While poetry Essay Example For Students

While poetry Essay Thus it looks like the French Romantics went on to rebel against the constitutions, trying to change the world for the better, while the Germans lost themselves in their emotions and overwhelming feelings, which must have led to a completely false world-view. So from here onwards, the term Romantics shall be referred to the German Romantics, rather than the French ones, whose thoughts and aims seem to be far easier to understand. Not only were there significant changes on the social side of life in the late 18th and early 19th century, the arts themselves underwent some rather drastic changes too. Lead by the Sturm and Drang movement in literature which produced works such as Goethes famous book about The Sorrows of the Young Werther a masterpiece incorporating a number of the typical Romantic ideas, such as love and tragedy as well as the idea of the suffering hero8 the other art forms did not take long to follow the writers and poets examples. While poetry and architecture went back to their ancient roots, with the Nibelungenlied amongst many others gaining a new popularity and the Gothic architectural style being revived, music was more concerned with representation of the present. Despite this rather insignificant difference, all so called Romantic art forms have the same basic aims and principles: the revolt and downfall of prescribed rules and institutions especially in France -, philosophical revolt against rationalism, the promotion of feelings and emotions over intellect and reason, the belief in goodness of humanity, the rediscovery of artists as the greatest individual creators, the development of nationalistic pride and above all, the return to nature. While on the one hand the French Revolution is seen as the beginning of Romanticism, Alfred Einstein, on the other hand, emphasises Beethoven not necessarily as the founder of the Romantic period, but certainly as the most important composer who opened up the door to the new Musical Romanticism. In his eyes the Romantic era began with Beethoven, since from this great German composer onwards, symphonies, chamber music, songs and even opera had been written without anyone telling the composer what his works should be like. The Church and the Courts were no longer educating and more or less ruling over the musicians, which allowed the composers more freedom in expressing themselves. Compositions were generally aimed at an imaginary audience9, or in some cases at no audience at all, like for example for some of Schuberts piano sonatas, which have been composed for private use or performance in the small family and friends circle. The composers also set out to in Richard Wagners words create the artwork of the future, since they did everything possible to break away from the traditional Classical rules to create more forward looking works for the present generation, the generation of the future and for all eternity10. It is not unknown that Beethovens first composition were pretty much truly Classical ones, influenced by Haydn and to some extent also Mozart, but as he progressed as a musician and composer, his style gradually became freer and more expressive, and it was not for long until he started to express his view on political and social matters. The best known example for the turning point in Beethovens compositional style as well as the expression of his political views is the third Symphony (Op.55), also known as the Eroica Symphony. In contrast to the preceding symphony, the expanded form of this work makes it stand out; it was the longest composition of this genre by that date, even though Mozarts Prague Symphony had already been considered long. But not only the form of the composition itself was bigger than ever before, the size of the orchestra had also been increased, even if only slightly by the addition of a third horn at this early stage. Comparing two poems Two scavengers in a truck, two beautiful people in a Mercedes and Vultures EssayThis piece comprises not only the typical Romantic idea of nationalism, but also represents one of the most important Romantic musical forms: the tone poem, or symphonic poem. A piece that tells a story, but not just any story which the listener can make up himself, but a specific story provided by the composer. This was probably more or less the instrumental equivalent to the Romantic song, the Lied, which obviously was able to express certain feelings not just through the music, but also reinforce them with words. However, not only the styles and forms of music changed. The 19th century also saw a rise in the virtuoso. Led by Paganini, the role of the virtuoso instrumentalist is most likely to have come about because of the strong emphasis on the individual during this time. The artist saw himself as the misjudged genius, and as the demand for public performances, and especially solo concerts, increased, so did the demand for brilliant and outstanding musicians. Even though this put the individuals under extreme pressure, they did manage to create some of the greatest pieces of that time; pieces that were fresh and completely new in style. But not only Paganini composed pieces of instrumental transcendence, Liszt took the great violin masters creation a step further, by setting some of his etudes for piano and at the same time introducing new titles taken from poetry. Thus another typical Musical Romantic idea had been improved to include several Romantic ideals. This use of poetic titles was not unusual in the Romantic period, since it added more expression to the works as well as giving them a higher status in the Romantic world. In conclusion it needs to be said, that the ideas mentioned here are only a small fraction of what happened musically in what we are now used to calling the Romantic era. As declared previously, there are various different definitions of what Romantic really means, but hopefully some of the main characteristics have had some light shed on them. Musical Romanticism, just like Literal Romanticism is a term that can be applied to a great number of compositions or essays and poems that have been produced during the first half of the 19th century, but as always there are exceptions to the rules. There have been numerous composers who did not adapt the new style of writing and composing or even the new way of thinking, and have therefore stuck to writing in the old traditional style of the Classical period. But then again if Romantic was to include anything from the Middle Ages to the 20th century, surely this can then also be said about Musical Romanticism. If we were to adapt this definition, however, we would then need to talk about different stages of Romanticism in all the arts, and the term Romantic itself would need a much clearer definition itself. Of course composers as well as writers and other artists always set out to express certain emotions in their works, so considering this, should they be called Romantic too? There are still so many questions left open which need to be looked at in much greater detail to avoid any more confusion arising from vague definitions.