this work is based on Leonard Ratner’s topical theory, represented in his influential Classic Music: Expression, Form, and Style (1980) and is expanded by the writings of later topic theorists such as Wye Allanbrook, Kofi Agawu, Raymond Monelle, Danuta Mirka, and others. In the concerto and the sonata, I extend the topic analysis by analyzing the expressive narrative of these works. The expressive narrative of a particular work is based on either expressive

oppositions or static expression that the use of topics and other compositional choices create. My analysis on expressive narrative is based on Robert Hatten’s theory on musical narrative and expressive genres. The narratives of the sonata and the concerto are mirrored to the intensity of the expressions stated in these works. I analyze this by examining the harmonic rhythm, rhythmic intensity and the dynamic changes occurring in Giuliani’s music. With this, I intend to understand more on which topical field(s) is the most dominating in a given piece and does this effect on whether a work is perceived as music intended for amateurs or connoisseurs and does the work follow a public or private musical discourse.

The topical fields that form expressive narrations are also reflected in the structural choices Giuliani made. These structures are identified in the sonata brilliant op.15 and the concerto op.30 by using the Sonata Theory, developed by James Hepokoski & Warren Darcy. My special interest is how Giuliani treats the conventional sonata form in different social contexts.

Chapters 4 and 5 include the analytical part of the study. I introduce the analytical methods in chapter 4. In it, I use the topic theory to illustrate different topics through examples from Giuliani and other guitar composers of the late 18th and early 19th century. In chapter 5 the selected works from Giuliani’s oeuvre are analyzed and to some extend compared with each other. Chapter 6 concludes the study.

The analysis provided following results: The dance collections are composed for domestic purposes. However, they originate from public performances, since dances were constantly performed in ballrooms. The Sonata brilliant op. 15 is chamber music, and it was most likely performed in salons. The concerto op. 30 belongs to the genre of public music and it is the only work discussed that has evidence of public performance found from the 18th century reviews and diaries.

Stylistically, the dance collections represent popular music, as dance music was immensely popular, and Giuliani’s dances follow the genre’s conventions closely. The first movement of sonata op. 15 is music leaning towards more serious stylistic associations and the work has a significant emphasis on the tragic expression. This is because the work utilizes a lot of topics of high stylistic origin; it has a certain degree of uncertainty, and has an extensive section emphasizing the minor mode, which commonly is attributed to represent tragic expressions. The work follows the sonata style, which was common in works following a private musical discourse. The first movement of concerto op. 30 has mostly galant and high-comic expressive and stylistic associations. The work follows a mixture of symphonic and sonata styles (a common trait for concertos), but emphasizing the symphonic style more, which was common in music following a public musical discourse. It is a popular work through the genre and the concerto’s contemporary success, but it is not music intended only for an amateur audience because of its extensive usage of topics of middle and high stylistic association.

The reason for choosing Giuliani as an example of the early 19th century Viennese composer stems from my background as a guitarist. I played many pieces by Giuliani during my active days as a performer and I grew to admire his ambitious style of composing for the guitar. Even though I have since left the instrument behind, I find myself coming back to Giuliani’s music often. Thus, building my thesis around Giuliani’s music was an easy choice. My work also tries to fill in a vacuum in Giuliani and 19th century guitar studies: besides Thomas F. Heck’s work as a biographer, much else about Giuliani has not been written and large-scale music analysis of the 19th century guitar music in general seems to be sparse. I hope that this work will act as a preliminary study in further understanding the effect of the social aspects on the compositions of Giuliani and for future studies in the field.