essay romantic music

Early Romantic Era

Romantic music.

This short page lists some of the philosophical and social trends that influenced Romantic music. It is important to understand that scholars do not always agree on the dates for historical periods in music. In fact, over the past 100 years, there has been some debate as to whether the periods we refer to as Classical and Romantic are distinct enough to merit separate labels. For the purposes of this course, we accept that there are sufficient differences to consider the music composed between the death of Bach (1750) and the beginning of Beethoven’s late period (ca. 1815), and the music composed during the remainder of the 19th century and early 20th century as representing different historical periods. But you will certainly notice that Romantic music bears a much closer resemblance to Classical music than Classical music does to any of the earlier periods.

Introduction

Romantic music is a term denoting an era of Western classical music that began in the late 18th or early 19th century. It was related to Romanticism, the European artistic and literary movement that arose in the second half of the 18th century, and Romantic music in particular dominated the Romantic movement in Germany.

Background:  Romanticism

The Romantic movement was an artistic, literary, and intellectual movement that originated in the second half of the 18th century in Europe and strengthened in reaction to the Industrial Revolution. In part, it was a revolt against social and political norms of the Age of Enlightenment and a reaction against the scientific rationalization of nature. It was embodied most strongly in the visual arts, music, and literature, but had a major impact on historiography, education, and natural history.

One of the first significant applications of the term to music was in 1789, in the Mémoires by the Frenchman André Grétry, but it was E.T.A. Hoffmann who really established the principles of musical romanticism, in a lengthy review of Ludwig van Beethoven’s Fifth Symphonypublished in 1810, and in an 1813 article on Beethoven’s instrumental music. In the first of these essays Hoffmann traced the beginnings of musical Romanticism to the later works of Haydn and Mozart. It was Hoffmann’s fusion of ideas already associated with the term “Romantic,” used in opposition to the restraint and formality of Classical models, that elevated music, and especially instrumental music, to a position of pre-eminence in Romanticism as the art most suited to the expression of emotions. It was also through the writings of Hoffmann and other German authors that brought German music to the centre of musical Romanticism.

Characteristics often attributed to Romanticism, including musical Romanticism, are:

• a new preoccupation with and surrender to Nature
• a fascination with the past, particularly the Middle Ages and legends of medieval chivalry
• a turn towards the mystic and supernatural, both religious and merely spooky
• a longing for the infinite
• mysterious connotations of remoteness, the unusual and fabulous, the strange and surprising
• a focus on the nocturnal, the ghostly, the frightful, and terrifying
• fantastic seeing and spiritual experiences
• a new attention given to national identity
• emphasis on extreme subjectivism
• interest in the autobiographical
• discontent with musical formulas and conventions

Such lists, however, proliferated over time, resulting in a “chaos of antithetical phenomena,” criticized for their superficiality and for signifying so many different things that there came to be no central meaning. The attributes have also been criticized for being too vague. For example, features of the “ghostly and supernatural” could apply equally to Mozart’s Don Giovanni from 1787 and Stravinsky’s The Rake’s Progress from 1951.

Trends of the 19th century

Non-musical influences.

Events and changes that happen in society such as ideas, attitudes, discoveries, inventions, and historical events always affect music. For example, the Industrial Revolution was in full effect by the late 18th century and early 19th century. This event had a very profound effect on music: there were major improvements in the mechanical valves, and keys that most woodwinds and brass instruments depend on. The new and innovative instruments could be played with more ease and they were more reliable.

Another development that had an effect on music was the rise of the middle class. Composers before this period lived on the patronage of the aristocracy. Many times their audience was small, composed mostly of the upper class and individuals who were knowledgeable about music. The Romantic composers, on the other hand, often wrote for public concerts and festivals, with large audiences of paying customers, who had not necessarily had any music lessons. Composers of the Romantic Era, like Elgar, showed the world that there should be “no segregation of musical tastes” and that the “purpose was to write music that was to be heard.”

Nationalism

During the Romantic period, music often took on a much more nationalistic purpose. For example, Jean Sibelius’ Finlandia has been interpreted to represent the rising nation of Finland, which would someday gain independence from Russian control. Frédéric Chopin was one of the first composers to incorporate nationalistic elements into his compositions. Joseph Machlis states, “Poland’s struggle for freedom from tsarist rule aroused the national poet in Poland. . . . Examples of musical nationalism abound in the output of the romantic era. The folk idiom is prominent in the Mazurkas of Chopin.” His mazurkas and polonaises are particularly notable for their use of nationalistic rhythms. Moreover, “During World War II the Nazis forbade the playing of . . . Chopin’s Polonaises in Warsaw because of the powerful symbolism residing in these works.” Other composers, such as Bedřich Smetana, wrote pieces which musically described their homelands; in particular, Smetana’s Vltava is a symphonic poem about the Moldau River in the modern-day Czech Republic and the second in a cycle of six nationalistic symphonic poems collectively titled Má vlast (My Homeland). Smetana also composed eight nationalist operas, all of which remain in the repertory. They established him as the first Czech nationalist composer as well as the most important Czech opera composer of the generation who came to prominence in the 1860s.

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Romantic Era’s Music

Introduction, symphony number one, si, mi chiamano mimi from la boheme, association with today’s music.

This paper analyzes two musical pieces of the romantic era period to ascertain the characteristics that cause emotive feelings among their audience. The two musical pieces are Symphony number one (produced by Gustav Mahler) and Si, mi chiamano Mimi (a composition by Giacomo Puccini).

The latter is an opera, while the former is instrumental music. Finally, this paper analyzes if the two musical pieces bear any characteristics with today’s musical compositions. These analyses are done systematically.

Symphony no one was produced by Gustav Mahler between 1887 and 1888. Though the work was almost always termed a work of symphony, it contained numerous instrumentals including the inclusion of woodwinds, brass, and horns. The music is, therefore, a perfect example of instrumental music of the romantic era.

Considering Symphony number one was made in the romantic era period, the music had numerous undertones of emotions that characterized the 19th-century music. This can be evident from the various characteristics of the music. For instance, the musical piece contained warm and personal melodies which were emotive.

Moreover, the musical piece contains numerous expressive indications, which also act as an indication of the liberal nature of its composers. The music also contains various expressive colorizations brought about by an improvement in the musical instruments used to develop the music.

The improvements in musical instrumentations escalate the emotive undertones of the musical piece to new heights. Because symphony number one is melodious also goes a long way to confirm the emotive undertones of the music because the musical piece contains long, irregular phrases which are characteristic of music developed during the romantic era.

