The Romantic Movement manifested itself in different areas of culture. Its representatives were united by only one thing that is a conflict with reality. In a world, where everything, including human relations, is subject to the law of sale and purchase, romantics opposed the truth of feelings, and the free expression of a creative person (Davis, 2019). Hence, they paid close attention to a person’s inner world, a subtle analysis of complicated mental movements.
The artist of the romantic period is looking for salvation from the surrounding reality. For some, it is a journey to the past, for others – to distant exotic countries. Romanticism is characterized by the Middle Ages idealization, gravitation towards mysticism, and the fictional world (Davis, 2019). For the first time, music learned to embody fantastic images by purely musical means. Thus, Richard Wagner acquired the idea of humanity formation from mysticism. The sophistication of the musical palette, expressive imagery, and characters of ancient legends in Der Ring des Nibelungen become for Wagner the means of understanding the problems and contradictions of people of that time.
Paintings of the era of romanticism are distinguished by high artistic expressiveness. They have more effects designed to arouse emotions: compositions are more dynamic than those of classicism. (Perry, 2019). New themes and images also required romantics to develop new means of musical language. In the era of romanticism, the so-called modes of limited transposition appeared. Liszt, Wagner, and Tchaikovsky addressed such modes with symmetrical repetitions. Even though romanticism is associated with deep disappointment in the successes of the entire civilization, new creative achievements in music are connected with the qualitative transformation of trends in this period.
References
Davis, E. (2019). Music of the romantic period. In Pranger, G. (Ed.), History & humanities modern world-Reader I, (pp. 334-344). ORU.
Perry, S. (2019). Romanticism: The brief history of a concept. In Wu, D. (Ed.) A Companion to Romanticism, (pp. 1–11). Blackwell Publishing Ltd.
