Romantic Period 1820 1910 Cultural Trends and Events

Romantic Period 1820 -1910 Cultural Trends and Events • Industrial Revolution and life in crowded cities cause people to long for nature and emotional expression. • Settling of the American West • American Civil War • Europe: Napoleon Bonaparte sweeps across Europe. Italy and Germany become unified countries. Austrian Empire breaks apart. • Fascination with nature in its wild state. • Fascination with the Exotic and Supernatural. • Emotional expression became all-important in art and music Kamien CD#5

Romantic Period Artworks Which painting is Baroque and which is Romantic? Both have movement, color, emotion: ? ? Turner, The Slave Ship, 1840 Rubens, The Fall of Phaeton, 1606 -1608

Comparing Romantic and Baroque Art • Baroque art and Romantic art share asymmetry, a feeling of motion, and expression of emotion in common. • Romantic emotional expression is more true to life, and subjects reveal Romantic fascination with unspoiled nature, and mystery.

Romantic Literature • The Romantic fascination with fantasy and the supernatural produced writers and literature like: – The Brothers Grimm, Fairy Tales – Edgar Allen Poe, The Raven – Mary Shelley, Frankenstein – Jules Verne, 20, 000 Leagues Under the Sea

• Romantic Period Musical Trends Emotion, Adventure, Drama, Fantasy become important. • • Virtuoso performers like Nicolo Pagannini and Franz Liszt toured Europe and lived like rock stars. Liszt Trancendental Etude • Orchestras become larger from @ 30 -40 members in Beethoven’s time to @ 100 members by the year 1900! • Harmony becomes more complex • Instruments become louder and more refined • • • All of this to fill the larger public concert halls: Concerts were no longer for the nobility in the palace, but for everyone You. Tube - Mahler Symphony No. 8 1 st Movement Part 3 Brahms Hungarian Dance 5 - 6 Cecchetto. mht • Small, quiet, delicate pieces, like little jems, were also popular • Schubert, Impromptu in G Flat MAjor D 899 No. 3 (Horowitz)

War of the Romantics • Conservative and Radical Romantic composers and their friends fought with each other in the press through newspaper articles, pamphlets, and editorials. • Both Groups believed they were heirs to Beethoven, and were composing music the way he would have composed it. • Conservative composers championed Absolute Music with forms such as Sonata Form, Theme and Variations, and Rondo. They took the composer Brahms as their reluctant leader. Their style lives on in the works of many modern composers of Symphonies and other works with classical form. • Radicals championed Program Music. They believed they were composing the “Music of the Future. ” They were led by the composers Liszt and Wagner. Their style lives on especially in the works of film composers such a John Williams.

Conservative Romantics • Write Romantic style music (harmony and emotional content) • Use Classical Forms such as: Rondo, Sonata Form, Theme and Variations • There is no extra “story” given by the composer to us to understand the meaning or form of a piece of music • Composers: Johann Strauss, Franz Schubert, Clara and Robert Schumann, Johannes Brahms, Antonin Dvorak, Fanny Mendelssohn Hensel, Felix Mendelssohn, Peter Tchaikovsky • • Brahms Symphony no_ 2 (4 th mvt). mht The Symphony - Forms. mht Brahms, before: Brahms, after:

Radical Romantics • Use literature and poetry as a basis for the form and content of their music. This type of music is called Program Music. • Called their music the “Music of the Future” • Composers: Hector Berlioz, Franz Liszt, Richard Wagner, Gustav Mahler • You. Tube - Fantasia - Night on Bald Mountain • Dukas, Sorcerer's Apprentice, Disney Fantasia Liszt, before : Liszt, after :

Romantic Opera and Music Drama • Giuseppe Verdi and others continued to write Opera in Italy, which never really developed a true symphonic tradition. Opera remained the popular art form there. • Richard Wagner developed Gesamtkunstwerk (ha…say that three times fast!) in Germany. This was a total work of art, encompassing drama, literature, scenery, and music into one whole. He even built himself a theater in which to perform them. As you might guess, he was not a conservative. Verdi, after: Wagner, after:

Romantic Period 1820 -1910 What are your keywords for the ROMANTIC PERIOD? What about an HISTORICAL EVENT?

Romantic Period 1820 -1910 • After 1910, people sensed an era was coming to an end. War was ready to break out in Europe. Western culture would never be the same…