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Ferdinand Ries and the Piano Concerto: Beethoven's Shadow and the Early Romantic Concerto

McGorray, Ian

Abstract Details

2015, M.M., University of Cincinnati, College-Conservatory of Music: Music History.
The piano concerto in the late-eighteenth and early-nineteenth centuries was a vehicle for the composer of performer to display his virtuosic skill in a concert setting: Ferdinand Ries (1784-1838) was one such composer/performer. Ries was a student and friend of Ludwig van Beethoven for many years; a young Ries in fact made his concert debut performing Beethoven's C minor concerto, much to the composer's approval. In the Piano Concerto No. 3 in C minor, Op. 37 and the two following concertos, Beethoven expanded and developed the concerto as a genre by increasing the piano's activity in the melodic development and interplay with the orchestra. This development of the piano concerto's form inspired Beethoven's contemporaries--including Ries, who wrote eight concertos for the piano--to increase movement length and privilege the virtuoso more. In this thesis, I seek to situate Ries as a contributing composer in the development of the concerto from Mozart to Schumann. I first establish Beethoven's concerto form through formal analysis based on Stephan D. Lindeman and Leon Plantinga's work on the subject. I then examine the general trends in concerto composition in the early nineteenth century: the soloist's increased involvement in thematic material, a more exotic harmonic plan, and an increase in virtuosic solo material. I concentrate mainly on changes to the first movement approach by several prolific composers of the period--Dussek, Hummel, and Moscheles. Finally, I establish Ries's concerto style through comparison to Lindeman's trends and Beethoven's changes to the concerto genre. The availability of all eight of Ries's concertos in full score allows me to identify similarities and differences between Ries and Beethoven's piano concerto style by using form, thematic content, and solo-orchestra interaction.
Jonathan Kregor, Ph.D. (Committee Chair)
Steven Cahn, Ph.D. (Committee Member)
Mary Sue Morrow, Ph.D. (Committee Member)
108 p.

Recommended Citations

Citations

  • McGorray, I. (2015). Ferdinand Ries and the Piano Concerto: Beethoven's Shadow and the Early Romantic Concerto [Master's thesis, University of Cincinnati]. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=ucin1439296816

    APA Style (7th edition)

  • McGorray, Ian. Ferdinand Ries and the Piano Concerto: Beethoven's Shadow and the Early Romantic Concerto. 2015. University of Cincinnati, Master's thesis. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center, http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=ucin1439296816.

    MLA Style (8th edition)

  • McGorray, Ian. "Ferdinand Ries and the Piano Concerto: Beethoven's Shadow and the Early Romantic Concerto." Master's thesis, University of Cincinnati, 2015. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=ucin1439296816

    Chicago Manual of Style (17th edition)