Moreover, the changes in musical rhythms affirm the frequent changes in tempo and time signatures which are characteristic of music from the romantic era. These aspects easily cause listeners to experience strong emotions.

Si, mi chiamano Mimi from La Boheme was a composition by Giacomo Puccini, and it is among the most celebrated opera pieces, internationally. The musical piece contains various instrumentations including percussions, brass, strings, and woodwind. The musical piece also contains various characteristics that make it expose “emotive” feelings among its listeners.

For instance, the intense melodic composition which is backed by the frequent use of violins is a strong tool for arousing emotive feelings among the listeners. Few musical pieces produced during the romantic era period lack the vigorous melodic intensity that Si, mi chiamano Mimi possesses.

The liberal use of melodic composition, which is characteristic of the romantic era period, is also strongly evident in this musical piece because there are several melodic ideas used within one period. Furthermore, the texture of the musical composition is strongly homophonic, and this attribute is bound to expose the emotive undertones of the musical piece.

Furthermore, there is a variety of vocal color because the instrumentations used in the musical piece is slightly exaggerated, more than ordinary opera pieces. For instance, as evidenced in earlier sections of this paper, the musical piece had an active use of woodwind and brass, but the intensity of the use of these instruments are slightly more than ordinary musical compositions.

In this regard, there is a rich and colorful orchestration of the musical opera. These attributes increase the emotive character of the music.

There is a strong association of the musical characteristics of the two vocal pieces described above and the composition of romantic music today. Today, romantic musical pieces distinguish their identity from other musical parts, based on the texture, rhythm, melody, and timbre of the music.

In this regard, there is a strong similarity between the musical pieces described above and today’s romantic musical compositions. This is because the use of instruments in current romantic music is as liberal as the above musical pieces. The areas where romantic era music differs with conventional musical compositions are also the same strong-points of today’s romantic era music.

This paper notes that Si, mi chiamano Mimi, and Symphony number one represents present-day musical compositions because of their similarity in instrumental use. This observation is based on the texture, rhythm, melody, and timbre of the musical pieces. It is also from these musical aspects that the two vocal pieces expose the emotive undertones of their musical compositions.

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Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History Essays

Nineteenth-century classical music.

"Antonius" Violin

Antonio Stradivari

• Dubois et Couturier

Niccolò Paganini (1782–1840)

Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres

Cornet à Pistons in B-flat

Courtois frères

Christian Frederick Martin

Grand Pianoforte

Érard , made in London

Square Piano

Robert Nunns

Grand Piano

• Steinway & Sons

The Music Lesson

John George Brown

Giosue Esposito

Julian Alden Weir

• Lyon & Healy

Two Young Girls at the Piano

Auguste Renoir

Jayson Kerr Dobney Department of Musical Instruments, The Metropolitan Museum of Art

October 2004

The nineteenth century brought great upheaval to Western societies. Democratic ideals and the Industrial Revolution swept through Europe and changed the daily lives of citizens at all levels. Struggles between the old world order and the new were the root causes of conflicts from the Napoleonic Wars to the American Civil War . From New York, to London, to Vienna, the world was changing and the consequences can still be felt to this day.

The lives of musicians, composers, and makers of musical instruments were greatly altered by these social changes. In earlier times, musicians were usually employed by either the church or the court and were merely servants to aristocratic circles. Composers wrote music for performances in these venues, and musical instrument makers produced instruments to be played by wealthy patrons or their servant musicians. With the rise of the middle class, more people wanted access to music performances and music education.

A new artistic aesthetic, Romanticism , replaced the ideals of order, symmetry, and form espoused by the classicists of the late eighteenth century. Romantics valued the natural world, idealized the life of the common man, rebelled against social conventions, and stressed the importance of the emotional in art. In music, Romanticism, along with new opportunities for earning a livelihood as a musician or composer, produced two seemingly opposite venues as the primary places for musical activity—the large theater and the parlor.

Music as Public Spectacle One result of the Industrial Revolution was the creation of a middle class. This new economic strata consisted of a larger number of people with more disposable income and more leisure time than had ever existed before. Musical extravaganzas that triumphed the musician or composer gained popularity with the masses of concertgoers. Beginning with Beethoven, composers began to arrange large concerts in order to introduce their works to the public. As audiences desired more, composers wrote larger musical works and demanded more of performers and their instruments.

The “bigger is better” mentality led to new musical forms such as the tone poem and large-scale symphonic and operatic works . Orchestras grew, including larger string sections with a full complement of woodwinds, brass, and ever more percussion instruments. New types of orchestral winds ( 2003.150a–g ) and brass ( 2002.190a–n ) that allowed for greater facility and more accurate playing were introduced. Composers such as Hector Berlioz, and later Johannes Brahms and Richard Wagner, continually pushed the limits of the available musical forms, performers, instruments, and performance spaces throughout the nineteenth century.

Musicians who could dazzle and amaze their audiences by their virtuosity became the first musical superstars. The two most famous nineteenth-century examples were the violinist Nicolò Paganini (1782–1840) and the pianist Franz Liszt (1811–1886). Both dazzled audiences throughout Europe with their performances, elevating the status of the musician from servant to demigod. Their fame grew throughout Europe, and their likenesses would be recorded in a variety of visual arts.

In order to withstand the virtuosic and often bombastic playing of these soloists, as well as to provide the type of volume needed in large concert venues, more powerful instruments were needed. Larger and louder violins like those by Antonio Stradivari (1644–1737) or Guarneri del Gesù (1698–1744)—preferred by Paganini—replaced the quieter and subtler violins of earlier masters like Jacob Stainer (ca. 1617–1683) or the Amati family. The demands of pianists like Franz Liszt pressed the technology and design of pianos to ever-larger instruments, eventually replacing the internal wooden structures of the eighteenth century with cast-iron frames that could withstand thousands of pounds of pressure.

Parlor Music Conversely, music gained popularity in the intimate nineteenth-century parlor. At the time, home life was centered in the salon, or parlor, where children played and learned with adult supervision, and where the family entertained company. Musical performances for small groups of people became popular events, and some composers/performers were able to support themselves financially by performing in these small venues and attracting wealthy patrons. Most famous among these was Frédéric Chopin (1810–1849).

Music in the parlor was of a very different sort than in the concert hall. Solo performances and chamber music were popular, and included everything from operatic and orchestral transcriptions to sentimental love songs and ballads. In the United States, hymns and folk songs by composers like Stephen Foster (1826–1864) supplemented the European repertoire.

