Encyclopedia
Romanticism was an artistic and intellectual movement that originated in late
18th century Western Europe. In part a revolt against aristocratic social and political norms of the
Enlightenment period and a reaction against the rationalization of nature, in art and literature it stressed strong emotion as a source of aesthetic experience, placing new emphasis on such emotions as trepidation, horror, and the awe experienced in confronting the sublimity of nature. It elevated folk art, language and custom, as well as arguing for an epistemology based on usage and custom. It was influenced by ideas of the Enlightenment, particularly evolution and uniformitarianism, which argued that "the past is the key to the present", and elevated medievalism and elements of art and narrative perceived to be from the medieval period. The name "romantic" itself comes from the term "romance" which is a prose or poetic heroic narrative originating in the medieval.
The ideologies and events of the
French Revolution are thought to have influenced the movement. Romanticism elevated the achievements of what it perceived as misunderstood heroic individuals and artists that altered society. It also legitimized the individual imagination as a critical authority which permitted freedom from classical notions of form in art. There was a strong recourse to historical and natural inevitability in the representation of its ideas.
Characteristics
In a general sense, Romanticism refers to several distinct groups of artists, poets, writers, and musicians as well as political,
philosophical and social thinkers and trends of the late 18th and early 19th centuries in
Europe. This movement is typically characterized by its reaction against the Enlightenment; whereas the Enlightenment emphasized the primacy of reason, Romanticism emphasized imagination and feeling. Rather than an
epistemology of deduction, the Romantics demonstrated elements of
knowledge through intuition. But a precise characterization and a specific description of Romanticism have been objects of intellectual history and
literary history for all of the
twentieth century without any great measure of consensus emerging. Arthur Lovejoy attempted to demonstrate the difficulty of this problem in his seminal article "On The Discrimination of Romanticisms" in his
Essays in the History of Ideas ; some scholars see romanticism as completely continuous with the present, some see it as the inaugural moment of modernity, some see it as the beginning of a tradition of resistance to the Enlightenment, and still others date it firmly in the direct aftermath of the French Revolution. Perhaps the most instructive—and most succinct—definition comes from
Charles Baudelaire: "Romanticism is precisely situated neither in choice of subject nor exact truth, but in a way of feeling."
Some modernist writers argue that Romanticism represents an aspect of the
Counter-Enlightenment, a negatively charged phrase used to label movements or ideas seen by them as counter to the rationality and objectivity inherent in the Enlightenment, and promoting
emotionalism, superstition and instability.
Music
Romanticism and music
In general, the term 'Romanticism' when applied to music has come to mean the period roughly from the 1820s until 1910. The contemporary application of 'romantic' to music did not coincide with modern categories: in 1810
E.T.A. Hoffmann called
Mozart,
Haydn and
Beethoven the three "Romantic Composers", and Ludwig Spohr used the term "good Romantic style" to apply to parts of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony. By the early 20th century, the sense that there had been a decisive break with the musical past led to the establishment of the 19th century as "The Romantic Era," and as such it is referred to in the standard encyclopedias of music.
However the 20th century general use of the term 'romanticism' amongst music writers and historians did not evolve in the same way as it did amongst literary and visual arts theorists, so that there exists a disjunction between the concept of romanticism in music and in the other arts. Literary and visual art theorists tend to consider romanticism in terms of the 'alienation' of the artist and the value of art for art's sake, concepts only gradually creeping into musicology, where there is still considerable confusion between 'music of Romanticism' and the less definable, category of 'music of the Romantic Era'. The traditional discussion of the music of Romanticism indeed includes elements, such as the growing use of
folk music, which are more directly related to
Nationalism and are only indirectly related to Romanticism.
Some aspects of Romanticism are already present in eighteenth-century music. The heightened contrasts and emotions of Sturm und Drang seem a precursor of the
Gothic in literature, or the sanguinary elements of some of the operas of the period of the
French Revolution. The libretti of
Lorenzo da Ponte for
Mozart, and the eloquent music the latter wrote for them, convey a new sense of individuality and freedom. In Beethoven, perhaps the first incarnation since the
Renaissance of the artist as hero, the concept of the Romantic musician begins to reveal itself—the man who, after all, morally challenged the Emperor
Napoleon himself by striking him out from the dedication of the Eroica Symphony. In Beethoven's Fidelio he creates the apotheosis of the 'rescue operas' which were another feature of French musical culture during the revolutionary period, in order to hymn the freedom which underlay the thinking of all radical artists in the years of hope after the
Congress of Vienna.
