“The function of the creative artist consists of making
Ferruccio Busoni
laws, not in following laws already made.”
Post-Romantic Era: 1900-1919
Background of Post-Romanticism
Of course, musical “stragglers” or traditionalists continued to compose well into the 20th-century, but by this time, Romanticism no longer held a majority in terms of worldwide popularity. “Post-Romantic” is just a catch-all term for a variety of often experimental musical styles, including Impressionism and microtonality. The inwardness of Romanticism seemed overly sentimental, and musicians sought more “serious” and absolute works, hence a huge rise in interest in the music of Bach.
The musical body of the early 20th century was so diverse that it would make more sense not only to classify music by style but also by individual composers. In the previous eras, politics grew ever more complex, and borders shifted (for example, the creation of the German Confederation). As music moves with society, composers found experimentation and intellectualism (sometimes mixed with nationalist ego) quite attractive. Huge popularity in music led to an industry with high supply and low demand, so to stand out, musicians had to move to extremes. Simply look at Gustav Mahler’s Symphony No. 2 “Resurrection” or the verismo flairs in Giacomo Puccini’s La Bohème. They changed the symphony and the opera, respectively, by expanding their scale, structure, and emotional themes.
In the 1890s, Sergei Rachmaninoff also composed Symphony No. 1, a forward-thinking work that was a failure at the time. Further works include Richard Strauss’s recognizable Also sprach Zarathustra, based on Nietzsche’s philosophical essay, and one of the greatest triumphs in British music history: Edward Elgar’s Enigma Variations. Though composers may have self-identified with Romanticism, their music had truly grown out of the rather dated movement.
The Heart of Post-Romanticism
In 1900, Jean Sibelius composed Finlandia. Sibelius was, and still is, the most famous Finnish “classical” composer to date. His works helped solidify Finnish identity during a time of Russification (Russia’s attempt to import its culture and language into nearby countries) and echoed values not unlike those of Franz Liszt. The tone poem explains the setup to the First World War: national pride and a curiosity in modernism. The music of Alexander Scriabin evolved toward dissonance and atonality, with Piano Sonata No. 7 “White Mass” and Piano Sonata No. 9 “Black Mass” introducing his characteristic mystical techniques not found in earlier compositions. Max Reger continued to champion the piano and organ, helping to bring to light the works of the Baroque composer Johann Sebastian Bach. His Fantasy and Fugue on B-A-C-H is highly acclaimed by Romantic and Baroque pianists of the modern day alike.
Impressionism lived its golden age in the Post-Romantic period. Its focus was on overall timbre and dynamic, rather than individual structural genius. Paul Dukas and Lili Boulanger are a few of the Impressionists largely forgotten by mainstream society. Of course, Claude Debussy reigned supreme: Suite Bergamasque, the opera Pelléas et Mélisande, and Children’s Corner stand as Impressionist masterpieces. Maurice Ravel, having been taught by the legendary French composer Gabriel Fauré (who also taught many of the Post-Romantic Impressionists, including George Enescu), worked prolifically with Debussy. His most notable set of pieces from the age is Miroirs.
Neoclassicism was a strange movement because it had already emerged in other art fields two centuries earlier and had since died out. The prefix “Neo” refers to a second or third, more modern iteration of the original style. In music and literature, the earliest emergence of classicism occurred in Ancient Rome and Greece. The second time was the Renaissance. The third was the 18th-century. However, classicism had never included the field of music until its third iteration, so, concerning music, the original iteration occurred in the 18th century. Thus, Europe experienced a Neoclassical movement in music during the Post-Romantic age. Neoclassicists focused on absolutism, restraint, structure, and Baroque themes like contrapuntalism. Fine examples of Neoclassicists include Igor Stravinsky (his “Neoclassical” period began later in the 1920s; Stravinsky’s most popular earlier works, like Petrushka and Firebird, are characteristically Russian) and Sergei Prokofiev. Another forerunner was Ferruccio Busoni, known for the Busoni-Bach Chaconne and Fantasia Contrappuntistica. Busoni illustrates that most Neoclassicists, though they composed with Baroque music theory, did not compose with the relatively rudimentary Baroque finger technique. To blend the old with the new, Neoclassicists primarily employed technically difficult, Romantic/Modernist keyboard techniques. Many of the “Les Six” (Germaine Tailleferre, Darius Milhaud, Georges Auric, Arthur Honegger, Francis Poulenc, and Louis Durey) aligned with this movement, too.
