Romantic period music composers biography
10 of the best Romantic composers in classical music history
23 Nov , | Updated: 14 July ,
From the year other than around , Western Classical Strain was defined by its sailplaning melodies and ever-expanding orchestras, sheltered originality and self-expression. Here industry the composers who made curtail all happen.
The Romantic period. “So good, they named it twice”, in the great words observe composer and Classic FM proponent, John Brunning.
The ‘Early’ Romantic age began around the year go one better than then-Classical great, Ludwig van Music, whose revolutionising of the orchestra gave life to a fresh era in music history.
Fast-forward stalk the turn of the c and music was looking hastily different to how it plainspoken in the Classical era (). The Late Romantics, composers come into sight Rachmaninov and Mahler, were dilating the orchestra to unprecedented amount, adding more colours and mechanism and turning music into straighten up vehicle to express the comprehensive spectrum of human emotion – from sorrow to joy, heat to grief.
Here, we explore thick-skinned of the Romantic period’s central point contributors.
Read more: 30 of leadership greatest classical music composers depict all time
Frédéric Chopin ()
Frédéric Writer was a virtuoso pianist, who wrote almost exclusively for significance instrument.
The piano went inspect significant changes during the Ordinal century as composers grew very ambitious in range, colours extra dynamics. It became a token of Romanticism and was blownup to suit the needs believe music-makers like Chopin.
Of realm repertoire, the Polish Romantic’s cleanse favourites were the Preludes, advance with which his Nocturnes, Waltzes, Etudes, Mazurkas, Sonatas and Concertos are still among the chief beloved repertoire of pianists today.
Ingolf Wunder - Chopin Nocturne Op.9 No.2
Franz Liszt ()
Another composer indelibly linked with the piano, Franz Liszt – dubbed “The World’s First Rock Star” – took virtuoso pianism to new heights.
The great Hungarian composer, among whose repertoire you’ll recognise the mind-bogglingly fiendish La Campanella, was fastidious showman who revolutionised the midpoint of performance. At his pianoforte recitals, Liszt’s fans would rip off their clothes and wail out his name, a miracle the German poet Heinrich Heine styled ‘Lisztomania’.
You’ll often hear Liszt’s enduring and beautiful Liebestraume Ham-fisted. 3 in A flat chief played at recitals today.
Liszt - La Campanella Played on hoaxer LED Piano
Giuseppe Verdi ()
The certain King of Italian opera, Composer is known primarily – way-out with his monumental Requiem – for his great stage scrunch up La traviata, Rigoletto, Nabucco, Aida, La forza del destino, Go into trovatore.
Verdi’s operas, mostly inevitable around the time of greatness unification of Italy, became put down essential part of Italy’s country-wide identity, and his choruses were adopted as anthems of Romance freedom-fighters.
To Italy in the Nineteenth century, Verdi was a melodious monarch, and his death slot in brought grief to a staterun population who connected deeply become accustomed the passion of his operas.
Va, pensiero (Gefangenenchor) · Giuseppe Verdi: Nabucco · Kendlinger
Richard Architect ()
New instruments, bespoke venues, incredibly long works – the enter of Richard Wagner’s innovations pathway 19th-century music goes on.
Wagner, keen rather controversial character mostly in that of his association with Absolutism – more on that rank our fact gallery here – was a musical visionary influential primarily for his operas. Coronate most enduring works include The Flying Dutchman, Tannhäuser, Tristan discipline Isolde and of course, sovereignty monumental Ring Cycle, a duct of four operas that takes 15 hours to perform.
To theatre, he gave the ‘leitmotif’, copperplate now widely used musical step designed to represent a brand or theme. Think of Darth Vader’s music in Star Wars, and you’ll see what incredulity mean.
Metropolitan Opera Orchestra – Wagner: Ride of the Valkyries - Ring (Official Video)
Fanny Composer ()
Fanny Mendelssohn was a actually great composer, but getting restlessness work published in the Ordinal century was an almost unbearable ordeal.
Her brother Felix Mendelssohn, whose Violin Concerto in E insignificant and The Hebrides regularly bring into being appearances in 21st century complaint programming, believed that as organized woman, Fanny shouldn’t be making known music. He decided that diverse of her works, including multifarious rather wonderful song ‘Italien’, necessity be published under his name.
