The early Romantic period was a time of great thinkers, artists, and scientists. It is possible that the wealth of creativity at the time reflected the desire of 18th century philosophers to reassess reality and, in particular, man's role in the universe.
Early Romantic music was all about emotion and individual expression--the extremes of joy and sorrow, triumph and dejection, passion and despair. The intensity of passion, individualism and the striving for self-expression are central to the Romantic spirit ...
The early Romantic period was a time of great thinkers, artists, and scientists. It is possible that the wealth of creativity at the time reflected the desire of 18th century philosophers to reassess reality and, in particular, man's role in the universe.
Early Romantic music was all about emotion and individual expression--the extremes of joy and sorrow, triumph and dejection, passion and despair. The intensity of passion, individualism and the striving for self-expression are central to the Romantic spirit ...
Romantic 1825-1900:
Introduction to the period from Essentials of Music linked to details on historical themes, musical context, style, and composer biographies.
Romantic Music, Wikipedia:
The era of Romantic music is defined as the period of European classical music that runs roughly from the early 1800s to the first decade of the 20th century, as well as music written according to the norms and styles of that period. The Romantic period was preceded by the classical period, and was followed by the modern period.
Romantic music is related to Romantic movements in literature, art, and philosophy, though the conventional periods used in musicology are now very different from their counterparts in the other arts, which define "romantic" as running from the 1780s to the 1840s. The Romanticism movement held that not all truth could be deduced from axioms, that there were inescapable realities in the world which could only be reached through emotion, feeling and intuition. Romantic music struggled to increase emotional expression and power to describe these deeper truths, while preserving or even extending the formal structures from the classical period.
The vernacular use of the term romantic music applies to music which is thought to evoke a soft or dreamy atmosphere. This usage is rooted in the connotations of the word "romantic" that were established during the period, but not all "Romantic" pieces fit this description. Conversely, music that is "romantic" in the vernacular sense is not necessarily linked to the Romantic period ...
Kunst der Fuge (Art of the Fuge): Classical music site with thousands of MIDI files (free download!), and WMA/MP3 by outstanding featured artists (see at www.onclassical.com/). Music on the fugue, the counterpoint and generic classical music. Lists of over 5,000 fugues, and fugue theory, analyses, reviews, bibliographies and tools. Submissions of MIDI files and theory on fugues are welcome!
The Romantic Era:
After Beethoven, composers turned their attention to the expression of intense feelings in their music. This expression of emotion was the focus of all the arts of the self-described "Romantic" movement. Whether in the nature imagery or passionate violence found in the paintings of Friederich, Delacroix, and Goya, the strange and fanciful literature of Edgar Allan Poe, or the adventure and myths of the great collections of fairy tales and folk poetry, the depiction in art of the beautiful, the strange, the sublime, and the morbid was the ruling credo of the period.
In music, the nineteenth century saw the creation and evolution of new genres such as the program symphony, pioneered by Beethoven and now developed by Hector Berlioz; its off-shoot, the symphonic poem was developed by Franz Liszt; the concert overture, examples of which were composed by Felix Mendelssohn and virtually every composer thereafter; and short, expressive piano pieces written for the bourgeois salons of Europe by Robert Schumann and Frédéric Chopin ...