The Romantic era
1820–1900
Big emotions, bigger orchestras — music about love, nature, nations and stormy hearts.
The sound of the Romantic
Romantic composers put feeling first. Melodies soar and ache, harmonies grow rich and restless, and the orchestra swells to over a hundred players capable of anything from a heartbeat whisper to a thunderclap. Music starts telling stories — of swans and heroes, forests and storms — and composers pour their homelands into it, weaving in the folk tunes and dances of Poland, Russia or Hungary. It is the golden age of the piano and of the virtuoso superstar, and of the art song, where a single voice and piano hold an entire world of emotion.
What to listen for
- Long, soaring melodies that seem to breathe and yearn
- Extreme contrasts — thunderous climaxes fading to a whisper
- Stories told in sound: a swan's theme, a storm, a ride to the abyss
- Rubato — the pianist bending time, lingering on a note like a sigh
The world at the time
The world accelerated: railways stitched countries together from 1825, the telegraph flashed messages across oceans, and photography froze faces in time — including Chopin's. Queen Victoria presided over a vast empire, Darwin's On the Origin of Species shook humanity's view of itself, and Dickens and Hugo filled novels with the century's struggles. Revolutions swept Europe in 1848, and new nations — Germany, Italy — were forged. Amid all this machinery and upheaval, audiences longed for feeling, fantasy and home: exactly what Romantic music delivered.
9 composers of the Romantic — meet them
Franz Schubert
1797–1828
Felix Mendelssohn
1809–1847
Frédéric Chopin
1810–1849
Franz Liszt
1811–1886
Clara Schumann
1819–1896
Johannes Brahms
1833–1897
Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky
1840–1893
Edward Elgar
1857–1934
Gustav Mahler
1860–1911
Notable people of the age
- Franz Grillparzer (1791–1872) — Viennese poet and friend who wrote Schubert's epitaph: 'Music has here buried a rich treasure, but far fairer hopes.'
- Caspar David Friedrich (1774–1840) — Painter of lonely wanderers and moonlit landscapes — the Romantic mood in pictures.
- Lord Byron (1788–1824) — Superstar Romantic poet whose fame swept the Europe of Schubert's youth.
- Simón Bolívar (1783–1830) — 'The Liberator' freeing South America while Schubert wrote songs.
- Fanny Mendelssohn (1805–1847) — His brilliant elder sister and closest musical confidante — a gifted composer in her own right.
- Queen Victoria (1819–1901) — A devoted fan who sang his songs and welcomed him to Buckingham Palace.
- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749–1832) — The aged giant of German literature, who befriended the boy prodigy.
- George Sand (1804–1876) — Famous novelist (real name Aurore Dupin) and Chopin's partner for nine years.
- Eugène Delacroix (1798–1863) — Great Romantic painter and close friend — his unfinished double portrait of Chopin and Sand is legendary.
- Victor Hugo (1802–1885) — Author of Les Misérables, star of the same Paris salons.
- Hans Christian Andersen (1805–1875) — Spinning fairy tales in Denmark while Chopin spun nocturnes in Paris.
- Richard Wagner (1813–1883) — The revolutionary opera composer Liszt championed — and who married Liszt's daughter Cosima.
- Hector Berlioz (1803–1869) — The daring French composer whose vivid orchestral storytelling Liszt admired and promoted.
- Charles Dickens (1812–1870) — Writing Oliver Twist and A Christmas Carol during Clara's touring years.
- Florence Nightingale (1820–1910) — Founder of modern nursing — another woman rewriting the rules of her era.
- Charles Darwin (1809–1882) — Published On the Origin of Species in 1859, mid-career for Clara.
- Thomas Edison (1847–1931) — His phonograph captured Brahms playing piano in 1889.
- Mark Twain (1835–1910) — Writing Tom Sawyer while Brahms wrote his First Symphony.
- Leo Tolstoy (1828–1910) — The great novelist wept hearing Tchaikovsky's music — a compliment the composer never forgot.
- Claude Monet (1840–1926) — Born the same year — painting impressions of light while Tchaikovsky painted feelings in sound.
- Alexander II (1818–1881) — The reforming tsar of Tchaikovsky's youth, assassinated in 1881.
- Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (1859–1930) — Creator of Sherlock Holmes — a fellow lover of puzzles and codes, like the secret in the Enigma Variations.
- Rudyard Kipling (1865–1936) — The writer who gave the same confident, imperial Britain its words as Elgar gave it music.
- Richard Strauss (1864–1949) — The other great composer-conductor of the age, both rival and friend to Mahler.
- Sigmund Freud (1856–1939) — The founder of psychoanalysis, whom the troubled Mahler once consulted.
- Gustav Klimt (1862–1918) — The painter of shimmering gold whose glittering Vienna was Mahler's world too.
Meanwhile in the world…
1804Napoleon crowns himself Emperor; Vienna will be occupied twice in Schubert's childhood.
1815The Congress of Vienna ends the Napoleonic Wars — in Schubert's home town, with waltzing every night.
1815Napoleon is finally defeated at the Battle of Waterloo.
1816The 'Year Without a Summer': the Tambora eruption darkens skies worldwide.
1825The world's first public steam railway opens in England.
1827Beethoven dies in Vienna; 20,000 mourners include the young Schubert.
1830The first modern steam railway opens between Liverpool and Manchester.
1830Revolutions sweep Europe: Paris rises in July, Warsaw in November — Chopin is caught between both.
1830Revolution in Paris topples one king for another.
1837Queen Victoria comes to the British throne.
1837Victoria becomes Queen of Britain; Samuel Morse demonstrates the telegraph.
1837Queen Victoria takes the British throne — her reign will span almost all of Clara's career.
1839The first photographs astonish the world.
1839Photography is announced to the world (the daguerreotype) — Chopin will be among the first composers ever photographed.
1840The world's first postage stamp, the Penny Black, is issued in Britain.
1848The 'Year of Revolutions' convulses Europe; gold is discovered in California.
1848A wave of revolutions sweeps across Europe.
1848Revolutions break out across Europe — the Schumanns flee Dresden during the uprising.
1859Charles Darwin publishes On the Origin of Species.
1859Darwin publishes On the Origin of Species.
1861The American Civil War begins; Italy becomes a united kingdom.
1861Tsar Alexander II frees Russia's serfs — the year before Tchaikovsky enters the conservatory.
1866The transatlantic telegraph cable permanently links Europe and America.
1869The Suez Canal opens; Tolstoy finishes War and Peace.
1871Germany unites into a single empire.
1871Germany is unified under Kaiser Wilhelm I — Brahms, a proud German, celebrates with a 'Triumphlied'.
1876Wagner opens his first festival at Bayreuth; the telephone is invented.
1876Alexander Graham Bell patents the telephone.
1876Bell patents the telephone; Wagner opens his Bayreuth festival.
1876The telephone is invented.
1876Wagner opens his first Bayreuth Festival; the telephone is invented.
1879Edison demonstrates his electric light bulb.
1883Krakatoa erupts, the loudest sound in recorded history.
1889The Eiffel Tower opens in Paris. Brahms makes a wax-cylinder recording — his actual piano playing survives!
1889The Eiffel Tower opens for the Paris World's Fair.
1891Work begins on the Trans-Siberian Railway across Tchaikovsky's homeland.
1901Queen Victoria dies, and the Edwardian age begins.
1903The Wright brothers make the first powered aeroplane flight.
1905Albert Einstein publishes his theory of relativity.
1914The First World War breaks out across Europe.
1922The BBC begins broadcasting to Britain.