Occurring after the Classical Music Period and from 1825 to 1900, the Romantic Music Period was a flourishing time of new music, styles and composers. Some of the important and majorly influential composers were Beethoven’s late style, Schubert, Mendelssohn, Chopin, Liszt, Tchaikovsky, Dvorak and many others. Along with the others, these composers utilized the new emotional styles that had emerged with help from musicians such as Beethoven. Instead of creating all their music for patrons and the church, composers of the Romantic Era supported themselves with the money they made from pleasing common people. With new technical styles come new forms of music which became evident in the Romantic Period.
Changing from the Classical Music Period, the Romantic Musical Period’s stylistic techniques were deeply emotional. The composers of the time expressed freely their personal feelings which were profoundly influenced by the ideals of the French Revolution, including freedom, fraternity and independence. Also, new and improved instruments were invented and utilized during this time. With warm melodies and long lyrical passages, Romantic composers were able to lead people do love their music. Additionally the rhythm was changed by changing the tempo and time signatures (mostlywind.co.uk). While some composers used elaborate technical performances others utilized intimate forms and delicate textures. Giving their music a sense of unity, the primary goal of the Romantic composers was to convey emotion. Sometimes melting together, the forms of this new music were not as clear as in the Classical Period and musical tension was used for emotional response, such as melodies having long dynamic climaxes (kaulblepianostudio.com). The style of th...
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...essed, more than anything else, their emotions and thoughts in the masterful music they produced. With this new enthusiastic music, famous composers wished to receive recognition and admiration by numerous other people from which they could make their living. Also by introducing new musical forms and types, the Romantic Era made its way to be one of the most influential and loved music periods in history.
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"The Romantic Era." Oracle Think Quest. N.p., n.d. Web. 20 Feb. 2014.
Miller, Carole B. "All about Romantic Music and Its Features." All about Romantic Music and Its Features. N.p., n.d. Web. 23 Feb. 2014. .p://library.thinkquest.org/15413/history/history-rom.htm>.
TitleAuthor/ EditorPublisherDate James Galways’ Music in TimeWilliam MannMichael Beazley Publishers1982 The Concise Oxford History of MusicGerald AbrahamOxford University Press1979 Music in Western CivilizationPaul Henry LangW. W. Norton and Company1941 The Ultimate Encyclopaedia of Classical MusicRobert AinsleyCarlton Books Limited1995 The Cambridge Music GuideStanley SadieCambridge University Press1985 School text: Western European Orchestral MusicMary AllenHamilton Girls’ High School1999 History of MusicRoy BennettCambridge University Press1982 Classical Music for DummiesDavid PogueIDG Books Worldwide,Inc1997
From the concrete structure of the Baroque period to the free-form structure of the Modern period each composer brings forth a new understanding and value to their time period. Within these pieces that they creatively compose it brings new light and displays the culture of the time period. The composers each have story to tell and has each creatively constructed their own works within the diameters of their era.
For almost half a century, the musical world was defined by order and esteemed the form of music more highly than the emotion that lay behind it. However, at the turn of the 19th century, romantic music began to rise in popularity. Lasting nearly a century, romantic music rejected the ideas of the classical era and instead encouraged composers to embrace the idea of emotionally driven music. Music was centered around extreme emotions and fantastical stories that rejected the idea of reason. This was the world that Clara Wieck (who would later marry the famous composer, Robert Schumann) was born into. Most well known for being a famous concert pianist, and secondly for being a romantic composer, Clara intimately knew the workings of romantic music which would not only influence Clara but would later become influenced by her progressive compositions and performances, as asserted by Bertita Harding, author of Concerto: The Glowing Story of Clara Schumann (Harding, 14). Clara’s musical career is an excellent example of how romantic music changed from virtuosic pieces composed to inspire awe at a performer’s talent, to more serious and nuanced pieces of music that valued the emotion of the listener above all else.
Throughout time, love has been a steady theme in music, literature, and film. Love is perhaps one of the most obvious emotions to portray and it can often be described as be sensual, sexual, spiritual or mystic, and divine. The tradition of courtly love began in the twelfth- century with the traveling songs of the performing troubadours and trouvères throughout Europe. Their songs of love were the source of all Western vernacular poetry and through the evolution of time developed into the popular chanson of the fifteenth and sixteenth- centuries. Perhaps the most common themes in Burgundian, Parisian and international chansons is that of fine amour or refined love. Due to the influence of culture and the progression of time, the subject matter and compositional style of the chanson changed as it moved through Burgundy, Paris and eventually spread internationally.
