What is Musical Romanticism?

While the Classical era saw itself as a strong unity of people that outsiders could not disturb without any risk, especially the German Romantics, unlike their French counterparts, did not want to stick together like this. They were not interested in this kind of unity to such an extent, but instead they strongly believed in individuality – the German Romantic artist was proud of his isolation and greatness or ‘genius’. On the other hand, the French Romantics were more concerned with general and impersonal issues than with definite and private ones. However, because of this main concern with the universal, they also withdrew themselves into the centre of their inner selves, a feature which actually mainly characterises the German Romantics. Those artists – poets, painters, musicians – seem to have lived in a dream world, a world of their very own, which they were able to shape the way they wanted it to be, according to what they considered aesthetically beautiful and pleasing, giving them the privilege of looking at society from a very different angle. Living in this vision of their very own, artists were able to express their deepest emotions, dreams and hopes in a completely new and individual way. Of course there was a certain danger involved in such a lifestyle, and in many cases this emotional isolation not only led to extreme melancholy and a feeling of constantly being misunderstood, but also to insanity as well as suicides. But then again, healthy mental states and good general health were normally looked down upon as being banal and probably too normal.

Thus it looks like the French Romantics went on to rebel against the constitutions, trying to change the world for the better, while the Germans lost themselves in their emotions and overwhelming feelings, which must have led to a completely false world-view. So from here onwards, the term ‘Romantics’ shall be referred to the German Romantics, rather than the French ones, whose thoughts and aims seem to be far easier to understand.

Not only were there significant changes on the social side of life in the late 18th and early 19th century, the arts themselves underwent some rather drastic changes too. Lead by the Sturm and Drang movement in literature which produced works such as Goethe’s famous book about ‘The Sorrows of the Young Werther’ – a masterpiece incorporating a number of the typical Romantic ideas, such as love and tragedy as well as the idea of the “suffering hero” – the other art forms did not take long to follow the writers’ and poets’ examples. While poetry and architecture went back to their ancient roots, with the ‘Nibelungenlied’ amongst many others gaining a new popularity and the Gothic architectural style being revived, music was more concerned with representation of the present. Despite this rather insignificant difference, all so called Romantic art forms have the same basic aims and principles: the revolt and downfall of prescribed rules and institutions – especially in France –, philosophical revolt against rationalism, the promotion of feelings and emotions over intellect and reason, the belief in goodness of humanity, the rediscovery of artists as the greatest individual creators, the development of nationalistic pride and above all, the return to nature.

While on the one hand the French Revolution is seen as the beginning of Romanticism, Alfred Einstein, on the other hand, emphasises Beethoven not necessarily as the founder of the Romantic period, but certainly as the most important composer who opened up the door to the new ‘Musical Romanticism’. In his eyes the Romantic era began with Beethoven, since from this great German composer onwards, symphonies, chamber music, songs and even opera had been written without anyone telling the composer what his works should be like. The Church and the Courts were no longer educating and more or less ruling over the musicians, which allowed the composers more freedom in expressing themselves. Compositions were generally aimed at an imaginary audience, or in some cases at no audience at all, like for example for some of Schubert’s piano sonatas, which have been composed for private use or performance in the small family and friends circle. The composers also set out to – in Richard Wagner’s words – create the ‘artwork of the future’, since they did everything possible to break away from the traditional Classical rules to create more forward looking works for the present generation, the generation of the future and for all eternity.

It is not unknown that Beethoven’s first composition were pretty much truly Classical ones, influenced by Haydn and to some extent also Mozart, but as he progressed as a musician and composer, his style gradually became freer and more expressive, and it was not for long until he started to express his view on political and social matters. The best known example for the turning point in Beethoven’s compositional style as well as the expression of his political views is the third Symphony (Op.55), also known as the ‘Eroica’ Symphony. In contrast to the preceding symphony, the expanded form of this work makes it stand out; it was the longest composition of this genre by that date, even though Mozart’s ‘Prague’ Symphony had already been considered long. But not only the form of the composition itself was bigger than ever before, the size of the orchestra had also been increased, even if only slightly by the addition of a third horn at this early stage. But what really makes this opus special is the employment of extra-musical ideas, happenings – or in this case, more precisely, conflicts – from the real world. Originally this symphony was supposed to stand as homage to Napoleon, at a time when he was considered the defender of freedom and equality. But when Napoleon, obviously driven by lust for power, probably a human weakness, accepted the title of Emperor, Beethoven, enraged by this event, removed the ex-First Consul’s name and replaced it with ‘Eroica’ (heroic), turning the composition into a celebration of “the memory of a great man”. This generalisation did not harm the composition in the slightest, quite on the contrary. Rather than celebrating one particular individual the symphony was now a celebration of the greatness of mankind. Weak individuals like Napoleon could not for very long live up to the noble image Beethoven painted of man. This new kind of expression Beethoven used in this composition was the start of what was still to come. The ground for the most important Romantic characteristic, expression, had been laid, and it seems to have been fairly easy for composers to follow to build on it.

