Joseph Joachim and the Violin Romance: Reforming the Playground of Virtuosos

Abstract

In an enticing article for the Neue Zeitschrift für Musik, Hans von Bülow suggested that Joseph Joachim would be well suited to achieve a reform of violin playing in the 1850s, which would effectively close the door behind Virtuosentum. The Golden Age of virtuosity had been on its way out for several years, impacting also violin performance. And yet, violin programming in the musical metropolises London and Paris was slow to adapt. As recent work on Joachim's virtuoso years has shown, his repertoire during the 1840s encompassed far more than German classics. It accommodated plenty of virtuoso music by H.W. Ernst, de Bériot, Ferdinand David, and Vieuxtemps, as well as his own substantial, virtuoso compositions, composed for his London tours in the 1840s. As this article argues, Joachim's programming did not change overnight: the shift from performing and composing virtuoso pieces to identifying himself with lofty and serious works happened gradually. One vehicle through which Joachim transformed the state of ‘violin playing’ of the 1840s was the violin romance. Joachim, who spent three months in Paris in early 1850, used the aesthetic of the romance to transform not only the state of violin playing but also the violin romance itself. Two simple romances he composed in 1850 were followed by a third romance in 1857. The third was, in effect, a Bravourstück in disguise, exhibiting none of the older virtuoso tricks such as flying bow strokes that had fallen out of favour. Rather, in Joachim's third romance, the conspicuous, ‘1840s’ virtuosity merged into ‘shape-oriented virtuosity’, a term used in a 1854 review of Joachim's playing. Many later nineteenth-century composers of violin romances from Bruch to Sibelius adopted Joachim's romance model, negotiating between melodic simplicity and violinistic demand, resulting in lyrical pieces in which virtuosity was an undercurrent, hidden but present.

Full text

Joseph Joachim and the Violin Romance:
Reforming the Playground of Virtuosos
Katharina Uhde
Valparaiso University College of Arts and Sciences, USA
Email: katharina.uhde@valpo.edu
In an enticing article for the Neue Zeitschrift für Musik, Hans von Bülow suggested that Joseph
Joachim would be well suited to achieve a reform of violin playing in the 1850s, which would effec-
tively close the door behind Virtuosentum. The Golden Age of virtuosity had been on its way out for
several years, impacting also violin performance. And yet, violin programming in the musical
metropolises London and Paris was slow to adapt. As recent work on Joachim’s virtuoso years
has shown, his repertoire during the 1840s encompassed far more than German classics. It accom-
modated plenty of virtuoso music by H.W. Ernst, de Bériot, Ferdinand David, and Vieuxtemps, as
well as his own substantial, virtuoso compositions, composed for his London tours in the 1840s. As
this article argues, Joachim’s programming did not change overnight: the shift from performing and
composing virtuoso pieces to identifying himself with lofty and serious works happened gradually.
One vehicle through which Joachim transformed the state of ‘violin playing’of the 1840s was the
violin romance. Joachim, who spent three months in Paris in early 1850, used the aesthetic of the
romance to transform not only the state of violin playing but also the violin romance itself. Two sim-
ple romances he composed in 1850 were followed bya third romance in 1857. The third was, in effect,
aBravourstück in disguise, exhibiting none of the older virtuoso tricks such as flying bow strokes
that had fallen out of favour. Rather, inJoachim’s third romance, the conspicuous, ‘1840s’virtuosity
merged into ‘shape-oriented virtuosity’, a term used in a 1854 review of Joachim’s playing. Many
later nineteenth-century composers of violin romances from Bruch to Sibelius adopted Joachim’s
romance model, negotiating between melodic simplicity and violinistic demand, resulting in lyrical
pieces in which virtuosity was an undercurrent, hidden but present.
In an enticing 1856 article for the Neue Z2eitschrift für Musik, Hans von Bülow
offered an assessment of Franz Liszt’s leadership in reforming keyboard virtuosity
and remarked:
Giventhesovereignpositionthatthekeyboardhasnotonlytakenbutconqueredonthe
playground of virtuosos par excellence in today’smusicworld,reformhashere been needed
most, and has occurred in a most decisive, and for other instruments most authoritative,
manner. Joseph Joachim, who in a way can call himselfastudentofFranzLiszt,mayper-
haps be able to achieve a similar reform for violin playing [Violinspiel].
1
1
‘Bei der souveränen Stellung, welche das Clavier in der heutigen Musikwelt nicht blos
eingenommen, sondern erobert hat, auf dem Concertinstrumente, dem Tummelplatz der
Virtuosen par excellence, war hier die Reform am nothwendigsten, wie am enschiedensten
Nineteenth-Century Music Review, page 1 of 30 © The Author(s), 2024. Published by
Cambridge University Press. This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the
Creative Commons Attribution licence (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/),
which permits unrestricted re-use, distribution and reproduction, provided the original article
is properly cited.
doi:10.1017/S1479409824000223
https://doi.org/10.1017/S1479409824000223 Published online by Cambridge University Press

The Golden Age of virtuosity had been on its way out for several years,
2
and this
was having an impact on violin performance. And yet, violin programming in
the musical metropolises London and Paris was slow to adapt. For von Bülow, if
anyone could effectively close the door behind Virtuosentum in the violin world,
it was Joachim, whose classical performance style –as evident at the Lower
Rhine Festival in 1853 –proved his exemplary artistry.
As recent work on Joachim’s virtuoso years has shown,
3
his repertoire during
the 1840s encompassed far more than German classics. It accommodated plenty
of virtuoso music by H.W. Ernst, Charles de Bériot, Ferdinand David, and Henri
Vieuxtemps, as well as his own substantial, virtuoso compositions, composed
for his London tours in 1847, 1849, and 1852.
4
As this article argues, Joachim’s programming did not change overnight: the
shift from performing and composing virtuoso pieces to identifying himself
with lofty and serious works happened gradually. One vehicle through which
Joachim transformed the state of ‘violin playing’of the 1840s was the violin
romance. Joachim’s romances –misunderstood in terms of genesis and almost
unknown today –offered a suitable vehicle for stylistic change.
5
Unostentatious
and yet enchanting, the main qualities of the older French ancestor –the vocal
romance –were simplicity, naïveté, a bucolic element (champêtre), and, according
to Jean-Jacques Rousseau, a plainness that resisted heavy ornamentation and vir-
tuosity.
6
The romance’s beauty enticed: typically short and sweet, it gave audi-
ences pleasure.
Joachim, who spent three months in Paris in early 1850, used the aesthetic of the
romance to transform not only the state of violin playing but also the violin
romance itself. Two simple romances he composed in 1850 were followed by a
third romance in 1857. The third was, in effect, a Bravourstück in disguise, exhibit-
ing none of the older Golden Age virtuoso tricks, such as flying bow strokes, that
had fallen out of favour. Rather, in Joachim’s third romance, the conspicuous,
und für andere Instrumente maßgebendsten. Joseph Joachim, der sich gewissermaßen einen
Schüler Liszt’s nennen darf, vermöchte vielleicht eine ähnliche Reform für das Violinspiel zu
vollziehen’[my italics]. Hans von Bülow, ‘Alexander Winterberger und das moderne
Orgelspiel’,Neue Zeitschrift für Musik (henceforth NZfM] 45/1 (1 July 1856): 1.
2
Carl Dahlhaus, Nineteenth-Century Music (Berkeley: University of California Press,
1989), 111; Eduard Hanslick, Geschichte des Concertwesens in Wien, 2 vols (1869; repr.,
Hildesheim: Georg Olms, 1979), 1:12.
3
Katharina Uhde, ‘Re-considering the Young Composer-Performer Joseph Joachim,
1841–53’,inThe Creative Worlds, ed. Valerie Woodring Goertzen and Robert Eshbach
(Martlesham: Boydell & Brewer), 221–41; Katharina Uhde, ‘Re-discovering Joseph
Joachim’s‘Hungarian’and ‘Irish’[Scotch] Fantasies’,The Musical Times 158 (2017): 75–100.
4
The Hungarian Fantasy dates as far back as 1846. Although Joachim had been eager to
write useful virtuoso bonbons for London use since 1846, only in 1852 did he actually per-
form his two fantasies in London.
5
Regarding the Romance in C major, Moser claims that it originated in the mid-1850s.
Andreas Moser, Joseph Joachim: Ein Lebensbild, 1856–1907 (Berlin: Deutsche
Brahms-Gesellschaft, 1910): 89, writes: ‘Ein Stück von ganz besonderem Liebreiz ist ferner
die Romanze in C-dur für Violin emit Klavierbegleitung, die Joachim Mitte der fünfziger
Jahre als Beitrag für eine illustrierte Zeitschrift geschrieben und dann der
Verlagshandlung Kahnt, Leipzig, überlassen hat’. The B-flat major Romance, furthermore,
is said to have originated ‘in Leipzig’, which could mean anywhere from 1843 to 1850.
6
Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Dictionnaire de musique (Paris: Duchesne, 1768): 420.
2Nineteenth‐Century Music Review
https://doi.org/10.1017/S1479409824000223 Published online by Cambridge University Press

‘1840s’virtuosity merged into ‘shape-oriented virtuosity’(‘Gestaltende
Virtuosität’), a term used by a critic to describe Joachim’s interpretation in a concert
of 1854; specifically, a type of virtuosity ‘which makes it its task to illustrate to us
the characteristic moments within the works of our good masters’.
7
Later
nineteenth-century composers including Max Bruch, a close friend of Joachim,
adopted Joachim’s romance model, negotiating between melodic simplicity and
violinistic demand, resulting in lyrical pieces in which virtuosity was an undercur-
rent, hidden but present.
The romance genre offered a training ground for a young violinist-composer; it
also featured a tie to Beethoven, whose oeuvres include two violin romances,
allowing Joachim to express his continued classical allegiance. At the same time
the genre stood with one foot in the world of opera, and its effect was pleasing
to mainstream concertgoers without pushing the buttons of audiences tired of fla-
shy virtuosic fare. The romance was a genre ‘antique’enough and, by the mid-
nineteenth century also ‘empty’enough, to serve as a vessel that could be ‘filled’,
signalling Joachim’s own interests: those of a violinist-composer negotiating
between edifying his audiences and being the violinist of expert virtuosic skill
who enjoyed proving his mastery over the violin.
Joachim’s three-pronged transformation of violin playing consisted of a) a
change in programming favouring romances instead of 1840s-type
Bravourstücke, b) his own romance compositions, and c) particular stylistic touches
particularly in the late romance, the second movement from the Hungarian
Concerto, highlighting a new ‘shape-oriented’virtuosity,
8
thereby presenting a
new performative approach. In 1861 Hanslick described Joachim’s performance
of Beethoven’s romance as embodying ‘undecorated greatness’,‘simplicity’, and
‘Roman seriousness’.
