Rhapsody (music)
A rhapsody in music is a one-movement work that is episodic yet integrated, free-flowing in structure, featuring a range of highly contrasted moods, colour and tonality. An air of spontaneous inspiration and a sense of improvisation make it freer in form than a set of variations. Sergei Rachmaninoff's set of variations on a theme by Niccolò Paganini are so free in structure that the composer called them a Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini.[original research?]
The word "rhapsody" is derived from the Greek rhapsōdos, a reciter of epic poetry, and came to be used in Europe by the 16th century as a designation for literary forms, not only epic poems, but also for collections of miscellaneous writings and, later, any extravagant expression of sentiment or feeling. In the 18th century, literary rhapsodies first became linked with music, as in Christian Friedrich Daniel Schubart's Musicalische Rhapsodien (1786), a collection of songs with keyboard accompaniment, together with a few solo keyboard pieces. Although vocal examples may be found as late as Brahms's Alto Rhapsody, op.53 (1869), in the 19th century the rhapsody had become primarily an instrumental form, first for the piano and then, in the second half of the century, a large-scale nationalistic orchestral "epic"—a fashion initiated by Franz Liszt (Rink 2001).
The heroine's mad scene in Donizetti's opera Lucia di Lammermoor is rhapsodic in form.[original research?]
The term "rhapsody" usually refers to compositions produced whithin the Western Classical music canon, although composers from other types of music have also resorted to this definition.[citation needed]
Some familiar examples may give an idea of the character of a rhapsody:
- Hugo Alfvén, Swedish Rhapsody No. 1 (Midsommarvaka), for orchestra
- Johannes Brahms, Two Rhapsodies, Op. 79, for solo piano
- Emmanuel Chabrier, España, rhapsody for orchestra
- Claude Debussy, Première rhapsodie for clarinet and piano
- Claude Debussy, Rhapsody for alto saxophone and orchestra
- Ernő Dohnányi, Four Rhapsodies, Op. 11, for solo piano
- George Enescu, Romanian Rhapsodies Nos. 1 and 2, for orchestra
- Edward German, Welsh Rhapsody, for orchestra
- George Gershwin, Rhapsody in Blue, Second Rhapsody, for piano and orchestra
- Franz Liszt, Hungarian Rhapsodies for solo piano
- David Popper, Hungarian Rhapsody
- Sergei Rachmaninoff, Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini, Op. 43, for piano and orchestra
- Maurice Ravel, Rapsodie espagnole, for orchestra
- Ralph Vaughan Williams, Norfolk Rhapsody No. 1, for orchestra
[edit] See also
[edit] Bibliography
- Rink, John. 2001. "Rhapsody". The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, second edition, edited by Stanley Sadie and John Tyrrell. London: Macmillan Publishers.
- Salmen, Walter. 1966. Geschichte der Rhapsodie. Atlantis-Musikbücherei. Zürich and Freiburg im Breisgau: Atlantis.
