MUSIC, ROMANTIC

From "Encyclopedia of the Romantic Era, 1760-1850"

Copyright © 2004 by Taylor & Francis Group

The Romantic style in music is frequently described as radically opposed to its predecessor, the classical
style. This is a somewhat simplistic view, for Romanticism in music, at least initially, was not a deliberate
attempt to overthrow the principles of classicism. Early nineteenth-century Romanticism was far from being a
conscious, concerted, homogeneous movement directed against classicism. By no means did all early
Romantic composers (some trained in the classical and even Baroque traditions) disdain or discard the
forms, genres, and techniques of their forefathers; conversely, traces of proto-Romanticism were apparent
in the instrumental works of many composers active during the second half of the eighteenth century, the
decades that were chiefly marked by the classical aesthetics of Franz Joseph Haydn, Wolfgang Amadeus
Mozart, as well as Ludwig van Beethoven, in works prior to his Third Symphony the “Eroica” (1803).

Classicism in music emphasized objectivity, clarity, equilibrium, serenity, grace, elegance, and wit; classical
forms were rational and restrained. The primary goal was the cultivation of symmetry and proportion as
illustrated in the sonata form with its three sections: exposition (of two contrasting musical themes),
development (of the two themes), and recapitulation (a reconciliation of the themes). This was the musical
outline of the first movement of the classical keyboard sonata, symphony, string quartet, trio, and so on. The
building blocks of the sonata form were four-measure phrases and clear-cut harmonic patterns endowed
with specific formal functions. Throughout the last decades of the eighteenth century sonata form was one of
the primary means of musical architecture, the very embodiment of classical conciseness, order, and logic.

Yet even during that time, Haydn (in his symphonies of the so-called Sturm und Drang, or storm and stress,
period in the late 1760s and early 1770s) and Carl Philipp Emmanuel Bach (in most of his symphonies and
clavier sonatas) insisted on the subjective and the emotional, expressed in dramatic dynamic contrasts;
striking pictorial effects; a preference for abrupt pauses, daring chord structures, unexpected harmonic
progressions, and modulations to remote keys; and sudden shifts of mood and formal distortions that clearly
foreshadowed, albeit on a small scale, the musical aesthetics of the following century.

Within the historical and cultural context of the nineteenth century, Romanticism in music took two distinct
paths: on the one hand, the progressive trend found its ideological sources in the French Revolution of 1789
through 1793 and the revolutionary movements of the following century: the July Revolution of 1830 in
France and the 1848 European revolutions; on the wings of this social upheaval, composers cultivated
innovation and sought to represent in their music the ardor, struggle, and heroism of the period. Beethoven
originally dedicated his the Eroica to Napoleon Bonaparte, whom the composer saw at the time as the
exponent of freedom, equality, and universal brotherhood; when, in 1804, Napoleon crowned himself as
emperor of the French, Beethoven erased the dedication in angry disappointment.

On the other hand, the bleak political outlook resulting from the series of events beginning with Napoleon's
storming of Europe and ending with his defeat and abdication followed by the Congress of Vienna (1814)
triggered feelings of hopelessness and a vague, nostalgic longing for a lost Eden; like their literary
counterpart, composers sought refuge in the recreation of history. The attempt to find comfort and solace in
an idealized past, together with the increased awareness of an earlier musical tradition, until then largely
ignored, were at the root of the preoccupation with Baroque and even Renaissance forms and techniques.
Composers such as Felix Mendelssohn had a keen interest in reviving the almost forgotten works of Johann
Sebastian Bach, whose Passion according to St. Matthew Mendelssohn conducted in Berlin in 1829.
Mendelssohn took up the music of an even more distant period, using Lutheran chorale tunes such as “A
Mighty Fortress” in his Fifth Symphony, the “Reformation” (1832). Both his oratorios, St. Paul (1836) and
Elijah (1846), were reminiscent of the Baroque magnificence associated with similar works by Bach and
George Frideric Handel. Frédéric François Chopin composed his twenty-four preludes for piano (1836-39)
as a deliberate attempt to emulate both the concept and structure of Bach's Das Wohltemperierte Klavier
(The Well-Tempered Clavier, 1722 and 1744)—a two-volume work comprised of forty-eight preludes and
forty-eight fugues in all major and minor keys. Later in the century, Johannes Brahms built the entire fourth
movement of his Fourth Symphony (1885) as a passacaglia or chaconne, both variational forms typical of
Baroque instrumental music.