Beethoven's use of tonal architecture in such a way as to allow significant expansion of musical forms and structures was immediately recognised as bringing a new dimension to music. The later piano music and string quartets, especially, showed the way to a completely unexplored musical universe. The writer, critic Hoffmann was able to write of the supremacy of instrumental music over vocal music in expressiveness, a concept which would previously have been regarded as absurd. Hoffmann himself, as a practitioner both of music and literature, encouraged the notion of music as 'programmatic' or telling a story, an idea which new audiences found attractive, however irritating it was to some composers . New developments in instrumental technology in the early nineteenth century—iron frames for pianos, wound metal strings for string instruments—enabled louder dynamics, more varied tone colours, and the potential for sensational virtuosity. Such developments swelled the length of pieces, introduced programmatic titles, and created new genres such as the free standing overture or tone-poem, the piano fantasy, nocturne and rhapsody, and the virtuoso concerto, which became central to musical Romanticism.
In opera a new Romantic atmosphere combining supernatural terror and melodramatic plot in a folkloric context was most successfully achieved by
Weber's
Der Freischütz . Enriched timbre and color marked the early orchestration of
Hector Berlioz in France, and the grand operas of
Meyerbeer. Amongst the radical fringe of what became mockingly characterised as 'artists of the future', Liszt and Wagner each embodied the Romantic cult of the free, inspired, charismatic, perhaps ruthlessly unconventional individual artistic personality.
It is the period of 1815 to 1848 which must be regarded as the true age of Romanticism in music - the age of the last compositions of Beethoven and
Schubert , of the works of
Schumann and
Chopin , of the early struggles of Berlioz and
Richard Wagner, of the great virtuosi such as
Paganini , and the young
Liszt and Thalberg. Now that we are able to listen to the work of Mendelssohn stripped of the
Biedermeier reputation unfairly attached to it, he can also be placed in this more appropriate context. After this period, with Chopin and Paganini dead, Liszt retired from the concert platform at a minor German court, Wagner effectively in exile until he obtained royal patronage in Bavaria, and Berlioz still struggling with the bourgeois liberalism which all but smothered radical artistic endeavour in Europe, Romanticism in music was surely past its prime—giving way, rather, to the period of musical romantics.
Music after 1848
Romantic nationalism, the argument that each nation had a unique individual quality that would be expressed in laws, customs, language, logic, and the arts, found an increasing following after 1848. Some of these ideals, linked to liberal politics, had been exemplified in Beethoven's antipathy to Napoleon's adoption of the title of Emperor, and can be traced through to the musical patriotism of Schumann, Verdi, and others. For these composers and their successors the nation itself became a new and worthy theme of music. Some composers sought to produce or take part in a school of music for their own nations, in parallel with the establishment of national literature. Many composers would take inspiration from the poetic nationalism present in their homeland. This is evident in the writings of Richard Wagner, especially after 1850, but can be clearly seen in Russia, where the 'Kuchka' of nationalist composers gathered around
Balakirev, including
Mussorgsky,
Borodin, and
Rimsky-Korsakov. These composers were concerned about the enormous influence of German music in Russia, and they largely resented the founding of the
conservatoires in
Moscow and
St. Petersburg by the brothers
Nikolai and
Anton Rubinstein, which they believed would be Trojan horses for German musical culture. .
This movement continued forward through into the 20th century with composers such as
Jean Sibelius, although nationalism found a new musical expression in study of folk-song which was to be a key element in the development of
Bartók,
Ralph Vaughan Williams and others.
Labels like 'Late Romantic' and 'Post-Romantic' are sometimes used to link disparate composers of various nationalities, such as
Giacomo Puccini,
Jean Sibelius,
Richard Strauss,
Samuel Barber and
Ralph Vaughan Williams, all of whom lived into the middle of the
20th century. See Romantic period in music. The conscious '
Modernisms' of the 20th century all found roots in reactions to Romanticism, increasingly seen as not realistic enough, even not brutal enough, for a new technological age. Yet
Arnold Schoenberg's later spare style had its roots in rich freely chromatic atonal music evolving from his late Romantic style works, for example the giant polychromatic orchestration of
Gurrelieder; and
Stravinsky's originally controversial ballets for
Diaghilev seem to us far less controversial today when we can understand their descent from Rimsky-Korsakov.
