At the other end of the philosophical spectrum from Saint-Simonian ‘materialism’, though sharing its rhetoric of progress, was Hegelian Idealism. It influenced not only critics such as Franz Brendel and A. B. Marx, but also the ‘New German School’ of Liszt and Wagner. Though Hegel opposed Romanticism, applications of his aesthetics to music by Marx and Liszt remained closer to it, noting the convergence of music and literature on Romantic subjectivity and responding with the new genre of ‘programme music’. Another Romantic project, the ‘new mythology’, was realized in Wagner’s operatic Gesamtkunstwerk. Its more ‘realist’ approach to feeling was derived from Feuerbach’s post-Hegelian philosophy and little changed by Wagner’s later enthusiasm for Schopenhauer. Though overshadowed by his universalizing and exclusionary goal of a ‘purely human’ art (one that had no space for Jewish artists), Wagner’s aesthetic technique remained faithful to the idea of theatrical illusion inaugurated a century earlier by Rousseau and Diderot.

Although nowadays Vaughan Williams is sometimes associated in popular writing with a Romantic musical style, broadly conceived, this is a view that few of his contemporaries would have recognized. Indeed, his own understanding of the term suggests that he saw himself marking a break with the earlier, largely Germanic Romantic tradition that culminated in Wagner and Strauss.  Nevertheless, several important aspects of his musical and aesthetic views form strong continuity with earlier Romantic thought. These include viewing music as (1) self-expression; (2) the expression of a community; and (3) a revelation or intimation of the beyond.  The tension between these three, partially antithetical, conceptions of music informs his creative output in often productive ways that are teased out over the course of this chapter.

Schoenberg’s family background might have suggested that he would have a career as a bank clerk or schoolteacher. Yet his early commitment to music, and pursuit of expert contacts who encouraged his ambitions, marked him out as someone determined to take risks and to avoid easy options. Five years after having shown his ability to compose an effective if derivative string quartet, Verklärte Nacht (1899) for string sextet – later arranged for string orchestra – was a decisive leap forward in which respect for tradition was set against the radical perception that chamber music and tone poetry need not be kept apart. Sources considering Verklärte Nacht’s genesis in detail, and exploring its processes in depth, are surveyed. The extent to which the young composer was prepared to challenge conventional boundaries was reinforced by the unfailing resourcefulness with which his music consistently reflects the style and form of its poetic source.

The chapter explores two of Adès’s early works – Living Toys for fourteen players (1993) and America: A Prophecy, for soprano solo and orchestra with optional chorus (1999) – from the perspective of gesture as an 'energetic shaping' of sound (after Robert Hatten). Analyses synthesise small-scale events to wider emergent dramatic and expressive networks. The 'volatile' gestural sequence in Living Toys is a function of the score’s overtly programmatic scheme of seven dream-like scenarios, with a returning 'Hero’s' theme centre-stage in a score rich in agent-like instrumental solos. In America, gesture communicates a historical-mythic sequence, evoking the impending catastrophe of the sixteenth-century military conquest of Mayan civilisation by Spanish conquistadors. History runs its awful course in a sequence recounted verbally by the solo soprano as priestess. A gestural perspective elucidates Adès’s large-scale drama of complex images. Fracturings of musical tempo create an image of Mayan calendrical movement: triadic brass music evokes the moment of encounter, a 'battle' scene.

In the first half of the nineteenth century, changes in philosophy and aesthetics as well as the increasing prominence of ‘pure’ instrumental music brought to a head questions over the meaning and value of music. While the merit of most of the fine arts (literature, painting, sculpture) was beyond serious doubt, instrumental music’s supposed lack of content posed a peculiar problem to writers. This chapter presents four main Romantic strategies used to argue for music’s meaning, including the use of programmes as well as the rethinking of the relations between music and feeling, music and words, and between content and form. Covering the first half of the nineteenth century, it encompasses the view of philosophers and composers as well as writers and critics, from Schopenhauer, Hoffmann, and Tieck to Mendelssohn, Schumann, Wagner, Brendel, and Hanslick.