15 Chapter 15: Music of the Romantic Era
Romantic Era Explored
Introduction
When people talk about “Classical” music, they usually mean Western art music of any time period. But the Classical period was actually a very short era, basically the second half of the 18th century. Only two Classical period composers are widely known: Mozart and Haydn.
The Romantic era produced many more composers whose names and music are still familiar and popular today: Brahms, Tchaikovsky, Schumann, Schubert, Chopin, and Wagner are perhaps the most well known, but there are plenty of others who may also be familiar, including Strauss, Verdi, Liszt, Mendelssohn, Puccini, and Mahler. Ludwig van Beethoven, possibly the most famous composer of all, is harder to place. His early works are from the Classical period and are clearly Classical in style. But his later music, including the majority of his most famous music, is just as clearly Romantic.
The term Romantic covers most of the music (and art and literature) of Western civilization from the 19th century (the 1800s). But there has been plenty of music written in the Romantic style in the 20th century (including many popular movie scores), and music isn’t considered Romantic just because it was written in the 19th century. The beginning of that century found plenty of composers (Rossini, for example) who were still writing Classical sounding music. And by the end of the century, composers were turning away from Romanticism and searching for new idioms, including post Romanticism, Impressionism, and early experiments in Modern music.
Background, Development, and Influence
Classical Roots
Sometimes a new style of music happens when composers forcefully reject the old style. Early Classical composers, for example, were determined to get away from what they considered the excesses of the Baroque style. Modern composers also were consciously trying to invent something new and very different.
But the composers of the Romantic era did not reject Classical music. In fact, they were consciously emulating the composers they considered to be the great classicists: Haydn, Mozart, and particularly Beethoven. They continued to write symphonies, concertos, sonatas, and operas, forms that were all popular with classical composers. They also kept the basic rules for these forms as well as keeping the rules of rhythm, melody, harmony, harmonic progression, tuning, and performance practice that were established in (or before) the Classical period.
The main difference between Classical and Romantic music came from attitudes toward these “rules.” In the 18th century, composers were primarily interested in forms, melodies, and harmonies that provided an easily audible structure for the music. In the first movement of a sonata, for example, each prescribed section would likely be where it belonged, of the appropriate length, and in the proper key. In the 19th century, the “rules” that provided this structure were more likely to be seen as