9
No bravura piece was offered on the programme and its
absence was not even noted. The state of ‘violin playing’had changed.
Genealogy of the Violin Romance
Because of the romance’s rich history –reaching back to the wandering trouba-
dours –and because of its extremely broad definition –by 1828 defined as an
‘instrumental composition of a somewhat desultory and romantic cast’
10
–offering
a comprehensive historical overview is futile. Indeed, the literature about the oper-
atic romance is exhaustive but only partially relevant to the instrumental romance,
while the existing literature on the violin romance is sparse and of limited use. For
example, Chapel White writes that in the decades around 1780, ‘no movement is
designated a “romance”unless it presents an initial, closed section made up of reg-
ular, well-defined phrases –a section, that is, corresponding to the vocal
7
Review of a Leipzig concert on 21 December 1854. Signale 13/1 (January 1855): 4.
8
Signale 13/1 (January 1855): 4. Review of a Gewandhaus concert on 21 December 1854.
‘Virtuosität, die wir die gestaltende nennen möchten, d.h. die es sich zur Aufgabe macht, die
charakteristischen Momente innerhalb der Werke unserer guten Meister uns zu
veranschaulichen’.
9
Eduard Hanslick, ‘Concerte’,inDie Presse, Vienna, 23 Feb. 1861, 1–2.
10
Chappell White, From Vivaldi to Viotti: A History of the Early Classical Violin Concerto
(Milton Park: Taylor & Francis, 1992): 82, cites Thomas Busby, A Musical Manual (London:
Goulding & D’Almaine, 1828).
3Joseph Joachim and the Violin Romance
https://doi.org/10.1017/S1479409824000223 Published online by Cambridge University Press

romance’.
11
But White focused on Giovanni Battista Viotti (1755–1824) and did not
extend his studies to nineteenth-century works. Furthermore, White did not elab-
orate on the intriguing genre transfer as violinist-composers of opéra-comique also
turned to romance composition in standard violin concertos, which were taught
throughout the nineteenth century. In fact, Beethoven’s widely-known two
romances Opp. 40 and 50
12
can be traced to a shared discourse with the Paris con-
servatoire composers,
13
and, furthermore, Joachim’s own violin-pedagogical
ancestry can be traced via his teacher Joseph Böhm (1795–1876) to the same
institution.
Thus, rather than understanding the violin romance’s ancestry as a branch of the
instrumental romance
14
–there would certainly be enough piano romances in
Joachim’s circle that one could address, including those of the Schumanns
15
–
the violin romance in Joachim’s hands deserves its own genre-specific story,
which begins with the violinist composers associated with the Paris conservatoire
who had one foot in the opéra-comique world (Table 1).
The main three violin representatives at the Paris conservatoire were Pierre
Baillot, Rodolphe Kreutzer, and Pierre Rode. All violin pedagogues in the late
1700s, their efforts were published in the Méthode du Violon …Adoptée par le
Conservatoire pour servir a l’Etude dans cet Etablissement.
16
Giovanni Battista Viotti,
who lived and worked in Paris for a time and taught all three of the above-
named,
17
is considered the founding father of the Parisian violin school. Pierre
Gaviniès –whom Viotti described as ‘the French Tartini’, taught violin at the
Paris Conservatoire from 1795 until his death. Gaviniés was credited with two of
11
White, From Vivaldi to Viotti, 82–3.
12
From 22 January 1889 onwards, Joachim owned an autograph of Beethoven’s
Romance Op. 50. Library of Congress, ML30.8b .B4 op. 50.
13
Beethoven helped establish the independent instrumental romance. ‘The pair of
Romances Opp. 40 and 50, however, retain many of the characteristics of the typical slow
movement if French violin concertos of the 1770s –simplicity, lyricism, symmetrical phrase
structure, and, in the case of the G major Romance, duple time commencing at the half-bar’;
Robin Stowell, Beethoven: Violin Concerto (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998): 6.
14
Laura Probst, ‘The Romance and the Couplet in Selected Operas of Boieldieu and
Isouard: A Preliminary Study of their Structure and Function’(M.A. thesis, University of
Minnesota, 1989): 2–11; Daniel Heartz, ‘The Beginnings of the Operatic Romance:
Rousseau, Sedaine and Monsigny’,Eighteenth-Century Studies 15/2 (1981–82): 153–7.
Jeffrey Kalberg, ‘Voice and the Nocturne’,inPianist, Scholar, Connoisseur: Essays in Honor
of Jacob Lateiner, ed. Jacob Lateiner, Bruce Brubaker and Jane Gottlieb (Hillsdale:
Prendragon Press, 2000): 1–46, at 6–7. ‘Romance’,inEncyclopédie Méthodique, Musique
(Paris, 1818) as cited in Rainer Gstrein, ‘Romanz/romance/Romance’in Handwörterbuch
der musikalischen Terminologie, ed. Hans Heinrich Eggebrecht (Wiesbaden: Franz Steiner,
1987): 11.
15
Marie Sumner Lott, ‘Romantic Medievalism in the Piano Romances of Clara and
Robert Schumann and Brahms’,American Brahms Society Newsletter 33/1 (2015): 1–8;
Katharina Uhde and R. Larry Todd, ‘Contextualizing Clara Schumann’sRomanzen’in
Clara Schumann Studies, ed. Joe Davies, 165–86 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press):
165–86; Nancy B. Reich, Clara Schumann: The Artist and the Woman (Ithaca: Cornell
University Press, 2001).
16
Pierre Baillot, Pierre Rode, and Rodolphe Kreutzer, Méthode du Violon [ …]. Adoptée par
le Conservatoire pour servir a l’Etude dans cet Etablissement (Paris: Faubourg, after 1793).
17
Warwick Lister, Amico: The Life of Giovanni Battista Viotti (New York: Oxford
University Press, 2009): 165.
4Nineteenth‐Century Music Review
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the earliest operatic romances,
18
while Rodolphe Kreutzer –whose third concerto
was dedicated to Gaviniès –followed in the latter’s footsteps as a violin virtuoso,
pedagogue, and opéra-comique composer.
The operatic romances are trifles. As expected in the opéra-comique, whose musi-
cal numbers –romances included –were separated by spoken dialogue, romances
were meant to be simple. The simplicity of form, strophic or ABA designs, minor–-
major contrasts, and sweet text and tone aimed at something else than effect in a
spectacle sense.
19
They wrapped the listener into a state of sentimentality,
which, if not ‘effectful’, was still enthralling.
Gaviniès’s romance in G major, Qu’il est doux, qu’il est charmant (c. 1755), is writ-
ten in a ‘simple and slightly archaic style’
20
and falls into a five-part form with three
strophes featuring a charming theme in G major (text: ‘Qu’il est doux est charmant,
Le plaisir qu’on goûte en aimant’), alternating with couplets in G major (8 bars,
moving to V) and G minor (8 plus 16 bars). Similarly, Gaviniès’s romance in C
major from La Pretendu (1760) is an essay in elegance, as expressed in the simple
melody of the opening 16-bar sentence. The basic idea in C major contains stately,
crisp two-crotchet gestures, and an elegant appoggiatura pair while the repetition
of the basic idea moves to the dominant. The continuation visits A minor and ends
Table 1 Romance in opéra-comique and in Violin Concertos by Paris Conservatoire
Violinists
opéra-comique Violin Concerto (as mvt. 2)
Gaviniès
La Pretendu (1761) [no. 30]
Annette et Lubin (1 act) [in scene 5, romance identical to
that in La Pretendu]
Kreutzer
Lodoïska (1791) [act II scene 1] Concerto No. 3 (dedicated to
Gaviniés) (1790s)
Ipsiboé (premiered 1824), [two romance, nos. 7, act 1,
and 19, act 3 in]
Concerto No. 5 (1796)
Concerto No. 9 (1799)
Viotti
Concerto No. 4 (1782)
Concerto No. 7 (1808 or earlier)
18
David Charlton, ‘The Romance and its Cognates: Narrative, Irony and vraisemblance in
Early Opéra Comique’,inDie Opéra comique und ihr Einfluß auf das europäische Musiktheater im
19. Jahrhundert: Bericht über den Internationalen Kongreß Frankfurt 1994, ed. Herbert Schneider
and Nicole Wild (Hildesheim: Georg Olms, 1997): 43–92, at 66.
19
Isouard’sCendrillon (1810), for example, contains a light-hearted Romance at the finale
of act 2; the opera as a whole was noted for a ‘graceful playfulness in the music of this piece,
mingled with much that is of a higher order’.‘Foreign Musical Report: Prague’,inThe
Harmonicon: A Journal of Music (London: Longman, Rees, Orme, Brown, and Green: 1831): 73.
20
Pierre Gaviniès, Qu’il est doux, qu’il est charmant, arr. J. B. Weckerlin (Paris: Pierre
Lafitte, 1904).
5Joseph Joachim and the Violin Romance
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on V/A minor, before giving way to the cadential idea, which returns the theme to
the home key.
21
The short romance from Lodoïska (1791) is in a 6/8 lilting metre; the accompani-
ment of broken triads gives it a pastoral feel.
22
The whole piece falls into a sentence
structure. The basic idea traces a i–V in a rocking quaver melody (bars 1–5); this
basic idea is repeated (bars 6–9). The continuation (bars 10–12) lightens the
mood briefly into C major, before offering an expanded cadential idea; that
expanded cadential idea is repeated, and followed by a brief 6-bar codetta.
The romance from Ipsiboé (1824), in A minor and cut-time, uses the French cou-
plets form.
23
Used throughout the Romantic period by Hector Berlioz and others,
this form alternates verses and refrains; the tone is often pathetic and sentimental,
the style simple. After a brief introduction that features a minor-mode reference to
the ‘La Marseillaise’the first couplet (verse) ensues with a melody descending
down the interval of a fifth while the dotted rhythms from the introduction remain
underneath the melody. The Refrains bring A major and a theatrical declamatory
style, making use of repetitive quavers on single pitches and of harmonic variation,
as the dominant, E major, appears with a raised fifth scale degree (B♯) in the mel-
ody, clashing with the B in the bass. The second verse and refrains are varied –dec-
orated –and followed by a coda, thus yielding altogether a 5-part form. The mood
is serious in the verses and uplifting in the refrains.
