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Romanticism and the Arts. Visual Art, Music, Literature. Dates. Literature and visual art: end of 18 th century to middle of 19 th century Lyrical Ballads (Wordsworth and Coleridge) 1798 Music: all of 19 th century. Romantic assumptions. Reaction against Classical/Neo-classical movement
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Romanticism and the Arts Visual Art, Music, Literature
Dates • Literature and visual art: end of 18th century to middle of 19th century • Lyrical Ballads (Wordsworth and Coleridge) 1798 • Music: all of 19th century
Romantic assumptions • Reaction against Classical/Neo-classical movement • Romantic not necessarily tied to “love” • Revolutionary impulse—so many initially supported French Revolution
Characteristics of Romantic art • Intended to move and inspire, not teach • Vast, unlimited space in the background • Dramatic, restless, moody • Spontaneous, does not look planned • Expressive Friedrich’s Wanderer Above the Sea of Fog
Characteristics of Romantic Music • Reaching, soaring quality—unattainable goal • Lyricism (not worried about balanced phrases) • Expressing individual feelings • Break from patronage system • Musician as artist—and specialist • Reach a larger audience (concert halls), but they probably won’t understand what the musician means
Two different conceptions of music Classical: “Music is an innocent luxury, unnecessary, indeed, to our existence, but a great improvement and gratification of the sense of hearing. Music is the art of pleasing by the succession and combination of agreeable sounds.” -Charles Burney
Romantic: “Music embodies feeling without forcing it to contend and combine with thought. . . . If music has one advantage over the other media, it owes this to its supreme capacity to make each inner impulse audible without the assistance of reason.” -Franz Liszt
Characteristics of Romantic Literature • The Self as central • Romantic hero • Emotion • “Poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings”—Wordsworth • Lyric
Romantic literature (cont.) • Nature • Burke: The Sublime and the Beautiful Joseph Wright An Eruption of Vesuvius, Seen from Portici John Constable The Hay Wain
Romantic literature (cont.) • Non-traditional Christianity (“Nothing, not God, is greater to one than oneself is”—Whitman) • Opening up of poetic forms; not poetic diction • Supernatural/gothic