The musical forms of the earlier part of the nineteenth century remained, generally speaking, those of the
classical period. But the Romantic composer had an inclination for exaggeration and lack of balance that
resulted in the reforging of the size of musical works: thus the abundance, in the first three or four decades
of the century, of miniature forms—both vocal and instrumental—often arranged in sets or cycles and
sometimes related either through a musical or a literary or autobiographical theme. The taste for miniatures
was also prompted by the fashion of soirées (evening literary and musical gatherings of the aristocracy and
bourgeoisie, of which of most enduring fame were the Schubertiads, associated with the composer Franz
Schubert. Most Romantic composers were adept at penning small-scale piano pieces such as impromptus,
waltzes, nocturnes, barcarolles, arabesques, and the like to be played in salons. Chopin, the composer of
the Polish-inspired mazurkas and polonaises, also wrote waltzes and nocturnes—all of relatively diminutive
size and imparting a sense of intimacy. In addition, the first part of the century witnessed a growing interest
in the lied, a relatively short, simple solo song with piano accompaniment. Die schöne Müllerin (The Pretty
Millmaid, 1823) and Winterreise (Winter Journey, 1827) were both composed by Schubert as lied cycles
set to poems by Wilhelm Müller. In 1840 Robert Schumann wrote his two cycles of lieder on poems by
Heinrich Heine (Dichterliebe [Poet's Love]) and Adelbert von Chamisso (Frauenliebe und Leben [A
Woman's Love and Life]) as a love offering to his new bride, Clara Wieck. Still by Schumann, Papillons
(Butterflies, 1832) is a series of small-sized, dancelike solo piano pieces of contrasting character, loosely
related to the central idea of a swirling ball—like the ones described in the sentimental novels of Jean Paul,
whose characters come to life in several of Schumann's compositions. Similarly, the various pieces
comprising Schumann's Carnaval: Scènes mignonnes sur quatre notes (Carnival: Small Scenes on
Four Notes, 1835) for piano are musical characterizations of several members of an imaginary Davidsbund
(David's League) of the composer's own invention, whose mission was to fight the Philistines of
contemporary culture; Clara Wieck and Ernestine (Schumann's former fiancée) each are represented with a
miniature.

At the other end of the compositional spectrum there was the fascination with the sublime and colossal,
which in turn brought about the swelling of the symphony to previously unheard of dimensions. The sheer
number of measures of the usual four movements was increased to sometimes almost unbearable lengths:
a first step in this direction was taken by Beethoven in his Third Symphony, of which the first movement was
double the size of corresponding movements in his first two symphonies of Classical extraction; the first
public performance of the work was greeted by some contemporary critics with grunting disbelief: the
symphony was seen as being of “inordinate length” and its effect on the audience was perceived as one that
“wearies even the cognoscenti.” Furthermore, the number of movements was sometimes increased from
four to five, as in Beethoven's Sixth Symphony, the Pastoral (1808) and in the Symphonie fantastique
composed in 1830 by Hector Berlioz. Individual movements were connected through passages reminiscent
of the principal themes of the introduction (if there was one) or of the first movement; this technique, in
addition to providing a sense of thematic unity throughout the work, was also aimed at creating the
perception of the symphony as a gigantic one-movement piece comprised of contrasting sections: such is
the case with Mendelssohn's Third Symphony, the “Scotch” (1842), and Schumann's Fourth Symphony (the
1851 version).

