0.5 Chapter 4: european art music: middle ages to romantic  (Page 11/12)

Romantic (ca. 1820–1900)

In many respects, the social and political history of 19th century Europe and the United States is a continuation of trends and movements rooted in the previous century: secularization, industrialization, democratization. But the way in which artists perceived, interpreted, and expressed the world was informed by a romantic aesthetic. As a general descriptive, romantic is applied to literature, visual arts, and music that emphasize imagination over objective observation, intense emotion over reason, freedom and spontaneity over order and control, individual over universal experience. The romantics of the 19th century sought inspiration in nature (poetry of Wordsworth, paintings of Constable and Turner), mythology and folklore (stories of E. T. A. Hoffmann), and the past (Keats, Ode on a Grecian Urn; Dumas, The Three Musketeers). They idolized tragic heroic figures (Sir Walter Scott’s novel Ivanhoe), and the artist as visionary (Walt Whitman, “I celebrate myself, and sing myself”). And they were fascinated by subjects associated with dreams (Goya’s The Dream of Reason), oppression, injustice, and political struggle (novels of Dickens, Victor Hugo’s Les Miserable), the macabre (stories of Edgar Allen Poe), and death (poems of Emily Dickinson). The lives of many romantics were marked by the restlessness, longing, and unhappy love relationships they depicted through their art (the English poets Byron and Shelley).

Music was in a number of respects the perfect romantic art form. In the words of the composer Franz Liszt, “Music embodies feeling without forcing it to contend and combine with thought…” Music was used as a vehicle for expression of personal emotion, for awakening nationalistic aspirations, and for the display of virtuosity. Composers continued to use genres they inherited from past, such as the symphony, concerto, piano sonata, and opera, but also developed repertories particularly associated with the 19th century, such as the art song and instrumental program music. Whatever the form, romantic composers spoke a musical language infused with poetic lyricism, harmonic complexity, and dramatic contrasts. The requirements of their orchestral scores led to the expansion of the orchestra, both in size, to eighty or more players, and in its palette of instrumental colors through the addition of trombones and tubas, piccolo and contrabassoon, harp, cymbals, triangle, and a variety of drums. The concept of what constituted a single work encompassed the extremes from short, intimate songs and piano miniatures of Schubert and Schumann intended to be performed in intimate surroundings, to the operas of Wagner and symphonies of the late romantic written for large concert halls and demanding enormous performing resources.

Historic context

• Death of Napoleon I, 1821.
• Mexico becomes a republic, 1823; slavery is abolished, 1829.
• Slave revolt in Virginia led by Nat Turner, 1831.
• Charles Darwin’s expedition to South America, New Zealand, Australia, 1831-1836.
• Anti-Slavery Society founded in Boston, 1832.
• Abolition of slavery in British Empire, 1833.
• Public demonstration of the telegraphy by Samuel Morse, 1837.
• Vulcanization of rubber by American inventor Charles Goodyear, 1839.
• Invention of the bicycle by Scottish inventor Kirkpatrick Macmillan, 1839.
• Texas and Florida become U.S. states, 1845.
• Founding of Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C., 1846.
• Potato famine in Ireland, 1846.
• First U.S. women’s rights convention in Seneca Falls, N.Y., 1848.
• Marx and Engels issue The Communist Manifesto, 1848.
• First California gold rush, 1848.
• California becomes U.S. state, 1850.
• Continuous stitch sewing machine invented by Isaac Singer, 1851.
• Paris World’s Fair, 1855; subsequent fairs in London, 1862; Vienna, 1873; Philadelphia, 1876; Paris, 1878; Melbourne, 1880; Moscow, 1882; Amsterdam, 1883; Chicago, 1893, Brussels, 1897; Paris, 1900.
• Construction of Suez Canal, 1859-1869.
• Victor Emmanuel II named King of Italy by Garibaldi, 1860.
• Lincoln elected sixteenth president of the United States, 1860.
• U.S. Civil War, 1861-1865.
• Speed of light measured by Foucault, 1862.
• Lincoln issues Emancipation Proclamation; Gettysburg Address, 1863.
• Thirteenth Amendment to U.S. Constitution abolishes slavery, 1865.
• Alfred Nobel invents dynamite, 1866.
• Russia sells Alaska to United States, 1867.
• P. T. Barnum opens his circus “The Greatest Show in Earth,”; in Brooklyn, 1871.
• Brooklyn Bridge opened, 1872.
• Republic proclaimed in Spain, 1873.
• First Impressionist exhibit, Paris, 1874.
• Alexander Graham Bell invents the telephone, 1876.
• Thomas Edison invents the phonograph, 1877.
• Cholera vaccine discovered by Pasteur, 1880.
• New York streets first lit by electric lights, 1880.
• Tuskegee Institute founded by Booker T. Washington, 1881.
• Pasteur invents rabies vaccine, 1885.
• Statue of Liberty is dedicated, 1886.
• Manufacture of electric motor constructed by Nikola Tesla, 1888.
• Henry Ford builds first car, 1893.
• Invention of motion picture camera by August and Louis Lumiere, 1895.
• First Nobel prizes are awarded, 1896.