Romanticism Essentials

As with all labels, the Romantic era doesn’t exactly have defined borders. Although it spanned roughly from 1820 to 1910, the music of the period can be divided into early and late. The late works of Beethoven, for instance, are often considered to be the dawn of Romanticism, and many composers who lived and wrote well into the musical explosion of the 20th century began in a more Romantic tradition. Richard Strauss, for example, kept faithful to it until the late 1940s, as in a work like his Four Last Songs. As with the visual arts and literature, the Romantic composers were all about self-expression, emotion on a grand scale and new ideas. And few personify that creative urge better than Richard Wagner—in particular, his totemic opera Tristan und Isolde.