Musical Epochs

The Romantic

Term applied to the era in music history, from circa 1790 to 1910, that succeeded the Classical period. The word 'romantic' has to do with romance, imagination, the strange and the fantastic; in music it is applied (as to literature and painting) to works in which fantasy and imagination are in their own right more important than classical features such as balance, restraint and good taste.

Romanticism has early manifestations in English 18th-century literature, but its chief development was in Paris and Germany. In post-Revolution Paris, it is seen in the new types of opera that began to emerge and in the massive scale of patriotic music-making. In Germany. it appeared in the work of E.T.A. Hoffmann, the operas of Weber and the songs of Schubert, for example. The influence of Goethe and particularly his Faust, was widely felt: Faust's search for immortality and transcendental sensual experience, leading him to meddle with the forces of darkness, typifies some of the attitudes of early Romanticism, seen in music in such works as Schubert's song Der Erlk�nig, Weber's Der Freisch�tz and Berlioz's Symphonie fantastique. The position of the creative artist began to change: the artist could lead the way into a transcendental world and thus came to be regarded as a spiritual hero.

In music, Romanticism led to looser and more extended musical forms, including the symphonic poem (an orchestral work that related a story, or at least had a literary or artistic background), the expressive miniature for piano (especially the nocturne, cultivated by Field, Chopin and others, in which clear outlines were blurred to provide a dreamy, nocturnal effect), the art song (in which great emphasis was placed on the music's detailed expression of the verbal text and the symbolic meanings it carried) and opera, with plots that dealt with the escape of individuals from political repression ('rescue operas') or the fates of national or religious groups (especially in French grand opera) or events in exotic, far-off settings, usually in medieval times (Italian composers especially favoured plots set in Scotland based on Walter Scott).

Another manifestation of Romanticism is found in the exaltation not only of the composer but of the virtuoso performer; pianists such as Chopin and Liszt, and the violinist Paganini, acquired European reputations for their unique insights or heroic brilliance. A further aspect of Romanticism is found in the search for national identity, often through their history and folk-music repertory, by many of the European countries just attaining political maturity or independence.

The early period of Romanticism is generally seen as ending about the middle of the century, and the middle period as ending in circa 1890; the final period can be reckoned as ending in circa 1910 or at the time of World War I.

This project was created by Ahmed Azab.
Since �2001

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