The Romantic period in music spanned from 1820-1900. Key developments included the rise of nationalism and program music, as well as expanded orchestral and vocal works. Jean-Jacques Rousseau was an influential philosopher whose writings inspired Romantic ideals of individualism. The Industrial Revolution impacted music through new instruments and the growth of the middle class. Romantic composers embraced individual expression and focused on emotion, nature, and the supernatural in genres like art song, piano miniatures, opera, ballet, and symphonic poems. Important Romantic composers included Chopin, Liszt, Brahms, Wagner, Verdi, and Tchaikovsky.

1. Romantic Period
c.1820 - 1900

2. Father of “Romanticism”
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
French writer & philosopher
(1712-1778)
“Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains”
“I am different from all the men I have seen.
If I am not better, at least I am different.”

3. FRENCH REVOLUTION
“Liberty, Equality, Fraternity” 1789-1799
Sympathy for the oppressed More than ever, there was an appreciation
Early 19th century: The lasting effect for the individual, simple folk/children
triggered a change of power from the Faith in humankind and its destiny; outcry
hereditary land-holding aristocracy to for equality. Optimism overshadowed by
the middle class doubt.

4. Industrial Revolution
early 18th-19th centuries
The root of the middle-class uprising due to
major changes in agriculture, manufacturing,
mining, transportation, and technology
Intellectual and artistic hostility arose out
of the newly developed industry
New found freedoms were a
double-edged sword
Artists/poets/musicians felt
more cut off from society
skepticism of the
“monstrous machines and factories”
stressed the importance of “nature”

5. Romantic Writers
✦ Hugo’s “Les Miserables” was
✦ Emerging poets/writers rebelled
dedicated “to the unhappy ones
against the conventional
of the earth”
concerns of their predecessors
✦ great theme of conflict between
✦ Attracted to the picturesque,
the individual and society
fanciful, and passionate
✦ Inspired countless adaptations
✦ Wrote with INTENSELY
including the musical of the same
EMOTIONAL EXPRESSION
name
Edgar Allen Poe’s
Mary Shelley’s “Frankenstein”
“the Raven”
social commentary regarding
presented bleak and
the industrial revolution
dreary landscapes

6. Industrial Revolution’s
Positive impact on Music
Instruments more affordable & responsive with better intonation, new timbres
✦Brass instruments now had valves (horns/trumpets)
✦Piano built with cast iron frames and thicker strings = louder capabilities
✦New instruments emerged: Tuba, Saxophone (invented in 1840)
✦ Percussion instruments: celesta, tubular bells, glockenspiel
Broadened educational opportunities for the study of music.
✦ The chief cities in Europe established conservatories: specialized colleges for the
study of advanced musicianship
✦ Great composers were also expected to help educate musicians
✦Felix Mendelssohn founded the Leipzig Conservatory in 1843
✦Richard Wagner directed his own theater at Bayreuth in Germany
✦Robert Schumann was also a widely read music critic

7. Musical Society in the 19th century
✦ The emerging democratic society liberated composers
and musicians.
✦ Romantic composers who were very popular for their
Romantic techniques include Giuseppe Verdi, Hector
Berlioz, Peter Tchaikovsky, Richard Wagner, Robert
Schumann, Franz Schubert, Frédéric Chopin.
✦ Supported by middle/upper class audience of public
concert halls
✦ Solo performers dominate the concert hall = “stars” idolized
by the public
✦ Women encouraged to play, sing, and/or play piano as a
sign of “class”
✦More women composers emerge: Fanny Mendelssohn
Hensel, Clara Schumann, and American Amy Cheney Beach
✦Some women were also important patrons to composers
(novelist George Sand=Chopin)

8. Rise of public concert halls: as opposed to palaces and churches
✦To accommodate the growing orchestra (now with english horn, piccolo, tuba, and
various percussion) and to heighten the greater contrast in dynamics (ppp - fff)
✦ Growth of orchestras called for
greater use of orchestration
the art of arranging the music
of an orchestra.
✦ Wider palette of timbres
✦ Central figure to the orchestra
is the conductor who is
necessary to keep the large
groups together.
Wide interest in folklore resulted in Nationalism
✦ National idioms emerge as extensions of melodies from composers’ native lands
Exoticism: first arose from northern European composers longing for the sounds
characteristic in the southern countries.
✦Interest in melodies from the East (Asia) and further south (Egypt and Middle East)