The violin romances of Kreutzer, Gaviniès, and Viotti, likewise prioritize the
same intense potentiality for lyricism. Kreutzer’s Romance in A major from
Concerto No. 3, in ABA form, is a calm and ornate token in alla breve. The piece
opens with a pastoral circular triadic figures in the violins (a–c♯–e–c♯–a–c♯–e–c♯)
before the solo presents a theme in which large expressive intervals abound. In sen-
tence structure, the basic idea stays in A major (bars 2–5); the repetition of the basic
idea (bars 6–9) ends with a I:HC; the continuation phrase (bars 10–13) tonicizes E
major while the violin executes ornate fast ornaments and trills; and the cadential
idea, expanded by one bar (bars 14–18), heightens the level of decoration in the vio-
lin and leads to a varied repeat of the theme, this time condensing it, bringing the A
section to a close. The B section, in A minor, opens with an expressive ascending
sixth –continuing the large-interval gestures from A–and offers an 8-bar anteced-
ent (to V) and an expanded consequent (ending with a i:IAC) and a transition
towards V to prepare the return of A.
Kreutzer’s Romance in A minor from Concerto No. 5, in ABA form, opens with
a brief introduction of maestoso dotted rhythms in 3/4 before offering a melan-
choly A minor-theme in small ternary aba′form, with a lilting slow waltz quality.
The first theme, a, is closed and cadences on C major, III. The b (bars 13 [with
pick-up]–16) is loosely knit, ending on V/A minor. The a′returns the opening
theme to A minor. The middle B section is in A major and briefly visits the dom-
inant E, before returning to the home key. The minore A section returns and
draws the piece to a close.
21
For Caplin ‘sentence structure’contains basic idea (b.i.), repetition of b.i. (dominant
version), continuation/fragmentation and cadential idea. William Caplin, Classical Form: A
Theory of Formal Functions for the Instrumental Music of Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998): 36.
22
Rodolphe Kreutzer, Lodoïska (Paris: Sieber, 1791, Plate 1222), 90. Accessed on
imslp.org, 25 January 2023.
23
Rodolphe Kreutzer, Ipsiboé (Paris: C. Laffillé, n.d.), No. 7. Accessed on imslp.org, 25
January 2023.
6Nineteenth‐Century Music Review
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A specifically operatic heritage is evident in Kreutzer’s Romance from Concerto
No. 9, where fermatas before the A′and A′′ sections invite ad libitum improvised
cadenzas. In addition, the B and C episodes add a florid style relying on demisem-
iquaver garlands.
Thus, the ‘romantic’and lyrical qualities that ‘vocal and instrumental settings
entitled “romance”…continued to express’
24
since the eighteenth century,
included, specifically, a continued focus on the Rousseauian simplicity –‘une
mélodie douce, naturelle, champêtre’
25
and prioritized relatively strictly sectional-
ized ABA[′] ternary (Kreutzer Nos. 3, 5; Viotti Nos. 4, 7; Gaviniès’s romances)
or 5-part forms (Kreutzer’s Concerto No. 9 and Ipsiboé);
26
minore or relative/paral-
lel key contrasts are paramount; and often the opening A section featured ‘closed’
thematic blocks, sometimes in 16 bars (aa′ba′′);
27
the ‘Fantasia topic’also
stood out.
28
In Paris, the romance never truly disappeared. As William Cheng has written,
29
the genre attracted primarily amateurs in the 1830s and 40s. The places in which to
hear violin romances included musical salons. ‘The abundance of this musical com-
modity called the romance’, the critic for the Gazette musicale declared, ‘should alarm
neither those who consume it nor those who produce it …. The Parisian has always
enjoyed easy pleasures, and of course, of all musical pleasures, the romance …can
very well be regarded as the easiest.’
30
By 1835, the genre, at least in Paris, ‘had
become a critical buzzword for dilettantism …and a veritable cultural institution’.
31
Thus, although some writers claimed as early as 1818 that ‘[t]he domain of the
romance has prodigiously increased in our time …[and] now has every characteristic
and takes every tone’,
32
scholars including James Hepokoski, Annegret Fauser, and
Stephen Rodgers have shown that the genre could still afford important insights
in the mid-nineteenth century, owing to its potential for generic intermixture,
33
24
Jack Sage, Susana Friedmann, and Roger Hickman, ‘Romance’,inGrove Music Online,
www-oxfordmusiconline-com.
25
‘Romance …Air sur lequel on chante un petit Poëme du même nom, divisé par cou-
plets, duquel le sujet est pour l’ordinaire quelque histoire amoreuse & souvent tragique.
Comme la Romance doit être écrite d’un style simple, touchant, & d’un gout un peu antique,
l’Air doit répondre au caractère des paroles; point d’ornamens, rien de maniéré, une mélodie
douce, naturelle, champêtre, & qui produise son effet parelle-même, indépendamment de la
manière de la Chanter’. Rousseau, Dictionnaire de musique, 420.
26
White, From Vivaldi to Viotti, 83.
27
White, From Vivaldi to Viotti, 83.
28
Danuta Mirka, ed. The Oxford Handbook of Topic Theory (New York: Oxford University
Press, 2014): 263.
29
William Cheng, ‘Hearts for Sale: The French Romance and the Sexual Trafficof
Musical Mimicry’,19th-Century Music 35/1 (2011): 34–71.
30
Cheng, ‘Hearts for Sale’, 35, cites Gazette musicale (4 Jan 1835).
31
Cheng, ‘Hearts for Sale’, 35.
32
‘The domain of the romance has prodigiously increased in our time. It now has every
characteristic and takes every tone. It is true that, under this title, one includes many pieces
with couplets [stanzas/verse–refrain structures] that have nothing of that which properly
constitutes the romance’.‘Romance’in Encyclopédie Méthodique, Musique (Paris, 1818) cited
by Gstrein, 11.
33
James Hepokoski, ‘Reading Character, Culture, and Politics in Les vêpres siciliennes:
Verdi Confronts the Ternary Principle’, 1994, jameshepokoski.com, 1; Hepokoski, Music,
Structure, Thought: Selected Essays (New York: Routledge, 2009): 103.
7Joseph Joachim and the Violin Romance
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‘promiscuity of genre’or transfer between stage and salon,
34
and dialogues with
vocal song forms.
35
It is admittedly difficult to see how Joachim might have reconciled, in perfor-
mance or composition, features of ‘easiness’,‘dilettantism’,‘simplicity of song’,
‘straightforward melody’, and expression of ‘sentiments that everyone feels’,
36
given that none of these elements is typically associated with Joachim the dignified
Geigerkönig’s own music or performance style. A critic for Le Ménestrel suggested
that ‘several writers also denounced the romance for failing to contribute to the
progress of art’and ‘paralyzing’the musical advances of ‘our forefathers
[Beethoven, Weber, Rossini, and Meyerbeer]’.
37
Yet, Joachim’s romances –while
celebrating ‘straightforward melody’, simplicity of form and common sentiment –
did not ‘paralyze’the musical advances of his forefathers; in fact, he used one fore-
father’s set of romances to advance the genre according to his own imagination.
Joachim’s lyricism, one of his praised qualities, may well have intensified and
evolved during his Paris sojourn.
Filling a Niche: Performing Beethoven’s Romances
Joachim’s performances of Beethoven’s Opp. 40 and 50 romances –and the three of
his own in B-flat major, C major, and G major –helped him advance his maturity
from a young virtuoso to a serious artist.
Joachim’s repertoire of the 1850s (especially after 1855) departed conspicuously
from his concerts of the early 1840s until about 1853,
38
which, pace Andreas Moser,
included many more compositions of H.W. Ernst, de Bériot, and F. David than
acknowledged, in addition to Joachim’sownAndantino & Allegro scherzoso Op. 1
(1849), Fantasy on Hungarian Themes (1846–50), and Fantasy on Irish [Scottish]
Themes (1850–52). An overview of Joachim’s performances of romances from
1848 up to 1865 is presented in Table 2; they are mostly Beethoven’s, but also
Joachim’s, and one poignant jewel by Berlioz. Although by 1852 Joachim’s
romances in B-flat and C major were published,
39
only occasionally did he offer
them in public himself, though probably more frequently at private concerts.
40
The transition from preferring Beethoven’s romances to performing his own
Hungarian Concerto romance becomes clear over a stretch of about a decade.
Often Joachim performed his Romance Op. 11 without the other movements.
41
34
Annegret Fauser, ‘The Songs’,inThe Cambridge Companion to Berlioz, ed. Peter Bloom
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000): 108–26.
35
Stephen Rodgers, Form, Program, and Metaphor in the Music of Berlioz (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2009): 77.
36
Revue et Gazette 5/41 (14 October 1838): 410.
37
Le Ménestrel 2/3 (14 December 1834): 4.
38
Uhde ‘Re-considering the Young Composer-Performer Joseph Joachim’,3.
39
Joachim’sB-flat Romance appeared in London and Leipzig in 1852; the C major
Romance was printed in the NZfM 36/24 (11 June 1852). The former was announced in
September 1852 in Hofmeister’s catalogue as part of Three Pieces Op. 2.
40
What Joachim said about his Op. 5 short pieces –that they were too intimate to be per-
formed for a large public –was likely also true for his two independent romances, though
definitely not for his Romance in G major, which remained a programming staple almost
until the end of his life.
41
Uhde, The Music of Joseph Joachim (Woodbridge: Boydell & Brewer, 2018): 317–20.
8Nineteenth‐Century Music Review
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Table 2 Joachim’s Performances of Romances between 1848 and 1865
2 March 1848,
Leipzig
Beethoven, Romance in F
major.
Signale 6/11 (Mar. 1848):
81.
Spring 1850, Paris Beethoven, Romance in G
major
Neue Berliner Musikzeitung 4/
24 (12 Jun. 1850): 189.
10 February
1853,
Bremen
Romance by Joachim
Signale 11/9 (Feb. 1853): 69
August 1853,
Göttingen
Romance by Joachim
Signale 11/33 (Aug.
1853): 259.
22 December 1853,
Cologne (‘for the
benefit of Herr
Clef’)
‘Schöne Romanze eigener
Composition’
Signale 12/2 (Jan. 1854): 13.
20 January
1854
‘Romanzen von Joachim’
Robert Schumann,
Tagebücher, ed. Gerd
Nauhaus, 3 vols (Leipzig:
VEB Deutscher Verlag
für Musik, 1981–88),
III:447.
28 January 1854 Romance Op. 2
Robert Schumann,
Tagebücher, III:448
4 March 1854,
Hanover
Beethoven, Romance
Neue Berliner Musikzeitung 8/
11 (15 Mar. 1854): 87.
1 April 1854,
Hanover
Berlioz, Romance tendresse
et caprice
Fischer, Musik in Hannover,
232–3.
10 December
1854,
Berlin
(Singakademie)
Beethoven, Romance in G
major
Niederrheinische
Musik-Zeitung 3/3 (20
Jan. 1855): 21.
21 December 1854,
Leipzig
(Gewandhaus)
Beethoven, Romance in G
major
Signale 13/1 (Jan. 1855): 4.
