Romantic Era

(1827-1900)

Listen to Romantic music

The years between 1827 (the death of Beethoven) and 1900 (the turn of the century). The Romantic period takes its name from literary “romances” which were expressive stories and poems about heroic historic or legendary subjects. Romanticism tends to be personal and subjective stressing freedom, intense emotion and individuality.

Some historians feel the Romantic period was a revolt by sensitive, creative artists against the onrushing industrial revolution and its mechanization of work which seemed to threaten the dignity of man.  The Romantic period was a time of highly individual musical styles. Composers got their inspirations from life experience, from nature and its wildness, the supernatural, poetry, ancient mythology, the romantic ideal of love and the notion of unfulfilled love, and the suffering from a loss or death of a loved one. Small spontaneous and flexible forms (miniatures), programmatic forms, or large grandiose forms dictated how the music was written. Many of the Classical forms such as sonata, theme and variations, minuet & trio and rondo form, which evolved in order to take advantage of the dramatic possibilities offered by homophony, were abandoned. The new Romantic forms were governed by spontaneity, expression, ideas, individualism and creative freedom. Romanticism take its name form the medieval “romances,” which were stories and poems about heroic figures written in one of the romance languages of the people.

Beethoven’s innovations and contributions served as a catalyst for Romantic era composers. He was considered by many to be the liberator of music, as the person who broke the molds and led the way. Romanticism represents an approach to life and to art completely different from that of Classicism. Whereas Classicism tends to be traditional and objective, Romanticism is individual and subjective, when Classicism shows emotional restraint then Romanticism is emotionalistic. The composers from the Romantic period include: Frederic Chopin, Franz Liszt, Franz Schubert, Robert Schumann, Johannes Brahms, Piotr Tchaikovsky and Gustav Mahler.

Romantic Themes and Inspirations

  1. Legends and myths from faraway places and times. Extreme expression, fantastic things, marvelous and legendary as opposed to the mundane aspects of the present.
  2.  
    1. Wagner writes the Ring of the Nibelung (an early medieval cycle of Nordic myths)
    2. Berlioz imports Gregorian Chant into his Symphony Fantastic
    3. Mendelssohn, Berlioz, Verdi, and Tchaikovsky use Shakespeare as the basis for their music works
    4. Mendelssohn revives the music of Johann Sebastian Bach.

 Nature and the wilder aspects of nature.

    1. mysterious forests
    2. night time
    3. storms
    4. untamed seas
    5. music depended on nature descriptions
    6. with the urbanization of the industrial revolution going on nature, wild and unfettered by civilization provided a sense of purity, something uncontrollable by man.
  1. Love and the yearning for something just beyond ones grasp.
    1. the love of an unattainable woman
    2. a hero warrior in conquest of power and love
    3. unfulfilled desires, unrealized dreams
  1. Macabre and supernatural subjects, nightmarish, awful, ugly, and within this terrible ugliness a kind of weird supernatural,  anti-rationality. The idea of the less sense something makes the better off it is. The wilder, crazier, weirder uglier the more horrific something can be……the better.
  1. Death and resignation. The experience of a loss and the profound emotion that comes when the experience in the death of someone close or of great importance. The affect of this experience on the meaning of life.