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Neoromanticism in music is a return (at any of several points in the nineteenth or twentieth centuries) to the emotional expression associated with nineteenth-century
Romanticism.
Definitions
Neoromanticism was a term that originated in literary theory in the early 19th century to distinguish later kinds of romanticism from earlier manifestations. In music, it was first used by
Richard Wagner
Wilhelm Richard Wagner ( ; ; 22 May 181313 February 1883) was a German composer, theatre director, polemicist, and conductor who is chiefly known for his operas (or, as some of his mature works were later known, "music dramas"). Unlike most op ...
in his polemical 1851 article "
Oper und Drama Oper may refer to:
;Technology
* Operator (disambiguation)
** IRC operator
* Outstanding Physical Education Preparation, a website for PE preparation
;Opera
* Deutsche Oper Berlin, Oper Leipzig, Komische Oper Berlin, Alte Oper
* Romantische Oper, ...
", as a disparaging term for the French romanticism of
Hector Berlioz
In Greek mythology, Hector (; grc, Ἕκτωρ, Hektōr, label=none, ) is a character in Homer's Iliad. He was a Trojan prince and the greatest warrior for Troy during the Trojan War. Hector led the Trojans and their allies in the defense o ...
and
Giacomo Meyerbeer
Giacomo Meyerbeer (born Jakob Liebmann Beer; 5 September 1791 – 2 May 1864) was a German opera composer, "the most frequently performed opera composer during the nineteenth century, linking Mozart and Wagner". With his 1831 opera ''Robert le di ...
from 1830 onwards, which he regarded as a degenerated form of true romanticism. The word came to be used by historians of ideas to refer to music from 1850 onwards, and to the work of Wagner in particular. The designation "neo" was used to acknowledge the fact that music of the second half of the 19th century remained in a romantic mode in an unromantic age, dominated by
positivism
Positivism is an empiricist philosophical theory that holds that all genuine knowledge is either true by definition or positive—meaning ''a posteriori'' facts derived by reason and logic from sensory experience.John J. Macionis, Linda M. G ...
, when literature and painting had moved on to
realism
Realism, Realistic, or Realists may refer to:
In the arts
*Realism (arts), the general attempt to depict subjects truthfully in different forms of the arts
Arts movements related to realism include:
*Classical Realism
*Literary realism, a move ...
and
impressionism .
According to Daniel Albright,
In the late twentieth century, the term Neoromanticism came to suggest a music that imitated the high emotional saturation of the music of (for example) Schumann Romanticism ">Romanticism#Music.html" ;"title="Romanticism#Music">Romanticism but in the 1920s it meant a subdued and modest sort of emotionalism, in which the excessive gestures of the Expressionism">Expressionists
Expressionism is a modernist movement, initially in poetry and painting, originating in Northern Europe around the beginning of the 20th century. Its typical trait is to present the world solely from a subjective perspective, distorting it rad ...
were boiled down into some solid residue of stable feeling. Thus, in Albright's view, neoromanticism in the 1920s was not a return to romanticism but, on the contrary, a tempering of an overheated post-romanticism.
Notable composers
In this sense,
Virgil Thomson proclaimed himself to be "most easily-labeled practitioner [of Neo-Romanticism] in America," :
Neo-Romanticism involves rounded melodic material (the neo-Classicists affected angular themes) and the frank expression of personal sentiments. . . . That position is an esthetic one purely, because technically we are eclectic. Our contribution to contemporary esthetics has been to pose the problems of sincerity in a new way. We are not out to impress, and we dislike inflated emotions. The feelings we really have are the only ones we think worthy of expression. . . . Sentiment is our subject and sometimes landscape
A landscape is the visible features of an area of land, its landforms, and how they integrate with natural or man-made features, often considered in terms of their aesthetic appeal.''New Oxford American Dictionary''. A landscape includes the ...
, but preferably a landscape with figures. (; )
In the twentieth century, composers such as
John Adams,
Airat Ichmouratov
Airat Rafailovich Ichmouratov (russian: Айрат Рафаилович Ишмуратов, Tatar Cyrillic: Айрат Рафаил улы Ишмурат,) born 28 June 1973) is a Volga Tatar born Russians, Russian / Canadians, Canadian composer ...
and
Richard Danielpour have been described as neoromantics (; ).
Since the mid-1970s the term has come to be identified with
neoconservative postmodernism
In music, neoconservative postmodernism is "a sort of ' postmodernism of reaction'," which values "textual unity and organicism as totalizing musical structures" like "latter-day modernists".
Neoconservative modernism...critically engages moderni ...
, especially in Germany, Austria, and the United States, with composers such as
Wolfgang Rihm and
George Rochberg. Currently active
US-based composers widely described as neoromantic include
David Del Tredici
David Walter Del Tredici (born March 16, 1937) is an American composer. He has won a Pulitzer Prize for Music and is a former Guggenheim and Woodrow Wilson fellow. Del Tredici is considered a pioneer of the Neo-Romantic movement. He has also bee ...
and
Ellen Taaffe Zwilich .
Francis Poulenc
Francis Jean Marcel Poulenc (; 7 January 189930 January 1963) was a French composer and pianist. His compositions include songs, solo piano works, chamber music, choral pieces, operas, ballets, and orchestral concert music. Among the best-kno ...
and
Henri Sauguet were French composers considered neoromantic while
Virgil Thomson ,
Nicolas Nabokov
Nicolas Nabokov (Николай Дмитриевич Набоков; – 6 April 1978) was a Russian-born composer, writer, and cultural figure. He became a U.S. citizen in 1939.
Life
Nicolas Nabokov, a first cousin of Vladimir Nabokov, and of ...
,
Howard Hanson (; ; ; ) and
Douglas Moore were American composers considered neoromantic .
See also
*
Neo-romanticism
*
Vítězslav Novák
Vítězslav Augustín Rudolf Novák (5 December 1870 – 18 July 1949) was a Czech composer and academic teacher at the Prague Conservatory. Stylistically, he was part of the neo-romantic tradition, and his music is considered an important e ...
*
Postmodern music
*
Romantic music
Romantic music is a stylistic movement in Western Classical music associated with the period of the 19th century commonly referred to as the Romantic era (or Romantic period). It is closely related to the broader concept of Romanticism—the ...
*
Neoclassicism (music)
Neoclassicism in music was a twentieth-century trend, particularly current in the interwar period, in which composers sought to return to aesthetic precepts associated with the broadly defined concept of "classicism", namely order, balance, c ...
References
Sources
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Further reading
*Heyman, Barbara B. 2001. "Barber, Samuel." ''The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians'', second edition, edited by Stanley Sadie and John Tyrrell. London: Macmillan Publishers; New York: Grove's Dictionaries of Music.
*Lewis, Zachary M. 2003.
Neo This, Neo That: An Attempt to Trace the Origins of Neo-Romanticism. ''New Music Box'' (1 September). (Accessed 9 January 2011)
*Svatos, Thomas D. 2009. "A Clash over ''Julietta'': The Martinů/Nejedlý Political Conflict and Twentieth-Century Czech Critical Culture". ''Ex Tempore'' 14, no. 2:1-41.
External links
Art of the States: neoromanticneoromantic works by American composers
"Neoromanticism" ''Canadian Music Centre''
{{DEFAULTSORT:Neoromanticism (Music)
20th-century classical music
Neo-romanticism