Romanticism was an artistic, literary, musical, and intellectual movement that originated in Europe towards the end of the 18th century as a rejection of the precepts of order, calm, harmony, balance, idealization, and rationality that typified Classicism in general. ▶️ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/JoynulAbadinRasel ☕ Buy me a Coffee: https://www.buymeacoffee.com/JoynulAbadinR

1. The Romantic Period of Music

2. Content

3. What is romanticism?
•Romanticism was an artistic, literary, musical, and intellectual movement that originated in Europe towards the end of the
18th century as a rejection of the precepts of order, calm, harmony, balance, idealization, and rationality that typified
Classicism in general.
•Romanticism was characterized by its emphasis on emotion and individualism.
•The time from 1820 to 1910 was the romantic period of music.

4. Defining Characteristics of Romanticism in Music
• Larger orchestras.
• Use of rubato - slight speeding up and slowing down of the music.
• Dramatic contrasts of dynamics and pitch.
• Freedom of form and design.
• Music during the Romantic period became widely expressive and emotional.
• Composers experimented with new chords, unusual chord progressions, dissonance and smaller motifs for thematic development.
• Music began to include creative and innovative harmonies.
• This period began to present composers as individuals.
• Common themes during this period included intense emotions, nationalism, extreme perceptions of nature, exoticism and the
supernatural or macabre. Symphonie Fantastique (1830), by Berlioz, is an example of many common Romantic themes.

5. How Romantic Era music separated itself from Classical music:
• Chromatic harmonies were making greater use of semitones and unusual chord progressions.
• Melodies associated with an external reference, like a character or emotion being expressed.
Wagner pioneered this idea with the leitmotif.
• Use of rubato(robbed time), adjusting tempo in order to allow for expression, therefore
there will not be strict tempo maintained.
• Increased tempos and complicated rhythms that demanded extraordinary precision and technical
skill to be performed.
• Greater use of techniques like sul ponticello (bowing near the bridge) and
sul tasto (bowing near the fingerboard).

6. Key Music Terms:
Instrumentation: Piano continued to become a prominent instrument.
Other instruments became standardized, such as the saxophone (which was patented in 1846), the
Boehm flute, and the Moritz tuba.
Timbre: Romantic composers often explored varying timbres to create specific moods and emotions—such as
the terror communicated by shrill, high-pitched, dissonant tones.
Timbre at times seemed edgy, rough, or shrill. At other times, timbres were warm and
very lush as in Tchaikovsky’s Romeo and Juliet.
Texture: Much Romantic period music was homophonic and revolved around melody
or melodic statements.
Dynamics: Dynamics are another tool exploited by Romantic period composers
to create expression and emotional communication. Sudden dynamic extremes
were commonly used.
Form: In the Romantic period, forms became both larger and smaller than those of previous
periods. Forms were much more flexible during this period, with the expression or story
sometimes more important than following a specific form.

7. POLITICAL INFLUENCES
POLITICAL INCIDENTS:
• Jeans-Jacques Rousseau (1712-78), the French philosopher,
taught theories of social reform and opposed political tyranny,
which influenced liberal and revolutionary events.
• The American revolutionary war(1775-83) shifted the focus from a ruling monarchy to empowered civilians.
• French revolution(1789-99) brought empowerment of the common individual.
• Napoleon crowned himself as Emperor of the France in 1804.
After that in many countries' revolution was taking place.
This political incidents affected the arts and human expression significantly. The composers of that time were heavily influenced by
the turbulence and revolutionary ideas around them. Beethoven’s Eroica Symphony was one of them.

8. Political Influences Upon Beethoven’s Eroica
• Beethoven was highly influenced by the surrounding political issues.
He composed about revolutionary ideas and dedicated to Napoleon and named it “Buonaparte”.
• Then Napoleon crowned himself as the Emperor.
• At this news Beethoven changed the name to “Eroica” or “Heroic”.
• The “Eroica” was the new beginning for composers and that changed the focus of Beethoven into romanticism in music.

