04/12/23 1

Classicism Vs RomanticismClassicism vs. Romanticism

Listen to This By Mark Evan Bonds

5-2Listen to This By Mark Evan Bonds PRENTICE HALL

©2009 Pearson Education, Inc.Upper Saddle River, NJ 07458

Classicism Vs. Romanticism

Classic-defined by Aulos Gallius, 2nd century A.D. grammarian

“A correctness of language and style for a unique, elite, civilized class of people

Romantic-from “romance”

A Medieval tale of poem treating heroic personages or events written in one of the Romance languages

Listen to This By Mark Evan Bonds

5-3Listen to This By Mark Evan Bonds PRENTICE HALL

©2009 Pearson Education, Inc.Upper Saddle River, NJ 07458

Classicism Reason prevails in all provinces of thought. The

universe is capable of rational explanation as orderly, purposive, structured, and regular

Belief in reality, leaving little of validity to emotion. Mystery and miracle are dispelled

Uniform excellence desired in morals, social function, and art

The artist sought to appeal to rational good taste For the species, not the individual For seeking what is common to all For revealing the order and form inherent in a work of

art to thinking people of good taste

Listen to This By Mark Evan Bonds

5-4Listen to This By Mark Evan Bonds PRENTICE HALL

©2009 Pearson Education, Inc.Upper Saddle River, NJ 07458

Romanticism Distrust of universal formulae and impatience with

rules of procedure Development of a sense of awe and mystery Cultivation of individual, national, and racial

peculiarities High value place upon originality

Every person appreciates and understands through his senses

The glorification of self-rebellion & struggle Strong, Byronic heroes, masculine; later the emphasis

shifts to the willful, dominant female ideal

Listen to This By Mark Evan Bonds

5-5Listen to This By Mark Evan Bonds PRENTICE HALL

©2009 Pearson Education, Inc.Upper Saddle River, NJ 07458

Romanticism Nature not as rational and ordered but as a mirror

of unpredictability of human emotion and of the uncertainties of life

Fascination with the remote, the distant past. Revival in interest in Roman Catholicism as a timeless institution rooted in mystery

Life is ever becoming…evolving. Romantic artists express a longing for the unattainable. Death becomes an obsession as the only haven for fulfilling the struggle toward completeness

Listen to This By Mark Evan Bonds

5-6Listen to This By Mark Evan Bonds PRENTICE HALL

©2009 Pearson Education, Inc.Upper Saddle River, NJ 07458

Romanticism Romantic spirit

“Something far off, legendary, fictitious, fantastic, and marvelous-imaginary and ideal contrasted to the world of the present.”

Implies a freedom of the individual, represents all that man can become, possibility

Listen to This By Mark Evan Bonds

5-7Listen to This By Mark Evan Bonds PRENTICE HALL

©2009 Pearson Education, Inc.Upper Saddle River, NJ 07458

Romanticism Traits:

Remoteness from everyday world

Emphasis on the strange and the fantastic

Boundless: Aspires To transcend the

immediate To reach backward and

forward in time To range outward to reach

the cosmos

Listen to This By Mark Evan Bonds

5-8Listen to This By Mark Evan Bonds PRENTICE HALL

©2009 Pearson Education, Inc.Upper Saddle River, NJ 07458

Romanticism Traits

Cherishes freedom, passion, and endless pursuit of the unattainable-a yearning after the impossible with longing

The personality of the artists merges with the work of art

The arts themselves merge Instrumental music seen as the only perfect vehicle

for communicating deep emotions, abstract and divorced from the world, it is detached completely from the world and therefore free to work on the mind and heart

Listen to This By Mark Evan Bonds

5-9Listen to This By Mark Evan Bonds PRENTICE HALL

©2009 Pearson Education, Inc.Upper Saddle River, NJ 07458

Music & Words Instrumental music is dominated by lyrical spirit of

the Lied Composers were also writers

Carl Maria von Weber Robert Schumann Hector Berlioz Richard Wagner

Program music was the solution to imbuing instrumental music with the poetic & the pictorial

Instrumental accompaniment of vocal music is endowed with pictorial qualities itself

Listen to This By Mark Evan Bonds

5-10Listen to This By Mark Evan Bonds PRENTICE HALL

©2009 Pearson Education, Inc.Upper Saddle River, NJ 07458

Romanticism As containing contradictions and opposites

The crowd and the individual Composers sought haven with a few friends, while at the same

time writing for a large new audience Disappearance of patronage system Composers write for posterity-an “ideal” audience which would

appreciate work Rise of the virtuoso performer-Paganini, Liszt-performer as hero The composer as prophet, along & struggling heroically against a

hostile environment The simple & complex existing side by side

The Lied & Character piece-small, intimate forms The Program Symphony & Romantic Opera: enormous works in which

the composer creates an entire universe

Listen to This By Mark Evan Bonds

5-11Listen to This By Mark Evan Bonds PRENTICE HALL

©2009 Pearson Education, Inc.Upper Saddle River, NJ 07458

Science & the Irrational While the nineteenth

century saw an expansion of exact knowledge, music delved into the unconscious and the supernatural, into dreams and myth.

Nature was seen as fraught with mysterious significance way beyond scientific fact-finding

Listen to This By Mark Evan Bonds

5-12Listen to This By Mark Evan Bonds PRENTICE HALL

©2009 Pearson Education, Inc.Upper Saddle River, NJ 07458

Materialism & Idealism A secular, materialistic age Rise of the Industrial

Revolution A turning away from

organized religion, revival of interest in Catholicism was for its tradition & mystery of ritual

The arts were seen as a religion in themselves

Sacred music was often idealistic and of immense proportion, a longing for the eternal

Listen to This By Mark Evan Bonds

5-13Listen to This By Mark Evan Bonds PRENTICE HALL

©2009 Pearson Education, Inc.Upper Saddle River, NJ 07458

Nationalism A patriotic

movement which glorified the heritage of a country by using its folk music and historical subjects in theatrical or program music