Romantic music
Romantic music is a stylistic movement in Western Classical music associated with the period of the 19th century commonly referred to as the Romantic era. It is closely related to the broader concept of Romanticism—the intellectual, artistic, and literary movement that became prominent in Western culture from about 1798 until 1837.
Romantic composers sought to create music that was individualistic, emotional, dramatic, and often programmatic; reflecting broader trends within the movements of Romantic literature, poetry, art, and philosophy. Romantic music was often ostensibly inspired by non-musical stimuli, such as nature, literature, poetry, super-natural elements, or the fine arts. It included features such as increased chromaticism and moved away from traditional forms.
Background
The Romantic movement was an artistic, literary, and intellectual movement that originated in the second half of the 18th century in Europe and strengthened in reaction to the Industrial Revolution. In part, it was a revolt against social and political norms of the Age of Enlightenment and a reaction against the scientific rationalization of nature. It was embodied most strongly in the visual arts, music, literature, and education, and was in turn influenced by developments in natural history.One of the first significant applications of the term to music was in 1789, in the Mémoires by the Frenchman André Grétry. It was E. T. A. Hoffmann who established the principles of musical romanticism, in a lengthy review of Ludwig van Beethoven's Fifth Symphony published in 1810, and an 1813 article on Beethoven's instrumental music. In the first of these essays Hoffmann traced the beginnings of musical Romanticism to the later works of Haydn and Mozart.
It was Hoffmann's fusion of ideas already associated with the term "Romantic", used in opposition to the restraint and formality of Classical models, that elevated music, and especially instrumental music, to a position of pre-eminence in Romanticism as the art most suited to the expression of emotions. It was also through the writings of Hoffmann and other German authors that German music was brought to the center of musical Romanticism.
Traits
The classical period often used short, even fragmentary, thematic material while the Romantic period tended to make greater use of longer, more fully defined and more emotionally evocative themes.Characteristics often attributed to Romanticism:
- a new preoccupation with and surrender to nature;
- a turn towards the mystic and supernatural, both religious and unearthly;
- a focus on the nocturnal, the ghostly, the frightful, and terrifying;
- a new attention given to national identity;
- discontent with musical formulas and conventions;
- a greater emphasis on melody to sustain musical interest;
- increased chromaticism;
- a harmonic structure based on movement from tonic to subdominant or alternative keys rather than the traditional dominant, and use of more elaborate harmonic progressions ;
- large, grand orchestras were common during this period;
- increase in virtuosic players featured in orchestrations;
- the use of new or previously not so common musical structures like the song cycle, nocturne, concert etude, arabesque, and rhapsody, alongside the traditional classical genres;
- Program music became somewhat more common;
- the use of a wider range of dynamics, for example from ppp to fff, supported by large orchestration;
- a greater tonal range ;
Trends of the 19th century
Non-musical influences
Events and changes in society such as ideas, attitudes, discoveries, inventions, and historical events often affect music. For example, the Industrial Revolution was in full effect by the late 18th century and early 19th century. This event profoundly affected music: there were major improvements in the mechanical valves and keys that most woodwinds and brass instruments depend on. The new and innovative instruments could be played with greater ease and they were more reliable.Another development that affected music was the rise of the middle class. Composers before this period lived under the patronage of the aristocracy. Many times their audience was small, composed mostly of the upper class and individuals who were knowledgeable about music. The Romantic composers, on the other hand, often wrote for public concerts and festivals, with large audiences of paying customers, who had not necessarily had any music lessons. Composers of the Romantic Era, like Elgar, showed the world that there should be "no segregation of musical tastes" and that the "purpose was to write music that was to be heard".
"The music composed by Romantic " reflected "the importance of the individual" by being composed in ways that were often less restrictive and more often focused on the composer's skills as a person than prior means of writing music.
Nationalism
During the Romantic period, music often took on a much more nationalistic purpose. Composers composed with a distinct sound that represented their home country and traditions. For example, Jean Sibelius' Finlandia has been interpreted to represent the rising nation of Finland, which would someday gain independence from Russian control.Frédéric Chopin was one of the first composers to incorporate nationalistic elements into his compositions. Joseph Machlis states, "Poland's struggle for freedom from tsarist rule aroused the national poet in Poland. ... Examples of musical nationalism abound in the output of the Romantic era. The folk idiom is prominent in the Mazurkas of Chopin". His mazurkas and polonaises are particularly notable for their use of nationalistic rhythms. Moreover, "During World War II the Nazis forbade the playing of ... Chopin's Polonaises in Warsaw because of the powerful symbolism residing in these works".
Other composers, such as Bedřich Smetana, wrote pieces that musically described their homelands. In particular, Smetana's Vltava is a symphonic poem about the Moldau River in the modern-day Czech Republic, the second in a cycle of six nationalistic symphonic poems collectively titled Má vlast. Smetana also composed eight nationalist operas, all of which remain in the repertory. They established him as the first Czech nationalist composer as well as the most important Czech opera composer of the generation who came to prominence in the 1860s.
History
Early Romantic
The transition of Viennese classicism to Romanticism can be found in the work of Ludwig van Beethoven. Many typically romantic elements are encountered for the first time in his works. These works stand here in contrast to vocal music and are "purely" instrumental music. According to Hoffmann, the pure instrumental music of Viennese classical music, especially that of Beethoven, since it is free of material or program, is the embodiment of the romantic art idea.Another of the most important representatives of late classicism and early romanticism is Franz Schubert. He introduced romantic features into German-language opera, with his chamber music works and later symphonies. In this field, his work is supplemented by the ballads of Carl Loewe. Carl Maria von Weber is important for the development of the German opera, especially with his popular Freischütz. There are fantastic-horrious materials by Heinrich Marschner and cheerful opera by Albert Lortzing. Louis Spohr became known mainly for his instrumental music. Still largely attached to classical music is the work of Johann Nepomuk Hummel, Ferdinand Ries, and the Frenchman George Onslow.
