Expert: Pat G - 4/22/2009

Question
Hi, I am middle school student. I want to become a composer and conductor. I am currently studying with a professional composer, and I play piano and horn. I know most harmony, and some basic counterpoint. I'm still studying third species counterpoint and orchestration now. My teacher suggested that I learn to compose pieces in different moods. My music, so far is usually typical classical style like Haydn and Mozart. He wants me to expand to more Romantic like music, and add more emotions into it. He suggested to first put my own feelings into the music, and second to analyze some good musical examples. According to him, if you want to compose in a Chopin style, study Chopin's music. I asked him for some pieces to study and he gave me a few, but here I want to ask for a bigger, broader list, especially of lesser known music, because I am quite familiar with most of the famous pieces. So do you have any suggestions for lesser known, Romantic pieces that correspond to the moods below.

-Haunting and scary
-Sad, dispair, mournful
-slow but powerful, with passion, force, and fire, stormy
-fast and furious, stormy
-bright and happy

Thanks for the help. I realize this is kind of homework. But it is something I have already done a little bit. I've done Barber's Adagio for Strings, Shostakovich's Piano Concerto, Beethoven Symphony 7 Mvt. 2, etc. I'm justing looking for some lesser known music in the Romantic style. I'm just a middle school student, so I'm not that knowledegable. Thanks for all the help.

Answer
Hi, Robert,

This question should be made public. That's my reason for sending it again.

Actually, you sound like you have an excellent background, especially for a middle school student!

For romantic, you want to include impressionistic. Claude Debussy is a good example. The scale often used is a whole tone scale, which gives a totally different quality to the music.

I will give you a list of composers, and I recommend you look at each in Wikipedia. You can often find samples of their music either at Amazon.com or YouTube.

Along with Debussy, in no particular order, take a look at Maurice Ravel, Cesar Franck, Bedřich Smetana, Hector Berlioz, Johannes Brahms, Felix Mendelssohn, Ottorino Respighi, Franz Liszt, Robert Schumann, Franz Schubert, Gustav Mahler, Anton Bruckner (both of which remind me a lot of Richard Wagner), Richard Strauss, Niccolo Paganini, operas by Giacomo Puccini, Giuseppe Verdi, and Georges Bizet. Check out also Carl Maria von Weber, and Antonin Dvorak. Turning to the Russians, you have both romantic and neoromantic, such as Mikhail Glinka, Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, Alexander Borodin, Mikhail Ippolitov-Ivanov, Modest Moussorgsky (his final scene in the opera Boris Godunov is a real tear jerker, especially if you understand the Russian, which I do. Godunov, a lifelong nasty tyrant, is pleading with God for forgiveness), and he is also known for his famous Pictures at an Exhibition, of which the Ravel orchestration is a special favorite, Reinhold Glière, and Sergei Rachmaninoff. Then there are composers like some of the "halloween" style music is haunting and scary, such as In the Hall of the Mountain King by Edvard Grieg. Asa's Death from the Peer Gynt Suite is another very melancholy piece. More: Henryk Wieniawski, Henri Vieuxtemps, whose violin concertos are a real challenge, Max Bruch, Carl Orff (composer of Carmina Burana, a delightful funny collection of somewhat bawdy songs, much fun to sing), well, the list just goes on and on!

Then there are composers like Camille Saint-Saens, Jean Sibelius, Karl Nielsen (though his music is moving toward the dissonant), the early work of people like Arnold Schoenberg (listen to his Verklarte Nacht, for example), or listen to the Poem of Ecstasy by Alexander Scriabin. Then there are Vincent d'Indy, Engelbert Humperdinck, Ernest Chausson (I am totally in love with his string chamber pieces), and don't forget the waltz composers, such as the Strauss family.

British composers include Ralph Vaughan-Williams, John Field, Edward Elgar, and Gustav Holst (he didn't just compose The Planets, but his suite for strings is absolutely exquisite, and he has a similar version for brass). Turning to Americans, there are people like Edward MacDowell, Ferde Grofe, Samuel Barber (who composed the famous Adagio for Strings, as you well know), Aaron Copland, and I would personally put pieces like Rhapsody in Blue by George Gershwin into this category, too. Then there is the Armenian-American composer Alan Hovhaness, whose music is downright mystical. Here is a list: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_American_composers .

Anybody who wrote tone poems would be included, from whatever nationality.

Don't forget the women. Excellent composers of this period included Clara Wieck Schumann, Fanny Mendelssohn, Cécile Chaminade, and Amy Beach (an American). There is a whole list of women composers here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_female_composers . It will take you an hour just to read the list, I swear!

And black composers include William Grant Still (an American), Chevalier de Saint-Georges, Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, Leo Brouwer from Cuba, and many others. Brouwer opens up the whole question of romantic guitar music, which include Isaac Albeniz, Fernando Sor, Augustin Barrios (his La Catedral is a special favorite of mine), Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco, Heitor Villa-Lobos, Joaquín Rodrigo, Andrés Segovia, and Francisco Tárrega.
Here's a link for this category: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Composers_for_guitar .

And look at the organ music of the French romantic composers! It will simply lift you right off this earth! Charles-Marie Widor (his Toccata from his Fifth Organ Symphony is a special favorite that I love to play), Josef Rheinberger (who wrote two absolutely phenomenal organ symphonies, full length works), Léon Boëllmann, Louis Vierne, and others. For a list, see here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_organ_composers .

Then there are people who are going in a slightly different direction, such as Arvo Pärt, Philip Glass, and John Adams. While they are not technically romantic or impressionistic, they are certainly lovely and fit very much into the same mood.

For fast, furious, and stormy, you can hardly beat some of Richard Wagner's music, especially the orchestral parts of his operas. Sad, despair, mournful, reminds me of parts of the oratorio Elijah by Mendelssohn, particularly when Elijah is mourning because of what is going on. In the same oratorio, there is a very light, happy piece for three part women's chorus. Absolutely exquisite.

And then there are brand new composers that compose in a romantic style. I am especially fond of Palladio by Karl Jenkins. And I especially like this recording: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E5jtKuQeq0w Sometimes I listen to it several times a day!

If you would like a lot of quick exposure to lots and lots of wonderful romantic pieces, you can't do better than listening to the streaming audio at http://theclassicalstation.org/ They do also play baroque and classical, but everything they play is absolutely lovely!

Thank you for a wonderful question. If you look at all of that, you'll just be getting started!