Nocturne as a musical form?

[soitainly]

 I was reading through another thread about Chopin's Nocturne in Cm and people were saying it strayed somewhat from the nocturne form. I didn't realize that a Nocturne was a form, just a name for a series of Chopin pieces that had a certain mellow feel. When I think of form I think of Sonatas or Minuets and the like with some definable structure. What are the defining structural characteristics of a Nocturne?

[go12_3]

 Just googled it for you:

A nocturne (from the French for "nocturnal") is usually a musical composition that is inspired by, or evocative of, the night. Historically, nocturne is a very old term applied to night Offices and, since the Middle Ages, to divisions in the canonical hour of Matins.

The name nocturne was first applied to pieces in the eighteenth century, when it indicated an ensemble piece in several movements, normally played for an evening party and then laid aside. Sometimes it carried the Italian equivalent, notturno, such as Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's quadraphonic Notturno in D, K.286, written for four lightly echoing separated ensembles of paired horns with strings, and his Serenata Notturna, K. 239. At this time, the piece was not necessarily evocative of the night, but might merely be intended for performance at night, much like a serenade.

In its more familiar form as a single-movement character piece usually written for solo piano, the nocturne was cultivated primarily in the nineteenth century. The first nocturnes to be written under the specific title were by the Irish composer John Field, generally viewed as the father of the Romantic nocturne that characteristically features a cantabile melody over an arpeggiated, even guitar-like accompaniment. However, the most famous exponent of the form was Frédéric Chopin, who wrote 21 of them (see Chopin nocturnes). One of the most famous pieces of nineteenth-century salon music was the "Fifth Nocturne" of Ignace Leybach, who is now otherwise forgotten. Later composers to write nocturnes for the piano include Gabriel Fauré, Alexander Scriabin and Erik Satie (1919), as well as Peter Sculthorpe. In the movement entitled 'The Night's Music' [1] ('Musiques nocturnes' in French) of Out of Doors for solo piano (1926), Bartók imitated the sounds of nature . It contains quiet, eerie, blurred cluster-chords and imitations of the twittering of birds and croaking of nocturnal creatures, with lonely melodies in contrasting sections. American composer Lowell Liebermann has written ten Nocturnes for piano. Other notable nocturnes from the 20th century include those from Michael Glenn Williams, Samuel Barber and Robert Helps.

Other examples of nocturnes include the one for orchestra from Felix Mendelssohn's incidental music for A Midsummer Night's Dream (1848), the set of three for orchestra and female choir by Claude Debussy (who also wrote one for solo piano) and the first movement of the Violin Concerto No. 1 (1948) by Dmitri Shostakovich. French composer Erik Satie composed a series of five small nocturnes. These were however, far different from those of Frédéric Chopin and John Field.

The first movement of Ludwig van Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata has also been considered a nocturne (certainly, Ludwig Rellstab, who gave the piece its nickname, thought it evocative of the night), although Beethoven did not describe it as one.

Nocturnes are generally thought of as being tranquil, often expressive and lyrical, and sometimes rather gloomy, but in practice pieces with the name nocturne have conveyed a variety of moods: the second of Debussy's orchestral Nocturnes, "Fętes", for example, is very lively.


best wishes,

go12_3

[soitainly]

 Thanks for that info go12_3. So it seems that it isnt as rigid a structural form as say a sonata.
The description "a cantabile melody over an arpeggiated, even guitar-like accompaniment" is interesting to me, and maybe explains why I have been drawn to the Chopin Nocturnes. I am mainly a guitar player so that type of sound really appeals to me.

 One of the great things of recently taking up the piano is I am discovering so much new music to listen to. I never really paid any attention to Chopin before, also Haydn and Phillip Glass. Thank god for YouTube so I can just follow the links and just discover so much great music. The real surprise is that I have started liking Mozart, I always thought his music sounded a bit childish, but now that I am listening with fresh ears, the great melodies with such sophisticated underlying harmonies now seem much more mature.

[gep]

I never really paid any attention to Chopin before, also Haydn and Phillip Glass.

Philip Glass wrote Nocturnes? Or indeed music??

It's not to everybody's taste, but Sorabji wrote some very impressive Nocturnes. Also Szymanowski wrote some music that could be counted among the Nocturne gerne.