Visual art and literature
In visual art and literature, 'Romanticism' typically refers to the late 18th century and the 19th Century.
The Scottish poet James Macpherson influenced the early development of Romanticism with the international success of his
Ossian cycle of poems published in 1762, inspiring both Goethe and the young
Walter Scott.
An early
German influence came from
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe whose 1774 novel
The Sorrows of Young Werther is a loosely autobiographical [i] novel [i] by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe [i] ...
had young men throughout
Europe emulating its protagonist, a young artist with a very sensitive and passionate temperament. At that time Germany was a multitude of small separate states, and Goethe's works would have a seminal influence in developing a unifying sense of
nationalism. Important writers of early German romanticism were
Ludwig Tieck,
Novalis and
Friedrich Hoelderlin.
Heidelberg later became a center of German romanticism, where writers and poets such as
Clemens Brentano, Achim von Arnim and
Joseph von Eichendorff met regularly in literary circles.
Since the Romanticists opposed Enlightenment, they often focused on emotions and dreams in their works. Other important motives in German Romanticism are travelling, nature and ancient myths.
The late German Romanticism was somewhat darker in its motives and has some
gothic elements.
Romanticism in British literature developed in a different form slightly later, mostly associated with the poets
William Wordsworth and
Samuel Taylor Coleridge, whose co-authored book "Lyrical Ballads" sought to reject Augustan poetry in favour of more direct speech derived from folk traditions. Both poets were also involved in
Utopian social thought in the wake of the
French Revolution. The poet and painter
William Blake is the most extreme example of the Romantic sensibility in Britain, epitomised by his claim “I must create a system or be enslaved by another man's”. Blake's artistic work is also strongly influenced by Medieval illuminated books. The painters
J.M.W. Turner and
John Constable are also generally associated with Romanticism.
Lord Byron,
Percy Bysshe Shelley,
Mary Shelley and
John Keats constitute another phase of Romanticism in Britain. The historian
Thomas Carlyle and the
Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood represent the last phase of transformation into
Victorian culture.
William Butler Yeats, born in 1865, referred to his generation as "the last romantics."
In predominantly
Roman Catholic countries Romanticism was less pronounced than in Germany and Britain, and tended to develop later, after the rise of
Napoleon.
François-René de Chateaubriand is often called the "Father of French Romanticism". In France, the movement is associated with the 19th century, particularly in the paintings of
Théodore Géricault and
Eugène Delacroix, the plays, poems and novels of
Victor Hugo , and the novels of
Stendhal. The composer
Hector Berlioz is also important.
In
Russia, the principal exponent of Romanticism is
Alexander Pushkin. Mikhail
Lermontov attempted to analyse and bring to light the deepest reasons for the Romantic idea of metaphysical discontent with society and self, and was much influenced by
Lord Byron. The poet
Fyodor Tyutchev was also an important figure of the movement in Russia, and was heavily influenced by the German Romantics.
Romanticism played an essential role in the national awakening of many Central European peoples lacking their own national states, particularly in
Poland, which had recently lost its independence to
Russia when its army crushed the Polish Rebellion under the reactionary Nicholas I. Revival of ancient myths, customs and traditions by Romanticist poets and painters helped to distinguish their indigenous cultures from those of the dominant nations . Patriotism, Nationalism, revolution and armed struggle for independence also became popular themes in the arts of this period. Arguably, the most distinguished Romanticist poet of this part of Europe was
Adam Mickiewicz, who developed an idea that Poland was the Messiah of Nations, predestined to suffer just as
Jesus had suffered to save all the people.
In the
United States, the romantic gothic makes an early appearance with
Washington Irving's
Legend of Sleepy Hollow , followed from 1823 onwards by the fresh
Leatherstocking tales of
James Fenimore Cooper, with their emphasis on heroic simplicity and their fervent landscape descriptions of an already-exotic mythicized frontier peopled by "
noble savages", similar to the philosophical theory of Rousseau, like Uncas, "
The Last of the Mohicans". There are picturesque elements in Washington Irving's essays and travel books.