So to an extent, expression is one of the most important, if not the most important characteristics of Musical Romanticism, and vice versa, music is the ideal form for expression. In almost all the books on Romanticism it is said somewhere that music is the language of the emotions; it can express much more than the mere words, and is above all a lot more powerful than speech. This ability to convey a multitude of different feelings and probably also different nuances of those feelings, made music the ideal and most important Romantic form of art. Having a broader scale of emotional colours available to them, the Romantics seem to have translated anything into music. From the happy love to the tragic and unhappy one, problems in society, triumphs, the beauty of nature and the world in general, as well as a certain nationalistic pride. Thus, the folk song started to emerge as another important element of Musical Romanticism. By embedding folk tunes into their compositions, composers managed to capture the “spirit of the people” or “the nation”, giving the music a specific language and making sure a whole nation can relate to a certain piece, thus it creates a special kind of unity or bond. But also, as Bedřich Smetana showed, this national consciousness can result in the music telling a certain story, like for example his tone poem ‘The Moldau’ (or also called ‘Vltava’). This second one of a set of six national tone poems for orchestra is undoubtedly the most popular of the lot. It is a musical portrait of the Bohemian river Vltava which rises as a small stream of water in a Bohemian forest, and flows past several ‘scenes’ – described by what seems to be almost like an invisible poet who follows the water – before merging with the Elbe River. During the stream’s hurry through the woods, not only are there hunting scenes placed in the background which seem to come nearer as the river progresses, depicting the scene of a typical forest, Smetana also introduces the theme of a Bohemian folk tune. This is present throughout the entire work and grows in power as the stream turns into a river. The next stage is a rather festive one, as the river flows through the lowlands where a marriage happens to be taking place at the time it passes by. Dance music and happy folk tunes are heard. A little later the program suggests that it is getting dark now with the river flowing past an old castle which reflects in the water. Following this picture of a calm and peaceful night, a storm comes up, speedily taking the river through a rocky gorge into a wider river bed, where it can calm down from the torrent before entering Prague. The capital greets it with the now well known folk tune, but this is where the poet parts with the river. As he watches it calmly winding its way past the city, it finally disappears on the horizon.

This piece comprises not only the typical Romantic idea of nationalism, but also represents one of the most important Romantic musical forms: the tone poem, or symphonic poem. A piece that tells a story, but not just any story which the listener can make up himself, but a specific story provided by the composer. This was probably more or less the instrumental equivalent to the Romantic song, the Lied, which obviously was able to express certain feelings not just through the music, but also reinforce them with words.

However, not only the styles and forms of music changed. The 19th century also saw a rise in the virtuoso. Led by Paganini, the role of the virtuoso instrumentalist is most likely to have come about because of the strong emphasis on the individual during this time. The artist saw himself as the misjudged genius, and as the demand for public performances, and especially solo concerts, increased, so did the demand for brilliant and outstanding musicians. Even though this put the individuals under extreme pressure, they did manage to create some of the greatest pieces of that time; pieces that were fresh and completely new in style. But not only Paganini composed pieces of instrumental transcendence, Liszt took the great violin master’s creation a step further, by setting some of his etudes for piano and at the same time introducing new titles taken from poetry. Thus another typical Musical Romantic idea had been improved to include several Romantic ideals. This use of poetic titles was not unusual in the Romantic period, since it added more expression to the works as well as giving them a higher status in the Romantic world.

In conclusion it needs to be said, that the ideas mentioned here are only a small fraction of what happened musically in what we are now used to calling the Romantic era. As declared previously, there are various different definitions of what ‘Romantic’ really means, but hopefully some of the main characteristics have had some light shed on them. Musical Romanticism, just like Literal Romanticism is a term that can be applied to a great number of compositions or essays and poems that have been produced during the first half of the 19th century, but as always there are exceptions to the rules. There have been numerous composers who did not adapt the ‘new’ style of writing and composing or even the new way of thinking, and have therefore stuck to writing in the old traditional style of the Classical period. But then again if ‘Romantic’ was to include anything from the Middle Ages to the 20th century, surely this can then also be said about Musical Romanticism. If we were to adapt this definition, however, we would then need to talk about different stages of Romanticism in all the arts, and the term ‘Romantic’ itself would need a much clearer definition itself. Of course composers as well as writers and other artists always set out to express certain emotions in their works, so considering this, should they be called Romantic too? There are still so many questions left open which need to be looked at in much greater detail to avoid any more confusion arising from vague definitions.