With the rise of the parlor as the center of family life, music education became increasingly important. Children were often taught to play musical instruments as part of a well-rounded education; for girls, playing an instrument was more important than learning to read. When guests and potential suitors visited, the children and teenagers would entertain with performances of the latest popular works.

All sorts of musical instruments were used in the home, and at various times the guitar , harp ( 2001.171 ), concertina, and banjo were extremely popular. However, the most important musical instrument in the home was the piano, because it was useful as both a solo instrument and as accompaniment to a group of singers or instrumentalists. To accommodate home use, smaller pianos were created, first square pianos and later uprights. Small pianos took up less space and, although they were not as powerful as larger types, they were also less expensive. With the technological advances of the Industrial Revolution, the mass manufacturing of musical instruments—especially pianos—provided a seemingly endless supply for the huge markets of both the United States and Europe. The piano would remain a central component of domestic life until it was replaced by the phonograph, radio, and television in the twentieth century.

Dobney, Jayson Kerr. “Nineteenth-Century Classical Music.” In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History . New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2000–. http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/amcm/hd_amcm.htm (October 2004)

Further Reading

Samson, Jim, ed. The Cambridge History of Nineteenth-Century Music . Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002.

Additional Essays by Jayson Kerr Dobney

• Dobney, Jayson Kerr. “ Archtop Guitars and Mandolins .” (September 2016)
• Dobney, Jayson Kerr. “ The Guitar .” (September 2007)
• Dobney, Jayson Kerr. “ The Piano: Viennese Instruments .” (March 2009)
• Dobney, Jayson Kerr. “ Military Music in American and European Traditions .” (October 2004)

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List of Rulers

• Presidents of the United States of America
• Central Europe and Low Countries, 1800–1900 A.D.
• France, 1800–1900 A.D.
• Great Britain and Ireland, 1800–1900 A.D.
• The United States and Canada, 1800–1900 A.D.
• 19th Century A.D.
• Biedermeier
• Brass Instrument
• Central Europe
• Musical Instrument
• North America
• Oil on Canvas
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• United States
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Artist or Maker

• Amati, Nicolò
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• Esposito, Giosue
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10 Of The Greatest Romantic Period Composers Of All Time

If you’ve been to a classical music concert, you’ve probably heard pieces from the Romantic era, which lasted from about 1800 to 1900. Many of the most loved and frequently performed works come from this period.

During this time, music became richer, more complex, and more emotional as composers broke away from the strict rules of the Classical period.

This article will look at 10 of the greatest Romantic composers, some of their beautiful works, and the innovations they introduced, like program music, changes in opera, and the rise of virtuoso composer-performers.

Table of Contents

1. Ludwig Van Beethoven (1770–1827)

Ludwig van Beethoven bridged the Classical and Romantic eras. He started with Mozart and Haydn’s traditions but later created larger, more complex works. He pioneered program music — instrumental pieces that convey specific ideas or scenes.

The Romantic era drew inspiration from nature, literature, legends, and national identity. Many of Beethoven’s works reflect this, like his Sixth Symphony (the Pastoral Symphony), which depicts rural life with bird calls.

Beethoven sadly lost his hearing and was completely deaf by 1814, yet he continued to compose. His late string quartets are now considered masterpieces.

Related : Read our list of facts about Beethoven here.

2. Fanny Mendelssohn (1805–1847)

Due to the concerns of her family and the social expectations of women during the 19th Century, Fanny Mendelssohn found it difficult to work publicly as a composer. Many of her pieces were published under the name of her brother Felix, another great Romantic composer.

A keyboard prodigy, most of Fanny’s 460 compositions include the piano. She also wrote over 250 Lieder (German songs that set poetry to music), including Italien , which was a favorite of Queen Victoria.

Related : Learn more facts about Fanny Mendelssohn here.

3. Frédéric Chopin (1810–1849)

A piano virtuoso, all of Frederic Chopin’s beautiful, sensitive music featured the piano. This instrument became the main keyboard instrument during the Romantic era, growing bigger and more powerful, which allowed composers to write more dynamic and expansive pieces.

Chopin tried out new forms of music that emerged in the 19th century, including ballades and nocturnes (musical pieces that suggest the peaceful feeling of nighttime). Famous among these are Ballade no. 1 in G Minor, op. 23, and Nocturne in E-flat Major, op. 9, no. 2. He was also well-known for his mazurkas and polonaises, which were influenced by Polish folk music and dances.

The composer spent much of his life in Paris. Despite his success, Chopin battled poor health and died of tuberculosis at just 39.

Related : Next, see our list of Chopin’s best Nocturnes here.

4. Robert Schumann (1810–1856)

Robert Schumann was a talented pianist, but he was forced to focus on composition after a hand injury left him unable to play with his right hand.

In addition to orchestral works, an opera, and many piano pieces, he helped advance the German Lied (art song) and created “character pieces” for piano, like Carnaval, op. 9 and Fantasiestücke (Fantasy Pieces), op. 12.

He also worked as an influential music critic; he founded the journal Neue Zeitschrift für Musik , supporting other composers like Chopin and Brahms.

5. Franz Liszt (1811–1886)

Franz Liszt, a close friend of Chopin, is famous for being one of the best piano players of his time.

Known for his impressive performances and stage presence, his concerts were wild events where he played his own difficult pieces and piano versions of other works, often causing the audience to fight over his scarves and gloves and rip off their clothes.

The Hungarian composer also wrote several programmatic music inspired by art, like his Années de pèlerinage , which took ideas from Italian paintings. Other works of his that you might be familiar with are the Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2, the Dante Symphony, and the Mephisto Waltzes.

6. Richard Wagner (1813–1883)

Italian opera was dominant for years until Carl Maria von Weber, a late Classical/early Romantic composer, helped create a uniquely German style of opera.

Richard Wagner built on this by emphasizing drama as the key element in a blend of music, visual art, dramatic art, and poetry. One of his major innovations was the leitmotif , a musical phrase representing a specific character, now commonly used in film music.

Wagner’s famous “Ride of the Valkyries” is part of his epic opera cycle Der Ring des Nibelungen , which takes about 15 hours to perform in full. His later works, full of adventurous harmony and the bold use of chromaticism, paved the way for 20th-century modernism.

7. Giuseppe Verdi (1813–1901)

After working as a composer and organist, Giuseppe Verdi had his operas staged at La Scala in Milan, but they received mixed responses.

After two of his children died in infancy, followed by his wife Margherita, who was just 26, Verdi almost gave up composition.

However, he persevered and created passion-filled operas such as Rigoletto , La Traviata , Aida , and Il Trovatore , establishing himself as the king of Italian opera.