10 February
1855,
Hanover
Beethoven, Romance in F
major
Fischer, Musik in Hannover,
236.
8 March 1855,
Berlin
Beethoven, Romance in F
major
Signale 13/14 (Mar. 1855):
109.
18 October 1855,
Elberfeld
Beethoven, Romance in G
major
Caecilia: algemeen muzikaal
tijdschrift van Nederland 13/
1 (1 Jan. 1856): 10.
19 October
1855,
?
Beethoven, Romance in G
major
Signale 13/46 (Nov. 1855):
364
9Joseph Joachim and the Violin Romance
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1 November 1855,
?
Beethoven, Romance
Blätter für Musik 1/83 (16
Nov. 1855): 4
3 November 1855
Berlin
(Singakademie)
Beethoven, Romance G major
Berliner Musikzeitung Echo 5/
43 (28 Oct. 1855): 342
7 November
1855,
Potsdam
(Barberini
Palace)
Beethoven, Romance in G
major
D-Zsch 10463, 366-C3.
11 November
1855,
Berlin
Beethoven, Romance in G
major
Niederrheinische
Musikzeitung 3/47 (24
Nov. 1855): 374.
14 and 16 November
1855,
Danzig
Beethoven Romance?
Berthold Litzmann, Clara
Schumann: Ein Künstlerleben
nach Tagebüchern und Briefen
(Leipzig, 1909), II:120.
8 March 1856,
Hanover
Beethoven, Romance
Signale Vol. 14 No. 14 (Mar.
1856): 166.
14 February 1857,
Hanover
Beethoven, Romance in F
major
Fischer, Musik in
Hannover, 246.
28 October 1857
Dresden
Beethoven, Romance in G
major
Süddeutsche Musik-Zeitung 6/
145 (9 Nov. 1857): 179.
13 March
1858,
Hanover
Beethoven, Romance in F
major
Fischer, Musik in Hannover,
249.
2 May 1859,
London
Joachim,
Romance in G
Myles Birket Foster,
History of the
Philharmonic Society of
London 1813–1912
(London: John Lane,
1912), 257.
24 March 1860,
Hanover
Joachim,
Romance in G
Fischer, Musik in Hannover,
256.
3 April 1860,
Bremen
Joachim,
Romance in G
Musical World 38/18
(5 May 1860): 290.
29 May 1860,
Düsseldorf
Joachim,
Romance in G
Andreas Moser, ed.,
Johannes Brahms im
Briefwechsel mit Joseph
Joachim, 3rd ed. (1908;
1921; reprint, Tutzing:
Schneider, 1974) [here-
inafter JB], V:273,
Brahms to Joachim,
[c. 5 May 1860].
26 November 1860 Joachim,
Romance in G
Max Kalbeck, ed., Johannes
Brahms Briefe an P.J. Simrock
und Fritz Simrock (Berlin:
Deutsche
Brahms-Gesellschaft, 1917),
24.
11 February
1861,
Vienna
Joachim,
Romance in G
Hanslick, ‘Concerte’,in
Sämtliche Schriften:
Historisch-Kritische
Ausgabe, vol.
1/5 (1859–61), ed.
Dietmar Strauss (Vienna,
2005), 321–2.
10 Nineteenth‐Century Music Review
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13 February 1861,
Pest
Joachim,
Romance in G
NZfM 54/15 (5 Apr.
1861): 135.
6 April 1861,
Hanover
Joachim,
Romance in G; Beethoven,
Romance in F major
Fischer, Musik in Hannover,
258.
16 April 1861,
Hamburg
Joachim,
Romance in G
Kurt and Renate Hofmann,
Johannes Brahms:
Zeittafel zu Leben und
Werk (Tutzing: Hans
Schneider, 1983), 50.
10 March 1862,
London
Joachim,
Romance in G
Moser und Johannes
Joachim, eds, Briefe von
und an Joseph Joachim,3
vols (Berlin: Bard,
1911–13) [hereinafter
Joachim], II:185,
Joachim to Scholz
[London, 13 March
1862].
15–17 May 1864 Joachim,
Romance in G
JB, VI:27, Brahms to Joachim,
[Vienna, 5 April 1864].
17 (or 18)
November
1865, Berlin
Joachim,
Romance in G
Niederrheinische
Musikzeitung 13/48
(2 Dec. 1865): 381.
11Joseph Joachim and the Violin Romance
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In Joachim’s view, Beethoven’s romances were central to educating audiences
in becoming more discriminatory listeners, as they abandoned their hunger for
‘tawdry’sensationalism and musical bonbons full of effects. One would have
expected critics witnessing Joachim’s programming to give a nod to the vocal
romance, that it was a texted sibling with national and other genre stereotypes,
such as features of form, narrative, and lyrical song, some pointing to the
French Conservatoire composers. And yet, critics rarely commented on genre.
Beethoven’s romances were heard without the revealing qualities of the romance
being acknowledged. Presumably the way that Joachim performed classical
works created a blind spot for critics who noticed the classical nature of music
and its formidable interpretation while other music presented in the same concert
sometimes did not seem worthy of critical investigation. One reviewer found that
a Paganini Caprice somehow ‘lost in significance’alongside serious classical
repertoire:
42
It is peculiar that both [Clara Schumann and Joseph Joachim] stand on a foundation
of the most solid art conception and understanding of art, that their repertoire con-
sists almost exclusivelyof classical, or at least elevated, compositions, and that this is
how one can judge their artistic point of view …. As a result, variations by Paganini,
which were presented at the end of the concert and were played excellently, lose their
meaning for us.
43
After acclimating audiences to Beethoven’s relatively unknown romances from
1848 onward,
44
Joachim presented his own romances as the next step.
Paris Encounter, 1850, and Joachim’s Two Early Romances
Although Joachim was deeply familiar with Beethoven’s romances by 1850, he
appears not to have modelled his own romances in B-flat and C major directly
after Beethoven’s. Rather, Joachim attempted a synthesis that brought together a
modified Beethovenian rondo form with French influences to which he had been
exposed during his three-month-long Paris sojourn in spring 1850, which occurred
right before his move to Weimar in the summer of 1850.
Paris was known at the time as the cradle of violin virtuosity. For a young aspir-
ing violinist, to prove himself in Paris was meaningful.
45
Before deciding to move
to Weimar and join Franz Liszt as concertmaster (as Joachim did in October 1850),
there was some discussion, mainly from Joachim’s family, about moving to Paris.
42
Berliner Musikzeitung 8/11 (15 March 1854): 7: ‘In allen dreien riss er das Publikum
durch sein unübertreffliches, geistige und was die Technik betrifft, wahrhaft dämonisches
Spiel zu jubelnder Begeisterung hin’.
43
‘Es ist eigenthümlich, dass beide [Clara Schumann and Joseph Joachim] auf dem
Boden der solidesten Kunstanschauung und Kunstauffassung stehen, dass ihr Repertoire
fast ausschliesslich aus classischen, mindestens gediegenen Compositionen besteht, und
dass darnach auch ihr Kunststandpunkt zu beurtheilen ist. …Für uns verlieren dadurch
Variationen von Paganini, welche am Schluss des Concerts zum Votrag kamen, und so vor-
trefflich sie gespielt wurden, an Bedeutung’.Berliner Musikzeitung 8/51 (20 December 1854):
403.
44
Signale 6/11 (March 1848): 82.
45
Akademie der Künste (Berlin), ‘Die Kunst hat nie ein Mensch allein besessen’: eine
Ausstellung der Akademie der Künste und Hochschule der Künste, 9. Juni bis 15. September
1996, exhibition catalogue (Berlin: Henschel, 1996).
12 Nineteenth‐Century Music Review
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Joachim’s opinion, though, was clear in 1848: ‘To Paris I definitely won’tgo’(‘Nach
Paris gehe ich aber keinesfalls’),
46
instead he chose Weimar. Although little has
been written about Joachim’s long stay in the French capital, by spring 1850 his atti-
tudes had changed. He considered himself ‘less of a philistine’and had warmed up
to Liszt: ‘The antipathy that I generally felt towards him has now given way to an
equally strong predilection, given that I’ve come to know him better. Perhaps I am
less of Philistine since Paris?’.
47
Perhaps Mendelssohn had instilled in Joachim a
certain distance towards Paris in the early 1840s; but by 1850 that distance had
turned into flirtation.
48
Upon his return from Paris in May, Joachim was brimming with ideas. He wrote to
his brother Heinrich: ‘SincemyreturnfromParisIhavecomposed…several small
pieces for violin and piano’.
49
What Joachim included in this count is unclear; he
may have composed both romances, Op. 2 and the C-major shortly upon returning
fromParis,butatleasttheterminus ante quem of the former was October 1850.
50
The terminus ante quem of the C-major romance was supplied by its publication
year, 1852.
Joachim arrived in Paris in late January
51
and left in April. Whereas the reper-
toire performed by the Orchestre de la Société des concerts du Conservatoire –founded
in 1828 –would have been partial to Beethoven, Haydn, and French operatic and
sacred works,
52
salon performances would have prioritized smaller, entertaining
pieces. He performed at several salons,
53
including, on February 21 [1850], with
46
Letter to Heinrich of 27 March 1848, in Johannes Joachim and Andreas Moser, Briefe
von und an Joseph Joachim, 3 vols, vol. 1 (Berlin: Bard, 1911): 11.
47
‘Meine sonstige Antipathie gegen diesen ist jetzt, seitdem ich ihn näher habe kennen
gelernet, in eine eben so starke Vorliebe übergegangen. Bin ich vielleicht seit Paris weniger
Philister?’, letter to Coßmann of 11 May 1850, in Joachim and Moser, Briefe von und an Joseph
Joachim, 1:21.
48
See the letter of 12 September 1844 from Joachim’s cousin, with whom Joachim stayed
in Leipzig, to Joachim’s parents: ‘Lieber Onkel u liebe Tante! …Wenn ich über Jos[eph] u
Ihren Vortschlag ihn nach Paris reisen zu lassen noch nicht geschrieben so ist es weil ich
darüber nichts zu sagen weiss. Mendelssohn hat in den Ihnen Bekannten Brief hinlänglich
seine Ansicht über Jos. Ausbildung dargelegt mit der wir mein Mann [und] ich vollkommen
übereinstimmen’, GB-Lbl, Add. MS 42.718, and the letter of 17 January 1845 from Joachim to
his parents: ‘Es wird Sie überraschen zu erfahren dass ich gestern im Gewandhause das
Beethovensche Violinconcert öffentlich spielte …. Sie werden darüber …Nachrichten erhal-
ten durch Herr Singer …; derselbe kömmt von Paris, wo er seinen Sohn zurückließ und ist
heute morgen von hier nach Hause gereist. Er bebedauert sehr dass er seinen Sohn nach Paris
gegeben hat, denn die Musik soll dort sehr in Verfall und die Künstler von einer abscheuli-
chen Steifheit [?] sein, dabei das Leben sehr theuer; und der arme x ist sich dort ganz allein
überlassen. Wie sehr muss ich dem lieben Gott danken, dass er mich so gut aufgehoben hat’,
GB-Lbl, Add. MS 42.718.