9. Romantic Style Traits
✦ Instrumental music longed for LYRICISM :“singing” melodies
✦ Highly expressive harmonic devices (chromaticism and dissonant chords)
✦ Symphonies became more grand
✦ Performance time is anywhere from a half hour to an hour
✦ Classical Symphony performance time = approx. 20 min
✦ Closer connection to the current painters and literary figures.
Richard Wagner Johannes Brahms
Frédéric Chopin
Franz Schubert

10. VIDEO
Hector Berlioz’s
Symphonie Fantastique: 4th movement
March to the Scaffold

11. The Romantic Miniature
Throughout the 19th century miniature forms rose in popularity partially due to the rise
in popularity of pianos in homes
Song structures
Through composed = no repetition in sections; music follows the story line.
Strophic = same melody for each stanza (or strophe) of a poem
found in: Hymns, carols, folk, and popular songs
Modified Strophic form = Same melody for each stanza with liberties of adding new
material as the poem requires it (typically at the song’s climax)
This combines strophic and through-composed forms
Lied (pl. Lieder)= GERMAN art song.
solo vocal song with piano accompaniment; German text
a song cycle is a group of Lieder that are all unified by a single
narrative
Grew from the outpouring of German lyric poets like Goethe and
Heine who favored short, personal, lyric poems
Composers of Lied: Schumann, Brahms, Schubert
Franz Schubert p. 197 (1797-1828) - composed 600+ Lieder.
At age 18, his 1st and most famous Lied (Erlking) is based on a
legend (whoever is touched by the king of the elves must die)

12. Short Lyric Piano Literature
The instrumental equivalent to the art song were short piano pieces
✤Piano - Mainstream instrument, the most popular and important keyboard instrument
of the Romantic era
✤piano virtuosos emerged (not always a composer as well)
✤Used fanciful names to describe the nature of the piece.
✤Examples: Prelude, Intermezzo (interlude), Impromptu (spur of moment), Nocturne
(night piece), Etudes (studies, meant for students)
✤Dance music inspired uptempo pieces. Ex: Mazurka, Polonaise, Waltz
✤Important piano composers: Franz Liszt, Felix Mendelssohn and sister Fanny
Mendelssohn Hensel, Robert and wife Clara Schumann, and
Frédéric François Chopin p. 201 (1810-1849)
“poet of piano” - composed almost exclusively for piano
Expressed a tempo rubato style where the tempo is “robbed of
time”; played freely with passages that slow down and speed up
according to the nature of the music

13. VIDEO
Polonaise in A Major, Op. 40, No.1 (Military)
follow along with listening guide
p.202

14. Romantic Program Music
Composer provides a literary or pictorial association (opposite of absolute music)
1. Concert overture - single movement work with a
literary connection 2. Symphonic poem or Tone Poem
-arose because of the popularity of opera overtures -single movement work that expressed
-to be played in concert settings a poetic idea, mood, or landscape
-uses traditional forms (rondo, ternary, etc) -freer form
Ex: Romeo and Juliet by Tchaikovsky Ex: My Country by Smetana
3. Incidental music - music included in a play
-overture and series of pieces performed between acts of a play and during important scenes
-Very important today, where it is used in movies and T.V. shows (background music)
Ex: Mendelssohn’s music set to Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream.
4. Program symphony- Multimovement orchestral
work with a story.
Ex: Symphonie Fantastique by Berlioz (see pg. 205)
uses an idée fixe (fixed idea) a melody that
represented an important character (in this case,
the love interest).

15. Examples of Nationalism
★All across Europe (and later in America), many composers took pride in their country
and showed their appreciation by composing works inspired by their own unique
culture
★Use of folk melodies and popular instruments.
★Smetana’s symphonic poem My Country (Czech)
★Chopin’s Polish mazurkas and polonaises
★Liszt’s Hungarian Rhapsodies
★Scandinavian school
Norway = Edvard Grieg
Finland = Jean Sibelius
★Russian school “The Mighty Five” (pictured)
★National Opera Styles (p. 216)

