Romanticism in music

This paper is a study of the romantic movement in music, which was at its height in European composition between approximately 1820 and 1890. A reaction to the emphasis of classicism on form, order, and rationality, romanticism explored passion, flamboyance, and individuality. From Ludwig van Beethoven's late compositions to the enormous scale of Richard Wagner's epic operas, romanticism represents the movement of music into the modern world. It nurtured development of the final stage of many of the elements that continue to define modern music, including an almost infinite variety of forms and lengths of composition, the importance of the conductor in performance, and the power of the individual artist's vision. Many of these changes were the result of artistic experimentation, both in form and content, by composers during this time period. Some changes were also the result of the altered place of composers in society, as they moved from being recipients of the support of wealthy patrons to being freelance artists seeking to support their art through a variety of independent methods.

Henri Peyre defines romanticism in general as "implying a predominance of passion over reason, the lure of the extraordinary, dissatisfaction with the present, and delight in suffering" (1977, p. 1). Romanticism was a direct reaction against the formalism of the classical movement. Romantics emphasized feeling and emotion, while romantic composers experimented freely with established m

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n smaller moulds and for an intimate medium" (1990, p. 16). Romantic composers made free use of the sonata and symphony forms, developed in Vienna during the classical period. The Hungarian, Franz Liszt (1811-1886), crafted symphonic poems, linking literature to music. He drew his inspiration from poetry and drama, creating complete effects with a single movement. He also made powerful use of the piano; Levy writes, "Liszt often treats the piano as if it were a whole orchestra, exploiting every scrap of variety in its range of colors" (1983, p. 247). In France, Berlioz wrote program music, compositions that draw their inspiration from other sources and attempt to explicitly evoke these associations; the Symphonie fantastique was his homage to the Irish actress who later became his wife. Many romantic composers used literature and poetry as the literal text of their works. Program music employs an explicit storyline, musical themes associated with particular characters, and a transformation of those themes that illustrates the changes through which the characters are passing, somewhat like an opera but without singers or an actual words. Richard Strauss 1864-1949) later extended the symphonic poem into a form he called the

Category: Arts - R