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Chapter 23 – The Romantic Era:
Beginnings and Endings
Illustration 1: "Symphony in
White", James McNeil Whistler,
1862
If one were to try to sum up the zeitgeist of the Romantic Era in one phrase, it would be
difficult to find a better one than simply, "the celebration of the individual".
Not the mysterious and supernatural power of the Church; the individual. Not the
grandiosity of the monarchy or even the hope of a representative government; the
individual. Not the promise of reason and logic, not the potential of science and industry,
not even the common bond of everyman; it is the individual whose voice we hear in the
music and art.
It is now the individual who is telling his own story and leading us to see the world
through his own eyes.
How did this happen?
Great music and great art always tell stories on many levels. Certainly on one level, the
spirit of the artist always speaks in his own unique voice. It is extremely difficult for a
creative artist to remove himself from his artistic work—and a few have actually tried.
Often the surface story is fairly obvious. A great deal of Medieval music—being
religious—is about the Church. In it you can hear the great mysteries, the celebrations,
the fears, the faith. Compare that with the modern era, where one can often hear the
sense of excitement, confusion, and frustration with technology that seems to have taken
over.i
In a later era, the story being told is one of the grandeur of royalty, of the glory of the
absolute monarchs.
By the end of the Classical Era, the story being told is often described as “everyman”,
where the composer's speaking voice is of the universal man having reached a sense of
enlightenment. The composer is telling our story.
As noted a few paragraphs earlier, the Romantic Era is often labeled “the celebration of
the individual.” The composer is telling you, “This is my story. This as I see it, through
my eyes and my sensibilities. Not someone else's.”
As always, there are always factors in a society that shape the market that determines
which paths music and musicians can take. Many times those paths are extremely
limited.
How does this personal approach help make the music different from previous eras?
When the music isn't the composer's own story, one doesn't hear many influences from
his life. For most of Western history, a composer's output rarely, if ever, reflects his own
personal circumstances. Artists have struggled with tragedy, disappointment, difficult
financial circumstances. . . and it is rarely heard in their work. Some of the few
examples are memorials to other composers who have died. Beyond that, it would be
difficult to find.
We can start to hear a change toward the end of the Classical era. Mozart's final
compositions become a little more transparent to the difficulties he experienced in his
life at the time.
One logical explanation is that when you are composing music for someone else's story,
they don't want to hear about your troubles. When you are in an era where there is a
market for the individual, the composer will speak with more of his own voice. The
artist is encouraged to explore, to challenge, to criticize.
Here, Beethoven's name comes up once more. Beethoven was deeply concerned with
human rights and personal freedoms, and it is evident in his music, both directly in the
topics of some of his compositions, but in the way his drama unfolds as a great struggle,
ending with triumph. Beethoven also struggled with his increasing deafness, a sense of
conflict that also made its way into his music—along with his own personal resolution to
not let it defeat himii. Not to take away from his greatness, but had he been born in a
different era and experienced his deafness, his musical output—and reputation—would
have very likely have ended much differently.
As suggested in the previous chapter, economic, political, religious, and technological
factors had to open a path for the individual's voice to be heard.
Up through the Classical Era, the patronage system was an important factor in a
musician's life. By the end of the Classical Era, patrons were no longer a major factor in
the demand for music. Musicians had to find new ways to earn a living. They had to
satisfy a new audience—which was now a public who had developed a demand for
music it wanted to hear; a public that had sufficient disposable income to pay for what it
wanted and sufficient freedom to choose music that fired its imagination.
It should hopefully not be surprising that this is the era when we start to see musicians
becoming legendary for their performances. Although the term “superstar” wasn't coined
until the 20th century, we begin to see superstar conductors and soloists. Some of these
had lifestyles somewhat reminiscent of modern rockstars.
For most of the last five or six hundred years there have been musicians who have
achieved some fame during their lifetimes. However, we do not see wealthy and
powerful musicians who can speak their minds until relatively recently. For most of
Western history, being a social critic and feeling free to condemn the government or the
church was not a good way to ensure that one died of old age. In later eras, it sometimes
seems that such criticism is a prerequisite for recognition.
Haydn, for one example, was highly celebrated during his lifetime but did not yet
experience the opportunity to make waves in the culture of his time (or become
fabulously wealthy). The orchestra was still a relatively small ensemble that was just
starting to be heard in public concerts.
