Romanticism Topics

    Romantic Themes:  Darker emotions (melancholy, grief, insecurity, fear, anger, rage...) 

 

          Love (requited and unrequited), mystery, magic, the supernatural, the ominous, 

          the diabolical, the macabre, terror, suffering, tragedy, death, destiny 
 
         the diab

         Individualism, subjective emotions (often intense, quickly changing), mental instability

          Glorification of nature (wild, untamed) / Distain for science (industrial revolution) 
          

   
            Heroism - Beethoven Symphony No. 3 "Eroica" (1805)  -  The artist as hero

Alfred de Musset or Alexandre Dumas, George Sand, Liszt, Marie d'Agoult; 

standing Hector Berlioz or Victor Hugo, Niccolò Paganini, Gioachino Rossini

    Early (pre-1830) Romantic Writers:    

         German:

                    Johann Gottfried (after 1802 von) Herder  (1744 - 1803)  Important Romantic philosopher

                    Johann Wolfgang von Goethe  (1749 - 1832)

                    Jean Paul  (Johann Paul Friedrich Richter) (1763 – 1825)

                    Novalis  (Georg Philipp Friedrich Freiherr von Hardenberg)  (1772 – 1801)

                    E.T.A. Hoffmann  (1776 - 1822)  Writer and champion of Beethoven's music

                    Heinrich Heine  (1797 - 1856)  


         British:

                     William Wordsworth's and Samuel Coleridge's Lyrical Ballads  (1798) 

                     William Blake (1757 – 1827)  Poet and  important early Romantic painter

Elohim Creating Adam (1795 - 1805)

                     Lord Byron (1788–1824), Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822) and John Keats (1795–1821), 

                     Mary Shelly (1797 - 1851)



    Expanding middle class - public performances "democratized taste"

    Musical Criticism - The critic as public advisor  (Berlioz and Robert Schumann)

    Instrument Improvements: 

          The piano  -  Metal harp (1820s), among other things

          Brass instruments get valves

          Mass production and precision manufacturing 

 

          Larger Orchestras

    Nationalism -  German, Russian, Czech

    Program Music  - Instrumental music that has a topic, (sometimes a narrative in the Romantic era)

    Virtuosos (e.g. Paganini and Liszt), Professional Conductors (Berlioz, Mendelssohn)

    After many, many centuries, instrumental music finally surpasses vocal music in popularity.