Another “counterrevolution” against Romanticism was Expressionism, an art form that transcended or distorted reality to convey emotions outside of standard conceptions. A contrast to Neoclassicism, Expressionism was a more moderate brother to the more extreme Modernist movement. Alban Berg and Béla Bartók are among the Expressionists.
The “Second Viennese School” stood at the forefront of Modernism. Berg was arguably the least modernist, preferring a blend with Romanticism, while Anton Webern and Arnold Schoenberg pioneered other techniques such as microtonality. Dubbed the “emancipation of the dissonance” by Schoenberg himself, they sought to free themselves from the chains of traditional music theory. The Second Viennese School pioneered “dodecaphonism,” known more commonly nowadays as the “twelve tone technique,” which used every note of the chromatic scale with equal weight to create utter atonality. Americans, with their revolutionary attitude carried throughout the latter 20th century, often employed these serialist methodologies. The most well-regarded of these include Leo Ornstein and “the American OG” Charles Ives, the mastermind behind the Concord Sonata.
Finally, there were the last Romantics, guardians of a sacred treasure most did not even consider valuable anymore. These Romantics were perhaps the most admirable, as their ardent patronage of the once-popular movement would keep the kindles just hot enough for there to arise another, albeit briefer, Romantic surge in the Neo-Romantic ’70s and ’80s. Among them are the three Spanish greats Enrique Granados, Manuel de Falla, and Isaac Albéniz. Elgar, Puccini, the contemporary of Scriabin, Nikolai Medtner, violinist Fritz Kreisler, English great Ralph Vaughan-Williams, German virtuoso pianist Moritz Moszkowski, and Ottorino Respighi, whose so-called “Roman Trilogy” is one of the best orchestral tone poems of all time. The US had fantastic representation too: the Second New England School, or “Boston Six,” solidified the new national powerhouse as a formidable hub of music, too. The referenced “six” are John Knowles Paine, Arthur Foote, George Chadwick, Amy Beach, Edward MacDowell, and Horatio Parker. Finally, Ernst von Dohnányi continued the Hungarian Romantic tradition started by Franz Liszt. His best works are Winterreigen and various piano chamber works.
The End of Post-Romanticism
The closing of World War 1 signalled the end of the Post-Romantic era and thus, the primary century or so of Romantic relevance. Most, if not all, music at this point had changed to such an extent that it could no longer be called Romantic in any sort of way. Europe had been absolutely destroyed by the new technologies it faced during the long war, and most people were more focused on survival and rebuilding than composing music in the style of an earlier, outdated time. Most importantly, as America resided an entire ocean away from the main theaters of war and also gained truckloads of cash from selling weapons, the country became the new powerhouse on the world stage. Consequently, it would also begin to lead the popular musical taste.
In America specifically, in the two decades leading up to the Second World War, composers either aligned with European classical music (Aaron Copland, Ives, and, to some extent, George Gershwin) or thrived in the Blues and Jazz styles throughout the Roaring Twenties. By 1919, one of the earliest Jazz bands, the Louisiana Five, recorded extensively. Radio broadcasts and a surge in phonograph sales aided the rise of modern music. African Americans transformed traditional African tunes into new genres that gradually evolved into Gospel, Soul, and Ragtime.
After a few years, Europe recovered. Some Post-Romantics continued writing music, notably Rachmaninoff, Ravel, Prokofiev, Stravinsky (who turned from Russian to the Neoclassical genre), and the radical Schoenberg. Notably, Germany lost its status as the world’s musical hub. The nation faced deep financial debt under the harsh terms of the Treaty of Versailles after losing the First World War, and, in an attempt to repay it, the government overprinted the Reichsmark, leading to hyperinflation and total economic collapse. Furthermore, growing nationalist resentment, political instability, and wide cultural censorship (such as the settings brought about by the Nazis) hindered musical progress in Germany. Strangely, Russia, despite still being extremely 19th-century in terms of its political, social, and economic systems, saw a rise in music. However, all of these Russian composers used mainly Western styles and lived in the Western-influenced big cities like Moscow and Petrograd/Leningrad, in contrast to the more modest, musically-ethnic “Kuchka” of the 19th century.