Today, it's completely normal for the most prominent musicians of our eras to be quite
wealthy, powerful, and even influential on the political stage. Bono of the band U2
occasionally meets with world leaders—as an equal—to influence policy. To someone in
the 1960s listening to the rebellious rock and roll of the Beatles and the Rolling Stones,
it would be unthinkable to be told that fifty years later that members would be known as
Sir Paul McCartney, MBE and Sir Mick Jagger, Kt – given the title of Knights of the
British Empire for their musical careers.
Less than a century later at the end of the Romantic Era, we see a series of music
"superstars" and virtuoso performers who dazzle audiences, behave like rock stars (if
you read a biography of Franz Lizst, you might think someone accidentally inserted
some pages of a bio of Mick Jagger).
Writers and artists were not afraid to shock. Friedrich Nietzsche proclaimed "God is
dead!" in his novel Thus Spake Zarathustra, a proclamation that still raises controversy
more than a century later.
In many ways, the spirit of the Romantic era is still with us. The role of artist as social
critic and popular icon (and tragic figure when he died at an early age) is deeply woven
into our current culture.
BEGINNINGS. . .
We begin to hear the first rumblings of the movement in the late 1700s.
A notable musical and literary movement is known as Sturm und Drang—storm and
stress. This movement included works from painters such as Fuselli, literature by
Goethe, and music by Haydn, conveying powerful emotions and personal visions—
intended to shock—pointing the way to the 19th century trends. Many of Mozart's final
compositions begin to show a different, more personal approach.
Historians mark the beginning of the musical Romantic Era in the early 1800s. While
the Church and imperial forms of government were still an influence on society, their
effect is almost unnoticeable in the music of the era.
The patronage system had long ceased to be a factor. If you were an artist, you were on
your own and responsible for your own success or failure. The market had changed--the
public was now a driving force behind the success of artists. The climate had changed to
where an artist had the personal freedom to speak his mind, tell his own story. . . and try
to outdo everyone else with his own distinct voice.
When we look back at the transitions from one era to another, the nearly universal rule is
one of rejection. Society had redefined its image of itself; redefined its own version of
reality. And with that, of course, always comes a redefinition of art and musiciii.
This one, however, was a little different.
The transition from the Classical Era to the Romantic Era was not one of revolution, but
instead one of evolution. Among the usual casualties of an era transition are musical
forms. The standard sonata-cycle based forms that were so useful at the end of the
Classical Era were still being used at the end of the Romantic Era (although sometimes a
bit loosely). Composers at the end of the Classical Era became the leading composers of
the Romantic Era.
While there were a lot of innovators, there was still a market for those who continued as
champions of the old forms and styles.
Over the remaining decades of the 19th century Romantic music split into two separate
directions.
One direction was a conservative purist approach keeping symphonic, concerto, and
chamber music structures relatively intact. Johannes Brahms and Anton Bruckner were
two of the leaders of this school of thought. Brahms' first symphony was nicknamed “the
tenth” by some of his contemporaries because many critics felt it was the first symphony
composed since the death of Beethoven that was a worthy successor to his ninth. All
nine of Bruckner's symphonies pay a very clear homage to Beethoven's ninth symphony.
Their inspiration? Ludwig van Beethoven—pupil of Haydn, heir of the Classical
tradition, composer of symphonies, opera, string quartets, sonatas, etc. who blazed a
trail.
The other camp was all about artistic freedom—the transformation of the old forms, new
structures, new harmonic directions. Where the Classical era was concerned with form
and proportion, raw emotion and freedom of expression were important in this school of
thought. Fran Liszt, Gustav Mahler, Piotr Tchaikovsky are perfect examples of this.
In addition, the tonal harmonic structure that began in the 1700s and was a game
changer in itself began to lose its usefulness in their compositions and eventually broke
down in the hands of the rebels.
Their inspiration: again, Beethoven, the great rebel, the composer whose powerful
personality clearly stood out in his music; Beethoven, the composer who stretched
formal structures and harmonies to the breaking point.
Beethoven was a man of contradictions who stood on the fence between two eras. His
music reflects his own dual approach. Starting his musical career at the peak of the
classical movement (and studying with Haydn), his own roots had been planted in a very
rich Classical tradition. However, Beethoven the innovator was never satisfied with the
status quo. Whatever medium he worked in, he was not afraid to leave his own personal
stamp on it. His eighth symphony is almost a return to a Classical model while his ninth
symphony abandons the classical models. His late piano sonatas and string quartets are
equal examples of throwing out the old conventions.
Because there is no neat and clean break, some historians have lumped these two eras in
a Classical/Romantic continuum and refuse to consider them two separate movementsiv.
ENDINGS. . .