Since Beethoven was seen as such an influential composer, many sought to compose music similar to that of Beethoven and the other masters who had set the stage for classical music. Yet they could not be too similar to Beethoven and had to have uniqueness in their compositions. As Burkholder explains, composers that followed the musical canon, “...distinguished from their lesser contemporaries by their level of craftsmanship, by the strength of their musical personality, and by an ineffable quality of ‘inspiration,’ ‘beauty,’ or ‘truth’.(Burkholder 120). The craftsmanship can be interpreted as the way they created their compositions in a great way such as the main inspirers of these young composers did. The craftsmanship had to of course to make it an impact, like pieces in any museum, they have to show skill and express the quality of their design. Their strength in musical personality had to show their uniqueness and style they imposed when composing music, to the point where they could be distinguished through their compositions. This strength in personality had to pop out while still following and showing their inspiration, which was the most important quality, to that of the masters of classical music. The inspiration was a key factor that lead to the rise of the musical
John Warrack, author of 6 Great Composers, stated, “Any study of a composer, however brief, must have as its only purpose encouragement of the reader to greater enjoyment of the music” (Warrack, p.2). The composers and musicians of the Renaissance period need to be discussed and studied so that listeners, performers, and readers can appreciate and understand the beginnings of music theory and form. The reader can also understand the driving force of the composer, whether sacred or secular, popularity or religious growth. To begin understanding music composition one must begin at the birth, or rebirth of music and the composers who created the great change.
Burkholder, J. Peter, Donald Jay Grout, and Claude V. Palisca. A history of western music. 8th ed. New York: W. W. Norton, 2010. Print.
Intrinsically, instead of music reflecting the emotions, composers aspired to cause emotions in the listener. Many dominating baroque musicians endorsed this approach and applied it to their compositions.... ... middle of paper ... ...
History is the story and knowledge of the past. There are individuals that are interested by history and wish to study it by learning more. It is very informative to know what has happened in the past for self-knowledge. An individual cannot be naïve to the past including but not limited to how literature came to. One can understand literature more when they understand the time period the author wrote during and the way they wrote. There are several time periods different authors have been through with each period having specific beliefs. Romanticism is the time period that interests me the most; it was a time during the eighteenth century and focused on nature along with the individual’s expression of imagination and emotion.
Woodlief, Ann M. "Intro to American Romanticism." Intro to American Romanticism. Emerita Associate Professor, 18 Aug. 2001. Web. 05 May 2014.
Romanticism was a reaction to the Enlightenment as a cultural movement, an aesthetic style, and an attitude of mind (210). Culturally, Romanticism freed people from the limitations and rules of the Enlightenment. The music of the Enlightenment was orderly and restrained, while the music of the Romantic period was emotional. As an aesthetic style, Romanticism was very imaginative while the art of the Enlightenment was realistic and ornate. The Romanticism as an attitude of mind was characterized by transcendental idealism, where experience was obtained through the gathering and processing of information. The idealism of the Enlightenment defined experience as something that was just gathered.
The second period of time for music is the Renaissance period. During this time frame music was reborn and it went through a lot of changes and the way music was written and understood. In this period of time, the composers were expe...
Romantic music was a different form of music that didn’t focus on religion, political or social tendencies. According to Lawrence Kramer the author of the book Why Classical Music Still Matters, “historically, the ideal of romantic love, tended to substitute for broader schemes of political, social, vocational, or religious meaning, as part of an increasing general tendency to rely on private rather that public schemes of fulfillment.” Meaning that romanticism had an impact on music in which religion, political and social meanings were substituted by a new form that rely on private situations instead of general public situations. This music form influenced the most in modern music because most of them are not based on
Roughly from 1815 to 1910, this period of time is called the romantic period. At this period, all arts are transforming from classic arts by having greater emphasis on the qualities of remoteness and strangeness in essence. The influence of romanticism in music particularly, has shown that romantic composers value the freedom of expression, movement, passion, and endless pursuit of the unattainable fantasy and imagination. The composers of the romantic period are in search of new subject matters, more emotional and are more expressive of their feelings as they are not bounded by structural rules in classical music where order, equilibrium, control and perfection are deemed important (Dorak, 2000).
The changes in society and the social well-being of people underlie the primary purpose of the Romantic Movement. Romanticism originally was the reaction against the Enlightenment. According to the Scientific Journal Of Humanistic Studies, the Enlightenment’s purpose was “to reform society using reason, challenging ideas are grounded in tradition and faith, and advance knowledge through the scientific method. “It promoted scientific thought, skepticism, and intellectual interchange” (Bodrogean). With the historical and cultural context of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, Romanticism in music took two distinctive paths. “One path in particular was taken in the path to find sources in the French Revolution of 1789 through 1793 and other revolutionary movements such as the July Revolution of 1830” (Fluck).Realism is found everywhere in literature and has enhanced the experiences of our lives, especially in the humanities. The ultimate influential arguments for realism is that it represents the life that people live. In response to the Romantic Era, the Realism Movement sought to depict real-life situations and people that not only affected literature, but also the American music written in the early eighteenth century through the twenty-first century.