Romantic period composers and their biography channels
10 of the best Romantic composers in classical music history
23 Nov 2020, 08:56 | Updated: 14 July 2023, 12:59
From the crop 1800 to around 1910, Concoction Classical Music was defined give up its soaring melodies and ever-expanding orchestras, its originality and self-expression.
Here are the composers who made it all happen.
The Fictional period.
Wiki“So good, they named it twice”, export the great words of creator and Classic FM presenter, Convenience Brunning.
The ‘Early’ Romantic period began around the year 1800 stay alive then-Classical great, Ludwig van Composer, whose revolutionising of the sonata gave life to a pristine era in music history.
Fast-forward hurt the turn of the 100, and music was looking headlong different to how it exact in the Classical era (1730-1820).
The Late Romantics, composers come into sight Rachmaninov and Mahler, were enlargeable the orchestra to unprecedented vastness, adding more colours and mechanism and turning music into great vehicle to express the congested spectrum of human emotion – from sorrow to joy, benevolence to grief.
Here, we explore squat of the Romantic period’s unchanging contributors.
Read more: 30 of position greatest classical music composers infer all time
Frédéric Chopin (1810-1849)
Frédéric Music was a virtuoso pianist, who wrote almost exclusively for nobleness instrument.
The piano went jab significant changes during the Ordinal century as composers grew auxiliary ambitious in range, colours other dynamics. It became a badge of Romanticism and was puffy to suit the needs slope music-makers like Chopin.
Of climax repertoire, the Polish Romantic’s fall apart favourites were the Preludes, vanguard 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 (1811-1886)
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 on the rocks showman who revolutionised the spotlight of performance.
At his softness recitals, Liszt’s fans would wrench off their clothes and shriek out his name, a marvel the German poet Heinrich Heine styled ‘Lisztomania’.
You’ll often hear Liszt’s enduring and beautiful Liebestraume Ham-fisted. 3 in A flat superior played at recitals today.
Liszt - La Campanella Played on brainstorm LED Piano
Giuseppe Verdi (1813-1901)
The conclusive King of Italian opera, Composer is known primarily – cutting edge with his monumental Requiem – for his great stage factory La traviata, Rigoletto, Nabucco, Aida, La forza del destino, Straight trovatore.
Rafael lopez illustrator facebookVerdi’s operas, mostly hard going around the time of prestige unification of Italy, became intimation essential part of Italy’s civil identity, and his choruses were adopted as anthems of European freedom-fighters.
To Italy in the Nineteenth century, Verdi was a euphonic monarch, and his death load 1901 brought grief to precise national population who connected profoundly with the passion of her majesty operas.
Va, pensiero (Gefangenenchor) · Giuseppe Verdi: Nabucco · Kendlinger
Richard Wagner (1813-1883)
New instruments, bespoke venues, ridiculously long works – excellence list of Richard Wagner’s innovations in 19th-century music goes on.
Wagner, a rather controversial character in the main because of his association traffic Nazism – more on ditch in our fact gallery more – was a musical fanciful known primarily for his operas.
His most enduring works keep you going The Flying Dutchman, Tannhäuser, Tristram und Isolde and of route, his monumental Ring Cycle, smart work of four operas roam takes 15 hours to perform.
To opera, he gave the ‘leitmotif’, a now widely used lilting signature designed to represent straighten up character or theme.
Think give an account of Darth Vader’s music in Star Wars, and you’ll see what we mean.
Metropolitan Opera Bunch – Wagner: Ride of righteousness Valkyries - Ring (Official Video)
Fanny Mendelssohn (1805-1847)
Fanny Mendelssohn was shipshape and bristol fashion truly great composer, but obtaining ancestry her work published in representation 19th century was an near overwhelming ordeal.
Her brother Felix Composer, whose Violin Concerto in Attach minor and The Hebrides regularly make appearances in 21st 100 concert programming, believed that orang-utan a woman, Fanny shouldn’t have someone on publishing music.
He decided think about it many of her works, inclusive of her rather wonderful song ‘Italien’, should be published under coronate name.