The era technically ended in the early 1900s, although music very similar in style
continued to be composed for decades (often referred to as “Post-romantic”), and even
to where the Romantic musical vocabulary isn't that far away from our own.
Two characteristics can be cited as evidence of the change.
A very important one is that tonal harmony, which had worked so well for nearly 300
years—an eternity in music history—had begun to break down.
Tonal harmony was the glue that enabled composers to create large scale instrumental
structures with a logical flow of drama, one in a very classic Western sense that pays
homage to our Classical Greek roots.
The concept is exquisitely simple: a composer will start with a home base (the tonic
harmony) and, through the use of chords and contexts, will pull us away from that home
base, creating a subconscious sense of anticipation. Much of the rest of a movement is
toying with our expectations—perhaps delaying our gratification, perhaps surprising us
by heading off in an unexpected direction. At the end, though, we expect to be rewarded
—and are—by safely returning us back to the home base, neatly wrapping everything
up.
While this harmonic foundation is a very powerful and useful tool that allowed someone
like Haydn to compose over a hundred symphonies, dozens of string quartets, etc.
quickly, it can also be very stifling.
German composer Richard Wagner is cited as a key player in the breakdown of tonal
harmony. One of his operas, Tristan and Isolde, is cited as being one of the earliest
examples of moving past tonal harmony.
Tristan and Isolde is a very tragic love story, one of defeated expectations. The system of
tonal harmony—where chords neatly resolve is one of realized expectations. Wagner
cleverly—and subliminally—began using harmonies that conveyed a sense of unrealized
expectations as they resolved—in unexpected ways.
The music of Gustav Mahler is also considered another key factor in the disingegration
of the tonal harmony system in the way he used chromatic harmonies. While Mahler's
musical output was tiny compared to other composers of his era (mostly just nine
symphonies), his influence was profound.
Another German composer by the name of Arnold Schoenberg eventually created a
system of harmony known as serialism which deliberately destroyed any feeling of a
functional harmony that had any sense of resolution.
While music centering around a tonal center isn't dead by any means (virtually all
popular music for the last century is tonal), it was no longer the direction music was
headed in. The dam had cracked.
Another major characteristic of Romanticism is a larger than life sense of scale. In some
ways, a goal was to be the biggest, the loudest, the longest, the most emotional and
dramatic.
One of the signs pointing to the end of Romanticism was the fact that it had nowhere
else to go. How do you outdo the four operas collectively known as The Ring of the
Nibelung that tell a story over nearly 20 hours of music? How do you get any larger or
louder than Mahler's 8th symphony, which had over 900 performers in its premiere?
The simple answer is, “you can't.” Music began to move in a different direction. With
the new generation, a new paradigm began to take over, as a new political and economic
reality began to take over.
We begin to see an exodus away from a universal musical dialect.
Coupled with political and economic instability in Europe (that eventually led to two
World Wars) and the invention of a strange new device that could record and play back
sound, the world of music had shifted on its axis to a new orientation.
Like it had in numerous cycles before it, music aesthetics rebooted and went back to
basics. However, the world had changed. The “basics” for the next generation had
changed drastically.
Illustration 2: "Mrs. Adrien Iselin",
Sargent John Singer, (1888)
i
A case can also be made for a subliminal story being told through the element of form. There is also
a close relationship between the musical structures each era latches on to and the world view of an
era. The fugue, often called the most scientific musical form, came about during an era that we label
as “The Age of Reason”. The sonata form, a logical argument that would have been perfectly at
home in Classical Greece evolved during the modern Classical/Neo-classical era that was deeply
influenced by Greek culture and philosophy. When all the data is in, it may be no more of a surprise
to find that Schoenberg's serial music—where a musical idea shapes the entire piece of music—
evolved in roughly the same era that looked for and found DNA. And this is only the tip of the
iceberg. . .
ii Had he lived in an earlier era, would his music have exhibited the same personality? Or perhaps we
might not ever have heard of him.
iii Perhaps the earliest recognition of this was a writer who dubbed two different eras “Ars Antiqua”
and “Ars Nova”, “old art” and “new art” respectively. This happened in the 1300s and we're still
doing it.
iv One interesting byproduct of lumping the two together is that from 1450 to 1900, you have a neat
series of musical eras all inspired by a renewed interest in Classical Greece that last almost exactly
150 years.
Material copyright 2016 by Gary Daum, all rights reserved. All photos and illustrations by Gary Daum unless otherwise
noted. Unlimited use granted to current members of the Georgetown Prep community.