49
Letter to Heinrich Joachim, 4 August 1850, D-LÜbi, Joa: B1: 20, Inv.-Nr.: 1991.2.50.3.
50
Romance Op. 2 was composed in ‘Leipzig’; Joachim moved from Leipzig to Weimar in
October 1850.
51
Revue et Gazette musicale 17/4 (27 January 1850): 32, reports Joachim’s arrival and first
performances ‘at several salons …this week’.
52
D. Kern Holoman, ‘The Paris Conservatoire in the Nineteenth Century’,The Oxford
Handbook Topics in Music, Oxford Academic, https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/
9780199935321.013.114, accessed 10 April 2021.
53
Revue et Gazette musicale 17/16 (21 Apr. 1850): 136.
13Joseph Joachim and the Violin Romance
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pianist Madame Wartel at Erard’s Salon,
54
and with Coßmann and Wartel again at
Erard’s Salon on February 28, March 7 and March 21.
55
Joachim was invited to perform at the opening night of Berlioz’s newly founded
concert series ‘Grande Société Philharmonique de Paris’dedicated to ‘vocal and choral
concerts every month on Tuesday evenings’
56
and so deepened his familiarity with
a composer he had first met in Prague in April 1846.
57
‘The opening concert on 19
February 1850 was an undoubted success and the society subsequently gave a
number of notable performances’.
58
Joachim presented his cheval de bataille,
Ernst’s‘Romance’and variations from Rossini’s Otello; the programme also fea-
tured Berlioz’sLa Damnation de Faust (but not act IV, which contains the romance
de Marguerite), excerpts from Meyerbeer’sLes Huguenots (‘Benediction of the
Swords’) and from Mehul’sJoseph (aria by Roger), and ‘Aria and Chorus’from
Iphigénie en Tauride, sung by Pauline Viardot-Garcia (1821–1910), whom Joachim
had known since 1843.
Though on February 19 Joachim’s performance of Ernst’s‘Romance’was the
sole representative of the genre, there is no doubt that his three-month Paris
sojourn not only brought valuable personal relationships with French performers
and visitors to Paris –the Wieniawski brothers, Pauline Viardot Garcia, Thérèse
Wartel (1814–65),
59
Bernhard Coßmann (1822–1910), and, of course, Berlioz –
but also provided a context where romances counted as particularly popular
fare. At the ‘5th concert’of ‘Henri Blanchard du 11eme arrondissement’on 17
March 1850, for example, Joachim again played his Ernst piece; the rest of the pro-
gramme also featured the Wieniawski brothers and a ‘Romance de la Fée aux
Roses’(by Charles Ponchard).
60
Pauline Viardot, who had already published two albums ‘accompagnées
de lithographies en rapport avec le sujet littéraire’with short vocal pieces,
including two romances in 1843 and 1849,
61
was, according to music critic and
composer Henri Blanchard, a connoisseur of the romance genre: ‘The woman is
very fit to spin us evenings and mornings of gold, silk and music, especially
54
Revue et Gazette musicale 17/5 (3 Feb. 1850): 39.
55
Revue et Gazette musicale 17/9 (3 March 1850): 68.
56
The Hector Berlioz Website, hberlioz.com.
57
Andreas Moser, Joseph Joachim: A Biography 1831–1899, trans. Lilla Durham (London:
Wellby, 1901), 71. Thus, Berlioz rightfully wrote in 1852 that he had known and appreciated
Joachim ‘for a long time’. Joachim and Moser, Briefe von und an Joseph Joachim, 1:30n1: Liszt
hatte Joachim an Berlioz, bevor dieser Anfangs März nach London aufbrach, empfohlen;
B. antwortete Paris, 2 März: ‘tu n’as pas besoin de me reommander Joachim, je le connais
et l’apprécie depuis longtemps’.
58
The Hector Berlioz Website, ‘The Société Philharmonique, 1850–1851’, hberlioz.com.
59
Joachim, ‘Haideröslein. Von Goethe’, MS (Joachim collection), Chicago, Newberry
Library, (autograph), signed ‘Paris, le 4 Avril 1850’.
60
Revue et Gazette 17/11 (17 March 1850): 95; Revue et Gazette musicale 17/6 (24 March
1850): 100.
61
Alexandre Zviguilsky, Pauline Viardot, cent ans après (Paris: L’Harmattan, 2018): 16.
Also see Revue et Gazette 16/51 (23 December 1849): 399: ‘La République voit surgir une nou-
velle muse de la romance, du lied, de la mélodie-fantaisie, madame Pauline Garcia-Viardot,
la soeur de Malibran la diva, la grande artiste, cantatrice inspire, audacieuse, éminemment
dramatique comme sa soeur; écrivant de la mélodie avec autant de facilité qu’elle la chante.
Madame Viardot vient donc le publier un album pour l’année 1850, renfermant des mélodies
caractéristiques’.
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romances’.
62
Among the pieces in Viardot’s 1843 collection is ‘Adieu, les beaux
jours’, a sentimental strophic romance in C major; its opening melody acts like a
refrain, A, and alternates with two sections in different keys. These popular
(‘très courant’) pieces were simple and short, to appeal to the bourgeoisie, and
sold separately.
63
Could Joachim have injected this cultural exposure to a context in which the
romance flourished into his Romance Op. 2 with memories fresh from Paris?
Perhaps. In his first romance of 1850 Joachim observed most closely Rousseau’s
archetype of the French romance and its simplicity, sentimental pathos, and pasto-
ral air (champêtre).
64
Owen Jander has linked the middle movement of Beethoven’s
Violin Concerto Op. 61 to the champêtre quality of the romance genre; in fact, Jander
averred thatthe Larghetto of Op. 61 is a romance on account of its archaic and pas-
toral qualities. Arguably, Joachim achieved an even more intense sense of pastoral
calm in his Romance Op. 2, which begins with a brief harp-like broken-arpeggio
introduction. The A section opens simply, with an internal small ternary outlining
a‘naïve’melody in B-flat major. The main motive –a pick-up gesturewith two cro-
chets descending in a third –is short, almost galant,fitting the French stereotype of
an ‘antique’sound (Ex. 1).
Using the orderly older violin romance structure, the B section is clearly sepa-
rated by a thin double bar, reminiscent of the old French violin romances.
Joachim also uses the B section for a minore contrast. The ‘agitato e espressivo’
now supports a sentimental mood (Ex. 2).
Then comes the crux: a formal deviation via an extra section in D major, marked
dolce e con anima and featuring a delightful melody involving metric modulation (it
feels ‘in two’but is ‘in three’). In short, instead of the expected B-flat major double
return, which would present the opening theme in the tonic key, we enter into an
ambivalent section. In the end, neither the theme nor the key is right. The busy
accompaniment in quaver triplets appears as ‘spilled over’from the B section in
G minor (Ex. 3).
Ex. 1 Joachim, Romance Op. 2 (opening)
62
Revue et Gazette 16/51 (23 December 1849): 399. ‘La femme est très-propre à nous filer
des soirées et des matinées d’or, de soie et de musique, de romances surtout’.
63
Zviguilsky, Pauline Viardot, cent ans après, 16. ‘Vendues aussi séparément, ces pieces
étaient destinées à la classe bourgeoise en expansion où les arts d’agréments, don’tle
chant et le piano, se développaient’.
64
Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Dictionnaire de musique (Paris: Duchesne, 1768): 420.
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Then, in an effort to redirect this excursion, Joachim recapitulates the minore pas-
sage in the tonic key. The overall structure remains a hybrid: A (aba) –B (minore) –
C (extra!) –A′-B (major) –A′′ (coda). The extra section might have been motivated
to achieve harmonic nuance, as using mediant and submediant relations as tonic
substitutions was a common device in Joachim’s compositional circle around
1850, favoured by the Schumanns and Mendelssohn (Fig. 1).
The continuation of the B′′ section and return to the last (abridged) A′′ is the
most poetic part of this romance. Building a rising figure (scale degrees 1–5–8)
with the rising-fourth pick-up of the opening, Joachim now fully invokes the
bucolic quality of the music by lingering, for the last 15 bars, on this figure in
the bass, against the violin in the high register, with disappearing (perdendosi)
dynamics. The last A′′ offers only a glimpse, as if saying ‘farewell’: only the galant
pick-up gesture is revisited once with an abbreviated second crotchet (now a qua-
ver), and then in augmentation, with the first crotchet turned into two full bars
(Ex. 4). Strengthening the bucolic character, Joachim repeats the rising figure inces-
santly, adding a circular metaphor to the piece, which may render this romance a
strophic variation.
Ex. 2 Joachim, Romance Op. 2 (bar 36)
Ex. 3 Joachim, Romance Op. 2 (bar 60)
Fig. 1 Joachim, Romance Op. 2 (formal diagram)]
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Stephen Rodgers has observed, ‘French strophic song form with verse and
refrain [was] often referred to …by one of two names: romance and couplets’.
65
We could redefine couplets as strophic form or sometimes as verse–refrain form.
Viewed as strophic form, our understanding of this romance does not quite
account for the ‘C’part but A and B, and A′and B′′ could potentially be viewed
as two verses, followed by an abridged last glimpse of A′′. The repetitive (rota-
tional) nature of the romance could well fit the pastoral interpretation of its ending:
the repetitive triplet-motive could serve as a metaphor for the three rotations of the
romance. Thus, Joachim’s Op. 2, even if featuring an expanded possibly
Ex. 4 Joachim, Romance Op. 2 (bars 100–114)
65
Rodgers, Form, Program, and Metaphor, 72.
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Beethoven-inspired rondo form, still shows more than a nod to the French romance
via clear-cut major–minor–major design, harp-like introductory material, and pasto-
ral motives with metaphorical potential stemming from the rotation principle.
In October 1850, some months after returning from Paris, Joachim moved to
Weimar where the works of Berlioz, Wagner, and Liszt were frequently performed
and discussed, which expanded his artistic horizon significantly. Though the exact
date of the second romance in C major is unknown, it definitely originated between
the Paris trip of 1850 and June 1852, when it was first published in an addendum to
the Neue Zeitschrift für Musik.
66
By that point Joachim had had significant interac-
tions with Berlioz.
