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Romanticism (music)
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Romanticism, in music, a comprehensive term defying strict chronological assignment. Throughout history,
Classicism and Romanticism, despite incompatible philosophies, have alternated, overlapped, and
coexisted. Romanticism, however, unlike Classicism, is neither an ideology nor a school. Other eras are
identified by elements and characteristics that constitute style, but the Romantic period cannot properly be
identified as a style or an isolated movement. Although it possesses certain easily determined
characteristics, these are found in the music of other eras as well.
A study of some 40 Romantic composers and their works discloses extreme variance in range and intensity
among their individual romanticisms. To a degree, however, all seem to have had in common a manifest
determination to hear "a different drummer" (Thoreau).
The Romanticist demands maximal and optimal involvement of self. He resolutely affirms the validity of
personal experience, feeling, imagination, introspection, and judgment. He exalts the senses and emotions.
His outpourings vary from gentle lyricism to overwhelming passion. He enjoys the celebration of nature,
rhapsodizes freedom of spirit and action, and delights in the whimsical, improbable, fabulous, and
allegorical. He is fascinated by legend, folklore, mythology, medievalism, and demonology. He is absorbed
with heroism, idealism, fate, agony, ecstasy, damnation, redemption, and apotheosis. He identifies more
readily with the sentimental than with the rational.
Refusing to subordinate content and feeling to Classical forms or to formal method, the Romantic composer
embraces free expression and originality. He experiments with form, rebels against strict adherence to
traditional rules, and applauds irregularity and diversity of treatment. Above all, he champions personalism
—the ultimate value and reality of the individual. Finally, the Romantic composer reveals his—or the
performing artist's—own personality.
History
Romanticism dawned as a movement in Europe toward the end of the 18th century and intensified during
the second quarter of the 19th. During the 19th century, conservatories were established to improve the
quality and quantity of trained musicians. Improvement in manufacturing techniques resulted in the
production of instruments in greater abundance at lower cost. Orchestral resources were augmented by
the inclusion of untraditional instruments, innovative orchestration, and the development of valved brass
instruments that could execute passages previously impossible to play.
No achievement of the era was of greater significance to composers, performers, and audiences than the
advancement of the piano to preeminence among solo instruments. By 1830 the piano had reached
substantially its present state. Pedals added new sonority and harmonic richness. With increased volume
and the capability of delivering delicate contrasts in color and shading, the piano could meet every
challenge to musicianship and virtuosity in the literature. Knowledgeable audiences clamored for firsthand
contact with renowned personalities communicating an increasing repertoire of Romantic concert music
through this versatile, personal instrument.
By the 1880s, Romantic music had reached almost a point of surfeit, though a number of post­Romantics
continued to compose well into the 20th century. By 1915, however, Romanticism as a movement was
exhausted and decadent, though it remains a continuing influence.
Program Music
A major development in the Romantic era was the evolution of instrumental program music, in which the
composer, through literary or pictorial associations, suggests extramusical ideas, images, impressions, or
emotional states. The 19th century produced four types of program music.
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1. The program symphony, retaining the multimovement form of the classical symphony,
employs a unifying idea throughout the work. Beethoven in his hymn to nature, the Sixth
Symphony (1808; Pastoral), provided intimations of a new genre by describing each of
the five movements according to the scene it portrays. The program symphony reached
its consummate expression in Hector Berlioz' Symphonie fantastique (1830), in which he
initiated an extended melodic theme he called the idée fixe ("fixed idea"). Berlioz, perhaps
the most daringly original composer of all time, developed the modern symphony
orchestra and was the first of the virtuoso conductors.
2. The concert overture, derived from the opera overture, is a descriptive work in one
movement employing the classical sonata­allegro design. The best­known examples are
two overtures by Felix Mendelssohn—A Midsummer Night's Dream (1826) and The
Hebrides (1832)—and Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky's overture­fantasy Romeo and Juliet
(1869, revised 1881).
