Introduction

Music is a piece of art that is so important when it comes to the dissemination of message and entertainment. Music as any other social phenomena has gone through transformation making it so dynamic in the world today. The following discussion will focus on the differences between the two eras of music which are the classical and the romantic.

Discussion

The classical era emerged in about 1750 to 1825. The main inherent characteristics of this piece of art were order, balance and control. There was no flexibility or the freedom provided to the artist to write a piece of art as they wished. They had to stick to the regulations of music of that time (Stephen 2004).

Classical music was more concerned on the objective phenomena than the subjective. This explains the reason why the music focused more on the things that could be observed in the nature which were also tangible. The subjective feelings which include the emotions were less used or ignored all together.

Classical music is said to focus more on the rational matters. Reasoning was therefore required when one was writing any piece of music. Matters of imagination which could not be substantiated by facts were ignored. There was no fantasizing about what the musician was trying to pass across to the audience. Passion was therefore less preferred as matters of reasoning always dominated the whole era of classical music.

On the other hand, the romantic music emerged at around 1825 to around 1900. the main dominant characteristics were freedom, movement and passion (Carlo 2000). Musicians were seeking for freedom from the traditional way of singing and writing and wanted to acquire freedom. Therefore, the rise of the romantic era was meant to abandon the traditional classics and have a whole turn to the more fanciful and passionate ways of passing a piece of art to the audience. This was also affected by the fact that the society was advancing in terms of technologies and also in their tastes and preferences. They wanted to see a change.

Contrary to the classical music, the romantic music was able to explore deep human feelings and externalize them in their music (Jim. 2001). This means that music was now transforming from being more objective to subjective. They would address the internal conflicts that people went through and this was important because people would identify with them.

Romantic music was written for the purpose of describing a person or a particular object. For instance, the musician could decide to describe a certain man and bring out all the qualities that are in him. This helps the audience to form a mental picture of what they are saying. On the other hand, the classical piece of music was only written for the purpose of musical value and many people could not identify with it.

Through the industrial revolution, the romantic music was able to grow owing to the increased size of the orchestra. This is because of the production of more effective musical instrument which also came in variety. This saw the shift from the traditional musical instruments that were mostly used in the production of the classical music.

Conclusion

The classical music had strict rules that had to be followed and this locked out many potential musicians. The rise of the romantic music gave freedom to the artists to shape their pieces of art as they wished.

Reference:

Cavalletti, Carlo. (2000). Chopin and Romantic Music, translated by Anna Maria Salmeri Pherson. Hauppauge, NY: Barron’s Educational Series. (Hardcover) ISBN 0764151363 ISBN 978-0764151361

Samson, Jim. (2001). “Romanticism”. The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, second edition, edited by Stanley Sadie and John Tyrrell. London: Macmillan Publishers.

Lihoreau, Tim; Fry, Stephen (2004) Stephen Fry’s Incomplete and Utter History of Classical Music Boxtree. ISBN 978-0752225340

Kamien, Roger (2008). Music: An Appreciation. 6th. New York, NY: McGraw Hill Print.