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Whats is Romantism in Music

Whats is Romantism in Music Romantic: of, characterized by, or suggestive of an idealised, sentimental, or fantastic view of reality… concerned more with feeling and emotion than with form and aesthetic qualities. The Concise Oxford Dictionary, Eighth edition, 1991. The term romantic first appeared at sometime during the latter half of the 18th Century, meaning in quite literal English, “romance-like”, usually referring to the character of mythical medieval romances. The first significant jump was in literature, where writing became far more reliant on imagination and the freedom of thought and expression, in around 1750. Subsequent movements then began to follow in Music and Art, where the same kind of imagination and expression began to appear. In this essay I shall be discussing the effect that this movement had on music, the way it developed, and the impact that it had on the future development of western music. Origins of Romanticism – a Revolt Against Classicism In many respects, and with hindsight, it seems natural that the Romantic composers and writers would take a new direction in their approach to expression, reacting against the classical and neo-classical ideas of reason and order from the previous age. It was a revolt against classicism, and against the pre-prescribed rules that defined it. The main catalyst for this change was the French Revolution in 1789, where the French monarchy and aristocracy was overthrown by a rebellion of the people and France became a republic. This, in a musical sense, had an immediate impact on French opera, with the emphasis of the stories now beginning to be drawn into the present as opposed to the ancient world, and the old hierarchy of the Gods and feudal systems. The many social and political revolutions of the late 18th Century established new social orders and new ways of life and thought, and this materialised in the arts also, in music in particular by the addition of a new emotional depth to the classical forms of previous years. The Classical Period had lasted from around 1750 – 1820, and was itself a revolt against the previous Baroque era. The arts moved away from the heavily ornamented styles of the Baroque to a cleaner, uncluttered style, thought to be reminiscent of Ancient Greece, and many people interested in music were now the aristocracy rather than the church or monarchy. The social upheavals of the latter part of this period challenged these ideas, and the Age of Reason became the age of the individual, and the beginnings of Romanticism, with its non-rational and disordered reasoning, became predominant. Early Romanticism and the Influence of Beethoven The Romantic age, although having been in the background in literature in particular since 1750, really began to evolve into mainstream music with the shockwaves caused by the French Revolution. Opera was immediately modernised in France – in particular a style later known as ‘Rescue Opera’, which typically depicted the capture of a heroine by an evil tyrant and then rescued gallantly by her lover. This genre showed the new way of thinking, that the evil was undone by human effort and not by the intervention of an almighty, superior being. Ludwig van Beethoven, seen by many as a Classical composer, used the new romantic ideas in his own music. In 1805 he wrote his own Rescue Opera, Fidelio, and even embraced the new ideas in his symphonic music, as first illustrated in the 3rd Symphony, which was entitled the ‘Heroic Symphony’, or Sinfonia Eroica, taking on the romantic idea of individualism. In this also Beethoven starts to add new dimensions to the 18th Century symphony, such as experimenting with, and often ignoring, the sonata form that makes up the first movement, and also experimenting with emotion; ‘the social upheaval of the 2nd half of the Century can be traced in the Symphonies of Beethoven’ (Oxford History of Music). The famous 5th Symphony (1808) is said to portray an act of human defiance of Fate, showing that the music is now growing emotionally deeper, and the symphonic form is slightly disrupted by the linking of the 3rd and 4th movements. It also shows the increasing use of dynamics, which continued throughout the 19th Century to add emotion to the music. His cyclic 9th Symphony (1824) actually breaks away from the symphonic form when a singer invites the other performers to join in singing Shiller’s ‘Ode to Joy’. The emphasis of Romanticism showed a trend away from the hierarchy of the gods, and concentrated more on humanism and the natural world. This was also predominant in the Rescue Operas, which some form of natural disaster usually having a crucial role in the plot, and Beethoven’s Pastoral Symphony (no. 6 1808) also shows a delight in nature. The ever, evolving orchestra also gave the composers of the time a wide scope for pictorialism, and allowed the greater emphasis on individual emotion to flourish, especially in the later romantic period, or the High Romantic period. A good example of this kind of natural depiction in music is from Edvard Greig’s Peer Gynt Suite no. 1 (1874). In particular, Morning, shows a brilliant portrayal of a Norwegian Sunrise. There appears to be subtle hints of previous periods in this piece, with an almost Fugue-like subject and counter subject at the beginning of the piece, but with no polyphony, and with an apparently very strong basis on sonata form. The slight variation in the following repeats help to build up the piece, with more and more of the orchestra accompanying the melody, seemingly representing the rising sun and increasing daylight. Another strong emphasis of the Romantic Period was an interest in the supernatural. Also part of the Peer Gynt Suite no. 1 is a piece called In The Hall of the Mountain King, which shows a complete contrast to Morning. The entire tempo of the piece constantly increases throughout the piece until the dramatic, imperfect series of cadences at the end, producing excitement and anticipation. Not only was the Romantic Period an awakening for the individual, it was also a time of increasing national identity. Many composers began to move away from the Austro-German traditions and looked for