Transition from Classical to Romantic music

Classical music was known for its clarity and regularity of structure, or "natural simplicity", thought of as an elegant international musical style with balanced four-bar phrases, clear-cut cadences, repetition, and sequence.[2] Several developments took place within the Classical period, such as dynamic changes, new homophonic textures, the implementation of the broken chord, and the important contribution of Sonata Form.[1] Sonata form was the foundation for a large number of pieces which provided a foundation for the new era of Romanticism.

Characterized by lyrical melodies, chromaticism and dissonance, and dramatic dynamics, the Romantic era evoked emotions assembled by sovereign story lines and nationalist marches reflecting change.[3][1][4] New musical vocabulary began to further develop using terms like "dolce" or "dolente", in addition to enriched harmonic and rhythmic language.[4] Orchestral forms like symphonic poem, choral symphony, and works for solo voice and orchestra, began to draw other art forms closer.[4]

Romantic music was a self-conscious break from the ideals of the Age of Enlightenment[4] as well as a reaction to socio-political desire for greater human freedom from despotism.[5] The movement sought to express the liberty, fraternity, and equality which writers such as Heinrich Heine and Victor Hugo artistically defended by creating new lyric poetry.[4] There was a new surrender to nature, nostalgia for the past, a turn towards the mystical, new attention to national identity, interest in the autobiographical, and a general discontentment with musical formulas and conventions exercised in Classical compositions.[6][7] Conductors became the central figures in orchestral performances, responsible for the sonic flow of larger pieces.[4]

It was not until the end of the nineteenth century that the emergent discipline of Musikwissenschaft (musicology) began to identify which composers contributed to the transition between the Classical and Romantic eras.[11] The key figure responsible for this periodisation was Guido Adler, who proposed Franz Schubert and Beethoven as the main transitional composers, despite classical composers Haydn and Mozart exemplifying romantic techniques. Adler deemed Romanticism to be fully matured through the post-Beethoven generation of Frédéric Chopin, Robert Schumann, Berlioz, and Franz Liszt's compositions.[12][11]

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, better known for composing classical music, incorporated opera, concerto, symphony, sonata, and string quartets which introduced Romantic qualities to music of the time.[13]

The noted composer working at the forefront of this transition, Haydn, composed a string quartet known as "The Lark" which embodied the new Romantic style.[14] Ludwig van Beethoven's Symphony No. 5 was a key contribution to the transition. During the transitional period, the virtuoso piano styles of the Romantics Frédéric Chopin[15] and Franz Liszt[16] were important to consolidating the Romantic movement, with Franz Schubert, Carl Maria von Weber, and John Field being prominent in the generation of "Proto-Romanticism".[17][18]

The concept of programmatic music was prevalent among transitional pieces such as Ludwig van Beethoven's titles of Eroica, Pastoral, and Pathetique.[19] Giving compositions characteristic names was expanded upon by Romantic composers such as Richard Strauss and became standard.[19] Ludwig van Beethoven formally cultivated ideas within the music community by interrelating between movements and writing smaller movements within one large piece such as pairing scherzo and trio sections. Franz Schubert took part in the Classical to Romantic transition by being considered the last of the Classical composers in his earlier instrumental pieces, and the first of the romantics through his 600 art songs that were melodic and harmonic.[20][21][22][23]

Gaspare Spontini was responsible for the final actions that led to the changing era due to the fact that he was deeply admired by later romantic composers like Weber, Berlioz, and Wagner.[1] He composed inventive harmonic language in his operas that cultivated closed numbers which was a structural pattern later adopted by Wagner. Spontini was regarded for his works being the Romantic beginnings of Opera.[1]

The last composition of the Classical era is considered to be the String Quintet in C major by Franz Schubert who continued to bridge Romantic music in his succeeding art songs and instrumental works.[22]