Another classical music era is the Romantic period music. This era includes the years 1830 to 1910. In the romantic era music, emotions played a significant role and were strongly expressed. One of the most common of these feelings is the longing for unattainable divine love and salvation.
In the Romantic period concerts and operas came out of the monopoly of the rich classes and royal families. According to the Romantic era composers, music was an art that could describe a wide range of human emotions. It was for this reason that the works of this era have more emotions. For Romantic era composers, expressing emotions was more important than observing form, and they ignored many of the rules of composers in classical era music. The Romantic period music has a great impact on the repertoire of today’s orchestras.
The romantic movement art and literature influenced the era of romantic music. During the Romantic period, important political, economic, and industrial changes occurred in Europe and America. The aim of the revolutions that happened in America and France was to increase people’s rights and wish for their freedom. In romantic era music, with industrial revolutions, people earned more money. As a result, the population of people who could afford to attend concerts increased.
Characteristics of music in the romantic period
As we said, during the Romantic era music, composers moved away from the formal musical structures of the Classical era. They turned more to emotions and expressed their emotional and individual experiences in the majority of musical works. In the Romantic period music, the forms expanded and the dynamics and dissonance in the music pieces increased. We will discuss the characteristics of the music in the romantic period in the following.
In the Romantic era music, composers started composing in new forms in addition to existing forms such as symphonies and sonata. We can mention Rhapsody, concert etude, mazurka, and overture among the new forms. Before the Romantic period, several new forms had been created, which were changed and modified by composers during the Romantic period. Rhapsody tells stories about contrasts, such as light and dark, loud and gentle, happy and sad. In the Romantic period music, first etude was a technical exercise, but now it has become a musical work.
In the pre-romantic era, orchestras mostly used string instruments for their compositions. Brass and woodwind instruments also played a role in orchestras, but not as much as string instruments. But in the romantic period, composers in the orchestra used woodwind, brass, and percussion instruments as much as they used string instruments.
It was during the Romantic period music that telling stories through instruments became very popular and spread across Europe.The program music is a song that composer wrote it for a special story to accompany it. Through the program music, visual images are described and a story is told. During the Romantic period, descriptive music, which is orchestral program music, became very popular.
Romantic instruments
In this part, we are going to briefly introduce you to romantic instruments. In the romantic period music, the piano became more flexible and the octave range of the piano increased from 4 to 7 octaves. Pianos were made of steel and cast iron, which were both more durable and had a higher volume level. As we said, the orchestra expanded and included wind instruments.
Among the stringed instruments of the romantic music era, we can mention the violin, viola, cello, and contrabass.
Woodwind instruments used in romantic era music include the flute, oboe, English horn, clarinet, bassoon, and piccolo.
In the romantic period music, brass wind instruments such as trumpet, trombone, and tuba were used.
Notable romantic composers
In the Romantic period music, many composers were raised, many of whom were influenced by Beethoven. In the following, we will introduce some prominent composers in the Romantic period.
Ludwig van Beethoven: Beethoven is considered a classical era composer, but some of his last works, such as Symphony No. 9 and String Quartet, were written at the beginning of the Romantic period.
Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky: Tchaikovsky is the first Russian composer of the Romantic period, who had a global impact on music. His progress in music was very fast and he created his musical works with great enthusiasm. He was almost 30 years old when he was able to write his first major work for orchestra, “Romeo and Juliet”. Among other great works of Tchaikovsky, we can mention “Swan Lake”, “The Nutcracker” and the opera “Eugene Onegin”.
Franz Liszt: Another romantic composer is Liszt. With his innovations in harmony and changes in symphonic themes, he greatly influenced the music of the Romantic period music. Liszt was very skilled at playing the piano and audiences came from far distances to hear him play.
Richard Wagner: Wagner was not only a composer but also a theater director and conductor hailing. He was one of the composers who had a great impact on the Romantic movement. He used rich harmonies and complex textures in his compositions.
Giuseppe Verdi: Verdi was another romantic composer from Italy. During the romantic period, Verdi worked on Italian opera and has great works such as “Aida”, “Otello”, “Requiem” and “Falstaff”.
Summary
As we said, in the Romantic period music, the basis of musical works was individualism. Romantic composer used to express their personal feelings through music. Musical forms expanded and dissonance in pieces increased. In program music, music was used to describe stories. In the Romantic era music, descriptive music became very popular among people. If you want to know about the development of classical music in other eras, you can refer to the article on classical music eras on the chang.education website.