Though he tried to retire, he made a surprise comeback with three late masterpieces, including the celebrated Requiem .

Verdi was also associated with the Risorgimento movement for Italian unification and was mourned as a national hero when he died from a stroke in 1901.

8. Johannes Brahms (1833–1897)

Johannes Brahms is often mentioned alongside Beethoven and Bach as one of the “Three Bs” of Western music. Born in Hamburg, he spent much of his career in Vienna, like many key composers of the 18th and 19th centuries.

His music is seen as a continuation of Beethoven’s legacy, whom Brahms greatly admired, while some of his compositions had influences from German and Hungarian folk themes.

Brahms’ body of work includes chamber pieces like the Clarinet Quintet, various works for piano and strings, and four symphonies. A famous one is the Symphony No. 1 in C Minor, op. 68 ; this piece took over 14 years to complete and is sometimes called Beethoven’s Tenth because the composer’s style influenced it.

9. Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky (1840–1893)

Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky was the first Russian composer to make an impact on the international stage. His ballets — Swan Lake , The Sleeping Beauty , and The Nutcracker — continue to sell out performances even today.

Other acclaimed works include his 1812 Overture, which commemorates the Russian military defense against Napoleon; his First Piano Concerto; and his Sixth Symphony, the Pathétique, which alludes to his rather traumatic personal life.

10. Gustav Mahler (1860–1911)

Gustav Mahler was a key composer who connected the Germanic Romantic tradition to the modernist sounds of the 20th century.

He was celebrated as one of the greatest conductors of his time, but his compositions were initially not fully appreciated. This was partly due to prejudice — Mahler, born to Jewish parents in Bohemia, faced antisemitism in Vienna and later had his music banned across much of Europe by the Nazis.

Today, he is beloved for his epic symphonies, which capture the full range of human emotions and experiences. Famous titles are Symphony no. 2, also known as the Resurrection Symphony, and Symphony no. 8, sometimes called Symphony of a Thousand.

Related : Read more about the greatest composers of the 20th century here.

Summing Up Our List Of Great Romantic Period Composers

We hope you’ve enjoyed learning about the most important composers of the Romantic period.

Each of these virtuoso performer-composers created groundbreaking program music, helped revolutionize German and Italian opera, and wrote technically challenging pieces.

And if you go to a classical concert, there’s a good chance you might hear more beautiful music written by these Romantic greats.

Dan Farrant

Dan Farrant, the founder of Hello Music Theory, has been teaching music for over 15 years, helping hundreds of thousands of students unlock the joy of music. He graduated from The Royal Academy of Music in 2012 and then launched Hello Music Theory in 2014. He plays the guitar, piano, bass guitar and double bass and loves teaching music theory.

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The Romantic Period of Music

Ask most people what they consider a romantic song, and you'll get answers like John Legend's "All of Me" or most anything from Marvin Gaye . But, as you know, the capital "R" in Romantic music is works composed in the Romantic style, which arose during the Romantic Period. But what characterizes Romantic Period music? How did it evolve? These are some of the questions we'll answer here.

Short description of what Romantic Era music is

At its core, composers of the Romantic Era saw music as a means of individual and emotional expression. Indeed, they considered music the art form most capable of expressing the full range of human emotion. As a result, romantic composers broadened the scope of emotional content. Music was expected to communicate to the audience, often by using a narrative form that told distinct stories.

Romantic composers prioritized the emotional or narrative content of the music above its form, which is why they broke so many of the classical composers' rules. Romantic composers didn't reject or break with the musical language developed during the Classical Period. They used its forms as a foundation for their work but felt unconstrained by them.

Beethoven is the originator of this approach. He lived and worked during the transition from the Classical to the Romantic Period, and was an inspiration to the Romantic composers who came after him.

Beethoven's symphonies "shift[ed] the terrain" for what a symphony could be. He also demonstrated coming Romantic Era characteristics, such as composing auto-biographical works and naming movements, such as the third movement of his String Quartet No. 15 in A minor, Op. 132 ( Song of Thanksgiving to the Deity from a convalescent in the Lydian mode ).

Ultimately, Romantic composers would evolve and expand the formalist Classical structure into a more complex, rich musical language.

Origins and context of the Romantic Period

Music was a bit late to the Romantic Period party. Historians argue over the start and end dates of the Romantic Period. Some date it as the 19 th century, while others place it in the late 18 th century. This is true for Romantic literature. Works like William Blake's Songs of Innocence (1789) and Samuel Coleridge's Kubla Khan (1797) are considered examples of early Romantic poetry. The Romantic Era hit its stride in the middle 1800s, encompassing all the arts and popular thought of the time.

The Romantic emphasis on individual self-expression grew out of the political ideas of individualism born during the Age of Enlightenment. However, the Romantics rejected that age's emphasis on logic and rationality. These ideas were as constraining as the rules regarding Classical music forms. They also rebelled against the hallmarks of the Industrial Revolution , such as mechanization, mass production, and urbanization, which were seen as contrary to their vision of an idealized, natural state of being.

Much of Romantic Era art, including music, also reflected the tension and nationalism of war and revolution that swept across Europe from the French Revolution (1789) through the mid-century revolutions and on to the national unifications in the 1870s. Examples of this include the sculpture Departure of the Volunteers on the façade of Paris's Arc de Triomphe, which alludes to soldiers both of the French Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars; and Spanish painter Francisco Goya's paintings depicting Spanish resistance to Napoleon .

These events, ideas, and atmosphere directly contributed to the four primary artistic trends seen in Romantic compositions.

Four primary artistic inspirations of Romantic Era music

Now that you understand the context in which Romantic music developed, it will be easy to understand why these are the artistic themes (defined more broadly than the strict musical sense of "theme") that continually appear in works throughout the period.

• Conveying extreme emotional states, whether auto-biographical, taken from a literary character or situation or just a representation of being human.
• Exploring nature, particularly its wilder aspects, such as using musical techniques to imitate the sounds of storms or evoke the atmosphere of a dense, mysterious forest.
• Fascination with the supernatural as a reaction to scientific advances , that both demystified old beliefs and created uncertainty about where science might take humanity.
• Incorporating folk music or stories as a means to proclaim or reclaim national pride.

These four themes aren't clearly delineated, as you can find many or all of them incorporated into a single work. One of the ways Romantic composers did this was by writing pieces inspired by literature. This method gave a composition with both a narrative and emotional framework for the composer.

