Listening Focus: 1865–1870
What would it have sounded like to be alive in 1868? Not just hearing the music, but hearing it for the first time? Imagine the excitement, the bewilderment, the terrible rehearsals, the pieces that nobody performed, and the scores that took years to become the versions we now know. I've been looking at a little slice of music history, 1865 to 1870, and it is completely fascinating.
Across Europe, opera houses, concert halls, churches and living rooms were full of composers trying to do new things. And they weren't all trying to do the same thing. Some wanted enormous symphonic architecture. Some wanted a national musical voice. Some were trying to make a piano do the impossible. And some were simply trying to get enough rehearsals to hear their work properly!
Explore the period
Start with a couple of pieces below, then jump into Listening in Context and set the composition years to 1865–1870. Follow the places on the map. Prague, Linz, Paris, Moscow, Denmark: this is a musical world connected by people, publishers, performers and ideas, but without recordings or the instant access we take for granted.
Six things to listen for
The orchestra is getting bigger. So are the ideas.
It is tempting to hear the 1860s as one giant Romantic orchestra. But that misses the really interesting bit: composers were using different sizes and kinds of ensemble to solve quite different musical problems. Bruckner’s First Symphony calls for woodwinds, four horns, trumpets, trombones, timpani and strings: substantial, but not yet the enormous orchestra we associate with some later Romantic scores. Grieg’s Piano Concerto adds a soloist who must somehow be brilliant, lyrical and audible against the full orchestra. And over in Prague, Smetana needs an orchestra that can sparkle, dance and support singers without drowning them out.
Listen for: how composers create scale without simply making everything louder. Brass can announce a change of world; thin strings or a single wind line can make a sudden intimate space.
1865–66: Dvořák and Bruckner find their feet
Dvořák wrote his first two symphonies in 1865, while still early in his career and working as a violist in Prague. His First was not performed in his lifetime. Imagine writing a symphony, working out all those instrumental combinations and large-scale transitions, and not being able to hear the finished thing! His Second is sprawling, full of energy and possibilities; you can hear a young composer trying out what a symphony might be. Meanwhile in Linz, Bruckner was composing his First Symphony, the work that later earned the nickname the cheeky little minx. Already there are enormous blocks of sound, abrupt contrasts and the patient building of musical architecture. The practical problem? Keeping long-range musical momentum through an entire symphony without losing the listener.
Listen for: Dvořák’s long phrases and transitions, then Bruckner’s repeated rhythmic figures, wide dynamic contrasts and brass arrivals. How do they tell you where you are in the structure?
1866–67: the opera house was a laboratory
In Prague, Smetana’s The Bartered Bride began as a two-act opera in 1866 and reached its familiar three-act form only in 1870. It wasn’t a finished monument on opening night: it was a work that grew through revision, performance and practical experience. In Paris, Verdi’s five-act Don Carlos demanded a very different kind of machinery: huge dramatic scenes, singers, orchestra, chorus, stage action and the expectations of French grand opera. Wagner’s Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg, completed in 1867 and premiered in Munich in 1868, offers another answer: an enormous, intricate musical comedy that asks the audience to follow a whole society of characters and musical ideas.
Listen for: the overture to The Bartered Bride, the way Verdi makes public spectacle suddenly feel personal, and Wagner’s ability to make several lines work together while the drama keeps moving.
1867: Mussorgsky writes something wild
Mussorgsky’s original Night on Bald Mountain is a wonderful case study in how music history gets edited. He wrote the orchestral score in 1867, but the version many listeners know today is a later arrangement by Rimsky-Korsakov, made after Mussorgsky’s death. The original was not performed during Mussorgsky’s lifetime. It is rough-edged, brilliantly strange, and quite unlike the polished symphonic narrative we might expect. Orchestration is not just decoration here: the collisions of colour and rhythm are the drama.
Listening challenge: compare the original 1867 version with the familiar Rimsky-Korsakov arrangement. Which sounds more dangerous? What happens when another composer smooths the edges?
1868: Brahms, Grieg and an incredible deadline
Brahms’s A German Requiem wasn’t a piece dashed off in a few weeks. The six-movement version was performed in Bremen in 1868; its complete seven-movement form followed in Leipzig in 1869. The challenge is astonishing: balancing solo voices, choir and orchestra while creating an emotional journey that feels unified, without turning every moment into a display of orchestral power. In Denmark, Grieg composed his A-minor Piano Concerto during the summer of 1868. Listen to the opening piano entry and the contrast with its gentler passages. And Saint-Saëns? His Second Piano Concerto was famously composed in just seventeen days for an 1868 performance. One period, three entirely different ways of working.
Listen for: choral texture in Brahms, the piano–orchestra conversation in Grieg, and the extraordinary change from Bach-like improvisation to virtuoso fireworks in Saint-Saëns.
1869–70: a composition is not always finished at its première
Tchaikovsky began his Romeo and Juliet overture-fantasia in 1869, had it performed in Moscow in 1870, and then revised it substantially in 1870 and again in 1880. The familiar version is not simply a historical snapshot of 1869. Balakirev, who encouraged Tchaikovsky to tackle Shakespeare, was also writing Islamey in 1869: an audaciously difficult piano fantasy drawing on musical material he encountered in and around the Caucasus. One work became famous through years of revision; the other through formidable demands on a single pianist.
Listen for: the contrasting thematic worlds in Romeo and Juliet, and the extraordinary physical and rhythmic momentum of Islamey. In both, musical ideas are inseparable from the bodies required to perform them.
The listening list: 1865–1870
Here are the works currently in the SAJA Music collection with composition years in this interval, grouped by year. It is a starting point, rather than a claim that these are the only important works of the period. Dates refer to composition (or the catalogue’s assigned year), not necessarily the premiere. I have kept the more unusual and early works alongside the famous ones: those are often where the best discoveries happen.
1865
1866
1867
1868
1869
A listening exercise
Pick three works from the same year. One big orchestral piece, one opera excerpt, and one work for solo instrument or a smaller ensemble if possible. Don't worry about identifying every chord. Listen for the physical realities: How many people are making this sound? What needs to be coordinated? What would be difficult to rehearse? And what do you think would have sounded genuinely new to an audience at the time?
Then pick another year and repeat. It's a remarkable way to hear history happening alongside itself, rather than as a neat procession of composers in a textbook.
A note on evidence: orchestra sizes vary by venue, period practice and score edition, so this article discusses instrumental forces rather than inventing fixed headcounts. Some works were composed across several years, performed later, or revised; the listening catalogue uses a single reference year for filtering.
Sources and further reading
For the dates, versions and orchestration details mentioned above, these are useful starting points.
- Brahms, Requiem performance history
- Smetana Museum, The Bartered Bride
- Bruckner First Symphony, edition and orchestration
- Grieg Piano Concerto, historical and instrumental notes
- Saint-Saëns Piano Concerto No. 2, background
- Mussorgsky and later arrangements
- Tchaikovsky Research, Romeo and Juliet versions
- Balakirev, Islamey history
- Verdi, Don Carlos production history
There is something rather wonderful about imagining all this music appearing in different places at almost the same moment, with no way for any of those composers to open a browser and hear the others. We can. So go and listen!