Zweig was right: Europe had not seen such a beautiful generation as romantics since the Renaissance. Wonderful images of the world of dreams, naked feelings and the desire for sublime spirituality - such colors painted the musical culture of romanticism.
The appearance of romanticism and its aesthetics
While Europe was undergoing an industrial revolution, the hopes of the Great French Revolution were shaking in the hearts of Europeans. The cult of mind, proclaimed by the era of the Enlightenment, was overthrown. On the pedestal ascended the cult of the senses and the natural principle in man.
So romanticism appeared. In musical culture, it existed for a little more than a century (1800-1910), whereas in adjacent fields (painting and literature), its term expired half a century earlier. Perhaps this is the "fault" of music - it was she who was at the top of the arts among the romantics as the most spiritual and the most liberated art.
However, the romantics, unlike the representatives of the epochs of antiquity and classicism, did not build a hierarchy of arts with its clear division into types and genres. The romantic system was universal, the types of art were free to go into each other. The idea of synthesis of arts was one of the key in the musical culture of romanticism.
This interrelation concerned the categories of aesthetics: it was perfectly connected with the ugly, the high with the base, the tragic with the comic. Such transitions were linked by romantic irony, it also reflected the universal picture of the world.
Everything that had to do with the beautiful acquired a new meaning among the romantics. Nature became an object of worship, the artist was worshiped as the highest of mortals, and feelings were exalted above reason.
Unspiritual reality contrasted with the dream, beautiful, but unattainable. Romantic using imagination built his new, unlike other realities, the world.
What themes were chosen by artists of romanticism?
The interests of romantics were clearly manifested in the choice of themes chosen by them in art.
- The theme of loneliness. An underestimated genius or a lonely person in society - these were the main themes of the composers of this era ("The Love of a Poet" by Schumann, "Without the Sun" by Musorgsky)
- Theme "lyric confession". In many opuses of romantic composers there is an autobiographical touch (Schumann’s Carnival, Berlioz’s Fantastic Symphony).
- Theme of love. This is mostly a topic of unrequited or tragic love, but not necessarily (Schumann’s “Love and Life of a Woman”, Tchaikovsky’s “Romeo and Juliet”).
- Theme of the way. It is also called the theme of wandering. The soul of romance, torn by contradictions, was looking for its own way ("Harold in Italy" by Berlioz, "Years of wandering" of Liszt).
- Theme of death. It was mainly spiritual death (Tchaikovsky's Sixth Symphony, Schubert’s Winter Path).
- Theme of nature. Nature is in the eyes of a romance and a protective mother, and an empathizing friend, and a punishing rock (Mendelssohn's Hebrides, Borodina In Central Asia). The cult of the native land (Polonaises and Chopin's ballads) is also connected with this theme.
- Theme fiction. The imaginary world for the romantics was much richer than the real one (Weber’s “The Magic Shooter,” Rimsky-Korsakov’s “Sadko”).
Music genres of the era of romanticism
The musical culture of romanticism gave impetus to the development of chamber vocal lyric genres: ballad (Schubert's "Forest King"), the poem ("Lake Maiden" Schubert) and songsoften combined in cycles ("Mirty" by Schumann).
Romantic Opera differed not only by the fiction of the plot, but also by the strong connection of words, music and stage action. There is a symphony of opera. It is enough to recall Wagner’s “Ring of the Nibelungs” with a developed network of leitmotifs.
Among the instrumental genres of romance emit piano miniature. To convey one image or a minute mood, they need a small play. Despite its scale, the play is bubbling with expression. She may be "song without Words" (like Mendelssohn’s) mazurka, waltz, nocturne or plays with program titles (Schumann’s Rush).
Like songs, plays sometimes come together in cycles (Schumann’s Butterflies). In this part of the cycle, brightly contrasting, always formed a single composition due to musical ties.
Romantics loved program music, connecting it with literature, painting or other arts. Therefore, the plot in their writings often controlled form. Single-part sonatas (B-minor Sonatas Liszt), one-part concerts (Liszt’s First Piano Concerto) and symphonic poems (Liszt’s “Preludes”), a five-part symphony (Berlioz’s Fantastic Symphony) appeared.
The musical language of romantic composers
Synthesis of the arts, sung by romantics, influenced the means of musical expression. The melody has become more individual, responsive to the poetics of the word, and the accompaniment has ceased to be neutral and typical in terms of texture.
Harmony was enriched with unprecedented colors to tell about the experiences of the hero-romantic. So, the romantic intonations of yearning perfectly conveyed the altered harmonies that increase the tension. Romantics also liked the light and shade effect, when the major was replaced by the minor minor of the same name, and the chords of the side steps, and the beautiful juxtaposition of tonalities. New effects were also found in natural modes, especially when it was necessary to convey the folk spirit or fantastic images in music.
In general, the melody of the romantics sought to the continuity of development, rejected any automatic repetition, avoided the regularity of accents and breathed expressiveness in each of its motives. And the texture has become such an important link that its role is comparable to the role of melody.
Instead of conclusion
The musical culture of the romanticist at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries experienced the first signs of crisis. The "free" musical form began to disintegrate, harmony prevailed over the melody, the sublime feelings of the soul of romance gave way to painful fear and base passions.
These destructive tendencies brought romanticism to an end and opened the way to modernism. But, having completed as a direction, romanticism continued to live in the music of the 20th century, and in the music of the present century in its various components. Blok was right when he said that romanticism "arises in all epochs of human life."
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