Further changes took place in terms of emotional content and individual character of movements
themselves: thus the restrained, gracious, balanced classical minuet used in the third movement of Haydn's
and Mozart's symphonies was replaced with a more vigorous, heavier, and faster Scherzo. Beethoven had
already used a scherzo-like sound and tempo for the third movement of his First Symphony (1799-1800),
although he labeled the movement a minuet; his Second Symphony (1801-2) made the change explicit.
Sometimes the traditional order of the four movements itself was inverted, as the scherzo took the position
of the slow, second movement, while the slow section was allotted to the third movement, as in Beethoven's
Ninth Symphony (1822-24) or in Mendelssohn's Fifth Symphony.

The belief that music should seek to suggest or overtly express extramusical ideas taken from literature or
painting—a concept known as programmaticism—was very close to the heart of the Romantic composer.
Descriptive trends had been present in music long before the age of Romanticism: the Italian caccia, for
instance—a fourteenth-century vocal genre, often performed with instrumental accompaniment—sought to
express the tumult and excitement involved in hunting through the use of interjections on reiterated pitches;
the vocal chansons (songs) of Clément Janequin were descriptive of battles (“Bataille de Marignan”),
birdsongs (“Chant des oiseaux”), and street cries (“Cris de Paris”); in terms of eighteenth-century orchestral
music, the four concerti grossi known as I quattro stagioni (The Four Seasons) by Antonio Vivaldi
contained convincing musical depictions of seasonal changes, complete with musical replicas of birdcalls
(Spring) and spirited dance rhythms (Autumn).

But in the early nineteenth century the concept of program permeated all levels of instrumental music, both
solo and orchestral, and was a topic of discussion and spirited debate among supporters and detractors.
Those who promoted programmaticism provided either descriptive titles or elaborate explanations of the
meaning of their works—as seen in the solo piano pieces of Schumann, many of which express Romantic
contradiction and tension through musically depicted characters of the composer's own invention: Florestan,
the impulsive hero; Eusebius, the dreamer; Raro, the wise master. Schumann used these characters to
voice his own opinions on the musical aesthetics of the time. Thus Florestan states, in one of the many
aphorisms published by Schumann throughout his life, that “the painter sees a poem as a picture, the
musician transforms paintings into tone.” Mendelssohn, at one time not one of the outspoken supporters of
program music, composed his Lieder ohne Wörte (Songs without Words), a cycle comprised of forty-
eight miniature pieces arranged in six books, to illustrate the idea that music can express states of the soul
without the help of literature, whether lyrical, descriptive, or narrative (ironically, when the work was printed
the publishers headed most of the pieces with descriptive titles such as “The Gondola Song,” “The Spinning
Song,” and so on).

Orchestral music in the nineteenth century owes a large debt to Beethoven's symphonies: of these, the first
two, the Fourth (1806-8), the Seventh (1811-12), and the Eighth (1812) are examples of pure or absolute
music—in other words, music without program. On the other hand, the Third, Fifth, Sixth, and Ninth
Symphonies are all programmatic, introducing extra-musical images of various levels of explicitness. Thus
the Third Symphony depicts the idea of the Romantic hero (Napoleon, but also the composer himself) and
the Fifth Symphony (1807-8) was interpreted as a musical metaphor for man's titanic struggle with destiny;
in the latter, the key of C minor in the first movement represents apprehension and gloom, while the last
movement's C major expresses triumph and brightness: the forces of darkness have been overthrown.
Beethoven provided descriptive titles (“Scene by the Brook,” “Merrymaking of the Peasants,” “Storm,” and
the like) for each of the five movements of his Sixth Symphony, the “Pastoral” (1808) whose music dwells on
the Romantic theme of man's communion with nature and offers glimpses of idyllic country life. Finally, in the
Ninth Symphony's fourth movement, the composer included soloists and a choir, and set to music fragments
from Johann Christoph Friedrich von Schiller's Ode to Joy to express more convincingly with the help of
words his belief in universal brotherhood.