Mendelssohn's scherzo from A Midsummer Night's Dream

Rise of the Musical Virtuoso

One last – yet critical – artistic inspiration developed in the Romantic Era isn't thematic, but highly personal: The composer as artiste and virtuoso . Romantic composers were often more than just composers. They were likely to also be performers and/or conductors. The virtuoso had both extraordinary technical proficiency and widespread acclaim. Paganini, Liszt, and Brahms are all excellent examples of the Romantic virtuoso.

The origins of the musical virtuoso are both artistic and practical.  Romanticism is about self-expression, particularly through an artist's self-expression. Thus, Romantic composers felt free to strain and twist the Classical musical forms in increasingly personal ways. Today we call it "branding." Yet even then, Romantic composers were searching for a way to develop their voice through their music, one which was recognizable to audiences.

Composers of the time had more personal, creative freedom because they no longer worked under the noble patronage system that defined the Baroque and Classical Eras. Composers and musicians no longer worked at the pleasure of a duke or prince. The Industrial Revolution lead to a population boom, and many people were living in the growing cities. A broad middle class developed that had some disposable income and time to appreciate the arts. The artists followed the people, performing at festivals and other public concerts. The arts centers had moved away from the castles in the countryside to the cities.

In short, Romantic composers could find popular and financial success by composing audience-pleasing works. However, this also led to an artistic tension that remains today: The degree to which the composer gave full expression to their personal, artistic motivations (the artiste side) or whether they restrained themselves to please ticket-buying audiences. This rise of the musical virtuoso is also one reason why the Romantic Era saw the growth of the music critic, like E.T.A. Hoffmann . Music critics helped laymen audiences navigate this new artistic world.

How Romantic Era music separated itself from Classical music

The language of Romantic Era music didn't break with its Classical predecessors so much as it expanded its vocabulary and felt free to ignore Classical formalism. For example, Schubert's Unfinished doesn't confine itself to traditional eight-bar phrasing.

Nor did composers feel constrained to limit a work's exploration of different keys, as evidenced in Mahler's Symphony No. 2.

In addition to breaking existing rules, Romantic composers also developed new techniques or reinvigorated lesser used ones to express a more extensive array of emotional and narrative states. They used more extended melodies, broader ranges of tone, pitch, and tempo – more sophisticated harmonies. Some key innovations from the Romantic Era include:

• Chromatic harmonies were making greater use of semitones and unusual chord progressions.
• Melodies associated with an external reference, like a character or emotion being expressed. Wagner pioneered this idea with the leitmotif .
• Not relying on cadence to resolve a passage, but allowing for "unending melody."
• Use of rubato , adjusting tempo to reflect the level of emotional intensity the music should convey at that moment.
• Increased tempos and complicated rhythms that demanded extraordinary precision and technical skill to be performed.
• Greater use of techniques like sul ponticello (bowing near the bridge) and sul tasto (bowing near the fingerboard).

Romantic composers took advantage of a variety of mechanical innovations to explore richer dynamics and tones. Specifically, improvements in instrumental construction, as well as the creation of new instruments. The broader range and improvement of instruments allowed Romantic composers to express more precise gradations of volume and tone. This included longer, soaring crescendos and diminuendos. It also allowed them to make greater jumps in tone and volume, creating a new sort of discordance.

Changes in Instruments during the Romantic Period

The piano significantly evolved during the Romantic Period. For example, the number of physical keys expanded from five to eight octaves. The materials used to construct piano frames shifted from wood to metal, and the durability of the metal used to manufacture its strings improved. These improvements enriched the pitch range and tonal quality of the piano.

Similarly, the materials used to construct woodwind instruments also improved and expanded their musical quality and variability. Innovations, such as developing the valve for brass instruments, also contributed to a more abundant variety of sounds. As did the invention of entirely new instruments, like the Wagner tuba .

However, one of the most significant changes to instrumentation during the Romantic Era wasn't the nature of the instruments individually, but changes in the instrumentation of the works.

Changes to the orchestra during the Romantic Period

A critical means of expanding the expressiveness of the music  – primarily through tonal color, broader dynamics, and richer harmonies – was by increasing the number of instruments required to perform the composition. An extreme example of this is Mahler's Symphony No. 8 in E-flat major ( Symphony of a Thousand ), which requires two choirs and 120 musicians, including over 70 string musicians.

Orchestras from the Classical Era typically had around 30 musicians. The orchestra continued to grow and evolve throughout the Romantic Period, settling into the orchestra we know today.

As alluded to above, the wind and brass sections grew through the addition of a variety of instruments, such as the piccolo and contrabassoon, both of which greatly expanded the tonal range of the music. The percussion section also saw numerous instruments added, from bass drums to the triangle.

The string section also expanded. It remained comprised of the same four instruments: violin, viola, cello, and double bass. However, the number of each string instrument increased. Enlargin the number of strings allowed for the creation of more subsets within the string section. Romantic composers would use different configurations of small groups of strings to deepen the texture and contrasts within a work.

Another orchestral innovation of the period was intermittent use of non-traditional instruments. Say, cannons needed for Tchaikovsky's 1812 Overture as one extreme example.

An expanded orchestra was needed to perform the longer, more dramatic symphonies from the Romantic Era. While the symphony exploded to new intensity during this time, the period is also notable for composers creating a variety of types of "miniature" works.

Changes in musical forms during the Romantic Period

We've seen that formal Classical structures, such as composing symphonies with only four movements, were set aside by Romantic composers. They also composed single-movement works in a variety of distinct forms:

• The etude was a short composition intended to both showcase virtuoso skill and as a training exercise for students. Paganini's 24 Caprices for Solo Violin falls into this category, as do many of Chopin's works for the piano.
• The prelude, used in earlier eras to introduce a more complete work, was composed as a stand-alone work. Romantic composers did the same with the overture, such as Tchaikovsky's Romeo and Juliet .

• The impromptu was a short piece meant to sound as if it was being improvised at that moment. As such, impromptus were typically single instrument works. Most impromptus were written for the piano, yet can be arranged for string instruments.

• There were also many formats originating from national or folk music, such as the German lied, Polish polonaise and mazurka, and Viennese waltz.

Another important sub-genre of Romantic composition was intended to tell a specific story or paint a particular scene – program music, which may be a single movement or may have multiple movements.

Rise and scope of program music in the Romantic Period

Program music is music that tells a discrete story. It could be a story from the composer's life or his imagination. Berlioz's Symphonie Fantastique: An Episode in the life of an Artist, in Five Parts , was the detailed recounting of the composer's unrequited love for a famous actress of the day. Each movement is named:

• Scene in the Fields
• March to the Scaffold
• Dream of a Night of the Sabbath

As you can tell from the names of the movements, the arc of this story doesn't go well for the artist. Berlioz handed out programs at the performances to explain the story.

