Romantic Music: The Ideals Of Instrumental Music
Beginning of paper
At one point in the study of the Romantic period of music, we come upon
the first of several apparently opposing conditions that plague all attempts to
grasp the meaning of Romantic as applied to the music of the 19th century. This
opposition involved the relation between music and words. If ins ....
Middle of paper
.... pure instrumental music (absolute
music) as the ultimate Romantic mode of expression, and the strong literary
orientation of the 19th century, was resolved in the conception of program music.
Program music, as Liszt and others in the 19th century used the term, is music
associated with poetic, descriptive, and even narrative subject matter. This is
done not by means of musical figures imitating natural sounds and movements, but
by imaginative suggestion. Program music aimed to absorb and tr ....
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Word count: 851
Page count: 4 (approximately 250 words per page)
