Proto-Romanticism

        "Reason is, and ought only to be the slave of the passions, and can never pretend to 

          any other office than to serve and obey them." 

                                                       David Hume, Treatise of Human Nature, 1739

        "To feel is to exist... and our feelings come, most incontestably, before our thoughts." 

                                                       Jean-Jacques Rousseau, "Letters Moralis," 1758    


                Amidst the classicism of the mid-18th century, there were two movements 

        that are proto-romantic (or pre-romantic).  First came empfindsamer Stil (the 

        sensitive style) beginning in the 1740s.  It is an earlier parallel to the showier 

        and stormier phase called Sturm und Drang (storm and stress) that emerged 

        around 1770.

                These two trends are together regarded as "pre-Romantic" manifestations 

        because of their emphasis on features such as extreme expressive contrasts 

        with disruptive incursions, instability of key, sudden changes of register, and 

        dynamic contrast, all of which are atypical of musical classicism as practiced 
        in the second half of the eighteenth century.  

                Most proto-romantic music used minor keys for their inherent darkness 

        darkness, but not all of it did.  Major keys were sometimes used and drama 

        and tension could also be produced using them.  But minor keys are better for 

        provoking the darkest of emotions like depression, anguish and anger.  (Online Piano)


      1.  empfindsamer Stil  - the sensitive (or tender) style  (begins c. 1730?)


       2.  Sturm und Drang  - Storm and Stress (late 1760s(?) - early 1780s)