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Romantic Era Art and Music
Romantic Era Art and Music
POSTED MAY 10, 2020
Romanticism was an artistic, musical, literary and intellectual movement that originated in late 18th century Europe. Characterized by its emphasis on emotion, individualism, and the glorification of the past and nature, it was a revolt against the Age of Enlightenment's emphasis on reason and the Industrial Revolution's emphasis on science. In part spurred by the ideals of the French Revolution, Romanticism also embraced the struggle for freedom and equality and the promotion of justice. (1, 2)
Painting
Painting
With Romanticism's embrace of individuality and subjectivity, artists began exploring various emotional and psychological states - often looking at the dark side of human psychology. The "Black Paintings" of Francisco Goya of Spain and the work of Theodore Gericault of France depict intense, haunting themes - often based on contemporary events.
Romantic painters also turned their attention to nature and plein air painting, or painting out of doors. Works based on close observation of the landscape as well as the sky and atmosphere elevated landscape painting to a new, more respectful level. While some artists emphasized humans at one with and a part of nature, others portrayed nature's power and unpredictability, evoking a feeling of the sublime - awe mixed with terror - in the viewer.(1) The paintings of John Constable are examples of the former; the work of Caspar David Friedrich, of the latter.
Below are some examples of famous Romantic Era paintings. More are given at the Learnodo-Newtonic website.
A Timeline
A Timeline
c. 1688 - c. 1789
AGE OF ENLIGHTENMENT
1760
INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION BEGINS IN ENGLAND
1789
FRENCH REVOLUTION
1803 - 1815
THE NAPOLEONIC WARS
1805
Beethoven's Symphony No. 3
1816
Schubert's Symphony No. 5
Theodore Gericault (1791-1824) was a pioneer in the Romantic art movement. Though he died young at age 32, had a huge influence on future generations of French painters. His 1819 painting The Raft of the Medusa, which depicted the aftermath of a contemporary French shipwreck, became an icon of the emerging Romantic movement in French painting. The painting “laid the foundations of an aesthetic revolution” that would ultimately oust the prevailing Neoclassical style of the Age of Enlightenment. (3)
1818
Wanderer above the Sea of Fog
1819
The Raft of the Medusa
1821
The Hay Wain
1824
Beethoven's Symphony No. 9
1848
THE REVOLUTIONS OF 1848 ("THE SPRING OF NATIONS")
John Constable (1776 - 1837) rebelled against the Neoclassical style, which used standard practices while creating landscape art and mostly used it to display historical and mythical scenes. Constable instead focussed on nature itself to bring out its beauty and power. (3) In doing so, he elevated landscape painting to a more respected place in the art world.
When first exhibited, The Hay Wain (below) attracted little attention. That changed after the French painter Theodore Gericault visited the Royal Academy Exhibition of 1821. After viewing The Hay Wain, Gericault was"stunned by it and communicated his enthusiasm" to Eugene Delacroix, another French Romantic Era artist. French appreciation of John Constable’s work led to The Hay Wain being awarded France’s most prestigious art prize in 1824.
Though it may not seem radical now The Hay Wain, with its emphasis on the green of the landscape, the realistically depicted clouds in the sky and the sun's highlights on the water, revolutionized landscape painting and popularized plein air painting that became a standard method for future generations of painters, most notably the French Impressionists.
1851
Gustave Courbet's A Burial at Ornans (Realism)
1871
UNIFICATION OF GERMANY
1878
Tchaikovsky's Violin Concerto
1885
Brahms' Symphony No. 4
1894
Debussy's Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune (Impressionism)
1900
Freud's Interpretation of Dreams
1903
Wright Brothers at Kitty Hawk
1905
Einstein's Theory of Special Relativity
1910
Stravinsky's Firebird (Modernism)
Friedrich's Wanderer above the Sea of Fog
"The dreamy contours of the natural world—and man’s dramatized, awed relationship to it" (4)
Caspar David Friedrich (1774 - 1840) is the most important of the German Romantic artists. His landscapes often have a solitary figure contemplating a vast, awe-inspiring, sublime nature, illustrating the "diminished strength of man in the larger scale of life. He was fascinated by nature and could see the presence of the divine in it. Freidrich took landscape art and infused it with deep religious and spiritual significance." (3)
Friedrich's Wanderer above the Sea of Fog is the quintessential Romantic artwork. The heart of the man contemplating the sea of fog is literally at the very center of the painting. "Throughout Europe, writers, artists, and musicians had turned to emotion, imagination, and the sublime for inspiration. Nature—wild, unbridled, and far more powerful than 19th century Europeans—became a major subject. In particular, the period exalted individuals and their strong emotions. Friedrich exemplified these qualities as he placed one man, gazing at a vast and unknowable territory, in the middle of his canvas." (4)
Just as Romanticism was a reaction to Neoclassical painting, Romanticism was in turn replaced by Realism, an art movement that began in France in the 1850s, following the 1848 Revolution. One of the earliest paintings of the genre is Gustave Courbet's A Burial at Ornans. (Below)
Music
Music
Romanticism dominated European music from 1830 to 1900. But its beginnings go back further - specifically to the music of Beethoven, who played a major role in the transition to the Romantic era from the Classical period of Haydn and Mozart. Beethoven's breakthrough Symphony No.3, performed in 1805 in Vienna, was the first sign that things were about to change drastically in the world of Western music. His Symphony No.9, premiered in Vienna in 1824, left no doubt. Many consider Beethoven's Ninth to be a statement of freedom and a "declaration in favor of universal brotherhood" - a musical expression of the French Revolutionary ideals of liberté, égalité, fraternité (freedom, equality, brotherhood).
