Romantic Period

The historians of music have set aside the years1820 – 1900 as the romantic era.
Musical Romanticism was marked by emphasis on originality and individuality, personal
emotional expression, and freedom and experimentation of form. Ludwig van
Beethoven and Franz Schubert bridged the Classical and Romantic periods, for while their
formal musical techniques were basically Classical, their music’s intensely personal feeling and
their use of programmatic elements provided an important model for 19th-century Romantic
composers.
The possibilities for dramatic expressiveness in music were augmented both by the expansion
and perfection of the instrumental repertoire and by the creation of new musical forms, such as
the lied, nocturne, intermezzo, capriccio, prelude, and mazurka. The Romantic spirit often found
inspiration in poetic texts, legends, and folk tales, and the linking of words and music either
programmatically or through such forms as the concert overture and incidental music is another
distinguishing feature of Romantic music. The principal composers of the first phase of
Romanticism were Hector Berlioz, Frédéric Chopin, Felix Mendelssohn, and Franz Liszt. These
composers pushed orchestral instruments to their limits of expressiveness, expanded the
harmonic vocabulary to exploit the full range of the chromatic scale, and explored the linking of
instrumentation and the human voice.

Characteristics of The Romantic Period

 Emotional expression – this became more important than formal structural considerations as
composers rebelled against the formal restraint of the classical period.

 Big expansion in size of orchestra and in types of instrument.

 New structures/forms – rhapsody, nocturne, song cycle

 Increasingly elaborate harmonic progressions

 Longer melodies than classical period

 Bigger range of dynamics

 Larger range in pitch (could be very easily expressed on the piano).

 Nationalism in music – some composers sought to use their compositions to celebrate their
countries e.g. Sibelius Finlandia