3. Incidental music, usually an overture and a succession of shorter segments, is designed
to accompany various scenes of a play or to serve as entr'actes. If the overture is in
sonata­allegro form and suitable for performance as a concert piece apart from the play, it
may be classified also as a concert overture. Beethoven's music after Goethe's Egmont
(1810) is a pioneer of incidental music. Mendelssohn's A Midsummer Night's Dream,
which includes the overture mentioned above and 12 segments added in 1842, is a prime
example of incidental music. Others include Edvard Grieg's two suites from the music for
Ibsen's drama Peer Gynt (1876).
4. The symphonic poem, or tone poem, conceived by Franz Liszt, is the 19th century's only
original contribution to the large musical forms. Like the concert overture it is a one­
movement work, but its form is freer, and its flexibility permits its being shaped according
to the literary idea that inspired it. Liszt called the short, incisive themes "germ­motives."
Modified by transformation, the germ­motives supply the unifying element of the story.
The best known of Liszt's 13 symphonic poems is Les Préludes (1850). Other celebrated
examples are Claude Debussy's Prélude à l'après­midi d'un faune (1894) and Paul
Dukas' L'Apprenti sorcier (1897). The half­dozen masterpieces of Richard Strauss, such
as Also sprach Zarathustra (1896), represent the full maturity of this genre.
Composers
Ludwig van Beethoven, who bridges the Classical and Romantic eras, provides early examples of
Romanticism in several of his piano sonatas. He did not suggest all the epithets by which they are
identified, but their romantic subtitles indicate a measure of the programmatic response from those who first
heard them.
Pathos, passion, and love of nature became personal revelation and communication in Beethoven's
Pathétique (1799), Moonlight (1800), Pastoral (1801), Appassionata (1804), and Farewell, Absence, and
Return (1809). In addition to the Pastoral Symphony and Egmont Overture, Beethoven explored
Romanticism in such other overtures as Prometheus (1801), the two Leonore overtures for his only opera,
Fidelio (1805, 1806), and Coriolan (1807).
Franz Schubert's luminous Romanticism is reflected in his instrumental music—in the lyrical flow of
unsurpassed melodies, radiant orchestral colorings and sonorities, unique orchestration of woodwinds and
brasses, and ability to make the instruments sing. His noblest contribution is the elevation and
transformation of song, especially the folk song, into a great vehicle of musical expression, the art song.
This music was nurtured by lyric poetry, a distinguishing mark of German Romanticism, beginning with
Goethe.
Although many of Schubert's songs follow traditional strophic form (employing the same music for several
stanzas), he introduced a style called durchkomponiert ("through­composed"), in which the music changes
according to the story line, seeking expression of every shade of meaning in the text. The piano
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accompaniment, far exceeding its traditional role of melodic and harmonic support, establishes the mood in
the introduction and then paints a vivid background in close conjunction with the words. The result is
perfect balance, coherence, and unity in the wedding of music and poetry.
After Schubert the most important composers of songs were Robert Schumann, Johannes Brahms, Grieg,
Hugo Wolf (whose works stand as possibly the high­water mark in song literature), and Gustav Mahler.
Richard Strauss' best songs, the product of his earlier years, rank among the greatest in art­song literature.
The instrumental counterpart of the art song is the short lyric character piece for the piano. Beethoven's
bagatelles (1782–1802) are among the earliest examples. Programmatic titles used by various Romantic
composers include romance, nocturne, impromptu, intermezzo, capriccio, moment musical, album leaf, song
without words, waltz, polonaise, mazurka, prelude, novelette, march, polka, country dance, and (of larger
proportion) ballade and rhapsody. Masters of such character pieces are Schubert, Mendelssohn, Frédéric
Chopin, Schumann, Liszt, and Brahms. Chopin is the greatest composer for a single instrument—the piano.
Brahms' transcendent choral and chamber music and his works in the larger forms—symphonies,
concertos, and choral­orchestral masterpieces, including Ein deutsches Requiem (1857–1868)—place him
in the vanguard.