In March 1852, Benvenuto Cellini (1837) was performed in Weimar. Joachim was
concertmaster. Although the performance may not have included the cavatina ‘Ah,
que l’amour une fois dans le coeur’–withdrawn before the premiere in 1838 –in
April 1854 Berlioz asked Joachim
67
to perform the violin romance version of the
cavatina, now renamed ‘Rêverie et Caprice’Op. 8 or Romance tendresse et caprice.
The Berlioz romance is an iconic example of the French romance. Opening with
an introduction in F-sharp minor, the wistful romance melody breaks through to
A major, announced by a bar of broken arpeggios imitating the harp. Berlioz’s
sound, orchestration, and melodic treatment of the violin, struck a chord with
Joachim, who wrote to his brother in March 1852: ‘The opera by Berlioz,
Benvenuto Cellini, was performed here a few days ago (thanks to Liszt’s enthusiasm
for the arts!), and I find so many new, and exciting elements in it that I would like to
offer the composer my personal thanks for the inspiration that his music has
brought to me’.
68
Joachim’sRomance in C major unfolds in a ‘rotational’five-part rondo form
ABA′B′A′′ with the A sections in C major, while the episodes visit A minor (B)
and A-flat major/A-flat minor (B′). The initial Asection is ‘closed’, consisting of
‘regular, well-defined phrases’,
69
which corresponds to White’s key markers of
the conservatory-style romance.
70
In a wistful enharmonic twist, the last episode
ends on V of D-flat minor (A-flat minor); then the fifth, E♭, is reinterpreted as
D♯, the leading tone of E major, before descending stepwise down to C major.
The B section is a sonorous G-string-theme with triadic motion (Ex. 5). The
G-string is a particularly compelling timbre in Joachim’s romance, corresponding
to Baillot’s description of the lowest string’s power to evoke the colour of the
horn.
71
To exemplify this link between the horn and the G-string, Baillot offers
an excerpt of a romance by Martini, titled ‘cantabile’. Here, as in Joachim’s
66
NZfM 36/24 (11 June 1852).
67
Hector Berlioz: Correspondance Générale, 8 vols, vol. 4, ed. Pierre Citron, Yves Gérard,
and Hugh Macdonald (Paris: Flammarion, 1983): 490, letter No. 1716 from Berlioz to Baron
Donop of 31 March 1854.
68
Letter from Joachim to Heinrich Joachim of 24 March 1852; Joachim and Moser, Briefe
von und an Joseph Joachim, 1:28.
69
White, From Vivaldi to Viotti, 82.
70
White, From Vivaldi to Viotti, 83, ‘For composers of violin concertos, the romance is
always a strict, quite sectional rondo form, usually ternary but occasionally expanded to
five parts’.
71
Pierre Baillot, ‘Timbre et Caractère’,inL’Art du violon.Nouvelle méthode, rev. German/
French ed. (Mainz: B. Schott, 1835): 143. ‘Die Töne der G Saite gleichen den Horntönen,
besonders in der Höhe; ein hinreichender Druck der Finger und des Bogens gibt diesen
Tönen Freiheit und Schärfe, im geschwinden, und Rundung im langsamen Tempo; wenn
18 Nineteenth‐Century Music Review
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Romance in C major, the triadic nature and the G-string together support a pastoral
reading. Joachim exploited the G-string’s characteristic sound whenever he could.
Noteworthy is that Berlioz’s Romance Op. 8 also specifies the G-string timbre in
one passage, which happens to be triadic as well (Ex. 6). Though the similarity
to Ex. 5is coincidental, we may nevertheless note that the violin romance appar-
ently has an affinity to a darker timbral imagination.
More generally, Joachim’s Romance in C major would have allowed him to
showcase his skill of sound production in the simple melody of the A section. In
the understanding of the French conservatory composers, sound was cultivated
with a focus on both bow technique and the violin’s resemblance to the human
voice.
72
The French violinists knew first-hand the revolutionary advances of the
Tourte bow (1790). The velvety, smooth connectivity achieved with the Tourte
bow could shine in a romance; by prioritizing beautiful sound, a violinist of the
early 1850s could leave an impression that did not call for the earlier decade’s daz-
zling bouncy bow strokes.
As I have argued elsewhere,
73
Joachim’s exposure to French influences may
have altered his views on the production of violin sound. Baillot had argued in
Ex. 5 Joachim, Romance in C major (bars 61–72)
man den Bogen dem Stege nähert um größere Schwingungen der Saite hervorzubringen, so
ähnelt der Ton sich noch mehr dem edlen und ergreifenden Ton des Hornes’.
72
Baillot, L’Art du Violon, 189: ‘Die Violine musste mehr, als irgend ein anderes
Instrument, an diese Fortschritte, ihrer Ähnlichkeit mit der Stimme wegen, Theil nehmen’.
73
Katharina Uhde, ‘In Dialogue with the Past: Rescuing Beethoven’s Op. 61 from its
Pedestal’CD liner notes for The Berliner Philharmoniker and Frank Peter Zimmermann:
19Joseph Joachim and the Violin Romance
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his L’Art du violon that the art of performing a ‘simple song’(‘chant simple’) like an
air or the romance relies not on outward activity or manner, but rather in a way of
being immersed in the spirit of a composition:
Far from all embellishment, one shall play this passage in its simplicity in order to
give it the melodic charm that comes with it …It is not a matter of foregrounding
oneself, but only that one is inspired by the inner spirit of the composition.
74
Joachim’s Romance in C major capitalizes not on virtuosity and effect but on plain lyr-
ical sound. As Joachim knew, simplicity in a composition was not a disadvantage,
quite the contrary. It allowed proving his most basic asset: a singing cantabile. Thus,
the Romance in C major brought together elements of pastoral feel, simplicity, and for-
mal clarity, in short, an aesthetic directed at the audience’s enjoyment and pleasure.
Joachim in Review –a‘shape-oriented’Virtuosity
Some contemporary comparisons of Joachim’snew‘virtuosity’to older types from
the 1840s provide some insights about how Joachim went about in promoting
the romance as a suitable vehicle for changing virtuosic expectations in violin
Ex. 6 Berlioz, Romance Op. 8
Beethoven, Berg, Bartók, with Frank Peter Zimmermann and the Berlin Philharmonic,
recorded 2016, Berliner Philharmoniker Recordings (2021), compact disc.
74
Baillot, L’Art du Violon, 187. ‘Fern von aller Ausschmückung spiele man diese Stelle
ganz in ihrer Einfachheit um ihr den ihr zukommenden melodischen Reiz zu geben …Es
kommt hier gar nicht darauf an, selbst zu schaffen, sondern nur darauf, dass der
Ausführende von dem inneren Geiste des Tonstücks beseelt ist’.
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music.
75
Shaping the music with nuanced details while not compromising large
sound and an overall ‘grandiose style’was a violinistic virtue almost absent in
the 1840s critical discourse. Critics of Joachim’s concerts in the 1850s often
expanded on his ‘highly developed virtuosity’, which on occasion emphasized
how splendidly Joachim executed works such as Beethoven’s Romance in G
major, a slow piece of moderate technical complexity:
[First soirée, 10 December 1854] Such a highly developed virtuosity, such a touching
sensual beauty of tone, as it was shown in the performance of Beethoven’s G major
romance, is almost never combined with such a serious striving, rejecting all super-
ficial effect. His playing and his whole being are an object of the most general sym-
pathy and love. It remains to be regretted, however, that such a force has so little
space to expand. Since Joachim spurns everything that has not emerged from a
higher artistic point of view, frequent contact with the public is made more difficult
for him. He himself would perhaps be less averse to intercourse with the outside
world and public appearance than he is, if a greater number of his worthy works
were at his command. It cannot be denied that a tendency to loneliness is easily asso-
ciated with this serious direction.
76
Joachim’s choice of a romance raised this critic’s concern that there were not
enough worthy works for Joachim to perform. In fearing that Joachim’s selective,
discriminating programming would isolate him, the critic did not realize that such
programming had an ‘educating’component geared precisely towards distancing
audiences from their customary expectation for mainstream virtuoso fare. Yet
another reviewer of the same concert wrote:
Mr. Joachim has chosen the well-known G major romance of Beethoven and Bach’s
famous ciaconne …. The most delicate fragrance and melting of colours character-
ized one, pithy strength and masterful characteristics the other.
77
Beethoven’s Romance in G major was not a typical ‘solo’, but this may have been
precisely why Joachim programmed it so frequently. In comparison to a
75
Beside intentional programming, several other anti-Virtuosentum efforts were visible
in Joachim’s concerts in the years 1848–1865. He resisted standard advertising and standard
soloist etiquette; he gave no concessions to managers or audiences; he sought to educate
audiences instead.
76
Niederrheinische Musik-Zeitung 3/3 (20 January 1855): 21. ‘Eine so weit ausgebildete
Virtuosität, eine so ergeifende sinnliche Schönheit des Tones, wie sie z.B. in dem Vortrage
von Beethoven’s G-Dur-Romanze such zeigte, vereinigt sich fast nie mit einem so ernsten,
allem oberflächlichen Effect feindlich abgewandetn Streben. Sein Spiel und sein ganzes
Wesen sind ein Gegenstand der allgemeinsten Theilnahme und Liebe. Zu bedauern bleibt
es indess, dass eine solche Kraft einen so kleinen Raum hat, sich auszubreiten. Da Joachim
Alles verschmäht, was nicht aus eine höheren künstlerischen Anschauungsweise hervorge-
gangen ist, so wied ihm ein häufiger Verkehr mit dem Publicum erschwert. Er selbst würde
dem Verkehr mit der Außenwelt und dem öffentlichen Auftreten vielleicht weniger abge-
neigt sein, als er es in der That ist, wenn ihm eine grössere Zahl von seiner würdigen
Werke zu Gebote stände. Zwar lässt sich nicht läugnen, dass mit dieser ernsten Richtung
ein Hang zur Einsamkeit sich leicht verbindet.’
77
Signale 12/52 (December 1854): 429–30, [soirée 10 December 1854]: ‘Herr Joachim hat
sich zu seinen Soli die bekannte G-Dur-Romanze von Beethoven und Bach’s berühmte
Ciaconne gewählt. Der zarteste Duft und Farbenschmelz zeichnete die Eine, markige Kraft
und meisterhafte Charakteristik die Andere aus’.
21Joseph Joachim and the Violin Romance
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performance of a Paganinian piece with heightened violinistic demands such as
outwardly effectual bow techniques –in which critics would not have highlighted
nuances of sound and timbre but would have been puzzled by such diverse tech-
nical demands –romances allowed critics to focus on subtleties of interpretation,
such as timbre and dynamics. Critics would have an opportunity to focus on –
and highlight –Joachim’s polished and refined mastery. Thus, Joachim trained crit-
ics and audiences to listen to greater nuance, here ‘the most delicate fragrance and
melting of colours’.