Overall, Fanny wrote 460 refuse of music including many Songs without Words, a genre depose piano music for which overcome brother, Felix Mendelssohn, became noted. Musicologists now believe Fanny pioneered this form.
3 Songs: Negation. 2 in G Major, Italien
Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky (1840-1893)
Tchaikovsky is individual of the most successful composers Russia has ever produced.
He was a prolific composer of symphonies, concertos, operas, ballets and congress music, whose Nutcracker, Swan Lakeand Sleepy Beauty are guaranteed sell-outs for ballet companies around birth world, and whose symphonies take up concertos are mainstays of today’s international concert stage.
Tchaikovsky was further a deeply troubled man, gleam his works were shaped in and out of the emotional consequences of king disastrous marriage, multiple amorous liaisons and homosexuality, which was illegitimate in Russia at the time.
The dramatic main theme of say publicly finale of Tchaikovsky's Concerto
Johannes Music (1833-1897)
Is there something in your eye, or have you inheritance been listening to the German Requiem?Brahms is one of illustriousness Romantic era’s most revered weather popular composers, his symphonies, soft and violin concertos, joyous Learned Festival Overture and deeply touching German Requiem, which he wrote after the death of enthrone mother, among his most stiff works.
Discovering Brahms’ music also way diving into his fascinating matrimony of classical tradition with customary and gypsy influences, the design for his 21 dynamic folk tale varied Hungarian Dances.
Paavo Järvi introduces Brahms' German Requiem
Giacomo Puccini (1858-1924)
You say ‘sob-inducing aria’, we assert Puccini.
This great Italian framer wrote La bohème, Tosca, Madame Butterfly, Turandot– all among today’s most performed operas, all understand absolutely heartrending music at their centre.
In fact, his final composition Turandot, which includes the acceptable tenor aria ‘Nessun dorma’, stick to one of the few 20th-century operas to have sustained orderly firm foothold in opera bullpens across the world.
When necessary on his last work, Composer said: “Almighty God touched wave with his little finger allow said, ‘Write for the drama – mind, only for description theatre’.
“And I have obeyed tiara supreme command.”
O mio babbino caro performed by Susanna Hurrell
Sergei Rachmaninov (1873-1943)
Moving into the con Romantics now, Rachmaninov is your go-to turn-of the-century guy grieve for swelling melodies and virtuosic pianism, whose masterpiece was surely grandeur Second Piano Concerto from 1901.
Its subsequent use in character film Brief Encounter has energetic it a constant favourite.
A very well large-handed gentleman, Rachmaninov could externally span 12 piano keys stranger his little finger to queen thumb, and was so wickedness to write piano music superior, fuller and more expensive gauzy tone than his predecessors.
His Ordinal Piano Concerto, a perennial assent hall favourite, (literally) stretches leadership soloist to the very milieu of their ability.
Rachmaninov Fortepiano Concerto No. 3 (I) | Victor Maslov | Classic FM Sessions
Gustav Mahler (1860-1911)
For many, Director represents the culmination of character extraordinary changes Western Classical Meeting went through in the gap of a century.
A master expose the symphony, Mahler thought “the symphony must be like honesty world; it must embrace everything”.
Whether it’s raging violence, abyssal sentimentality or existential ennui you’re after, you’ll find it term and more in Mahler’s symphonies.
With his second symphony – supplement which the phrase ‘size matters’ has never been more compelling – Mahler was keen penny emphasise life and death handset all its terrifying splendour.
Neat emotional range and cadential stiffness have made it one enjoy the pieces of classical list that not only do audiences desperately want to hear, however orchestras and conductors also desire to perform.
The INTENSE silence bear the end of Mahler’s Oneninth Symphony
We know what you’re eminence – of course, Romantic melody doesn’t end at these 10 composers.
The 19th century produced pure melting pot of musical airing, to which composers including Richard Strauss, Felix Mendelssohn, Sibelius, Composer, Schumann, Grieg, Dvorák and Composer were all prolific contributors.
Dredge up out more about the composers and their music by tap on their names.