The program, then, could be overtly stated as in Beethoven's “Pastoral” or Schumann's First Symphony, the
“Spring” (1841), where the composer provided subtitles for each movement; it could also be more of a
suggestion relying on a particular atmosphere, instrumental color, and rhythmic pattern, as in Mendelssohn's
Fourth Symphony, the “Italian” (1833)—a work evocative of the sunny, vibrant landscapes and bouncy
dances of the South.

The uncontested champion of program music in the earlier part of the nineteenth century was Berlioz. His
Symphonie fantastique-Scenes from the Life of an Artist, composed in 1830 as an autobiographical
piece, has since been alternatively interpreted as a narrative of his passionate love for the Irish actress
Harriet Smithson—or a five-act drama stemming from drug-induced hallucination. The symphony's five
movements are developed from the transformation and elaboration of a single, obsessive theme—the idée
fixe, a soaring melody symbolizing the beloved woman. For the first performance of the symphony Berlioz
provided an ample program of his own making, offering descriptive titles and a synopsis for each movement:
the first three (“Daydreams-Passions” “A Ball,” and “Country Scene”) show the artist (the composer himself)
haunted by the image of the woman with whom he “falls hopelessly in love,” who “brings trouble to his spirit,”
and whose memory generates “a mixture of hope and fear … visions of happiness troubled by dark fore-
bodings.” The fourth and the fifth movements (“March to the Scaffold” and “Dream of a Sabbath Night”)
allude to material that Berlioz might have found in Thomas de Quincey's Confessions of an English
Opium Eater: the hero has poisoned himself with opium and is experiencing a drug-induced nightmare;
having—in his dream—murdered his mistress, he is taken to the scaffold and witnesses his own execution;
then he “sees himself at a sabbath, surrounded by a hideous crowd of spirits …” while his mistress, stripped
of her noble qualities, “joins the diabolic orgy” on a hideously distorted version of the idée fixe; a grotesque
parody on the Dies irae (Day of Wrath), a sequence used in the Catholic funeral mass, concludes the
symphony.

While Berlioz's best known programmatic work is a symphony—albeit of nontraditional structure and
dimensions—the paragon of Romantic program music is found in the twelve tone poems of Franz Liszt
published between 1856 and 1861 (Symphonische Dichtung ["symphonic poem"] is a term apparently
coined by Liszt around 1853). These are one-movement compositions of various sizes, intense emotion, and
striking pictorial effects, each bearing—upon publication—a preface that discloses its source of inspiration:
Les Préludes (1856) is based on one of Alphonse Marie-Louis de Lamartine's poetic meditations; Mazeppa
(1856) on a poem of the same title by Victor Hugo; Hamlet (1861) on William Shakespeare's play;
Hunnenschlacht (Battle of the Huns, 1861) on a painting by Friedrich-August Kaulbach.

Throughout the eighteenth century European opera houses and their audiences had been under the spell of
Italian opera; this state of affairs was perpetuated well into the nineteenth century, as in addition to the
musical centers of Italy, both Vienna and Paris as well as the German cities produced time and again the
operas—comic or serious—of Gioacchino Antonio Rossini, Gaetano Donizetti, Vincenzo Bellini, and
Giuseppe Verdi. Italian composers and librettists concerned themselves with plausible, yet conventional,
stage re-creations of the human comedy (or drama); history (whether Italian or otherwise), social context, or
nature were seen as a mere background against which conflicts between individuals or groups arose,
evolved and were resolved. Italian opera, rooted in two centuries of tradition, focused on true or plausible
stories and beautifully carved, melodious arias of classical shape involving a high level of vocal virtuosity.
The Italian aria, generally conceived as a showcase for the prima donna or the primo uomo, was the
preferred vehicle for expressing emotions of every sort.

It did not, however, play a major role in French opera. Early in the nineteenth century Paris made a
successful attempt to promote its own brand of operatic work, the grand opéra. A sumptuous affair involving
large crowd scenes, grandiose ballets, lavish settings, and stage props built in the best tradition of the
seventeenth-century “flying machines,” the French opera was often composed on subjects adapted from
medieval legends, classical mythology, or French history. These aspects are represented in Les
Huguenots (1836), the work of Giacomo Meyerbeer, which is a kaleidoscope of rapidly shifting audio-visual
tableaux depicting the conflicts between religious and political factions in France on the eve of the Night of
St. Bartholomew. Richard Wagner—who later in the century became the loudest detractor of the traditional
operatic conventions in general and, because of his Jewishness, of Meyerbeer in particular—had earlier
succumbed to the charms of grand opera when he composed and revised Tannhäuser (first performed in
1845).