On 21 December 1854 a concert at the Gewandhaus in Leipzig led to a label for
Joachim’s art which I have used throughout this article: ‘shape-oriented virtuos-
ity’, a virtuosity that emphasizes nuanced and detailed phrasing.
The age of virtuosity has faded –that has now become a current expression; we have
stopped admiring the mere keyboard virtuosos and rewarding brilliant passages
with gifts of honour; in a word, audiences are done with dexterity. In this sense,
then, virtuosity is in fact at an end, but that virtuosity which we would like to call
shape-oriented [virtuosity], that is, which makes it its task to illustrate to us the char-
acteristic moments within the works of our good masters …has lost none of its fullest
justification. And who did not count Clara Schumann and Joseph Joachim among the
noblest representatives of this movement? …The two shining stars of the pro-
gramme were Beethoven’s Kreutzer Sonata and his Romance.
78
This review remarkably mentions Beethoven’s Romance in G major as one of two
‘shining stars’that night, the other being the Kreutzer Sonata, a radically different
work far greater in dimension and technical complexity. Joachim was linked with
‘shape-oriented virtuosity’precisely because he was able, like Clara Schumann, to
illustrate ‘characteristic moments in the music’, thus interpreting it in understand-
able terms, an achievement far more worthy for the reviewer than ‘brilliant
passage-work’and standard ‘Virtuosentum’. Other critics down the road who dis-
cussed Joachim’s and Schumann’s performance of the Kreutzer Sonata and the
Romance in G major could not pinpoint exactly what made the performance suc-
cessful but noted nevertheless the ‘most wonderful effect’.
79
78
Signale 13/1 (January 1855): 4. Review of a Gewandhaus concert on 21 December 1854.
Also on the programme was Paganini Caprice 24, Schumann’s Sonata in D minor and a Bach
prelude. ‘“Das Virtuosenthum hat sich abgelebt”–das ist jetzt eine currente Redensart
geworden; man hat aufgehört die bloßen Tastengötzen zu idolatieren und brillante
Passagen mit Ehrengaben zu belohnen, und das Publikum ist mit einem Worte fertig gewor-
den mit der Fertigkeit. In diesem Sinne also ist das Virtuosenthum in der That zu Ende, aber
jene Virtuosität, die wir die gestaltende nennen möchten, d.h. die es sich zur Aufgabe macht,
die charakteristischen Momente innerhalb der Werke unserer guten Meister uns zu veran-
schaulichen und der Idee einen verkörpernden Ausdruck zu geben, hat nichts an ihrer volls-
ten Berechtigung eingebüßt. Und wer zählte nicht Clara Schumann und Joseph Joachim zu
den edelsten Vertretern dieser Richtung? Er möchte ihnen das Recht streitig machen, durch
Makellosigkeit des Technischen und durch Sinnigkeit der Auffassung unter den
Großwürdenträgern der reproducirenden Kunst in der vordersten Reihe zu glänzen? –
Lassen wir die einzelnen Nummern …noch einemal an unserem geistigen Auge
vorübergehen, so stellen sich uns als die leuchtendsten Punkte die Kreutzer=Sonate und
Romanze von Beethoven …heraus’.
79
Süddeutsche Musik-Zeitung 6/145 (9 November 1857): 179. Concert on 28 October 1857
of Clara Schumann and Joachim: ‘Von wunderbarster Wirkung waren ohne Zweifel
Beethoven’s Andante und Variationen [Op. 47] und dessen Romanze in G-Dur für Violine’.
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Performing Beethoven’s romances allowed Joachim to highlight his warm, soul-
ful tone, which, unusually enough, had the power to ‘give rise’to the wildest
applause even in slow passages such as cantilenas. How could the performance
of a Beethoven romance elicit such a passionate audience response? This review
of the first of three soirées with Clara Schumann at the Berlin Singakademie is
revealing:
[T]he simplest cantilena gave rise to the wildest applause; every note played by his
hand breathes the soul, the deepest inwardness and truth, and takes the listener
unnoticed into the realm of ideals; Joachim himself is the ideal of a violin player, per-
fect and consummate in every respect, who never makes concessions to the audience
or wants to shine outwardly, he is the purest interpreter of ourmasters’works of art.
The same must be said about Clara Schumann’s piano playing; for her, virtuosity is
only a means, not an end.
80
Despite the elevated language and philosophical terminology (‘ideal’), this review
underscores Joachim’s didactic programming: ‘never making concessions to the
audience’was exactly what Joachim demanded.
81
Noteworthy, indeed, is that
slow ‘cantilenas’could provoke from 1850s audiences the type of response previ-
ously elicited with the ‘Bravourstück’. The reviewer added that Clara Schumann,
likewise, used her ‘virtuosity’as a means and not as an end in itself. Other similarly
enthusiastic reviews of Joachim’s performances of romances surfaced between
1848 and 1865.
82
Among other things, those were reviews of Joachim’s perfor-
mance of Berlioz’s above-mentioned Romance tendresse et caprice.
One reviewer said that Joachim performed Berlioz’s piece ‘like a young master,
three times master of his art’, a high praise considering the trifle-like reputation of
the genre.
83
Similarly, a reviewer of Joachim’s performance of said romance in
Hanover on 1 April 1854, under the baton of Berlioz himself, remarked:
‘[Joachim played] a romance and, in turn, tore the audience into a real frenzy’.
84
This romance by Berlioz imposes greater violin technical demands than
Beethoven’s romances. Joachim must have found it uniquely French, and, evi-
dently, performed it masterfully and with real conviction. We will now consider
80
Berliner Musikzeitung 8/50 (13 December 1854): 396. ‘[D]i.e. einfachste Cantilene riss
zu den stürmischsten Beifallsbezeugungen hin; jeder Ton, von seiner Hand gespielt, athmet
Seele, die tiefste Innerlichkeit und Wahrheit, und entführt die Zuhörer unbemerkt in das
Reich der Ideale; Joachim ist selbst das Ideal eines Violinspielers, in jeder Beziehung vollen-
det und vollkommen, der nie dem Publikum Concessionen macht oder äusserlich glänzen
will, er ist der reinste Interpret der Kunstwerke unserer Meister. Dasselbe muss man in
Bezug auf das Klavierspiel von Clara Schumann sagen; die Virtuosität ist bei ihr nur
Mittel, nicht Zweck. Wir hörten Sonate (A-dur) für Pianoforte und Violine von Bach,
Romanze (G-dur) für Violine von Beethoven, [.] Ciaconne von Bach und die
Kreutzersonate von Beethoven.’
81
Die Presse 15/299 (30 October 1862): 2.
82
Neue Berliner Musikzeitung 9/8 (21 February 1855): 61. ‘Das Vorzüglichste leistete an
dem Abend Herr Concertmeister Joachim, der besonders durch den Vortrag einer
Bach’schen Composition einen Sturm des Beifalls hervorrief; gleichen Erfolg errang er mit
der Romanze F-dur No. 2 von Beethoven’.
83
Georg Fischer, Musik in Hannover (Leipzig: Fischer, 1903): 232–33. ‘Joachim joue la
Romance en jeune maître, trois fois maître de son art’.
84
Neue Berliner Musikzeitung 8/17 (26 April 1854): 133: ‘Joachim spielte eine Romanze
und riss wiederum das Publikum zur wahrhaften Begeisterung hin’.
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another aspect, namely, the intersection of composition and performance in
Joachim’s Romance Op. 11 in G major.
‘Shape-oriented virtuosity’in Joachim’sHungarian Concerto Romance, Op. 11
Listeners and critics heard simplicity in Joachim’s‘Hungarian’Romance Op. 11 in
G major, which allows us to return once more to Cheng’s point about the romance
genre’s simplicity. Cheng’s observation that romances were viewed as ‘simple’and
that they sometimes concealed ‘just how much work went into making a tune
sound simple’, can be transferred to Joachim’s performance and composition of
a particular romance, which concealed just how much idiomatic passagework it
actually contained.
‘The second movement [of Joachim’s Op. 11]’, one critic argued, ‘is of extremely
simple structure’.
85
This critic perceived a simplicity of means, where, at second
glance, there was actually an intriguing multi-layered form with potential for
generic intermixture. In order to replace the violin Bravourstück with simplicity –
a key element of the romance proper –the composer needed to construct or fabri-
cate such simplicity. How did Joachim respond to this challenge?
The romance begins with a question, a recitative-like phrase that precedes the
romance theme proper and emerges out of a C-major triad only to come to a
halt on a dominant-seventh chord of G major (built on D), followed by a fermata
(Ex. 7).
What follows is a melodic romance theme, spiced with ascending tritones (the
pitches A♯and C in bar 11 were viewed by one writer as creating ‘harmonic harsh-
ness’) and Hungarian two-bar cadential endings (‘tail’). The theme unfolds in eight
bars; the second four are repeated. As in Op. 2, which preserved the century-old
minore tradition for the B section, Joachim’s Hungarian romance contrasts its clear-
cut A section with a minore B section featuring a stubborn theme in E minor and
tonic–dominant sequences typical of the style hongrois. Although not lacking a cer-
tain ‘punch-line’quality –a quality Hepokoski associated with the French couplets
Ex. 7 Joachim, Romance in G major (bars 1–3)
85
‘Der zweite Satz …ist von höchst einfachem Bau’,Deutsche Musik Zeitung 2/32
(12 August 1861): 254.
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form, which is discussed in more detail below
86
–the E-minor theme was viewed
by one writer as somehow deficient. The minore gives way to the opening theme,
ornamented in the fashion of Beethoven’s secondary theme in the first movement
of Op. 61 (‘graciously ornamented by the solo’
87
). If the romance had ended here, it
would have fallen neatly into a ABA′ternary form, but it continues. As the
Deutsche Musikzeitung described, Joachim added two more parts: [1] ‘then towards
the end a più moto, and [2] the solo part once again suggesting the theme, as if to
say goodbye’.
88
The result is a five-part form (Fig. 2). Curiously, Joachim separated
the ABA′ternary from its outer frame via double bars.
We know from Abendglocken Op. 5 that Joachim used the thin double bar inten-
tionally and with care, preferably as a framing device. Here they seem to bookend
an ABA′form –a nod to the old romance tradition. But how do we make sense of
the opening cadenza-like bars and of the sections following the thin double bar?
When Joachim composed his Hungarian romance (c. 1857) he may have con-
templated other romances he had performed within the last three years, such as
Berlioz’sRomance tendresse et caprice. In Berlioz’s romance, the recitative-like begin-
ning gives way to a French verse–refrain stanza. Applying Hepokoski’sdefinition
of the French couplet, a type of stanza, to Berlioz’s romance, we discover two stan-
zas, each of which comprises a ‘preparatory first part’of the romance theme (bars
11–41) that repeats and ‘ends with a connecting link’(bars 42ff., preparing us for
‘the more emphatic, concluding “punch-line”refrain’(bars 60 ff.). Perhaps most
conspicuous about Berlioz’s and Joachim’s romances are the similar tempo
changes and double bars (Fig. 3).