Related posts:
The music of Beethoven: the symphonies
Among the characteristics of Romantic Era music were its freedom of form and design. It was more personal and emotional than music from the Classical era. It featured song-like melodies, chromatic harmonies and discords, and dramatic contrasts of dynamics and pitch.(6) The concept of a nation-state began taking hold before, during, and after the Revolutions of 1848 and national identity found in folk music, myths, and legends frequently found their way into the music.
Franz Schubert (1797 - 1828) was one of the first Romantic composers. Though some of his early compositions have classical elements, his 600 lyrical songs and the melodies and harmonies of his longer works place him firmly in the Romantic camp. Almost forgotten in the years after his death in 1828, Schubert's music was rediscovered and admired by composers of the late 19th century:
Upon finding stacks of Schubert's music 10 years after the composer's death, Robert Schumann enthused, “The riches that lay here made me tremble with excitement.” Among them was the original manuscript of the Ninth Symphony, which, Schumann excitedly reported, “transports us into a world where I cannot recall ever having been before”. Just three months later, Felix Mendelssohn conducted the premiere in Leipzig. Declaring Schubert “the most poetic musician who ever lived”, Franz Liszt then set about making a series of celebrated song transcriptions for solo piano and Johannes Brahms later took on the responsibility of editing and seeing much of Schubert’s music safely through the printing presses. (7)
Schubert composed his Symphony No.5 (link left) when he was 19 and still trying to decide between a career in law and one in music. Young Schubert was a great admirer of Mozart and used examples from the recent past, especially Mozart's Symphony No. 40, to help him fashion his engaging Symphony No. 5 in B-flat Major. (11)
Although not as famous as other Schubert works, Symphony No.5 has been called "the perfect piece for anyone who wants to get into his music – fresh, light, full of youthful exuberance and bursting with tunes." (8)
Johannes Brahms (1833-1897) was a German composer of the Romantic period. A master of the symphonic form, he was considered old-fashioned by other composers of the second half of the century. The so-called War of the Romantics was basically a musical argument between composers like Wagner and Liszt, who represented a more radical approach to music, and more conservative artists like Brahms. (9)
Brahms Symphony No. 4 is a reliable staple of the concert season. But, warns Guardian music critic Tom Service, don't be fooled by its "comfortingly familiar melodies and melancholy, its promise of satisfying symphonic coherence, and its apparently easy appeal to musicians, conductors and audiences." Brahms' confidantes who first heard the work warned him not to release it as it was written.
Service writes, "I think those early commentators were on to something – not in terms of the work’s failure to live up to the promise of its three symphonic predecessors, but in the sense of the uncompromising intellectual complexity and refinement of this music, and its expressive implacability and even tragedy. You hear that above all in the final movement, which ends with one of the bleakest minor-key cadences in symphonic music. This is a symphony that ought to leave you intellectually battered and emotionally bruised rather than superficially consoled." (10)
American composer and author Jan Swafford goes even further, calling the piece “a funeral song for [Brahms’s] heritage, for a world at peace, for an Austro-German middle class that honored and understood music like no other culture, for the sweet Vienna he knew, for his own lost loves”; it’s a work that “narrates a progression from a troubling twilight to a dark night: fin de siècle” (10)
But no matter how you choose to listen to this great work, "superficially consoled" or "intellectually battered", Brahms Symphony No. 4 is a very satisfying piece of music
Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky (1840 - 1893) was the greatest Russian composer of the nineteenth century. His formal conservatory training allowed him to write works with Western-oriented attitudes and techniques, showcasing a wide range and breadth of technique from a poised "Classical" form to a style more characteristic of Russian nationalist composers or a musical idiom expressly to channel his own overwrought emotions. Even with this compositional diversity, the outlook in Tchaikovsky's music remains essentially Russian, both in its use of native folk song and its composer's deep absorption in Russian life and ways of thought. Writing about Tchaikovsky's ballet The Sleeping Beauty, composer Igor Stravinsky contended that Tchaikovsky's music was as Russian as Pushkin's verse or Glinka's song, since Tchaikovsky "drew unconsciously from the true, popular sources" of the Russian race. (12)
Tchaikovsky's Violin Concerto in D Major is one of the most beautiful pieces in classical music. Violinists have called Tchaikovsky's only violin concerto, written immediately after the composer had fled a disastrous short-lived marriage, "irresistible" as well as "unplayable."
"The work is filled with lyric melody suggestive of the Slavic and Russian folksong that so often found its way into Tchaikovsky’s ballets. Despite the difficulties of the solo part, the violin focuses on decorating the theme rather than on presenting purely technical passages...Taken as a whole, the work turned out to be one of Tchaikovsky’s most creative and least pretentious works, as well as a measure of how well he was able briefly to detach himself from his personal problems." (13)
The Georgian-born German violinist Lisa Batiashvili adds: "What I hear in his music is that the person behind it is quite vulnerable, and still at the same time trying to bring to his music the beauty of the life. Because that's what we're all looking for at the end to whatever happens in life, to still seek for the beauty."
Besides Schubert, Brahms and Tchaikovsky, there were numerous other great composers in the Romantic Era. You can learn more about some of the most famous here.
By 1900, music's Romantic Era was coming to an end - at first gradually with the Impressionism of the late 19th and early 20th century and then more radically with the Modernist movement.
References: (1) The Art Story (2) softschoools.com (3) learnodo-newtonic.com (4) artsy.net (5) Flatford and Constable website (6) rpfuller.com (7) Classic FM (Discovering the Great Composers) (8) Classic FM (Schubert: 20 facts) (9) Classic FM (Brahms: 15 facts) (10) UK Guardian (11) BBC (12) Wikipedia (13) Redlands Symphony
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