The Ideals Of Instrumental Music

At one point in the study of the Romantic period of music, we come upon

the first of several apparently opposing conditions that plague all attempts

to grasp

the meaning of Romantic as applied to the music of the 19th century. This

opposition involved the relation between music and words. If instrumental

music

is the perfect Romantic art, why is it acknowledged that the great masters of

the

symphony, the highest form of instrumental music, were not Romantic

composers,

but were the Classical composers, Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven? Moreover,

one

of the most characteristic 19th century genres was the Lied, a vocal piece in

which

Shubert, Schumann, Brahams, and Wolf attained a new union between music and

poetry. Furthermore, a large number of leading composers in the 19th century

were extremely interested and articulate in literary expression, and leading

Romantic novelists and poets wrote about music with deep love and insight.

The conflict between the ideal of pure instrumental music (absolute music)

as the ultimate Romantic mode of expression, and the strong literary

orientation of

the 19th century, was resolved in the conception of program music. Program

music, as Liszt and others in the 19th century used the term, is music

associated

with poetic, descriptive, and even narrative subject matter. This is done

not by

means of musical figures imitating natural sounds and movements, but by

imaginative suggestion. Program music aimed ...