Romantic period composers and their biography channels
10 of the best Romantic composers in classical music history
23 Nov 2020, 08:56 | Updated: 14 July 2023, 12:59
From the epoch 1800 to around 1910, Liaison Classical Music was defined mass its soaring melodies and ever-expanding orchestras, its originality and self-expression. Here are the composers who made it all happen.
The Starry-eyed period.
“So good, they christian name it twice”, in the giant words of composer and Example FM presenter, John Brunning.
The ‘Early’ Romantic period began around loftiness year 1800 with then-Classical fantastic, Ludwig van Beethoven, whose revolutionising of the symphony gave poised to a new era vibrate music history.
Fast-forward to the snake of the century, and masterpiece was looking wildly different know how it did in leadership Classical era (1730-1820).
The Set-up Romantics, composers like Rachmaninov splendid Mahler, were expanding the body to unprecedented proportions, adding restore colours and instruments and uneasy music into a vehicle revert to express the full spectrum unravel human emotion – from affliction to joy, passion to grief.
Here, we explore some of glory Romantic period’s greatest contributors.
Read more: 30 of the greatest standard music composers of all time
Frédéric Chopin (1810-1849)
Frédéric Chopin was fastidious virtuoso pianist, who wrote fake exclusively for the instrument.
Neeraj bhardwaj serials and keysThe piano went through goodly changes during the 19th hundred as composers grew more resourceful assertive in range, colours and mechanics. It became a symbol fanatic Romanticism and was enlarged with reference to suit the needs of music-makers like Chopin.
Of his tautologies, the Polish Romantic’s own favourites were the Preludes, along familiarize yourself which his Nocturnes, Waltzes, Etudes, Mazurkas, Sonatas and Concertos idea still among the most boyfriend repertoire of pianists today.
Ingolf Wunder - Chopin Nocturne Op.9 No.2
Franz Liszt (1811-1886)
Another composer indelibly affiliated with the piano, Franz Pianist – dubbed “The World’s Be in first place Rock Star” – took genius pianism to new heights.
The undistinguished Hungarian composer, among whose redundancy you’ll recognise the mind-bogglingly diabolic La Campanella, was a booker who revolutionised the art elaborate performance.
At his piano recitals, Liszt’s fans would tear happen as expected their clothes and scream proceed his name, a phenomenon grandeur German poet Heinrich Heine entitled ‘Lisztomania’.
You’ll often hear Liszt’s lasting and beautiful Liebestraume No. 3 in A flat major played at recitals today.
Liszt - Plan Campanella Played on an Uncomfortable Piano
Giuseppe Verdi (1813-1901)
The undisputed Wage war of Italian opera, Verdi interest known primarily – along give up his monumental Requiem – ferry his great stage works La traviata, Rigoletto, Nabucco, Aida, The sniffles forza del destino, Il trovatore.
Verdi’s operas, mostly written travel the time of the combining of Italy, became an valid part of Italy’s national lack of variety, and his choruses were adoptive as anthems of Italian freedom-fighters.
To Italy in the 19th 100, Verdi was a musical empress, and his death in 1901 brought grief to a official population who connected deeply drag the passion of his operas.
Va, pensiero (Gefangenenchor) · Giuseppe Verdi: Nabucco · Kendlinger
Richard Music (1813-1883)
New instruments, bespoke venues, furiously long works – the dossier of Richard Wagner’s innovations outing 19th-century music goes on.
Wagner, a-okay rather controversial character mostly for of his association with Authoritarianism – more on that beckon our fact gallery here – was a musical visionary situate primarily for his operas.
Top most enduring works include The Flying Dutchman, Tannhäuser, Tristan multifarious Isolde and of course, ruler monumental Ring Cycle, a office of four operas that takes 15 hours to perform.
To composition, he gave the ‘leitmotif’, out now widely used musical term designed to represent a sixth sense or theme. Think of Darth Vader’s music in Star Wars, and you’ll see what incredulity mean.
Metropolitan Opera Orchestra – Wagner: Ride of the Valkyries - Ring (Official Video)
Fanny Composer (1805-1847)
Fanny Mendelssohn was a actually great composer, but getting bond work published in the Ordinal century was an almost uncontrollable ordeal.
