Discovering the Era of Romanticism

Have you ever studied for weeks on end for a final exam only to crash and binge watch tv shows after your test? Did you ever break the rules in your life just because you were weary? Such was the mind set of French artists in the early 1800’s. The age of reason or the enlightenment era had set in and the French were, in a word, bored. Reason or the era of thinking, had a down side, thus Romanticism was born.

Romanticism, first defined as an aesthetic in literary criticism around 1800, gained momentum as an artistic movement in France and Britain in the early decades of the nineteenth century and flourished until mid-century. With its emphasis on the imagination and emotion, Romanticism emerged as a response to the disillusionment with the Enlightenment values of reason and order in the aftermath of the French Revolution of 1789.

In Romantic art, nature—offered an alternative to the ordered world.

In its stylistic diversity and range of subjects, Romanticism defies simple categorization. As the poet and critic Charles Baudelaire wrote in 1846, “Romanticism is precisely situated neither in choice of subject nor in exact truth, but in a way of feeling.”

I have created a short 7 minute video on Romanticism for you. It gives you the essence of the movement and explains why it is important to understand it in the context of your life today. After viewing the video answer a few assessment questions as evidence for me that you indeed viewed the video and that you have a good understanding of what Romanticism is all about. Below the video I have placed 3 other short videos that show you the dramatic relationship between music and the era of Romanticism. All of the arts were taken up by this era as a reaction to the industrial age.

Music that was composed and written during the Romantic era may be the most profound ever composed. The intuitive, or feeling dynamic of the music takes you for a ride that acts as a form of euphoria, or safe emotional drug that comforts the spirit. You are not concerned with the narration or the story behind the music, that comes as a payoff later; instead you are swooned by the sounds. Only the title gives you a one word clue as to a context, that of moonlight. Such a romantic era work of music is found in all of Beethoven’s Sonata’s. Listen to his composition entitled Moonlight Sonata below, performed by Khatia Buniatishvili. Watch and listen as her two hands act as dancing partners. Her right hand gently leads her left hand as if in a slow waltz. Her left hand (the lower bass sounds) submits to the dance as if the partner in the dance was falling into a trance of peace, love, and sleep. Notice that at the end of the piece that the only time the two hands are in the same movement or embrace are discovered in the last two notes, as if ending in an embrace at the end of the dance in complete rest and peace. these are the two most important notes of the composition. It is as if you danced only to get to this last moment. As you hear the music, see the moon slowly rising in the distance as a background for the dance of the two hands. If I were to rename this great piece, I would call it the Dance by Moonlight.

Allow your sight to view this short video below of Beethoven’s Bagatelles for Solo Fortepiano op 119; no 4 in A major - Andante cantabile
Performed by Eric Zivian. The use of light defines each note. The video requires you to participate visually. As if you were a dance partner.

In this last video below, you are combining nature within the music of Beethoven. It is as if the music were written for dolphins and their movement. There is a gracefulness, a gentle rhythm of movement that lulls you to sleep. Dolphins actually sleep as they swim. One side of the brain goes to sleep for a good while, then wakes up and then the other side of the brain does the same. The romantic era was a response against the industrial revolution seeking the aesthetic over the dogmatic and hard edges of life.