MUSIC 27 Study Guide - Final Guide: Tristan Chord, Gesamtkunstwerk, Program Music
Document Summary
Romanticism: striving for a better, higher, ideal state of being was at the heart of the romantic movement. Emotional expression (feeling, unconstrained by convention, religion, or social taboo- natural human feelings, as opposed to the artificial constraints imposed by society) became the highest artistic goal. The age of revolution: when the french revolution of 1789 rocked europe, the. Romantics were inevitably cast in the role of rebels against the established order. Many musicians including beethoven associated themselves with libertarian politics (beethoven"s bonaparte ): along with political revolution went social revolution- the barriers of hereditary nobility were breached, and the lower and middle classes assumed more social mobility (liszt) In the music itself, composers searched for higher experience and more intense expression- worked to break down barriers of harmony and form. Romantic composers experimented with imaginative new harmonies and treated the sonata form, which is the hallmark of classicism, so freely.
