Speaking of Music In the Romantic Era: Dynamic and Resistant Aspects of Musical Genre
Speaking of Music In the Romantic Era: Dynamic and Resistant Aspects of Musical Genre
In the nineteenth century Romantic literary critics and philosophers began claiming that art was or should be moving beyond established genres, or even beyond the idea of genre itself, which they saw as inherently limiting. Composers and music critics, particularly those such as Wagner and Liszt, absorbed this attitude in part. This chapter considers the lingering importance of genre, a continuity more substantial in music than in the other arts. Generic contracts and mediation were necessary to make sense of music. They operated on many levels, and ultimately, certain social and conceptual aspects of established musical genres retained or even gained force as other aspects were sacrificed. Genre labels associated with formal aspects, for example, were attacked, whereas large governing generic ideas such as “chamber music” were preserved, and more abstracted categories such as art, folk, and popular music were solidified.
Keywords: Genres, Frédéric Chopin, Franz Liszt, Richard Wagner, Romanticism, Chamber Music, Genre theory
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