During the Romantic Period Poetry and Music Are Intimately Infused in the Art Song Also Known as

Musical Traits of Romanticism

Composers brought their musical narratives to life in sound by making each work a unique expression of emotions, creating organic unity for each piece, breaking the rules of form established in the Classical Period, using more than dissonance, and expanding instrumentation.

In the Romantic period, for the start fourth dimension, it was taboo for composers to recycle their ain musical material in new works. Composers like Johann Sebastian Bach, George Friedrich Handel, and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart would often take entire chunks of music from their early works and rework them in subsequently pieces. During the Bizarre and Classical periods, this was entirely adequate, and helped composers to write vast amounts of music very quickly. Notwithstanding, with the new emphasis on individualism and the private's emotions in the Romantic period, composers risked ridicule if the material for each piece was non new. The effects of this tendency can be seen in the numbers: Mozart and Haydn, both of whom recycled musical material in their works, composed 41 and 109 symphonies respectively, whereas Beethoven, who insisted on writing new textile each time, only composed 9.

This emphasis on individual expression and uniqueness as well led to the rising of the "genius" composer, who was, traditionally, a misunderstood soul in possession of great wisdom to impart to the world through their music. The framing of a composer as misunderstood and struggling against the world is a very Romantic idea and tin be seen in the biographies of Romantic composers like Beethoven, Robert Schumann, Richard Wagner, and Gustav Mahler.

1 way composers created unique, individual works was by connecting the movements of works through an organic unity. "Organic unity" is a fancy manner of saying that works with multiple movements, like symphonies, operas, and sonatas, were tied together with a recurring tune or "theme." An example of this is the iv-note "fate" motif from Beethoven's 5th symphony. Not only is the first movement of the symphony centered around those four notes, but the motif comes back in all the subsequent movements also. These unifying themes were called different things by different Romantic composers. For case, Berlioz chosen this an "idée fixe," while Wagner called it a "leitmotif," a term still in utilize today.

Composers of the Romantic Period often relied on the forms established in the Classical period, just they likewise made changes to these forms to encompass their expressive musical interests. One way Romantic composers broke the rules of the Classical mode was by expanding forms--making them longer and adding lengthy introductions, longer developments, and dramatic endmost codas to private movements. These expansions took the counterbalanced, two-part Classical Sonata Form and turned information technology into a three-part form, with the development section gaining in emotional intensity and added length. Additionally, composers during the Romantic catamenia modulated to a wider variety of key areas than those in the Classical menstruum, adding more than dramatic tension in the procedure.

19th Century Sonata Form

	Slow Intro	Exposition			Evolution	Recapitulation	Coda
		A			B	A'
		Primary Theme (Pt)	Secondary Theme (St)	Closing Material (Thou)		Pt     St          K
Major		I	i, V, VI, Iii	I	Unstable fundamental areas	I         I           I	I
Small		i	V, v, VI, III	i	Unstable key areas	i         i           i	i

Composers further enhanced the dramatic tension of their works through the increased apply of dissonance and unconventional harmonic relationships. A neat case of such dissonance tin can be found in the famous "Tristan" chord used in Wagner'south opera Tristan und Isolde. This chord contains the dissonant interval of a tritone, an augmented sixth, and a raised 9th above the bass:

Wagner's "Tristan" Chord

In Classical music, a dissonant chord like this would most e'er occur in passing, and would resolve to a familiar, stable harmony, instead of the less stable Dominant chord information technology resolves to in Wagner's opera.

Finally, composers expanded the instrumentation they used in their compositions. This included increasing orchestra sizes to take larger string sections, and employing winds in groups of iii instead of the pairs found in orchestras of the Classical menstruation. Composers also added higher and lower instruments to the orchestra to increase its pitch range. In the Romantic menstruum, it was mutual for symphonic works to utilise piccolo, English horn, bass clarinet, contrabassoon, trumpets, trombones, and even tubas! Some symphonic works were too joined by full choruses, as in Berlioz'southward dramatic symphony Romeo and Juliette.

The range of the pianoforte was besides expanded in the Romantic period, increasing in size from a 4 to five octave range to the modernistic day seven-octave range, an expansion that was well-exploited past piano-axial Romantic composers like Frederic Chopin and Franz Liszt. Pianos too acquired a more than robust construction process, and were made using stronger materials like steel and cast-atomic number 26, giving them the ability to play louder, and giving composers the ability to reach for even greater dynamic extremes.

