Romanticism in Music

Romantic music reflected the profound changes that were taking place during the nineteenth century at every level of human existence. Art tends to mirror the great social forces of its time.

The Industrial Revolution had a great effect upon the production of music instruments. Musical instruments became not only cheaper but were more responsive due to technical changes, which improved sound. Valves were added to brass instruments, and new wind instruments were created. Two such instruments were the tuba and the saxophone. The piano gained a cast iron frame and thicker strings, which gave it a deeper and more brilliant tone, and it became the instrument that we know today.

Orchestras increased in size and moved from palace and church to the public concert hall. The technique of writing for instruments, individually and together became an art in itself. The musician, or composer was able to create sensuous beauty, mood and atmosphere, and to suggest nature scenes and calm or stormy seascapes due to the enlarged orchestra, plus new and better quality instruments.

Increased expressiveness was used by composers and some of the directions encountered in their musical scores are dolce(sweetly), cantabile(songful), dolente(weeping), mesto(sad), maestoso(majestic), gioioso(joyous), and con amore(with love, tenderly). These terms suggest both the character of the music and the frame of mind behind it.

The interest in folklore and the rising tide of nationalism also inspired Romantic musicians. They increasingly used folk songs and dances from their native lands.

Exoticism, or the longing for or interest in far-away places or styles manifested itself first in the northern nations' longing for the warmth and color of the south. Exoticism is also seen by the West's interest in the fairy-tale splendors of Asia and the Far East.

Romantic style traits such as when musicians tried to make their instruments "sing" were a part of this era. Romantic melody was marked by a lyricism that gave it an immediate emotional appeal. Also, nineteenth-century music worked for a harmony that was highly emotional and expressive. Certain composers used combinations of pitches that were more chromatic and dissonant than those of the Classical era. And finally, the nineteenth-century composers approached the writing of a symphony with greater deliberation than their predecessors of the Classical era did. For example, a symphony by Haydn or Mozart takes about twenty minutes to perform and a Romantic one by Tchaikovsky or Brahms lasts at least twice as long. Also, Haydn wrote more than a hundred symphonies and Mozart more than forty, while Tchaikovsky wrote six and Brahms wrote four.

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