Romantic music
Romantic priorities
c. 1820–1900. The exam probes song forms, piano genres, programme music, Wagnerian harmony and national schools.
Song and piano
- Lied: strophic (same music per stanza) or through-composed; song cycles such as Schubert's Winterreise and Schumann's Dichterliebe.
- Character pieces: nocturne, ballade, étude, impromptu, mazurka, waltz; Chopin turns miniature forms into large-scale structures.
- Piano writing expands: wider range, pedal, rubato, chromatic harmony.
Orchestra, programme and stage
- Programme music narrates or depicts; symphonic poem (Liszt), concert overture (Mendelssohn), programme symphony (Berlioz, Symphonie fantastique).
- Absolute music is the Brahmsian counter-position; the debate shapes nineteenth-century aesthetics.
- Wagner: music drama, leitmotif, Tristan und Isolde and its chromatic idiom (the 'Tristan chord'); Verdi and bel canto; verismo in Puccini and Mascagni.
- National schools: the Russian Five, Smetana and Dvořák, Grieg, Sibelius.
Worked example
A short motif returns with different instrumentation, harmony and rhythm whenever a character appears. That is a leitmotif, identified by association and transformation; it does not need to be a closed theme or a fixed tune, which is why thematic labelling alone is unreliable.
Traps that cost marks
Confusing symphonic poem with programme symphony; assuming opus numbers run chronologically; forgetting Chopin wrote almost only piano music (plus songs and two concertos); applying sonata form to through-composed Lieder.
Polish context
Moniuszko's Halka and Straszny dwór, Wieniawski's violin works and Paderewski's piano career belong here.