Romanticism in Music: Characteristics and Evolution

Romanticism in Music

Romanticism feels a passion for everything that is distant, magical, and unreal. Romantic music, leaving the balance of classicism for a direct and passionate expression of feelings and emotions. Music occupies a place of honor in this period; it is more abstract than others.

Musical Forms

• Vocal Music: Opera, Mass, Oratorio, Lied.
• Instrumental Music: Symphony, Symphonic Poem, Sonata, Concerto, Trio, Quartet, Quintet.

Symphonic Poem

A symphonic poem is a work of a genre that develops from a fact of imagination.

The Orchestra

Instruments: Percussion, drums, trumpets, horns, trombones, tuba, harp, clarinet, bassoon, oboe, violins, and basses.

The Lied

A Lied is a song in a romantic style and with a very stylized German language, interpreted by a solo voice and piano.

Social Changes Affecting Romantic Musical Life

1. A change of mentality in society regarding the perception of the artist, brought up in that the artist is a genius, not a craftsman.
2. New sources of income are generated.
3. Public music is born.
4. A new slavery comes from the public tastes of the audience.

How Romantic Music Achieved Intensity and Passion

1. Taste for technical virtuosity and ostentation.
2. Beautiful and passionate melodies.
3. Flexible use of movement.
4. Great, rich movement.
5. Harmonies enriched with constant changes of tone.
6. Increasing timbral possibilities; the orchestra multiplies.
7. Forms achieve great durability and are applied more freely (a lot of character).

Impressionism

The Impressionist French musical style looks like pictorial experimentation with the addition of sound and rhythm. Inaccurate, linear melodies are not very singable. It sounds sensitive or not at all defined; it sounds like a cloud where there are feelings but no emotions.

Representatives: Debussy and Ravel.

Stravinsky

Stravinsky revolutionizes the use of rhythm in his works. Elaborate pace and unpredictability create a seemingly primitive sound. It sounds like a real slap in the ears of the public of that time.

Schonberg

Schonberg's revolution affects melody. This music, built on melodies, does not bear in mind the tone, since the system used in the Renaissance generates some sounds of the scale as a center of attraction. Schonberg's music is atonal.

Contemporary Music

Contemporary music attaches great importance to the timbre as a musical element and gives it as much prominence as the melody or rhythm. Another characteristic of the music of the twentieth century is the acceptance of noise as sound material and its incorporation into musical compositions.

Conclusion

Romanticism is a period of idealistic and radical thinking in which the values of liberty are above all.