9. Jeans -Jacques’s theories
of
social reformation
The American
Revolutionary
War
French
Revolution
Napoleon
crowned himself as the
Emperor
Revolution
was taking place
in many countries
The composers were
influenced

10. SOCIAL INFLUENCES
• The industrial revolution brought manufacturing industries with smokestacks and large machinery.
• Shifted the focus on individual rather than group.
• Determined rights by people or groups.
• A large number of agricultural workers moved to cities.
• Work time became separate from family and socialization.
• Because of industrial revolution, the middle-class people started to rise and got involved in music. Composers before this period lived on the
patronage of the aristocracy.
• Started feeling helpless or hopeless due to oppressive and inhuman working conditions.
• Children started commonly working in factories.

11. Industrial
revolution
People
moved to
cities
Awareness about
their rights
Rise of
middle class
Influenced the
music
Middle class people
started involving
in music

12. CULTURAL INFLUENCES
• Artists began to depict scenes of loneliness, isolation as well as extreme emotions
like fear and insanity.
Romeo and Juliet
by
Ford Madox Brown
between 1869-70
Illustration to Goethe's "Erlkönig“
by Moritz von Schwind before 1871
• Modern transportation system allowed musicians and audiences to travel.
And magnificent performers were coming on the spotlight from rural areas.
• Literature developed. Mary Shelley, Fairy Tales, the poetry of Goethe, Keats,
Whitman, Wordworth
and Edgar Allan Poe was written in this period.
• Printing technology continued to progress.
This is the reason of mass production of books and newspapers.
• Composers were heavily influenced by literature and other arts, themes and stories.
Examples of this connection include Tchaikovsky’s Romeo and Juliet (1870), based on
Shakespeare’s play, and “Der Erlkönig” (1813) by Franz Schubert, based on a poem by Goethe.
• The chaos and the terror of war illustrated by visual artists like Francisco Goya.
• Carnegie Hall(1891) built in New York.

13. The chaos and terror
Illustrated
in paintings
Literature
developed Printing
Technology
developed
Carnegie Hall
built
Modern
transportation
system
Culturally music composers were influenced by:

14. Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827)
• Beethoven was generally considered the first Romantic composer.
• Symphony No. 3 in E flat, op. 55 – ‘Eroica’
• Symphony No. 9 in D minor, op. 125 – ‘Choral’
• Piano Sonata No. 30 in E, op. 109
• Fidelio, op. 72
Richard Wagner (1813-83)
• The Ring Cycle
• Das Rheingold (The Rheingold)
• Twilight Of The Gods
• Rienzi
Franz Liszt (1811-86)
• Transcendental Études
• Hungarian Rhapsodies
• Mephisto Waltz
• A Faust Symphony
Giuseppe Verdi (1813-1901)
• La Forza Del Destino
• Aida
• Don Carlos
• La Traviata
Famous Composers of the Romantic Period

15. • Individualism gave rise to an elitism among some artists
who believed that their work must be separated.
• During the second half of the eighteenth century the “revolt against reason” became another defining
characteristic of Romanticism and architecture got a new level of aesthetics.
• Artists often seized on the portrayal of ruins to convey a national identity inherited
from the past, which associated buildings with the glory of a nation’s past,
can be seen in the surge in popularity of the Gothic style for new buildings.
• Rise of the middle-class society made the mass interest on art,
which led the plain fields to be designed with geometry and order
as an influence of various romantic paintings and poems.
Relation of Romantic Music
with Architecture

16. Industrial revolution after the period was more flourished, which made the marketing strategies
bold. To make significance, marketers demanded different category of architecture.
As example, in 1958, Phillips Company, a producer of electronic speakers,
hired Le Corbusier to design and build a pavilion for the Brussels World Fair.
Influence of Romantic Period on Architecture
The changes of music from the Romantic period of music involved architecture learning
from the experiential qualities of music and trying to replicate them in built form.
As example, for the Stretto House, Steven Holl narrowed the study of stretto
to one particular piece of music, Bela Bartok’s Music for strings, percussions and Celeste, which is
a romantic music.

17. Conclusion

18. Thank you.