In other cases, the story was taken from literature, mythology, or local folklore. Dvorák 's The Golden Spinning Wheel is a work based on a Czech poem that tells the story of doomed love and murderous women.

The assumption of program music is that it must have program notes to share with the audience and explain the work. That may have been true when it first gained its greatest popularity during the Romantic Period, but handing out notes isn't the defining characteristic of program music.  In part because program music didn't have to tell a narrative story, but could be used to evoke the spirit of a time or place.

The symphonic or tone poem, a popular form of program music from the Romantic era, was intended to paint a scene where it transports the listener, which may or may not be a narrative story. For example, Sibelius composed numerous tone poems from old Finnish mythology, but composed others meant to invoke the spirit of his country and inspire patriotism, such as Finlandia .

Thus, Romantic Era tone poems run the full gamut of Romantic Era inspiration, from sharing intense emotional journeys, re-telling stories from Greek mythology or European literature, exploring fantastical settings (both natural and supernatural), and as odes to a country or culture.

Nationalist expression in Romantic Period music

Sibelius's Finlandia is an example of overt nationalism in Romantic music. In some cases, the work wasn't meant as a patriotic song per se but explicitly drew on folk music traditions the composer wanted to highlight. During the Classical Era, which prioritized the universality of strict, logical forms including strains of folk songs in music composed for nobles, would have been seen as provincial – at best. However, the self-expression popular during the Romantic Period often came out as patriotic love for local traditions during a time of war. Liszt's Hungarian Rhapsodies exemplify this approach.

One need not have been of a particular nation or ethnicity to include its music in new works. German Protestant Brahms turned to Hungarian-Jewish violinists to explore Hungarian themes he used in his Hungarian Dances . Dvorak was hired as Music Director of the National Conservatory of Music of America in part to develop an American classical musical language based on American folk music. His New World Symphony was the result.

The approach of using lands foreign to the composer as inspiration was akin to the nationalist trend and called "exoticism." The distinction between exoticism and nationalism could get blurry. Verdi's Aida , a story placed in Egypt, was commissioned by Cairo's Royal Opera. Puccini's Turandot , based on a commedia dell'arte play written in the 18 th century, was set in China.

Exploring Romantic Composers and Their Works

We've covered a number of Romantic Era composers and some of their works. As an artistic epoch spanning anywhere from 80 years to slightly over a century, it spawned a huge volume of amazing composers and music. We named our Spotify list of Romantic Era music "20 Hours of the Best Music from the Romantic Era," and it covers a lot ! You'll see we broke it up by form, from symphonies to tone poems through concertos and string ensembles and closing off with the operas and ballets.

If you prefer to start with the "must-know" list of Romantic Era composers, then check out this list of ten of the most influential . You'll find some composers already discussed, plus a few others. For each composer, we've also linked one extraordinary performance of one their most important works.

Romanticism evolves to its logical conclusion: Post-Romanticism

As the foundation of Romantic artistic ideas was personal expression and rule-breaking. It's not surprising that the musical style continued to evolve in significant ways, and by the late 19 th century, composers were becoming more abstract in regards to the atmosphere and sentiments they wanted to express – a musical form of Impressionism . They were also starting to break the "rules" of the Romantics by returning to Classical forms inspired by popular Romantic themes of mysticism and the grotesque. Mahler is a prime example of a composer who bridges the Romantic and Post-Romantic Eras. Eventually, the rule-breaking pioneered by the Romantics evolved to the Modernists and Post-modernists , like John Cage, who seems to have rejected the idea of aesthetic rules entirely.

It's no wonder the music of the Romantic Period, with its expressiveness and penchant for telling dramatic stories, remains one the most popular eras of classical music.

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Above Images: Gustav Mahler, courtesy of wikicommons, and Edvard Grieg, De Agostini/A. Dagli Orti/Getty Images.

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Romantic Period Music Guide: 5 Iconic Romantic Composers

Written by MasterClass

Last updated: Jun 7, 2021 • 5 min read

The Romantic period of classical music lasted for much of the nineteenth century. It bridged the gap between the Classical era music of Mozart and Haydn and the music of the twentieth century. Romantic-era music contributes heavily to the repertoire of today's symphony orchestras.

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Home — Essay Samples — History — Romanticism — The Music and Orchestra of the Romantic Period

The Music and Orchestra of The Romantic Period

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Romantic Music Essay (1094 words)

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Composers of the romantic period continued to use the musical forms of the preceding classical era. The emotional intensity associated with romanticism was already present in the work of Mozart and particularly in that of Beethoven, who greatly influenced composers after him. The romantic preference for expressive, kinglike melody also grew out of the classical style. Nonetheless, there are many differences between romantic and classical music. Romantic works tend to have greater ranges of tone color, dynamics and pitch.

Also, the romantic harmonic vocabulary is broader, with more emphasis on colorful, instable chords. Romantic music is linked more closely to the other arts, particularly to literature. New forms developed, and in all forms there was greater tension and less emphasis on balance and resolution. But romantic music is so diverse that generalizations are apt to mislead. Some romantic composers, such as Mendelssohn and Brahms, created works that were deeply rooted in classical tradition; other composers, such as Burlier, List and Wagner, were more revolutionary.

Important Style Features Mood and Emotional Expression Art forms, including music, exhibited extreme interest in subjects related to nature, death, the fantastic, the macabre, and the diabolical. Unprecedented emphasis was placed on self-expression and the development of a uniquely personal musical style or voice. Music explored a universe of feeling that included flamboyance and intimacy, unpredictability and melancholy, rapture and longing, the mysterious and the remote. Some composers wrote music evoking a specific national identity (“nationalism”) or exotic location (“exoticism”).

Rhythm is extremely diverse Tempos are flexible and may change frequently Tempo rubout permitted great expressively and freedom in performance. Dynamics Dynamic changes can be sudden or gradual. Extremely wide dynamic ranges, from very soft to very loud, add considerably to emotional excitement and intensity. Tone Color Romantic music exhibits a wide range of expressive tone color and sensuous sound The addition of new instruments and the increased size of the orchestra led to new and varied timbres. Woodwind, brass and percussion instruments played prominent roles in orchestral and operatic works.