Edgar Allan Poe's tales of the macabre and his balladic poetry were more influential in France than at home, but the romantic American novel is fully developed in
Nathaniel Hawthorne's atmosphere and melodrama. Later Transcendentalist writers such as
Henry David Thoreau and
Ralph Waldo Emerson still show elements of its influence, as does the romantic realism of
Walt Whitman. But by the 1880s, psychological and
social realism was competing with romanticism. The poetry which Americans wrote and read was all romantic until the 1920s: Poe and Hawthorne, as well as
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. The poetry of
Emily Dickinson – nearly unread in her own time – and
Herman Melville's novel
Moby-Dick is an 1851 [i] novel [i] by Herman Melville [i]. ...
can be taken as the epitomes of American Romantic literature, or as successors to it. Novels written during this time such as
Hawthorne's
The Scarlet Letter, published in 1850 [i], is an American romance novel written by Nathaniel Hawthorne [i] ...
and
Herman Melville's
Moby-Dick is an 1851 [i] novel [i] by Herman Melville [i]. ...
evoked a more realistic, and sometimes deeply psychological and philosophical, view of the world as opposed to the very early romantic tales from the
Middle Ages, such as
The Green Knight, that used magical occurrences and enchanted lands as literary devices while giving little recognition and descriptive detail to the actual realistic difficulties faced by characters in such works. As elsewhere , literary Romanticism had its counterpart in the visual arts, most especially in the exaltation of untamed America found in the paintings of the
Hudson River School.
In the
20th Century Russian-American writer
Ayn Rand called herself a romantic, and thought she might be a 'bridge' from the romantic era to an eventual esthetic rebirth of the movement. She wrote a book called
The Romantic Manifesto and called her own approach Romantic realism.
Nationalism
One of Romanticism's key ideas and most enduring legacies is the assertion of nationalism, which became a central theme of Romantic art and political philosophy. From the earliest parts of the movement, with their focus on development of national languages and folklore, and the importance of local customs and traditions, to the movements which would redraw the map of Europe and lead to calls for self-determination of nationalities, nationalism was one of the key vehicles of Romanticism, its role, expression and meaning.
Early Romantic nationalism was strongly inspired by
Rousseau, and by the ideas of
Johann Gottfried von Herder, who in 1784 argued that the geography formed the natural economy of a people, and shaped their customs and society.
The nature of nationalism changed dramatically, however, after the
French Revolution, with the rise of
Napoleon, and the reactions in other nations. Napoleonic nationalism and republicanism were, at first, inspirational to movements in other nations: self-determination and a consciousness of national unity were held to be two of the reasons why France was able to defeat other countries in battle. But as the French Republic became
Napoleon's Empire, Napoleon became not the inspiration for nationalism, but the object of it. In
Prussia, the development of spiritual renewal as a means to engage in
the struggle against Napoleon was argued by, among others,
Johann Gottlieb Fichte a disciple of
Kant. The word
Volkstum, or nationality, was coined in German as part of this resistance to the now conquering emperor. Fichte expressed the unity of language and nation in his address "To the German Nation" in 1806:
- Those who speak the same language are joined to each other by a multitude of invisible bonds by nature herself, long before any human art begins; they understand each other and have the power of continuing to make themselves understood more and more clearly; they belong together and are by nature one and an inseparable whole. ...Only when each people, left to itself, develops and forms itself in accordance with its own peculiar quality, and only when in every people each individual develops himself in accordance with that common quality, as well as in accordance with his own peculiar quality—then, and then only, does the manifestation of divinity appear in its true mirror as it ought to be.
See also
Terms sometimes taken as related
Terms sometimes taken as opposed
...
Movements associated with Romanticism
External links
- , Romanticism
- , Romanticism in Political Thought
Further reading
- Meyer H. Abrams, 1971. The Mirror and the Lamp : Romantic Theory and the Critical Tradition
- Walter Friedlaender, 1952. David to Delacroix,
- Fritz Novotny, 1971. Painting and Sculpture in Europe, 1780-1880,
- Marcel Brion, 1966. Art of the Romantic Era: Romanticism, Classicism, Realism
