[Encyclios]

Towards Romanticism

In the eighteenth century, while Pergolesi, Jommelli, Galuppi, Piccinni, Paisiello, Cimarosa in the sphere of theater, D. Scarlatti, Locatelli, Platti, Sammartini, Boccherini, Clementi in that of instrumental music, spread throughout Europe the spirit of Italian art (not without absorbing important suggestions from the nations that hosted them), Ch. W. Gluck directed musical theater towards a new coherence and dramatic effectiveness, while Haydn and Mozart went beyond the graceful measure of the galant style (the musical equivalent of rococo). Gluck directed the musical theater towards a new dramatic coherence and effectiveness, while Haydn and Mozart overcame the graceful measure of the galant style (the musical equivalent of the rococo) elaborating the harmonic and majestic measure of the classical style that Beethoven would bend to the signification of high aesthetic and moral ideals. With Romanticism, music was placed at the apex of the scale of the arts and its language was considered a privileged means of reaching the world of essence.

The new ideal independence acquired by the musician, who was no longer an objective interpreter of established values but a proud elaborator of his own truth animatedly proclaimed on the stage of the world (“from the heart to the hearts”, according to Beethoven’s expression), caused an amazing acceleration in the development of all the parameters of the language: from timbre (which was treated from this moment no longer with external coloristic intentions, but as an objective structural datum), to the formal aspect (with the acquisition, next to the traditional forms of the symphony, the sonata, the concert, the Lied, etc., of new genres, such as the symphonic poem and the very rich repertoire of the so-called Charakterstücke, pieces of free architecture dedicated especially to the piano), to the harmonic structure (which already in Tristan and Isolde, 1865, by R. Wagner, came to question the fundamental principles of the tonal system). Even the function of the interpreter was profoundly changed: from a simple performer he became an apostle of art, placed on the same level as the creative artist. It is no coincidence that the figure of the conductor was born in this period and instrumental virtuosity touched, with Paganini, Chopin and Liszt, goals no longer surpassed.