Composers experimented with timbre through unusual combinations of instruments or by having instruments play in unusual ways. Melody and Harmony Melodies are often long, complex and highly expressive. Recurring melodies and thematic transformation unify longer works. Prominent use of chromatic harmonies that are rich, colorful and complex. Dissonance is used more freely; resolutions are often delayed to create feelings of yearning, tension and mystery. A wide range of keys and frequent modulations sometimes obscure the sense of an overall tonic or home key.

Texture Texture is generally homophobic, but fluctuations of texture may occur to provide contrasts. A piece may shift gradually or suddenly from one texture to another. Form Forms are rooted in the classical tradition, but now are more expansive and treated freely. New forms and genres were developed, such as the symphonic poem and the art song. Symphonies are typically longer than those of the classical era. Less emphasis is placed on balance, proportion and resolution of tension than in the classical era. Works can be very brief (e. G.

Chopping Minute Waltz) or long an monumental (e. G. Wager’s four-evening opera cycle Deer Ring des Unbelieving). Genre: Art Song One of the most distinctive forms in romantic music is the art song, a composition for solo voice and piano. Here, the accompaniment is an integral part of the composer’s concept and it serves as an interpretive partner to the voice. Although they are now performed in concert halls, romantic songs were written to be sung and enjoyed at home. Flowered with an emergence of a rich body of romantic poetry in the early nineteenth century.

Many of the finest art song composers – Schubert, Schumann and Brahms, for example – were German or Austrian and set poems in their native language. Yearning – inspired by a lost love, nature, a legend, or other times and places – haunted the imagination of romantic poets. Thus art songs are filled with despair of unrequited love; the beauty of flowers, trees and brooks; and the supernatural happenings of folktales. There are also songs of Joy, wit and humor; but by large, romantic song was a reaching out of the soul. Some composers would interpret a poem. Translating its mood, atmosphere and imagery into music.

They created a vocal melody that was musically satisfying and perfectly molded to the text. Important words were emphasized by stressed tones or melodic climaxes. The voice shares the interpretive task with the piano. Emotions and images in the text take on an added dimension from the keyboard commentary. Arpeggios in the piano might suggest the splashing of oars or the motion of a mill wheel. Chords in a owe register might depict darkness or a lover’s torment. The mood is often set by a brief piano introduction and summed up at the end by a piano section called a postlude.

Strophic and Through-composed Form When a poem has several stanzas, the musical setting must accommodate Goatee’s poems were set to music throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth entries by a number of composers, including Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Ludwig van Beethoven, Franz Schubert, Robert Schumann, Johannes Brahms, Charles Sound, Richard Wagner, Hugo Wolf, and Gustavo Mailer. Erik¶ant (1815) Schubert art song Earl¶nigh is one of the earliest and finest examples of musical romanticism. It is a musical setting of a narrative ballad of the supernatural by Goethe. Goatee’s poem tells of a father riding on horseback though a storm with his sick child in his arms.

The delirious boy has visions of the legendary Reeling, the king of the elves, who symbolizes death. Schubert uses a through-composed setting to capture the mounting excitement of the poem. The piano part, with its rapid octaves and menacing bass motives, conveys the tension of the wild ride. The pianos relentless triplet rhythm unifies the episodes of the song and suggests the horse’s gallop. By imaginatively varying the music, Schubert makes one singer sound like several characters in a miniature drama. 1.

The Narrator lies in the middle range and is in minor mode. 2. The Father lies in the low range and sings both in minor mode and major mode. 3. The Son lies in a high range, also in minor mode, representing the fright of the hill. 4. The Reeling’s vocal line, in a major key, undulates up and down to repatriated accompaniment; a striking contrast as the only break from the triplet figure in the accompaniment until the boy’s death. The Reeling lines are typically sung pianissimo. Original Text English Adaptation Were rewrite so spit durra Nacho undo Wind?

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What T.S. Eliot’s Letters to Emily Hale Reveal About the Poet’s Romantic Past

Sara fitzgerald on unrequited love and a recently declassified epistolary correspondence.

It was at his cousin Eleanor’s home in Cambridge, Tom recalled. A small party, an impromptu game of charades. He stepped on Emily Hale’s feet—and promptly fell in love with her.

For decades, their story was hidden away, a matter of scholarly speculation. A few months before Eliot married his secretary, Hale donated the 1,131 letters he had sent her to the Princeton Library, a plan they had discussed for many years. The letters would be sealed until fifty years after both of them died.

They had met as teenagers in 1905, the year Eliot arrived in Boston to attend Milton Academy before going on to Harvard. They were both born outside New England, but to families that were well established there. Eliot came from St. Louis, where his grandfather had founded Washington University and his father owned a brick-making company. When summer came, his family escaped to the Massachusetts coast, where he played with his cousins, Eleanor, Barbara, and Frederick.

Since their schooldays in Cambridge, Eleanor Hinkley had been good friends with Emily Hale. Hale was three years younger than Eliot, born in East Orange, New Jersey, where her father had been called to start a Unitarian church. But when she was five, Edward Hale was lured back to Boston to teach at Harvard Divinity School and lead a growing congregation in Chestnut Hill.

Emily was an only child and Tom was treated like one, because he was eight years younger than his closest sibling. He was shy, and spent his days dreaming and reading books. “I never talked,” he recalled, “for who was there to talk to?”

At twenty-four, Eliot returned to Harvard after a year in Europe to complete a doctorate in philosophy. Hale was pursuing a life as an amateur actress. And Eleanor Hinkley dreamed of becoming a playwright.

Hinkley decided to organize a “Stunt Show” in her Cambridge home on the night of February 17, 1913. She drafted Hale, her Eliot cousins, and other Harvard and Radcliffe friends to perform in her skits. Tom played opposite Emily in a sketch based on Jane Austen’s Emma. When their rehearsals began, he started “to realise what had happened” to him.

Their audience would have included friends and relatives, but Emily’s mother, Emily Jose Milliken Hale, wasn’t present. In 1897, shortly after the Hales returned to Boston, her son, William, died of dysentery a few days before his second birthday. After the tragedy, Mrs. Hale had a breakdown—and disappeared from her family’s life. For her remaining years, she would be confined to McLean Hospital in Belmont, already a go-to place for the psychiatric treatment of the East Coast elite.

Emily left no words describing how it felt to be “abandoned” by her mother when she was only five. But the childhood trauma undoubtedly fueled a life-long desire to be “a good girl,” a woman who tried to please others so she would never be rejected again.

The loss may have also sparked Hale’s love for the stage. Plays allowed Hale to try on new roles, to step into a world of make-believe. The comedies she favored had happier endings than the chapters of her own life. And theater companies, casts, and school drama clubs all provided a substitute for the tight-knit family she would never truly know.