16. Romantic Opera
Golden Age of Opera
Italy, France, and Germany were the leading countries
France
✤ Paris became the opera center of Europe in late 18th and 19th centuries
✤ comic opera= opéra comique - included spoken dialogue, simpler compositional style
✤ The most popular NEW genre was grand opera which focused on serious historical
themes nourished by the new French leaders’ propagandist purposes.
Germany
✤ comic opera= Singspiel was a light comedic drama with spoken dialogue and was the first
dominating German genre of opera (18th century)
✤ The music drama was the NEW genre created by late Romantic composer Richard Wagner
✤integrated theater and music (no seperate arias, duets, ensembles, and choruses)
✤large scale and spectacular settings (huge choruses, crowd scenes, elaborate dances and
lavish scenery)
✤Orchestra was focal point
✤created a flexible “endless melody” fashioned out of concise themes known as leitmotifs
(leading motives) which represent characters, emotions, or ideas
✤Transformations occur throughout (variations throughout)

17. VIDEOS
WAGNER

18. Italy
✤ 19th century opera seria and opera buffa continued
✤ Development of bel canto style = beautiful singing style. Featured dazzling melodies
and singers with voices that were pure and agile.
✤ Ex. Rossini, Bellini, and Verdi
Guiseppe Verdi (1813-1901) p. 218
✤Master of Italian opera = developed a uniquely national style.
composed 28 operas
✤Rigoletto based on Victor Hugo’s “The King’s Fool”
✤opera seria premiered in mid-19th century
✤a controversial tale of Francis I (France) which included
insulting references to King Louis-Philippe.
✤showcases bel canto style
Exoticism in opera
✤Desire for a picturesque atmosphere that showed off the imagination of the composer
rather than the historical accuracy and authenticity
✤Elements from the South or East found their way into many operas.
✤exotic melodies, harmonies, and rhythms
✤exotic costumes and scenery
Ex: Puccini’s Madame Butterfly (set in Asia), Verdi’s Aida (set in Africa)

19. VIDEO
Verdi’s La donne è mobile from
Rigoletto (Act III)

20. Other Romantic Vocal Works
Popularity of vocal genres (Lied, Opera, etc) led to a huge increase in choral music
Regarded as a sacred genre before, new secular choral part songs emerged
✤ single-movement songs for 3-4 voices generally short in length
✤ Intended for amateur/young singers
Sacred genres (large-scale) like Mass, Requiem Mass (Mass for the dead), and Oratorios
became acceptable performance pieces in the concert hall.
Johannes Brahms p. 225 (1833-1897) Traditionalist (Romantic art in Classical style) - wrote
absolute music
His German Requiem was performed in concert halls; performed by
vocal soloists, 4-part chorus, and orchestral accompaniment.
✤7 movements
✤arranged in “arch” formation = musical connections between 1st
+7th, 2nd+6th, and 3rd+5th.
✤4th movement served as the centerpiece which uses the widely
known How Lovely Is Thy Dwelling Place as its melody
✤rooted in the Protestant tradition (based text from the Old and
New Testaments)
✤Inspired to write it upon the passing of both his teacher Robert
Schumann and his mother

21. VIDEO
Brahms’ Symphony No. 3 in F Major
Op. 90, 3rd movement

22. Ballet
• Began in the Renaissance as entertainment for festivals and royal theatrical events
• Baroque, elaborate ballets presented in French operas and entertainment events
• Grew in popularity as an independent art form in 18th century and into the 19th century
in France.
• 1847-arrival in St. Petersburg (Russia) of choreographer Marius Petipa marked the
beginning of Russian ballet as its own distinguished genre.
•Through his work on over 100 works in Russia, Pepita invented the pas de deux (dance
for 2) structure for staging dances
•Eventually, RUSSIAN ballet impresario Serge Diagolev (1872-1929) would a
huge influence in 20th century ballet
•his dance company Ballets Russes opened up a new cultural life in Europe
prior to WWI.
•invited artists like Bakst, Braque, and Picasso to paint scenery
•commissioned Igor Stravinsky to write 3 ballets that catapulted his career
(The Firebird, Petrushka, Rite of Spring)
•Russian composers embraced the growing interest in ballet.

23. Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky
(1840-1893) p.227
✤Studied at St Petersburg Conservatory,
taught at Moscow Conservatory
✤Patron=Nadezhda von Meck (wealthy
widow who commissioned many of his
works)
✤Embodied some of the nationalism and
pessimism of the Romantic era artists.
✤Attracted to ballet, he took influences
from French ballet, Italian opera, and the
German symphony to shape his style for
his 3 ballets
✤ 1876- Swan Lake
✤ 1889- The Sleeping Beauty
✤ 1892- The Nutcracker
✤based on the fictitious story by E.T.A.
Hoffman (expanded by Alexandre Dumas)
✤overture and 2 Acts
✤synopsis on pp 228-230