Assignment 1: A Brief Analysis Of Romantic Literature And Music

Unit four of the textbook is about music in the nineteenth century, and the first part of this section starts by dedicating a whole chapter to Ludwig van Beethoven. Beethoven was a true genius, his music is still widely popular until today. His style of music was mostly Classical, he was a student of Haydn. One of Beethoven 's first work that really showed his his individuality as an artist was his symphony called Bonaparte. This symphony was written in honor of Napoleon Bonaparte, but later on, when Bonaparte crowned himself the emperor of France, Beethoven was infuriated, and consequently, he changed the name of this symphony to Heroica. Although Beethoven only wrote nine symphonies, many of his piano sonatas and string quartets sounded like symphonies. He wrote thirty-two piano sonatas, and sixteen string quartets. Many of his work was so original, so unusual from that period of time that it demanded a all new techniques of piano and string playing. He …show more content…
For most people, the word romantic is associated with love, but love was only one of the themes of Romantic literature and music. This period of romanticism was a chance to strive for a better, higher, ideal state of being. It was a search for meaning which was exercised through individual will and passion. Emotional expression was the artist goal. Another symbol of this era was revolution and revolt, beginning with the American Revolution, the French revolution and other European revolutions to follow. With all this encouragement for expression, music was one the channels used to express in this period of time, musicians of this period were able to express their inner feeling by composing music which became symbols of