Italy experienced the heyday of the Belcanto opera in early Romanticism, associated with the names of Gioachino Rossini, Gaetano Donizetti, and Vincenzo Bellini. While Rossini's comic operas are primarily known today, often only through their rousing overtures, Donizetti and Bellini predominate tragic content. The most important Italian instrumental composer of this time was the legendary "devil's violinist" Niccolò Paganini.
In France, light Opéra comique developed. Its representatives are François-Adrien Boieldieu, Daniel-François-Esprit Auber, and Adolphe Adam, with Adam known for his ballets. The famous eccentric composer and harpist Robert Nicolas-Charles Bochsa wrote seven operas. The Grand opéra came up with pompous stage sets, ballets and large choirs. Her first representative was Gaspare Spontini, her most important Giacomo Meyerbeer.
Other European countries are represented. The Irishman John Field composed the first Nocturnes for piano. Friedrich Kuhlau worked in Denmark. The Swede Franz Berwald wrote four very idiosyncratic symphonies.
High Romantic
The high romanticism can be divided into two phases. In the first phase, the actual romantic music reaches its peak. The Polish composer Frédéric Chopin explored previously unknown depths of emotion in his character pieces and dances for piano. Robert Schumann, mentally immersed at the end of his life, represents in person as well as in music almost the prototype of the passionate romantic artist, shadowed by tragedy. His idiosyncratic piano pieces, chamber music works and symphonies should have a lasting influence on the following generation of musicians.Franz Liszt, a Hungarian composer, was on the one hand a swarmed piano virtuoso, but on the other hand also laid the foundation for the progressive "New German School" with his harmoniously bold symphonic poems. Also committed to program music was the technique of the idée fixe of the Frenchman Hector Berlioz, who also significantly expanded the orchestra. Felix Mendelssohn was again more oriented towards the classicist formal language and became a role model especially for Scandinavian composers such as the Dane Niels Wilhelm Gade.
In opera, the operas of Otto Nicolai and Friedrich von Flotow still dominated in Germany when Richard Wagner wrote his first romantic operas. The early works of Giuseppe Verdi were also still based on the Belcanto ideal of the older generation. In France, the Opéra lyrique was developed by Ambroise Thomas and Charles Gounod. Russian music found its own language in the operas of Mikhail Glinka and Alexander Dargomyzhsky.
The second phase of high romanticism runs in parallel with the style of realism in literature and the visual arts. In the second half of his creation, Wagner now developed his leitmotif technique, with which he holds together the four-part ring of the Nibelungen, composed without arias; the orchestra is treated symphonically, the chromaticism reaches its extreme in Tristan und Isolde. A whole crowd of disciples is under the influence of Wagner's progressive ideas, among them, for example, Peter Cornelius.
An opposition arose from numerous more conservative composers, to whom Johannes Brahms, who sought a logical continuation of classical music in symphony, chamber music and song, became a model of scale due to the depth of the sensation and a masterful composition technique. Among others, Robert Volkmann, Friedrich Kiel, Carl Reinecke, Max Bruch, Josef Gabriel Rheinberger, and Hermann Goetz are included in this party.
Some important loners came on the scene, among whom Anton Bruckner particularly stands out. Although a Wagner supporter, his clear-form style differs significantly from that of that composer. For example, the block-based instrumentation of Bruckner's symphonies is derived from the registers of the organ. In the ideological struggle against Wagner's adversaries, he was portrayed by his followers as a counterpart of Brahms. Felix Draeseke, who originally wrote "future music in classical form" starting from Liszt, also stands between the parties in composition.
Verdi also reached the way to a well-composed musical drama, in a different way than Wagner. His immense charisma made all other composers fade in Italy, including Amilcare Ponchielli and Arrigo Boito, who was also the librettist of his late operas Otello and Falstaff. In France, the light muse triumphed first in the form of the socio-critical operettas of Jacques Offenbach. Lyrical opera found its climax in the works of Jules Massenet, while in the Carmen by Georges Bizet, realism came for the first time. In Austria, the Viennese operettas of the 19th century Johann Strauss II, who wrote his waltzes and polkas.
Louis Théodore Gouvy built a stylistic bridge to German music. The operas, symphonies and chamber music works of the extremely versatile Camille Saint-Saëns were, as were the ballets of Léo Delibes, more tradition-oriented. New orchestra colors were found in the compositions of Édouard Lalo and Emmanuel Chabrier. The Belgian-born César Franck was accompanied by a revival of organ music, which was continued by Charles-Marie Widor, later Louis Vierne and Charles Tournemire.
A specific national romanticism had by now emerged in almost all European countries. The national Russian current started by Glinka was continued in Russia by the "Group of Five": Mily Balakirev, Alexander Borodin, Modest Mussorgsky, Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, and César Cui. More western oriented were Anton Rubinstein and Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, whose ballets and symphonies gained great popularity. Bedřich Smetana founded Czech national music with his operas and the Symphony poems oriented towards Liszt.
The symphonies, concerts and chamber music works of Antonín Dvořák have Brahms as a model. In Poland, Stanisław Moniuszko was the leading opera composer, in Hungary Ferenc Erkel. Norway produced its best-known composers with Edvard Grieg, creator of lyrical piano works, songs and orchestral works such as the Peer-Gynt Suite; England's voice resonated with the Brahms-oriented Hubert Parry and symphonist, as well as the comic operas of Arthur Sullivan.