Characteristics of the music of the

ROMANTIC PERIOD
 Objectives:
• Relate Romantic music to its historical and cultural
background
• Explain the performance practice during the
Romantic period
• Sing themes of melodic fragments of given Romantic
pieces
Portrait of a
Young Man in
an Artist’s
Studio by
Theodore
Gericult
MUSICOLOGY: greater appreciation for music of
past centuries
Social climate changed
• Support from middle class Romantic composers
audience, not church or aristocrats enjoyed self-expression
• Public favored opera, piano, solo and created music that
with piano, orchestral works would shout their
• Nationalism instilled in music, thus identity and personality.
emergence of folk tunes
CHARACTERISTICS OF ROMANTIC MUSIC

Timbre – richer, denser, added more persons for the orchestra, public
concert halls increased in size to accommodate full orchestras
Tonality – tonal with modulations and related keys to the key
signature
Texture – homophonic, not much counterpoint
Melody – brilliance and depth of sound, exploiting ranges of
instruments, warm and expressive
Dynamics – expressiveness of music uses wider dynamic levels, with
ffff and pppp. Crescendos and diminuendos
Tempo and articulation – new characteristic vocabulary: accelerando,
ritardando, cantabile, con amore, con fuoco (w/ fire), con passion,
dolce, dolente (weeping), maestoso, rubato deviating from strict time
Harmony – use of dissonances to achieve effect of action or tension,
chromatic harmony, use of 7th and 9th
Form – flexible to favor expressiveness
Program music – instrumental composition intended to
depict or evoke nonmusical incidents, ideas, or images
drawn from literature or works of art
During the Romantic period, art of music was closely linked
with art of literature. Musicians of the Romantic period
would want to create music as poetically as possible, and the
writers or poets would want their works to be made as
musically as possible.
This lesson is designed to lead the students to:
• Describe program music during the Romantic period
• Explain how musical elements are used in Program
symphony and concert overture
• Differentiate the main parts of Program music for
orchestra during the Romantic period
• Listen perceptively to selected Romantic period music
Program Music:
• Kind of art music
• Instrumental music
• Associated with a poem, scene or story
• Endeavors to depict musically an extramusical narrative
• Can draw forth a certain experience in the audience other than
sitting in front of musicians
• Composers write the notes in a program (program notes)
• Can elicit particular mental images of movements or sounds
in nature and therefore represents the characters and events
in a particular story as well as the mental and physical
manifestations of feelings: done through imitation of sounds
such as bird songs, thunder, ocean waves or bells. Romantic
composers of program music also use musical rhythm to
portray moving object like rippling brook or a galloping
horse.
Program Symphony: orchestral composition which relays
ideas or narrates a story, usually in movements

Symphony Fantastique
1st movement – passions
2nd movement – a ball
3rd movement – scene in the fields
4th movement – march to the scaffold
5th movement – dream of a witches’ sabbath
There is a fixed musical idea representing the main character
Concert Overture: independent
single movement work usually in
sonata form; different from opera
overture to introduce operas
Symphonic Poem: also called tone poem is a
single-movement composition with a descriptive title,
in which the content of a short story, novel, painting,
or any other literary work is illustrated or evoked

Was introduced by Franz Liszt and became an

important part of Program Music
Examples of SYMPHONIC POEM:
Les Preludes by Liszt
Night of Bald Mountain by Modest Mussorgsky
The Sorcerer’s Apprentice by Paul Dukas
Danse Macabre by Camille Saint-Saens
Isle of the Dead by Serge Rachmaninoff
Die Moldau by Bedich Smetana
Incidental Music:
Performed before and during a play,
intended to add atmosphere to the
action
Interludes, background music, dances or
marches
Now called film scoring or soundtrack