Why exactly did the ‘classical’ era turn into the ‘romantic’ era?
Around the early 1800’s, the classical, orderly 18th century style music of Mozart, Salieri, etc, gave way to the emotional rampages of Beethoven & Tschiakovski.
Similar transitions from order to emotion took place in other art forms.
But WHY did this happen? Why did the orderly style of classical (Mozart) give way, seemingly almost universally, to those romantic style, which seems to have lasted unto the present day for modern classical music composers?
Did it just magically happen? How did people’s tastes so rapidly change?
They didn’t. You’ll find most musical authorities citing 1820 as the beginning of the Romantic Era, but it’s not. The change was happening gradually throughout the late Classical period and early Romantic. Basically, full Classical music became “old-fashioned” the same way styles and music do today. Beethoven is actually considered a transitional figure, bridging the gap between Classical and Romantic.
One big change: in the Classical era, leading composers (like Haydn) were usually employees of royal courts. By the early 19th century, few noblemen were hiring court composers or maintaining court orchestras.
One important result was that composers were no longer writing to please their employer, but to appeal to large audiences.
I was taught that Beethoven’s Third Symphony started the transition. The three sharp notes that begin it signaled that this wasn’t going to be your father’s symphony. So we could say the transition came through Beethoven’s sheer force of will. However, in fact many other composers were involved, and not (all) simply following Beethoven’s lead. Schubert, on the other hand, maintained a classical style throughout the romantic period.
I’m curious why you said the romantic period continues today? Mostly people say it ended at the beginning of the 20th century with the rise of Stravinsky, Schoenberg, Debussy, Berlioz, and many others.
Thinking of Beethoven as a genre all by himself helps to put him in perspective
As jayjay says, it’s just changing fashions. This has happened continuously throughout the history of music, with the massive generalisations of ‘baroque’, ‘classical’ and ‘romantic’ disguising this. Every generation differs from the preceding one, either by an artistic evolution or revolution. (It goes without saying that every single composer does, too!)
What influences this varies, with all sorts of factors having an impact. As well as an individual choosing their own direction, they can be influenced by the economic necessity of employment or commission, the practicalities of performing music, contemporary politics (especially, for example, in 20th century Russia), and so on. Or, indeed, isolation from any of these, and not just geographically. Charles Ives was able to write astonishingly innovative music with no concern for making money from it, thanks to making his fortune selling insurance.
Sorry to pick on you as an example :), but this is the kind of comment that highlights the inadequacy of the simple ‘romantic’ lable. Schubert was indeed a generation younger than Beethoven, supposedly making him part of the ‘romantic’ era, but you need to also remember that they died within two years of each other. In any case, there’s aspects of Schubert’s music which I would argue have characteristics of full-blooded romanticism - Winterreise is one, which in the last song perhaps even hints at Mahlerian use of the banal to emphasise the profound. Certainly not classical.
I’ve just been listening to some of “The Great Courses” music lectures by Robert Greenberg (excellent, by the way.) In his discussion of Beethoven’s Symphonies, he does use the Eroica (Symphony Number 3) as a transition point.
Short version: He suggests that the change from classical to romantic was related to the Age of Enlightment coming to a conclusion. The concept of the artist as an individual with a need for self-expression emerged from the Enlightenment, from the political overturns connected with the French Revolution (the concept of the importance of the individual).
I dislike the description of any piece as being such a crucial moment around which everything else can be placed. The Rite of Spring may be absolutely crucial to the development of music in the past century, but it’s in no way correct to say that 1913 is the dividing line between ‘modern’ and ‘not modern’. Similarly, while the odd-numbered Beethoven symphonies (excluding 1) show a fascinating and astounding development of the form, they don’t tell the whole story.
Wikipedia gives a decent introduction to Romanticism. I think it is wrong to call it a changing of fashions, I see it as a paradigm shift. It went far beyond than what could be merely called fashion. I see it as beginning with the writings of Rousseau and Goethe and their influence on the following generation, especially in the aftermath of the American and French revolutions.
To me, it was a growing reaction against 1, the Newtonian deterministic view of the universe prevalent during the Enlightenment era and 2, the rise of heavy industry, made possible in no small part due to Newtonian mechanics, and the dramatic changes that was having on European societies, starting in Britain, but soon moving across the continent, both aspects being seen as robbing people of their free will. Reason and logic were considered to be paramount over all other aspects of the human condition, including free will.
The Romantic movement was a conscious effort to exert that free will by celebrating human characteristics of intuition, imagination and subjective experience over what was seen as the cold objective soulless universe, being made manifest in cold, soulless machines and to overthrow the heirarchy of reason proposed by the Enlightenment era. It stipulated that the use of reason without the input of these other characteristics was too impersonal and would make humanity into nothing more than glorified machines.
I see the change in music, as in literature and the other arts, as conscious decisions by the creators to embrace the movement and use art to further its ideals. The fact that most of them were also commercially successful I believe means that the general public was also willing to embrace that movement, but not necessarily the governments at that time. I feel the movement and the era ended with the failed revolutions of 1848, though there are/were artists after that period that may be considered Romantic, none are really breaking new ground.
Applying the concept of romanticism from other art forms onto music rarely gives meaningful results. Just about every aspect of art had a peak in the Florentine Rennaissance except music, which, arguably, had no rennaissance. To place the end of romanticism as 1848 means you wipe out the last decade of Schumann, for goodness sake!
Agnostic Pagan, can you give any musical examples which fit in with the explanation you’ve given?
Music usually trails the other arts in these kind of genre shifts I think.
Romantic painting predates the American War of Independence (think of Benjamin West’s Death of General Wolfe). I think that the public had perhaps grown a bit tired of the staid, and formal neo-classical and were captivated by the drama the romanticists brought to the scene. There’s almost a kind of swagger in their work, although really, it’s not a huge departure from the classical. Throw in the political philosophies of the day and critical mass was there for a wide dissemination and acceptance of the new style.
Beethoven I believe has always been considered the bridge from the classical to the romantic. His music began in the classical germanic tradition and evolved away from it. Brahms I believe cemented the new musical era. If I remember my music history correctly, composers were intimidated by Beethoven’s influence. Many did not wish to write a symphony as they knew they would be compared against Beethoven. Brahms managed to compose symphonies in a romantic style that stood on their own.
I’m sure there are other composers I am not taking into consideration, but I know Brahms is significant.
I’d argue that it was a reaction to modernity. You can see a similar thing from the orderly 1950s to the chaotic 1960s. Romanticism as I understand it is a deep primal urge to revisit some lost past. A past that never really existed, but which people fantasize existed. They are angry about the march of progress and the rigid control of society holding in their primal expression.
This doesn’t answer the question of ‘Why?’ You are genericizing the ideas by putting it in simple terms of generational turn over. Yes, fashions change, but why did they change from Classical into Romanticism instead of from Classical into something else?
Modern composers can often write in a romantic style, but the evolution of music has significantly changed away from it as well. Debussy and Ravel to an extent were impressionistic composers, Wagner and Prokofiev highlighted a return to the germanic classical style often called Neoclassicism. Schoenberg moved towards Atonal music. Bartok, Copland, and Sibelius promoted nationalistic music, as did the music of Tchaikovsky and other Russians (though their nationalistic compositions were romantically inspired). Minimalism and electronic music have been more recent developments. Stravinsky is in a league of his own, straying towards atonality and rhythmic ambiguity (my favourite composer by far )
Romantic music stylings are most present in film scores, which of course makes people believe that the style is the most popular. There are many varieties of “classical” music out there to explore.