Anton Bruckner was a religious mystic whose profound sacred works and symphonies reflect Austrian
Catholic traditions. Camille Saint­Saëns is best known for the C Minor Symphony for organ (1886); the
fanciful Carnaval des animaux (1886), featuring two pianos; and the grand opera Samson et Delilah (1868–
1877). Charles Gounod's Faust, a French lyric opera, is said to be performed more than any other opera.
Bedřich Smetana was the founder of Czech nationalism in music. His most celebrated work, the symphonic
poem Vltava (1874; The Moldau), epitomizes love of country. All his music is programmatic, and some of it
is autobiographical.
Opera composers of signal importance include Carl Maria von Weber, who wrote the first Romantic opera,
Der Freischutz (1821), and Giacomo Meyerbeer, who helped stabilize the grand opera format. The
foremost Italian opera composers of the early Romantic era were Gaetano Donizetti, Vincenzo Bellini, and
Gioacchino Rossini. Rossini's Il barbiere di Siviglia (1816) remains one of the most popular comic operas.
Mikhail Glinka led the movement toward Russian nationalistic music with his opera Ruslan and Lyudmila
(1842). He laid the foundation for a later group of Russian composers, the "Mighty Five"—Aleksandr
Borodin, César Cui, Miri Balakirev, Modest Mussorgsky, and Nikolai Rimsky­Korsakov. Mussorgsky's Boris
Godunov, first performed in 1874, is a masterpiece of musical theater.
Richard Wagner was the greatest composer of symphonic opera. His innovations include continuous
narrative; the use of leitmotiv, a concise musical figure symbolizing an object, character, place, or idea;
making the orchestra the unifying element in the opera; and taking chromatic harmony to its highest point.
Giuseppe Verdi, the most prolific of the later Italian opera composers, opposed Wagner's concept of
orchestral supremacy, holding fast to the Italian ideal of the singers' opera. Though most of his operas are
tragedies in the grand manner, his masterpiece and last work is the comic opera Falstaff (1893).
Other Romantic composers include César Franck, the greatest composer of French instrumental music in
the last half of the 19th century, and Georges Bizet, who wrote the masterpiece of French lyric drama,
Carmen (1875), with its exotic Spanish rhythms and idioms. Tchaikovsky was the greatest of the Russian
symphonists.
Antonín Dvořák, the Bohemian nationalist, observed the forms and traditions of Beethoven, Schubert, and
their disciple Brahms, while filling his compositions with the melody, rhythm, and color of Czech folk music.
He is best known for the symphony From the New World (1893).
Post­Romantic Era Romantics
The music of Giacomo Puccini, a successor to Verdi, flows with lyric charm and warm sentiment. His
greatest operas include La Bohème (1896), Tosca (1900), Madama Butterfly (1904), the one­act comic
opera Gianni Schicchi (1918), and his most polished score, Turandot, which lacked only the finishing
touches when he died in 1924.
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Debussy, the great impressionist composer, achieved exquisite effects through subtle, exotic harmonies,
rhythms, and haunting melodies. He established the French song as a national art form. The early works of
Finland's Jean Sibelius are in the Romantic tradition. The Swan of Tuonela (1893), inspired by the Finnish
epic the Kalevala, and the symphonic poem Finlandia (1899) breathe the spirit of Finnish nationalism. The
Russian­born Sergei Rachmaninoff wrote music of rich emotional content, as in the C Minor Piano Concerto
(1901), echoing in the 20th century the melancholy Russian soul.
Lara G. Hoggard
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
How to cite this article:
MLA (Modern Language Association) style:
Hoggard, Lara G. "Romanticism (music)." Encyclopedia Americana. Grolier Online, 2015. Web. 11 Jan.
2015.
Chicago Manual of Style:
Hoggard, Lara G. "Romanticism (music)." Encyclopedia Americana. Grolier Online
http://ea.grolier.com/article?id=0335730­00 (accessed January 11, 2015).
APA (American Psychological Association) style:
Hoggard, L. G. (2015). Romanticism (music). Encyclopedia Americana. Retrieved January 11, 2015, from
Grolier Online http://ea.grolier.com/article?id=0335730­00
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