The Romantic Era — introduction
A new ideal: emotion in music
As the Romantic era took hold, in the wake of the French Revolution, the experience of the individual took centre stage. Truth was no longer to be sought in the external, logical world, but inside each human being. Artists found inspiration in strange, unfamiliar worlds: in dreams and the unconscious, in the glories of bygone ages, in the mysteries of the exotic East, in the untameable force of nature. Composers began to look for new ways to communicate their experiences, trying to turn emotion directly into music, rather than using music to ‘express’ feeling. Schubert, one of the earliest of the Romantic composers, explored the conflict between inner reality and the outside world in his songs by using ‘happy’ major keys for dream sequences, and more sombre minor keys for the harshness of real life. Berlioz turns a symphony into a diary of his nightmarish vision of witches, demons and his own severed head in Symphonie fantastique. Operas like The Pearl Fishers (Bizet), Madama Butterfly and Turandot (Puccini) evoke the mysterious cultures of such lands as India, Japan and China; in Bayreuth, Richard Wagner changes the whole way that opera is experienced, immersing the audience in the experience by darkening the theatre during the performance, and putting the orchestra under the stage, rather than in front of it.
The rise of nationalism and the rediscovery of tradition
The Romantic fascination with the past, combined with the rise of political independence movements as European borders were redrawn, led to a rediscovery and revaluing of folk music traditions. Chopin, living in exile from his native Poland, composed mazurkas and polonaises in memory of his homeland. Dvořák, who proudly described himself as a ‘simple Czech musician’, drew on the folk dances of Moravia and Bohemia; when he moved to the US, he found inspiration in African-American spirituals. Mahler looked to German folk poetry for the texts of his songs, which he then incorporated into his symphonies, along with other ‘popular’ German music styles such as waltzes and ländler, and a love of the bold and even shrill sounds of the military brass band. In Russia, composers like Rimsky-Korsakov and Mussorgsky began to incorporate into their music the sounds of Cossack dances, the chants of the Russian Orthodox liturgy and even the tolling of church bells. And in England, as the Romantic age reached into the early years of the 20th century, folk melodies were inspiring composers like Vaughan Williams to create pastorales, rhapsodies and idylls evoking the simplicity and tranquillity of the English countryside — an escape from the increasingly frenetic pace of modern city life.
With feeling now the driving force, the Romantics no longer felt bound to respect the logic and intellectual argument of Classical musical structures. A concerto might plunge straight in with the soloist, instead of carefully preparing the ground with an orchestral introduction. Phrases need not be all the same length; a piece need not end in the same key it began; extra notes could be added to chords to create arresting harmonies and colours. A whole new orchestral form appears — one with no fixed structure or rules — explicitly to conjure up scenes, images or moods: the tone poem. The orchestra itself expands dramatically, and new instruments are brought in to add new colours (piccolo, contrabassoon, harp, xylophone, celeste, tuba…).
