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1 - Defining the Indefinable: Romanticism and Music

from Part I - Horizons

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  06 August 2021

By
Benedict Taylor
Edited by
Benedict Taylor
Benedict Taylor
Affiliation:
University of Edinburgh
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Summary

This chapter provides an accessible starting point for discussion of the relation between music and Romanticism, giving an overview of some of the issues frequently encountered in coming to an understanding of how the two intersect.It outlines some of the main debates about the nature of Romanticism, before turning attention specifically to the idea’s application to music. Three main positions are set out: Romanticism as a period in music history, Romanticism as a musical style, and Romanticism as an aesthetic or mode of understanding.Although these three definitions are not without their problems, each relates to an important aspect of how Romanticism may relate to music, and while the third is probably to be preferred, the first two also demand consideration in any account of this topic.

Keywords

RomanticismRomantic musicRomantic movementproblems of definitionhistorical periodisationstylecentre/peripheryRomantic aesthetics
Type
Chapter
Information
The Cambridge Companion to Music and Romanticism , pp. 3 - 16
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2021

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References

Further Reading

Beiser, Frederick C. The Romantic Imperative: The Concept of Early German Romanticism (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2003).Google Scholar
Berlin, Isaiah. The Roots of Romanticism, ed. Hardy, Henry (London: Chatto & Windus, 1999).Google Scholar
Charlton, D. G. ‘The French Romantic Movement’, in Charlton, D. G. (ed.), The French Romantics, 2 vols. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984), vol. 1, 1–32.Google Scholar
Cooper, John Michael (ed.). Historical Dictionary of Romantic Music (Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press, 2013).Google Scholar
Dahlhaus, Carl. Nineteenth-Century Music, trans. Robinson, J. B. (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1989).Google Scholar
Ferber, Michael. Romanticism: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010).Google Scholar
Ferguson, Frances. ‘On the Numbers of Romanticisms’, ELH, 58/2 (1991), 471–98.Google Scholar
Frisch, Walter. Music in the Nineteenth Century (New York: W. W. Norton, 2013).Google Scholar
Furst, Lilian R. (ed.). European Romanticism: Self-Definition. An Anthology (London: Methuen, 1980).Google Scholar
Lovejoy, Arthur. ‘On the Discrimination of Romanticisms’, Proceedings of the Modern Language Association, 39 (1924), 229–53.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Reibel, Emmanuel. Comment la musique est devenue ‘romantique’: De Rousseau à Berlioz (Paris: Fayard, 2013).Google Scholar
Rummenhöller, Peter. Romantik in der Musik: Analysen, Portraits, Reflexionen (Munich: Deutsche Taschenbuch Verlag, 1989).Google Scholar
Samson, Jim. ‘Romanticism’, The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, ed. Sadie, Stanley, 29 vols. (London: Macmillan, 2001), vol. 21, 596–603.Google Scholar
Samson, Jim (ed.). The Cambridge History of Nineteenth-Century Music (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001).Google Scholar
Wellek, René. ‘The Concept of “Romanticism” in Literary History II: The Unity of European Romanticism’, Comparative Literature, 1/2 (1949), 147–72.Google Scholar

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