In Boston, theater was something well-connected people did. Performing for a charity made it even more acceptable. And the Stunt Show was no exception.

It was pitched as a benefit for Cambridge Visiting Housekeeping, which promoted domestic work for young women to keep them off the streets. Hale had taken voice lessons for seven years, and Hinkley put her talents to good use: she kicked off both acts by singing three romantic songs from the Gay Nineties. Afterward, the Cambridge Chronicle reported that Emily’s performance for the forty guests “was a favorite.”

For “An Afternoon with Mr. Woodhouse,” Hinkley played Emma and, in a stroke of casting genius, she recruited Eliot to play Emma’s hypochondriac father. Years later, Hale recalled that she was “a natural” to play the fussy Mrs. Elton and that Eliot had played Mr. Woodhouse “very delightfully.”

The rehearsals may have deepened Eliot’s attraction to Hale, but she did not reciprocate his feelings, if she was even aware of them. She admired Eliot’s intelligence, but he was still painfully shy around women. Among her circle, no one was in a rush to get married. Harvard men, meanwhile, were said to categorize women according to their debutante status: pre-deb, deb, and post-deb. Unlike Hinkley, who was “presented” at teas in late 1911, Hale was not a deb. Still, she would have qualified for Harvard’s fourth category, LOPH, or “Left on Papa’s Hands.”

If Hale ignored Eliot’s awkward attempts at courtship, it was probably because she was focused on acting. As early as 1912, she performed with members of the Cambridge Social Dramatic Club in a play based on Lewis Carroll’s “Through the Looking Glass.” The club was the first, and possibly the most “social,” of Hale’s theater groups, drawing members from Cambridge, Harvard and Radcliffe.

Eliot’s efforts were also constrained by their busy schedules and the distances that separated them. Eliot was managing a demanding load of graduate school courses and studying eastern languages. Although he had begun work on his first great poem, “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock,” he was still building a curriculum vitae to become a philosophy professor. In the spring of 1914, he was admitted to Oxford’s Merton College and Harvard awarded him a fellowship for a year’s study abroad.

Eliot later recalled no more than a half dozen or so outings with Hale during the sixteen months that he remained in Boston. (Hale’s own memories were hazier.) Eliot signed up for dancing and skating lessons; years later, the two of them remembered practicing an English country dance for a “masque” a friend had organized. Eliot recalled that it marked the first time he had called Hale by name—“very timidly”—and that she had worn a blue dress with a scarlet sash for the party afterward.

Eliot frequently attended the opera and Boston Symphony concerts. Hale apparently invited him to attend a performance of Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde on December 1, 1913. Hale might have remembered the night as a mixed performance; it was soprano Margarete Matzenauer’s first performance as Isolde, while her new husband, Italian tenor Eduardo Ferrari-Fontana, was singing Tristan in German for the first time. But Eliot later recalled that he was “shaken to pieces” by the opera, and nine years later, incorporated his memories into The Waste Land.

Still Eliot’s youthful passions were more restrained than Tristan’s. After taking Hale home following a football game and a tea party, he was so “down in the mouth” that the two “delirious” days were over, that he barely spoke to her. He felt “hopelessly unattractive and ineligible,” and that he had no right to “make love to anybody” until he was able to support her.

When he was about to leave for Oxford, Eliot felt compelled to call on Hale at her home. There are three versions of what happened that night, but they all agree on one point: Eliot did not propose.

Years later, Hale pressed him to explain what he had been thinking. “I said, that last evening: ‘I can’t ask anything, because I have nothing to offer,’” he responded. At best, he could see himself teaching at an obscure provincial college. And “a man with such poor prospects…had no right to ask you to marry him.”

Hale later told her version. Before leaving, she said, Eliot had “very much embarrassed me by telling me he loved me deeply: no mention of marriage was made….” A few years later, she wrote, “Before leaving, to my great surprise, he told me how very much he cared for me; at the time I could return no such feeling.” But friends told her that she was the only girl Eliot noticed. They did stay in touch, and while Eliot was at Oxford, she tried “to decide whether I could learn to care for him had he returned to the ‘States.’”

In 1960, after learning that Hale had put down her memories, Eliot told the story again, this time in a secret letter that Harvard was instructed to release on the day Hale’s letters became public. He acknowledged that he had once loved her, but that she gave him no reason to believe that his feelings were returned, “in any degree whatever.”

When his letters were finally opened, it was possible to come to this conclusion: On that evening in June 1914, he was still a naïve, tongue-tied virgin, who was genuinely worried about whether he could support a wife. Hale was a proper Bostonian, focused more on building an acting career than finding a husband. Their timing was off, but Eliot would come back someday, and they might find a future together.

By the centenary of Eliot’s birth in 1988, he was a celebrated poet who had won the Nobel Prize. To mark the occasion, his widow published the first volume of his letters, covering the years to 1922. By then, scholars knew there was a cache of unopened letters at Princeton. Although the first volume included no letters to Hale, Mrs. Eliot was smart enough to know that she would have to say something about what had happened during her husband’s years at Harvard.

In her introduction, she did not disclose that her husband had sent his pre-emptive letter to Harvard. Instead she described it as “a private paper, written in the sixties.” She paraphrased how her husband had described Hale’s rejection, focusing instead on how he responded when Hale donated his letters: “The Aspern Papers in reverse.” It was a reference most literary scholars would know: a Henry James novella in which the over-zealous narrator seeks access to the love letters of a deceased American poet by charming his way into the confidences of the poet’s elderly ex-lover.

So while Hale’s story remained sealed for another thirty-two years, her reputation was defined by those who could speak—and others who spun her story. She became the woman who rejected an awkward and shy T. S. Eliot. The woman who broke his tender heart. And the vindictive older woman who exacted her revenge by passing on his very valuable letters.

See  Emily   Hale Letters,   https://tseliot.com/the- eliot – hale -letters ; “Statement by T. S.  Eliot  on the opening of the  Emily   Hale  letters at Princeton,”  https://tseliot.com/the- eliot – hale -letters/the-statements ; Valerie  Eliot , ed.,  The Letters of T. S.  Eliot , Vol. 1 (1898-1922),  introduction;   and Narratives by  Emily   Hale , 1957 and 1965.

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From The Silenced Muse: Emily Hale, T. S. Eliot, and the Role of a Lifetime by Sara Fitzgerald. Copyright © 2024. Available from Rowman & Littlefield.

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Sara Fitzgerald

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