History (Early Romantic)
History of Music 14C-20C – Early Romantic period
Early Romantic (c.1830 – c.1860)
It was apparent as Beethoven and Schubert moved towards their later years the increased dynamic intensity of the music required larger orchestras with new developments in brass woodwinds and the piano. Fiendish levels of skills from soloists and virtuoso performers never heard before as the 19th century music produced ‘superstar’s not unlike the ‘Pop’ world of today. Instrumental music became more like opera with storylines, dramas and plots (Glinka) or representational of natural phenomena (Smetana) but possibly even more ‘romantic’ were Chopin, Berlioz, Liszt Schumann and Mendelssohn.
The music of the Romantic period saw many new developments with regard toForte piano form. The Romantic Symphony was expanded upon in terms of size and musicality. Berlioz’s Symphonie Fantastique is an example of ‘Program music’ whereby a love story unfolds and characters can be identified by ‘motif’s’ or a theme know as the ‘idee fixe’
The Piano became the most popular instrument of the 19th century and Chopin and Liszt (amongst others) composed much remarkable music for the piano.
Richard Strauss (and others) wrote ‘tone poems’ of a single long movement. Don Juan and Der Rosenkavalie his most well known examples.
Formerly an Overture was written as an instrumental prelude to an opera to set the mood, but now the Overture existed as a stand-alone work with composers such as Mendelssohn writing his Fingal’s Cave Overture.
Schubert became famous for his Lieder (beautiful songs accompanied by the piano) and Verdi and Wagner wrote fabulous Operas
