The Language of Emotion in Nineteenth Century Art, Poetry, and Music

 

OBJECTIVES:

 

1.  Be able to "define" Romanticism, according to the characteristics found in the various styles of music from 1790-1914.

 

2.  Be able to cite characteristics of Romantic music in the works of Beethoven, Lizst, Chopin, Brahms, and Wagner.

 

3.  Be able to discuss the relationship between music and letters in Romanticism. 

 

4.  Be able to explain why music as regarded as the primary art form of Romanticism, and why instrumental music was considered the apogee of Romanticism.

 

5.  Be able to discuss the characteristics of Romanticism as seen in the poetry of Coleridge and of Wordsworth.

 

6.  Be able to discuss the characteristics of Romanticism in the art of Gericault, Delacroix, Friedrich, Turner, and other nineteenth-century artists.

 

 

Quotations:

 

"In the mirror of tones the human heart learns to know itself; it is how we learn to feel feelings."

Wilhelm Heinrich Wackenroder

 

Music is like a lion=s tongue "which tickles and scratches until the blood flows."

Jean Paul

 

"No color is as romantic as a tone."

Jean Paul

 

Romanticism is "a certain vague and indefinable fantasy."

Victor Hugo

 

"All art constantly aspired toward the condition of music."

Walter Pater

 

Romanticism is "the addition of strangeness to beauty."

Walter Pater

 

 

OUTLINE

 

I.  Definition and characteristics of Romanticism

A.  Problems with definition

B.  Dates

C.  Internationalism

D.  Extreme Contrasts of the nineteenth century

E.   Repudiation of Classical balance and uniformity

.           F.   Music as Ultimate Art form of Romanticism

G.  The Romantic Composers:     

i) youth, productivity, and early deaths

ii) literary interests 

 

II.  Example of Specific Characteristics in Art and Music

A.  Breaking from the Classical Mold: Shattering of Form

i) Boundlessness and Expansionism in music

ii) Beethoven's Eroica Symphony (no. 3)

iii) elongated melodies of Brahms Symphony no. 2         

 

B.  Individualism

i) Romanticists favored no specific type of symphony, poem, piece of literature

ii) oversized personalities of composers

iii) Lizst

a) brief biography

b)extreme virtuosity

*The Transcendental Etudes

*Piano Concerto in E minor

 

C.  Intensity of feeling/emotion 

i.  Weltschmerz, despair, and fear

a) minor keys

b) Chopin's Bb minor sonata

c) Beethoven's pathetique

d) Chopin's Nocturnes

e) Brahms: Capricio opus 76 no.1

f)  the "minor mode" in art: dark colors and despair

i) Goya=s Third of May

ii) Other examples of the use deep, rich colors in art to convey                                                 strong emotion: Blake's illustrations of the Book of Job

g) Delacroix: Horse Frightened by a Storm

h) Caspar David Friedrich: The Wreck of the Hope (Polar Sea)                                                                 ii) Unrequited love and love-suicides

a) Wagner's Tristan and Isolde

iii) The macabre

a) Lizst's Totentanz                   

iv) powerful and sharp contrasts

a) in dynamics: Beethoven

i) the Appassionata Sonata, opus 57

b) in tempo

c) in irregular rhythms

d) in Art; contrasts between light and shade: Goya's Third of May

v) wide leaps in music

vi) dissonance

a) Beethoven's opus 111 Piano Sonata

vii) diagonal lines in art

a) Gericault=s Raft of the Medussa         

 

D.  Love of Untouched Nature

i) Beethoven's Symphony no. 6: The Pastoral

"With more of an expression of feeling than painting"

ii) in Art: The Romanticist's landscape

a) J.M.W. Turner: Snowstorm -- Steamboat off a Harbor's Mouth

b) Constable: Weymouth Bay

iii) Wordsworth's Tintern Abbey

 

E.  Wanderlust and Fantasy

i) in music:  Lizst's Années de Pèlerinage

ii) in Art: anywhere but here! 

a) Delacroix: Dante and Virgil Crossing the Styx    

b) Delacroix: Death of Sardanapalus

c) Delacroix: Tiger Hunt

iii) in poetry: Coleridge's Kubla Kahn

 

F.  Nationalism

i) Chopin's Polonaisses

ii) Lizst's Hungarian Rhapsodies

 

G.  Program Pieces

a) the tension between Romanticism's love of literature and their philosophy of                     music

b) Rimsky-Korsakov=s Scheherazade

 

H.  Art as Escapism and as a World Unto Itself

i) the Industrial Revolution

ii) dehumanization of people

iii) Beethoven's Late Piano Sonatas

a) opus 106: The Hammerklavier

b) opus 111