Romantic Period

At its core, composers of the Romantic Era saw music as a means of

individual and emotional expression. Indeed, they considered music the art
form most capable of expressing the full range of human emotion. As a result,
romantic composers broadened the scope of emotional content. Music was
expected to communicate to the audience, often by using a narrative form that
told distinct stories.

Classical vs. Romantic

CLASSICAL ROMANTIC

Reason, thought Emotion, feeling

Restraint, caution Exurberance, excess

Objectivity Subjectivity

Balance Imbalance

Order and proportion Freedom of expression

Rubato – the temporary disregarding of strict tempo to allow an expressive quickening or slackening,
usually without altering the overall pace.

Instruments that added to the orchestra in Romantic period

Woodwind:
Bass clarinet
oboe
English horn

Percussions:

Snare drums
bass drum
cymbals
gong
chimes

Composers of the Romantic Era

Franz Schubert

Franz Peter Schubert (31 January 1797 – 19 November 1828) was an Austrian composer of the
late Classical and early Romantic eras. Despite his short lifetime, Schubert left behind a vast  oeuvre,
including more than 600 secular vocal works (mainly lieder), seven complete symphonies, sacred
music, operas, incidental music, and a large body of piano and chamber music.

Oeuvre - a substantial body of work constituting the lifework of a writer, an artist, or a composer

Lied/Lieder - a type of German song, especially of the romantic period, typically for solo voice with
piano accompaniment.
Carl Maria Von Weber

Carl Maria Friedrich Ernst von Weber (18 or 19 November 1786 – 5 June 1826)[1][2] was a German
composer, conductor, virtuoso pianist, guitarist, and critic who was one of the first significant composers
of the Romantic era. Best known for his operas, he was a crucial figure in the development of
German Romantische Oper (German Romantic opera)
Frederic Chopin

Frédéric Chopin (born March 1, 1810 Żelazowa Wola, near Warsaw, Duchy of Warsaw [now in Poland]—
died October 17, 1849, Paris, France), Polish French composer and pianist of the Romantic period, best
known for his solo pieces for piano and his piano concerti. Although he wrote little but piano works,
many of them brief, Chopin ranks as one of music’s greatest tone poets by reason of his superfine
imagination and fastidious craftsmanship.
Robert Schumann

Robert Schumann ( 8 June 1810 – 29 July 1856) was a German composer, pianist, and influential music critic.
He is widely regarded as one of the greatest composers of the Romantic era. Schumann left the study of law,
intending to pursue a career as a virtuoso pianist. His teacher, Friedrich Wieck, a German pianist, had assured
him that he could become the finest pianist in Europe, but a hand injury ended this dream. Schumann then
focused his musical energies on composing.
Franz Liszt

Franz Liszt  22 October 1811 – 31 July 1886) was a Hungarian composer, virtuoso pianist, conductor,
music teacher, arranger, and organist of the Romantic era. He was additionally
a philanthropist, Hungarian nationalist, and Franciscan tertiary.

Vituoso - an individual who possesses outstanding talent and technical ability in a particular art or field
such as fine arts, music, singing, playing a musical instrument, or composition.
Richard Wagner

Richard Wagner, in full Wilhelm Richard Wagner, (born May 22, 1813, Leipzig [Germany]—died
February 13, 1883, Venice, Italy), German dramatic composer and theorist whose operas and music had
a revolutionary influence on the course of Western music, either by extension of his discoveries or
reaction against them.
Jaques Offenbach

Jacques Offenbach (20 June 1819 – 5 October 1880) was a German-born French composer, cellist
and impresario of the Romantic period. He is remembered for his nearly 100 operettas of the 1850s to
the 1870s, and his uncompleted opera The Tales of Hoffmann.
Johanness Brahms

Johannes Brahms  (7 May 1833 – 3 April 1897) was a German composer, pianist, and conductor of
the Romantic period. Born in Hamburg into a Lutheran family, he spent much of his professional life in
Vienna. He is sometimes grouped with Johann Sebastian Bach and Ludwig van Beethoven as one of the
"Three Bs" of music, a comment originally made by the nineteenth-century conductor Hans von Bülow.

Three B’s – Bach, Beethoven, and Brahms (before Belioz)

Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky

Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky (7 May 1840 – 6 November 1893[a 3]) was a Russian composer of the Romantic
period. He was the first Russian composer whose music would make a lasting impression internationally.
He was honored in 1884 by Tsar Alexander III and awarded a lifetime pension.
Nikolai Rimsky Korsakov

Nikolai Andreyevich Rimsky-Korsakov (18 March 1844, Tikhvin – 21 June 1908, Lyubensk, Saint

Petersburg Governorate) was a Russian composer, and a member of the group of composers known
as The Five. He was a master of orchestration.

The Five - also known as the Mighty Handful, The Mighty Five, and the New Russian School, were five
prominent 19th-century Russian composers who worked together to create a distinct national style of
classical music: Mily Balakirev (the leader), César Cui, Modest Mussorgsky, Nikolai Rimsky-
Korsakov and Alexander Borodin. They lived in Saint Petersburg, and collaborated from 1856 to 1870.
Richard Strauss

Richard Georg Strauss (11 June 1864 – 8 September 1949) was a German composer, conductor, pianist,
and violinist. Considered a leading composer of the late Romantic and early modern eras, he has been
described as a successor of Richard Wagner and Franz Liszt.[1] Along with Gustav Mahler, he represents
the late flowering of German Romanticism, in which pioneering subtleties of orchestration are combined
with an advanced harmonic style.