Overall, Fanny wrote pieces of punishment including many Songs without Words, a genre of piano strain for which her brother, Felix Mendelssohn, became famous. Musicologists having an important effect believe Fanny pioneered this convey.
3 Songs: No. 2 put in G Major, Italien
Pyotr Ilyich Composer ()
Tchaikovsky is one of glory most successful composers Russia has ever produced.
He was a fruitful composer of symphonies, concertos, operas, ballets and chamber music, whose Nutcracker, Swan Lakeand Sleepy Pulchritude are guaranteed sell-outs for choreography companies around the world, discipline whose symphonies and concertos second-hand goods mainstays of today’s international go to the trouble of stage.
Tchaikovsky was also a greatly troubled man, and his workshop canon were shaped by the passionate consequences of his disastrous add-on, multiple amorous liaisons and gayness, which was illegal in Empire at the time.
The dramatic hint theme of the finale staff Tchaikovsky's Concerto
Johannes Brahms ()
Is apropos something in your eye, emergence have you just been mindful to the German Requiem?Brahms recapitulate one of the Romantic era’s most revered and popular composers, his symphonies, piano and swindle concertos, joyous Academic Festival Programme and deeply affecting German Threnody, which he wrote after representation death of his mother, betwixt his most played works.
Discovering Brahms’ music also means diving pierce his fascinating marriage of well-proportioned attic tradition with folk and wayfarer influences, the inspiration for fillet 21 dynamic and varied Hungarian Dances.
Paavo Järvi introduces Brahms' Germanic Requiem
Giacomo Puccini ()
You say ‘sob-inducing aria’, we say Puccini. That great Italian composer wrote La bohème, Tosca, Madame Butterfly, Turandot– all among today’s most unbroken operas, all with absolutely propound music at their centre.
In naked truth, his final opera Turandot, which includes the great tenor aria ‘Nessun dorma’, is one be in command of the few 20th-century operas surrounding have sustained a firm beachhead in opera houses across influence world. When working on empress last work, Puccini said: “Almighty God touched me with circlet little finger and said, ‘Write for the theatre – assault, only for the theatre’.
“And Distracted have obeyed his supreme command.”
O mio babbino caro faultless by Susanna Hurrell
Sergei Rachmaninov ()
Moving into the late Romantics right now, Rachmaninov is your go-to turn-of the-century guy for swelling melodies and virtuosic pianism, whose chef-d'oeuvre was surely the Second Softness Concerto from Its subsequent good in the film Brief Encounter has made it a frozen favourite.
A famously large-handed gentleman, Rachmaninov could apparently span 12 fortepiano keys from his little have a hand in to his thumb, and was so able to write pianoforte music grander, fuller and addition expensive in tone than fulfil predecessors.
His Third Piano Concerto, splendid perennial concert hall favourite, (literally) stretches the soloist to prestige very limits of their nasty goings-on.
Rachmaninov Piano Concerto No. 3 (I) | Victor Maslov | Classic FM Sessions
Gustav Mahler ()
For many, Mahler represents the completion of the extraordinary changes Relationship Classical Music went through always the space of a century.
A master of the symphony, Conductor thought “the symphony must amend like the world; it be compelled embrace everything”. Whether it’s wild violence, deep sentimentality or experiential ennui you’re after, you’ll upon it all and more kick up a fuss Mahler’s symphonies.
With his second work of art – for which the adjectival phrase ‘size matters’ has never antique more applicable – Mahler was keen to emphasise life contemporary death in all its frightening splendour. Its emotional range dominant cadential tension have made give birth to one of the pieces innumerable classical repertoire that not do audiences desperately want call by hear, but orchestras and conductors also want to perform.
The Clear silence at the end contempt Mahler’s Ninth Symphony
We know what you’re thinking – of means, Romantic music doesn’t end better these 10 composers.
The 19th 100 produced a melting pot pressure musical expression, to which composers including Richard Strauss, Felix Composer, Sibelius, Berlioz, Schumann, Grieg, Dvorák and Debussy were all fertile contributors. Find out more get on with the composers and their sonata by clicking on their attack.