The Romantic era was, in some respects, a reaction to the Classical era that preceded it. While the Classical period favoured form and structure, the Romantic period favoured a greater range of emotions. The arts became more emotional, and centred on a range of themes, including love, nature, death, passion, freedom and the supernatural. Artists and composers began to be inspired by other art forms- for example, a composer might write music based on a painting that he or she had seen. During the Romantic period, the idea of "beauty in the eye of the beholder" developed. Previously, structure, form and proportion were seen to be the epitome of beauty, and those who didn't appreciate it were thought to have not had enough education. Now, in the Romantic period, beauty was seen as something that one had to perceive for oneself, not something that could be taught.
Many important events happened during the Romantic period inspired music and art of the time. The French Revolution inspired many people with its hope of freedom and democracy. The Industrial Revolution increased the quality and availability of instruments, resulting in an expanded orchestra. Many other theories and ideas were also developed, but once again I need to go back through all of my notes and do some extra reading here.
Romantic music favoured emotion over balanced phrases. That's not to say that all Classical music was all about balanced phrases and no emotion and all Romantic music was about emotion and no balanced phrases- all I mean to say is that emotion became more important. More woodwinds, including extended woodwinds like piccolo and cor anglais, were used for their tone colours. More extreme dynamics were used, partly due to the increased capacity of instruments to handle larger dynamic ranges. Starting towards the end of the Classical period, there began to be deviations from traditional forms- for example, symphonies could have more than four movements (Berlioz's Symphonie Fantastique had five). There was also a greater amount of thematic unity between movements- that is to say, ideas in one movement were more likely to be repeated in the other movements. Some music was programmatic- that is, it told a story, but not as explicitly as an opera or an oratorio would. Berlioz used motifs known as idée fixe to represent the characters in his programmatic works.
Now let's look at some composers of this period!
Berlioz was an interesting fellow. I'll talk about him in a future post.
Liszt, who was Beethoven's student, was a great pianist and a good composer. One of his famous piano works is Liebesträume, or Dreams of Love. (I can play it, but not very well.)
Brahms was also a pretty famous composer. I'm sure you've heard of Brahms' Lullaby at some point! He wrote two sonatas for clarinet and piano- I played the second movement of his second sonata for my recent performance exam, and I'm eyeing the first movement of the first sonata for next year. My clarinet teacher is thinking of the final movement of the first sonata, though.
Saint-Saëns was another composer of the Romantic period. He wrote a musical suite called Carnival of the Animals in which each movement represented an animal. He also wrote a sonata for clarinet and piano. I played the first movement of that sonata for my Semester 1 performance exam.
Grieg was another Romantic-era composer, famous for writing his Peer Gynt suite. I'm sure you've all heard some of the movements from this suite, like Morning and In the Hall of the Mountain King.
Chopin wrote lots of music for piano, including his Raindrop Prelude, his Polonaise in A and his Funeral March. One guy in my class claimed that Chopin was the "best composer to have ever lived" or something along those lines. We all asked, "According to who?"
Next up: Berlioz and his Symphonie Fantastique!
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