THE ROMANTIC PERIOD (1820-1900) The early nineteenth century brought the flowering of romanticism, a cultural movement that

stressed emotion, imagination and individualism. Romantic writers emphasized freedom of expression. Romantic painters used bolder, more brilliant colors and preferred dynamic motion to gracefully balanced poses. Emotional subjectivity was a basic quality of romanticism in art. Among the most significant romantic musicians were: Franz Schubert Robert Schumann Clara Wieck Schumann Frederic Chopin Franz Liszt Felix Mendelssohn Hector Berlioz Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky Bedrich Smetana Anton Dvorak Johannes Brahms Giuseppe Verdi Giacomo Puccini Richard Wagner Gustav Mahler CHARACTERISTICS OF ROMANTIC MUSIC INDIVIDUALITY OF STYLE

Romantic music puts unprecedented emphasis on self-expression and individuality of style. Many romantics created music that sounds unique and reflects their personalities. EXPRESSIVE AIMS AND SUBJECTS

The romantics explored a universe of feeling that included flamboyance and intimacy, unpredictability and melancholy, rapture and longing. NATIONALISM AND EXOTICISM

Musical nationalism was expressed when romantic composers deliberately created music with a specific national identity, using the folk songs, dances, legends, and history of their homelands. Fascination with national identity also led composers to draw on colorful materials from foreign lands, a trend known as musical exoticism. Examples of musical exoticism: Bizets Carmen Spain Puccinis Madame Butterfly Japan Rimsky-Korsakovs Scheherazade Arabian PROGRAM MUSIC

The nineteenth century was the great age of program music, instrumental music associated with a story, poem, idea, or scene. The non-musical element is usually specified by a title or by explanatory comments called a program. EXPRESSIVE TONE COLOR

Romantic composers reveled in rich and sensuous sound, using tone color to obtain variety of mood and atmosphere. In both symphonic and operatic works, the romantic orchestra was larger and more varied in tone color than the classical orchestra. Toward the end of the romantic era, an orchestra might include close to 100 musicians. COLORFUL HARMONY

The romantics explored new chords and novel ways of using familiar chords. Seeking greater emotional intensity, composers emphasized rich, colorful, and complex harmonies. There was more prominent use of chromatic harmony, which uses chords containing tones not found in the prevailing major or minor scale. Chromatic chords add color and motion to romantic music. A romantic piece tends to have a wide variety of keys and rapid modulations, or changes from one key to another. EXPANDED RANGE OF DYNAMICS, PITCH AND TEMPO

The romantics sometimes demanded ffff and pppp in their compositions. Seeking more and more expressiveness, nineteenth century composers used frequent crescendos and decrescendos, as well as sudden dynamic changes. The range of pitch was expanded too, as composers reached for extremely high or low sounds. Changes of mood in romantic music are often underlined by accelerandos, ritardandos, and subtle variations of pace. FORM: MINIATURE and MONUMENTAL

The nineteenth century was very much an age of contradictions. Romantic composers characteristically expressed themselves both in musical miniatures and in monumental compositions. One the one hand are piano pieces by Chopin and songs by Schubert that last but a few minutes. On the other hand, there are gigantic works by Berlioz and Wagner that call for a huge number of performers, last for several hours, and were designed for large opera houses or concert halls. Romantic composers continued to write symphonies, sonatas, string quartets, concertos, operas and choral works, but their individual movements tended to be longer than Haydns and Mozarts. New techniques were used to unify such long works. One of these is known as thematic transformation when a melody returns in a later movement or section of a romantic work, its character may be transformed by change in dynamics, orchestration, or rhythm.