Berlioz intensifies the piece by increasing the tempo within each stanza, ending
each with Allegro and Allegro vivace, respectively. The lyrical first part of the mel-
ody is connected to a more ‘punch-line’-like refrain, which in Berlioz’s example is
faster and more energetic. Neither the melodic Adagio sections nor the ‘connecting
Fig. 2. Joachim, Romance in G major, formal diagram
86
James Hepokoski, ‘Genre and Content in Mid-Century Verdi: “Addio, del passato”(La
traviata, Act III)’,Cambridge Opera Journal 1/3 (1989): 264n33. ‘The term couplets may be
defined as a light, picturesque or sharply characterised song in two or three stanzas, written
in the French manner. The most important features of this “French manner”are a simple,
naive or colloquially “natural”style and –most notably –a sub-division of each stanza
into two parts: a preparatory first part, often beginning with repeated phrases, that ends
with a connecting link …whose task is to set up the more emphatic, concluding “punch-line”
refrain’.
87
Deutsche Musik-Zeitung 2/32 (12 August 1861): 254.
88
Deutsche Musik-Zeitung 2/32 (12 August 1861): 254.
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linking’sections are unambiguous due to the recitative-like ad libitum sections in
which fermatas and undisciplined phrases prevail. The mood, however, is clear
enough: ‘sentimental, even pathetic’, which, according to Rodgers, ‘explains its
designation romance’in its original title.
Joachim’s middle section in E minor was misunderstood by some reviewers.
One found it not to be ‘significant enough at all’:‘the middle section in e minor
pleases us less than the opening theme. The melodies in it are not on a par with
those of the main theme, and are not significant enough at all’.
89
But they are ener-
getic, similar to Berlioz’s‘refrain’, and could be viewed as a ‘refrain’in Joachim’sG
major Romance, given its many returns throughout the movement, often in frag-
ments, and yet unmistakably recognizable due to its head-motive (Ex. 8).
Beyond appearing in the opening of the B section, the head-motive emerges
after the orchestral theme A′(ornamented by the violin), and right after the last
glimpse of the main theme, the A′′ section (bar 95), which one critic referred to
as ‘merely a glimpse, as if saying farewell’(Fig. 4).
90
According to this view of Romance in G as containing a ‘refrain’, and following
Hepokoski’s verse–refrain model in the ‘French manner’, we could divide the
romance into three stanzas, each subdividing ‘into two parts’. Beginning with
the main theme that acts as the verse and features ‘repeated phrases’, all three
‘verses’are followed by a second part, the concluding the ‘punch-line’refrain.
Joachim seems to have remembered not only Beethoven’s two romances but also
Berlioz’sRomance tendresse et caprice, thereby adding himself to the list of compos-
ers for whom the romance genre presented a welcome opportunity for generic mix-
ture between the salon and the (orchestral) stage.
Fig. 3. Berlioz, Rêverie et Caprice (Romance tendresse et caprice [1854])
Ex. 8 Joachim, Romance in G major (bars 27–28)
89
Deutsche Musik-Zeitung 2/33 (19 August 1861): 257.
90
Deutsche Musik Zeitung 2/32 (12 August 1861): 254.
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Joachim’sRomance in G major: Performing Simplicity
Considering the romance from a performative angle, the question arises how a vir-
tuoso composer could reconcile the genre’s mandated ‘simplicity’with the desire
to compose something challenging and satisfying enough for someone with a
supreme level of skill. One possibility would be to compose something that sounds
‘simple’yet presents complex, technical demands.
According to Hans von Bülow, only a virtuoso of the modern, transformed vari-
ety could execute well the difficulties of works by J.S. Bach (for Bülow, nothing less
than the veritable ‘Zukunftsmusik’and a measuring stick of true skill and tech-
nique). To this end, the general advances of violin technique during the Golden
Age of the 1830s and 40s were not superfluous: as will be shown, the Romance in
G major, although seemingly aiming at an aesthetic of simplicity, by no means
was simple from the perspective of the technical and artistic skill. Just as ‘virtuo-
sity’s meaning is constructed and not posed, a meaning that arises from “the rela-
tions between the internal structure of works and the reactions of the listeners”’,
91
so too is performative meaning constructed. Whereas Paganini and Liszt exploited
the ‘demonic’type, which resonated well with early-to-mid nineteenth-century
audiences,
92
by the mid-1850s, Joachim was posing in his persona as priest or
Geigerkönig. That the romance genre helped Joachim anchor this persona to the col-
lective subconscious of the world of violin playing may seem counterintuitive, but
shall become clear in what follows.
Fig. 4 Joachim, Romance in G major, strophic form in the ‘French manner’with
B-section theme acting as ‘refrain’.]
91
Maiko Kawabata, Paganini: The ‘Demonic’Virtuoso (Woodbridge: the Boydell Press,
2013): 16.
92
Kawabata, Paganini, 16, 26–7.
27Joseph Joachim and the Violin Romance
https://doi.org/10.1017/S1479409824000223 Published online by Cambridge University Press

To create in the romance a sense of calm, dignity and, above all, simplicity, Joachim
found it necessary to use violin-technical idioms diametrically opposed to those of
the Bravourstück (the latter typically includessautillé, ricochet, staccato, and passages
requiring great physical investment and energy), namely, smooth legato runs with
few bow changes, which require the actions of the bow-arm and body to be kept to
a minimum and only involve small-scale finger- and hand-movements in the left
hand. In addition, bow changes could be executed not on the beat, whenthey are con-
spicuously registered aurally and visually as movements or gestures, but after the
beat to avoid unnecessary physical commotion and create an illusion that the bow
never needed to change direction. Such a still approach suggested to listeners that
‘simplicity’characterized this romance, the ‘easiest’of all genres.
Joachim’s‘performed’virtuosity in this romance differs from his approach in
the 1840s. To provide a counter example: the Hungarian Fantasy, written between
1846 and 1850 at the height of the Golden Age of virtuosity, frequently exploited
noisy, attention-gathering, 1840s-types of bow strokes, which foregrounded
bow-activity; it was replete with noise from the bow hitting the string (ricochet),
noise from the bow being pushed with many stops either in an up- or down-bow
(staccato), and fast bow-strokes played on the string with separate small bows but
at such high speed that the bow lifts off by itself (sautillé). Such fireworks were
popular during the 1840s but lost much of their appeal around 1848. How
Joachim constructed a type of virtuosity that was less explicit and involved less
body movement, but by no means simple to play, is the topic of this final section.
Two tools in particular helped Joachim meet the challenge of ‘performing sim-
plicity’. First, in the second appearance of the main theme (the A′of the ABA′CA′′
design), he placed the theme in the orchestra while the violin ornamented the
theme. By itself seemingly unassuming, this approach appropriated Beethoven’s
ornamentation to a level perhaps unmatched in the romance genre, requiring the
violin to play abundant hemidemisemiquaver sextuplets and octuplets and creat-
ing extremely long legato slurs as a result (Ex. 9).
All that said, Joachim hid the violin’sfiligree behind the main theme heard in
the orchestra. Perhaps he had the secondary theme of the first movement of
Beethoven’s violin concerto in mind (bars 152ff.). But the difference is that
Beethoven restrained the melodic diminutions to quaver triplets and semiquavers.
Executing Joachim’s ornamental garlands, curiously, does not take much effort
from the bow at all, except for having to draw it very slowly and smoothly, in
order not to run out of bow and to guarantee smooth string crossings.
To maximize the smoothness of the bow, Joachim had one more tool up his
sleeve: concealing bow-direction changes by placing them off the beat, thus mak-
ing them minimally audible (bars 67–71, 74–75). Concealing bow changes is wide-
spread in Joachim’s mature violin works, including his second (Hungarian) and
third concerti in G major (1864), mature cadenzas, Notturno (1858), and
Variationen für Violine mit Orchesterbegleitung (1879). Although a subtle device, it
helped create the impression of physical stillness as the right arm moves quite
deliberately, so that fast movements occur only in the small-level finger activities
of the left hand. While Joachim’s‘legato virtuosity’, which required considerable
technical demands on the violinists, has drawn attention before, how it helped
him construct a type of ‘performative simplicity’appropriate for the romance
has largely evaded attention.
As Bülow had foreshadowed, Joachim synthesized traditions of the romance
that assimilated not only the French Conservatoire influences, but possibly also
his performative experience under Berlioz’s baton, resulting in Joachim’sG
28 Nineteenth‐Century Music Review
https://doi.org/10.1017/S1479409824000223 Published online by Cambridge University Press

major romance in a greater tempo diversity and more expressive freedom before
and after the double bars. Although Joachim surely was not responsible for having
brought about a shift in how violin romances were composed, the type of violin
idiom he advocated in the G-major romance matched how composers would
approach the genre subsequently, from Max Bruch (1874) to Antonín Dvor
ák
(1879), and from Johan Svendsen (1881) and Gabriel Fauré (1883) to Jean
Sibelius (1904/1915–17). Like Joachim, they privileged melody and an omnipres-
ent sense of calm air, an application of smooth, non-angular bowing, and a willing-
ness to explore the horizon behind genre boundaries.
While this article has focused largely on Joachim’s romances –and therefore has
not proven that these pieces changed the violin romance genre asa whole –the author
hopes to have provided evidence that the violin romance played a significant role in a
larger development with whichJoachim, the violinist-composerand long-term direc-
tor of the Berlin Hochschule from 1869 until his death, is deeply linked: the Werktreue
Ex. 9 Joachim, Romance in G major, piano reduction (bars 65–76)
29Joseph Joachim and the Violin Romance
https://doi.org/10.1017/S1479409824000223 Published online by Cambridge University Press

movement,
93
which he supported tirelessly via his dedication to the ‘classics’,thatis,
works by Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Spohr,Mendelssohn, Schumann, Brahms, and a
few others. While Joachim’sadvocacyforWerktreue has been the topic of discussion
for more than ten years, this article highlighted how a small and unpretentious genre
such as the romance helped Joachim achieve his aesthetic goals at a time when violin
virtuosos were prone to be pushed into the Virtuosentum corner.
Ex. 9 Continued.
93
Karen Leistra-Jones, ‘Staging Authenticity: Joachim, Brahms, and the Politics of
Werktreue Performance’,Journal of the American Musicological Society 66/2 (2013): 397–436.
30 Nineteenth‐Century Music Review
https://doi.org/10.1017/S1479409824000223 Published online by Cambridge University Press