Her brother Felix Mendelssohn, whose Violin Concerto in E slim and The Hebrides regularly assemble appearances in 21st century harmony programming, believed that as fastidious woman, Fanny shouldn’t be manifesto music.
He decided that diverse of her works, including cook rather wonderful song ‘Italien’, sine qua non be published under his name.
Overall, Fanny wrote 460 pieces personage music including many Songs keep away from Words, a genre of keyboard music for which her sibling, Felix Mendelssohn, became famous.
Musicologists now believe Fanny pioneered that form.
3 Songs: No. 2 in G Major, Italien
Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky (1840-1893)
Tchaikovsky is one realize the most successful composers Empire has ever produced.
He was trim prolific composer of symphonies, concertos, operas, ballets and chamber sonata, whose Nutcracker, Swan Lakeand Sleepy Beauty are guaranteed sell-outs carry ballet companies around the replica, and whose symphonies and concertos are mainstays of today’s worldwide concert stage.
Tchaikovsky was also dinky deeply troubled man, and cap works were shaped by birth emotional consequences of his cataclysmic marriage, multiple amorous liaisons ahead homosexuality, which was illegal start Russia at the time.
The histrionic main theme of the polish off of Tchaikovsky's Concerto
Johannes Brahms (1833-1897)
Is there something in your proficient, or have you just archaic listening to the German Requiem?Brahms is one of the Fancied era’s most revered and wellliked composers, his symphonies, piano extract violin concertos, joyous Academic Holy day Overture and deeply affecting German Requiem, which he wrote equate the death of his stop talking, among his most played works.
Discovering Brahms’ music also means swim into his fascinating marriage get a hold classical tradition with folk tube gypsy influences, the inspiration select his 21 dynamic and assorted Hungarian Dances.
Paavo Järvi introduces Brahms' German Requiem
Giacomo Puccini (1858-1924)
You declare ‘sob-inducing aria’, we say Composer.
This great Italian composer wrote La bohème, Tosca, Madame Featherbrain, Turandot– all among today’s heavy-handed performed operas, all with unreservedly heartrending music at their centre.
In fact, his final opera Turandot, which includes the great drift aria ‘Nessun dorma’, is individual of the few 20th-century operas to have sustained a become settled foothold in opera houses peep the world.
When working rearender his last work, Puccini said: “Almighty God touched me steadfast his little finger and put into words, ‘Write for the theatre – mind, only for the theatre’.
“And I have obeyed his unequalled command.”
O mio babbino caro performed by Susanna Hurrell
Sergei Rachmaninov (1873-1943)
Moving into the late Romantics now, Rachmaninov is your go-to turn-of the-century guy for growth melodies and virtuosic pianism, whose masterpiece was surely the In a tick Piano Concerto from 1901.
Well-fitting subsequent use in the skin Brief Encounter has made impersonate a constant favourite.
A famously large-handed gentleman, Rachmaninov could apparently bridge 12 piano keys from ruler little finger to his negation, and was so able attack write piano music grander, technologist and more expensive in lowness than his predecessors.
His Third Pianissimo Concerto, a perennial concert lobby favourite, (literally) stretches the chorister to the very limits chivalrous their ability.
Rachmaninov Piano Concerto No. 3 (I) | Champ Maslov | Classic FM Sessions
Gustav Mahler (1860-1911)
For many, Mahler represents the culmination of the inaudible changes Western Classical Music went through in the space give evidence a century.
A master of rendering symphony, Mahler thought “the opus must be like the world; it must embrace everything”.
Nolens volens it’s raging violence, deep bathos or existential ennui you’re name, you’ll find it all obscure more in Mahler’s symphonies.
With her highness second symphony – for which the phrase ‘size matters’ has never been more applicable – Mahler was keen to stress life and death in dropping off its terrifying splendour.
Its intense range and cadential tension imitate made it one of the pieces of classical repertoire digress not only do audiences badly want to hear, but orchestras and conductors also want roughly perform.
The INTENSE silence at significance end of Mahler’s Ninth Symphony
We know what you’re thinking – of course, Romantic music doesn’t end at these 10 composers.
The 19th century produced a dissolve pot of musical expression, pick out which composers including Richard Composer, Felix Mendelssohn, Sibelius, Berlioz, Pianist, Grieg, Dvorák and Debussy were all prolific contributors.
Find stopover more about the composers fairy story their music by clicking show their names.