inspiration in their own country’s, and in some cases other countries’, history. Nationalist composers include the likes of Greig, Chopin, Sibelius and Antonin Dvorak. Dvorak was an eastern European symphonist, whose 9th Symphony, From the New World (1893), was written whilst he was director of the National Conservatory of Music in New York, and took a great deal of inspiration from the American surroundings and Native American music. In the Negro melodies of America I discover all that is needed for a great and noble school of music. The American musician understands these tunes, they appeal to his imagination because of their associations. New York Herald, 21st May 1893 The symphony has an extremely romantic slow first movement, ‘with a nostalgic cor anglais theme’ (Lionel Salter, 1980). Dvorak was greatly impressed by the natural beauty of the American countryside, and parts of the symphony are said to have been inspired by part of Longfellow’s Song of Hiawatha. Dvorak tries to capture the basis of the native folk music, alongside the folk music of his own country, in particular he himself notes that many of the symphony’s themes are pentatonic, and that all the movements make play with the flattened seventh of the scale, which is common in folk music from all around the world. Another nationalist composer was the Russian Mikhail Glinka. Much of his composition was based on previous Russian composers but he was ‘very much more gifted and commanded a much wider and deeper musical culture’ (New Oxford History of Music). His opera, Russlan and Ludmilla (1842) was based on a fairy tale taken from a poem by the famous Russian writer Alexander Pushkin, and he is seen as one of the founding fathers of a truly Russian musical style, along with Tchaikovsky. This opera, along with A Life for a Tsar (1836), used cadences of Russian speech and Russian folk music, which would have been unheard of in earlier periods. The First World War and the End of Romanticism Romanticism did last to a certain extent into the 20th Century, but composers were already searching for exciting and different modes of expression. The emphasis began to move towards usual and unorthodox harmonies and tonal schemes, Eastern music and the whole tone scale for example, fascinated Debussy. The Great War probably killed off any romanticism that remained in Europe, and this is best shown in the career of the English romantic composer Sir Edward Elgar. In 1899, Elgar produced the Enigma Variations. These were seen immediately as poetic masterpieces, and the ‘Original Theme’ is said to represent Elgar himself, and ‘the rumbustious finale is a self-portrait of a confident, determined Elgar’ (Michael Kennedy, 1985). His Cello Concerto in E Minor (1919) however, was written straight after the First World Word, was his last major piece, and portrays a self-portrait of ‘a man wearied by the world, disillusioned by the war, yet still finding solace in the beauty of music’. The concerto has 4 movements, instead of the usual three, and presents a mood of despair, and a sense of loss, perhaps of the romanticism and the general way of thinking of a now previous age. The romantic period, like so many that preceded it, was a revolt against previous ideologies, mainly due to the social upheavals, and in particular the French Revolution in the latter half of the 18th Century. In musical terms, it added more emotional depth and a greater use of material than previous periods. In the music, the melody receives the greatest emphasis and the style of the music is typically melody with accompaniment. The themes became longer, with more irregular phrases than in the classical period, and the rhythms became more complex, including the use of compound meters, changing meters, cross rhythms and greater syncopation. Composers of the time also included greater use of dissonant chords, and the style became highly chromatic, which in some cases could cause the breakdown of tonality that would occur more commonly in the 20th Century. Minor keys became more frequent to help portray emotion and feeling, and modulations began to occur more frequently that in previous periods. There was a greater use of dynamics, again to add depth and excitement, which was helped by the continuing development and increasing size of the orchestra. Many forms did survive from the Classical and previous periods, such as sonata and rondo, but were greatly expanded. In particular, sonata form became typically much longer, with a greatly expanded development section. Many new genres emerged also during the period, including many different piano pieces, the German lieder, song cycles, programmatic overtures and symphonic poems. In almost all genres however, they became greatly expanded in length, and the traditionally formal style of the Classical Period was broken down, to accommodate the more emotional and irrational sounds. Romanticism pushed the boundaries of the Classical era and allowed the increased development of the music of the time. It was a forerunner to the 20th Century classical music, and allowed the emotion and imagination of the individual composers to flourish, pushing the complexity of the music forward and helping the development of the vast array of music that we see today. Bibliography: Ludwig van Beethoven, Joseph Schmit-Gorg and Hans Schmits, (1974), Polydor International Music in Britain: The Romantic Age 1800-1914, Nicholas Temperley, (1981), Athlone Press London The New Oxford History of Music, OUP The Oxford History of Music, OUP The Oxford Concise Dictionary, Eighth Edition, (1991), OUP WEB RESOURCES: Emory University Website, www.emory.edu/music (Dec 2000) Music History 102, www.ipl.org/exhibit/mushist (April 1999) MISU Website, by Dr. Monty Cole, (Dec 2000) www.misu.nodak.edu/woods/Music_Appreciation/Lecture_Notes/Romanticism/romanticism.html WH Smiths Web Resources, http//ebooks.whsmithonline.co.uk/encyclopedia, Excerpts taken from The Hutchingson Family Encyclopedia, (2000). ARTICLES: Taken from articles written for introductions of albums of the same name. Dvorak’s Symphony no. 9, Lionel Salter, (1980) Edward Elgar’s Enigma Variations and Cello Concerto in E Minor, Michael Kennedy, (1985)

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