浪漫主义音乐

m-audio

The era of Romantic music is defined as the period of European classical music that runs roughly from the early 1800s to the first decade of the 20th century, as well as music written according to the norms and styles of that period. The Romantic period was preceded by the classical period, and was followed by the modern period.

Romantic music is related to Romantic movements in literature, art, and philosophy, though the conventional periods used in musicology are now very different from their counterparts in the other arts, which define "romantic" as running from the 1780s to the 1840s. The Romanticism movement held that not all truth could be deduced from axioms, that there were inescapable realities in the world which could only be reached through emotion, feeling and intuition. Romantic music struggled to increase emotional expression and power to describe these deeper truths, while preserving or even extending the formal structures from the classical period.

The vernacular use of the term romantic music applies to music which is thought to evoke a soft or dreamy atmosphere. This usage is rooted in the connotations of the word "romantic" that were established during the period, but not all "Romantic" pieces fit this description. Conversely, music that is "romantic" in the everyday usage of the word is not necessarily linked to the Romantic period.

Musical language

The Romantic era established the concept of tonality to describe the harmonic vocabulary inherited from the baroque and classical periods. Romantic composers sought to fuse the large structural harmonic planning demonstrated by Bach, Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven with their own chromatic innovations, in order to achieve greater fluidity of movement, greater contrast, and to meet the needs of longer works. Chromaticism grew more frequent and varied in use, as did dissonance. Composers modulated to increasingly remote keys, and modulations were often less extensively prepared than in the classical era; sometimes, instead of a pivot chord, a pivot note was used. Franz Liszt and others sometimes enharmonically "spelled" this note in a special way (for example, changing a C sharp into a D flat) to modulate into even more distant keys. The properties of the diminished seventh chords, which enables modulation to almost any key, were also extensively exploited. Composers such as Beethoven (who is often regarded as the first Romantic composer) and later Richard Wagner expanded their harmonic language to include previously-unused chords, or to treat existing chords in different ways. Wagner's Tristan chord, found in Tristan und Isolde, has had much written about it attempting to explain exactly what harmonic function it serves.

Romantic music analogized music to poetry and to rhapsodic and narrative structures, and at the same time created a more systematic basis for the composing and performing of concert music. The Romantic era codified previous practices, such as the sonata form, and then almost immediately began to extend them. There was an increasing focus on melodies and themes, as well as an explosion in the composition of songs. The emphasis on melody found expression in the more and more extensive use of cyclic form, which turned out to be an important unifying device for the much longer pieces that became common during the period.

All these trends — greater harmonic elusiveness and fluidity, longer and more powerfully-placed melodies, poesis as the basis of expression, the mixing of literature and music — were present to one degree or another prior to the Romantic period. However, the Romantic period adopted them as the central pursuit of music itself. Romantic composers were aided by improvements in technology, which provided significant changes in the language of music, ranging from an increase in the range and power of the piano to improvements in the sound and reach of the symphony orchestra.

Non-musical influences

One of the controversies that raged through the Romantic period was the relationship of music to external texts or sources. While music with a point or a program (program music) was common prior to the 19th century, the conflict between formal and external inspiration became an important aesthetic issue during Romantic era.

The controversy began during the 1830s with Hector Berlioz's Symphonie Fantastique, which was presented with an extensive program text, causing critics and professors to pick up their pens. Prominent among the detractors was François-Joseph Fétis, the head of the newly-founded Brussels Conservatory, who declared that the work was "not music". Robert Schumann defended the work, but not the program itself, saying that good music would not be hurt by bad titles, but good titles would not save a bad work. It was left to Franz Liszt to defend the idea of extra-musical inspiration.

This rift grew more pronounced as time progressed, with polemics delivered from both sides. For the believers in "absolute" music, formal perfection rested on musical expression obeying the schematics laid down in previous works, most notably the sonata form then being codified. To the adherents of program music, the rhapsodic expression of poetry or some other external text was, itself, a form. They argued that bringing the artist's life into a work required the form to follow the narrative. Both sides pointed back to Beethoven as their inspiration and justification. This rift would become codified by the conflict between followers of Johannes Brahms and Richard Wagner: Brahms was taken to be the pinnacle of absolute music, without a text or other outside reference, and Wagner the believer in the poetic "substance" shaping the harmonic and melodic flow of the music.

The forces that brought this controversy about are complex. The rise in importance of Romantic Poetry is certainly one of them, as was the increasing market for songs which could be sung in concerts, or played in the home. Another is the changing nature of concerts themselves: as concerts moved from presentations of a wide variety of works to being more specialized, there was increasing demand for instrumental works possessing greater expressiveness and specificity.

Examples of extra-musical inspiration include Liszt's Faust Symphony, Dante Symphony, and various symphonic poems, Tchaikovsky's Manfred Symphony, Mahler's First Symphony (based on the novel Titan), and Saint-Saëns' The Carnival of the Animals (from which the popular The Swan is drawn.) Composers such as Schubert used song melodies in their extended works, and others, such as Liszt, transcribed opera arias and songs into purely instrumental works.

Romantic opera

In opera, there was a tendency for the forms established in classical and baroque opera to be loosened, broken, and merged into each other. This reached its climax in Wagner's operas, in which arias, choruses, recitatives and ensemble pieces cannot easily be distinguished from each other. Instead there is a continuous flow of music.

Other changes occurred as well. The decline of castrati led to tenors being given the heroic lead in operas as a rule, and the chorus took on a more important role. Towards the end of the Romantic period, verismo opera, depicting realistic, rather than historical or mythological, subjects became popular in Italy. France followed with operas such as Bizet's Carmen.

Nationalism

A number of romantic composers wrote nationalist music, music which had a particular connection to a particular country. This manifested itself in a number of ways. The subjects of Mikhail Glinka's operas, for example, are specifically Russian, while Bedřich Smetana and Antonín Dvořák both used rhythms and themes from Czech folk dances and songs. Late in the 19th century, Jean Sibelius wrote music based on the Finnish epic, the Kalevala and his piece 'Finlandia' became a symbol of Finnish nationalism.

Instrumentation and scale

As in other periods, instrumentation continued to improve during the romantic era. Composers such as Hector Berlioz orchestrated their works in a way hitherto unheard, giving a new prominence to wind instruments. The size of the "standard" orchestra grew, and began to include instruments, such as the piccolo and cor anglais, that were previously rarely-used. Mahler's Symphony No. 8 is known as the Symphony of a Thousand because of the massive choral and orchestral forces required to perform it.

In addition to using larger orchestral forces, works in the Romantic era tended to become longer. A typical symphony by Haydn or Mozart lasts twenty to twenty-five minutes. In contrast, Beethoven's Third Symphony, generally considered the beginning of Romanticism, lasts at least forty-five minutes. The trend towards long, large scale works requiring substantial orchestral forces was expanded through the symphonies of, among others, Anton Bruckner, finally reaching its peak in Mahler's symphonies, with his works ranging from roughly an hour in length (the First and Fourth symphonies), to an hour and a half and longer (the Second, Third, and the Ninth).

The Romantic period also saw the rise of the instrumental virtuoso. The violinist Niccolo Paganini was one of the musical stars of the early 19th century, though his fame was usually put down as much to his charisma as his technique. Liszt, in addition to his skills as a composer, was also a very popular virtuoso pianist. The presence of such virtuosi on a concert program was more likely to attract a large audience than the composers of the music.

4797230

分享，支持