Neither the Italian nor the French approach, both believed to be too conventional, were satisfactory for the
more meditative and philosophically-inclined German, who was looking for tales of trial and redemption
involving supernatural forces—of which Mozart's Die Zauberflöte (The Magic Flute, 1791) was one
illustrious example. The first lasting nineteenth-century operatic attempt to fulfill the German taste for stories
incorporating fantastic elements and a wild, ominous nature was Undine (1813-14) by E. T. A. Hoffmann—
who, like Schumann, was a composer, writer, and literary critic. Der Freischütz (The Freeshooter, 1821) by
Carl Maria von Weber was the glorious heir to this tradition. Composed on the Faustian theme of man selling
his soul to the devil in exchange for earthly favors (in this case, some magic bullets that would enable him to
win a shooting contest and the hand of his beloved), the opera basks in the dark mystery of the Northern
forest populated with fantastic characters. A battle between angelic and demonic forces ensues, at the end
of which the hero redeems himself, emerging triumphant. Medieval legends of salvation and redemption also
formed the basis for Richard Wagner's Der fliegende Holländer (The Flying Dutchman, 1843),
Tannhäuser (1845), and Lohengrin (1850)—the latter considered the last important German Romantic
opera. With Tristan und Isolde (1857-59), Wagner transcended the limits of the traditional concept of
“number opera” consisting of well-delineated arias, recitatives, and chorus scenes, and plunged into the
hitherto unexplored territory of continuous, unbroken melodic lines and intensely chromatic harmonies.
Previously used in Lohengrin, the leitmotif—a reoccuring musical theme associated with particular
personages, objects, or situations—became all-pervasive in Tristan, where the orchestra, often the carrier
of such themes, was given a prominence that elevated its status to that of a prima donna.

As the nineteenth century wore on, Romantic ideology and aesthetics, together with the view of the
musician's role in society, grew more radical. The rise of the composer and interpreter to the status of a
superhuman hero, already visible in Beethoven's somewhat eccentric mannerisms, was accentuated
towards the middle of the century and found its climax in the musical philosophy and practice of Liszt and
Wagner, both narcissistic personalities who took immense pleasure in subjugating the crowds, and
professed music as a quasi-religious ritual of which they viewed themselves the semiofficial priests.

With all this came a marked change in the concept of sound and, consequently, of harmony and
instrumental color. The expansive use of chromaticism sought to infuse music with a profusion of harmonic
nuances—thus with greater expressive potential; this, together with the widespread use of unexpected chord
progressions and sudden modulations to distant keys, gradually “liberated” music from the conventions of
the earlier part of the century. The harmonic language of the later nineteenth century saw the introduction of
bold, complex chords and a nontraditional, shocking treatment of dissonances that stretched postclassical
harmony to its utmost limits and, in works of Liszt (the “Faust” Symphony [1854]; Nuages gris [Gray
Clouds, 1881] for piano) and Wagner (Tristan and Isolde, [1857-59, the trilogy Das Ring des
Nibeliungen [The Ring of the Nibelung, completed in 1874], and Parsifal [1882]), challenged—and
ultimately overthrew—the very concepts of traditional tonality, form, function, and structure.

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Luminita Florea
 Copyright © 2004 by Taylor & Francis Group

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APA

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MLA

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2003. Credo Reference. Web. 12 January 2015.

Chicago

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(accessed January 12, 2015.)

Harvard

Florea, L., 2003, "Music, romantic" in Encyclopedia of the romantic era, 1760-1850, Routledge,
London, United Kingdom. Accessed: 12 January 2015, from Credo Reference