Contexts for the Romantic Period

Concert Life

Concert life flourished during the Romantic Menstruum. The public concerts that had been gaining popularity in the Classical Period exploded in the early decades of the 19th century. Governments, as well every bit music societies, established concert series to exist held throughout the year in a variety of venues. Large concert halls were erected to accommodate large performing orchestras and huge audiences. Composers could now earn money from the performance and publication of their works for such public concerts, rather than through composing solely for noble patrons or churches.

Public concerts also took on numerous forms. The bulk of public concerts, those that were not opera performances, took the form of variety shows, in which many performers would perform many different styles of music. Performances could first with an orchestral overture, then have a vocalist performing an aria from an opera, and so a violinist performing a romance, a pianist performing virtuosic transcriptions from a popular opera, a speaker reciting verse to musical accessory, and a choir, all performing together as a part of a unmarried concert.

The nineteenth century too saw the ascension of the virtuosic performer, which led to the format of the solo recital with which we are familiar today. Performer composers would write works to show off their vivid technique and astound their public audiences. Ane of the get-go of these virtuosic showmen was the violinist Niccolò Paganini (1782-1840), who wowed his audiences with brilliant displays of virtuosic musicianship--fast passage work, double stops, harmonics, and pizzicato effects. Rumors swirled around Paganini, stating that in guild to be so expert at the violin, he must accept sold his soul to the devil, a rumor that too followed many other virtuosic performers into the twentieth century.

Audience fandom for virtuosic performers atomic number 82 to the Romantic "Cult of the Artist," which elevated particular composers and performers to the level of "vaunted genius." This fandom is similar to what we come across in the twentieth century with big name celebrities like The Beatles, Elvis, Taylor Swift, Justin Bieber, and One Direction. Audiences would flock to concerts, strive to run across the artist, and buy trade adorned with the artists' names. Ii of the biggest stars of the nineteenth century were pianist Franz Liszt and opera singer Jenny Lind, who generated their own special brands of fan devotion, "Lisztomania" and "Lindomania."  Products sold with Jenny Lind's name on them included: cribs, chairs, stools, ovens, fireplaces, perfumes, soaps, dolls, equally well as songs and canvass music.

Additionally, the Romantic Period witnessed a change in audience behavior during concerts. In the Classical and early Romantic periods, audience members would antipodal, trip the light fantastic toe, and swallow while a concert was being performed. Audiences would often cry out with cheers or boos, depending on their appreciation of what was beingness performed. As the nineteenth century continued though, new restrictions were added to concert halls, which called for the audience to sit down quietly and receive the "emotional wisdom" from the composers and performers on stage.

Music for the Home

Domestic music-making similarly experienced a big boom during the Romantic Menstruation. As mentioned earlier, due in large function to the Industrial Revolution, Europe and the Americas gained a new heart class that possessed leisure time and a caste of dispensable income. In a world without TV's and smartphones, one of the well-nigh popular uses of leisure time and dispensable income was for music. Families hired music teachers for their children; sons would learn how to play string or wind instruments and daughters would learn to sing and play piano. In fact, information technology was considered a sign of a family's elevated social condition to have a daughter who could play pianoforte for the family'southward entertainment. To make full the demand of such private performances, composers wrote in more intimate genres like the German Lied (song), grapheme pieces for solo piano, sonatas for a solo instrument and piano, and piano trios.

Famous composers and performers too participated in home music-making for their close friends and family. The composer Franz Schubert held renowned "Schubertiads" where he would perform some of his latest compositions, and host friends and family in the reading of poetry and in the argue of political issues. Pianist and composer Fanny Mendelssohn Hensel also hosted musical performances every Dominicus in her family'south Berlin dwelling. Performances at Hensel's musicales could include full orchestral performances, choirs, also every bit performances of sleeping accommodation music and solo instrumentals. Some notable attendees and performers at Hensel's musicales included composers Robert and Clara Schumann, virtuoso violinist Joseph Joachim, the composer Johannes Brahms, and of form, Hensel's brother, Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy. The room these concerts were held in could fit upwards to 1 hundred people, but since they were held in a private domicile and for only those invited, they were nevertheless seen every bit private, domestic performances.

Music was an essential class of amusement in both the home and in public life during the Romantic period. At the end of the 19th century, new technologies, such as the invention of recorded audio and images, would have a major affect on daily life. Composers of the Early on Modern period to come in the beginning of the twentieth century would have to grapple with these changes and invent new means of perceiving and creating music.

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Source: https://www.libertyparkmusic.com/the-romantic-period/

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