19th Century Romantic Music by Larry Heyl

The name, Romantic, comes from literature. A Romance was a type of novel, an adventure narrative about heroic or mythical figures. Romantic music would often be programmatic, telling a story and expressing extreme emotions.

Romanticism was a reaction to the age of reason and the failure of rationality. People were returning to spiritualism and mythology as the industrial revolution progressed without humanitarian benefit. Romantic music was popular across all classes, played by amateurs and virtuosos, and it was escapist.

In Romantic music the melody became paramount. Chromaticism increased and composers pushed harmonic structure to the edge of standard tonality. 

Miniatures or salon music were songs with beautiful melodies. They were very popular among amateurs and cognoscenti. The German Leider or art songs developed beyond popular songs into a true art form.

Large pieces became even larger while also embracing melodies. Orchestras had more pieces, with new and better horns. Symphonies often had choruses singing with the instruments. Operas became huge spectacles. Many famous stories were retold in music.

Romantic music grew out of classical music. It was not an abrupt transition. Beethovens work was emulated.

Franz Schubert (1797-1828)

Schubert was an early Romantic composer. He was extremely prolific in all genres in spite of his short life. He helped define romanticism with his lyrical melodies and his new ideas about harmonic progressions. He died young in 1828 one year after Beethoven.

Hector Berlioz (1803-1869)

We can arbitrarily place the beginning of full blown romantic music with Berlioz writing Symphonie Fantastique in 1830. Berlioz was a master orchestrator and he used all the power and nuance of horns as well as strings to create orchestral effects that were new and exciting. All romantic composers were indebted to his groundbreaking work.

Fryderyk Chopin (1810-1849)

But not all Romantic music was big. The piano came fully into its work embraced chromaticism extending tonality while still presenting some of the most beautiful melodies ever written. 

Giachino Rossini (1792-1868)

Rossini set the stage for Romantic Opera. During his life he rivaled Beethoven in popularity by placing the music as the most important element of his operas. He developed a style called Bel Canto meaning beautiful singing where the emphasis was placed on beautiful voices delivering wonderful melodies.

Giuseppe Verdi (1813-1901)

Verdi was the most popular Italian Opera composer dominating the last half of the 19th century. He was a master storyteller presenting human drama rather than the larger fantasy stories popular in French and German Opera.

Richard Wagner (1813-1883)

Wagner is probably the most important Romantic Opera composer, writing mythical, larger than life stories with plenty of sex, violence, and weirdness. Expanding on French Grand Opera Wagner developed Gesamptkunstwerk or United Artwork meaning that all elements of the presentation add to the story. His work has fantastic melodies presented by huge ensembles in the theater large. His work was also overly large in duration with Der Ring des Nibelungen or Ring Cycle taking 15-16 hours to present so that it takes 4 evenings to see it. There is still a large cult of Wagnerians and these huge operas are still presented every year.

Johannes Brahms 1833-1897

Brahms was the anti Wagner. Musically he was conservative. Brahms was a definite successor to Beethoven. He composed some of the most beautiful symphonies ever written but he did not break new ground. 

Gustav Mahler s fame as a composer increased after his death and he is extremely popular today with major orchestras performing his symphonies regularly.

So we can see throughout the Romantic period fantastic stories told with beautiful melodies remain at the center. Experimentation in form and tonality became the norm. Smaller works showed increased complexity without losing accessibilty or popularity and large works became huge telling larger than life stories in larger than life settings.