The Romantic Orchestra - Symphony

The Romantic Symphony

The Romantic Symphony was a new beast. Composers up until now had a smaller, string-based orchestra with limited wind, brass and timpani families of instruments to choose from.

But the dawn of the Romantic era brought a larger orchestra - much larger.
Look at the difference!

Seating Plan for a standard Romantic period symphony orchestra.

So what can you expect?

Structure:

Well hopefully you'll have realised that the Romantic composers weren't motivated by the balance, symmetry and simplistic, clean formulaic approach that the Classical mob were into. They were all about the emotions, turmoil, conflict, love, hate, war, peace, human nature... The big stuff.

They therefore decided to break the rules.

The symphony used to last 3 or 4 movements. Not any more! The Romantic guys went nuts. Give us a 5 or 6 movement symphony, they said. Keep your sonata form first movements, they said. Keep your Minuet & Trio second movements, they said!

So they broke the rules, and basically, cut a long story short - they did what they liked.

Melody & Harmony

In the Classical period, we'd got used to a very elegant way of music-making. The tonality of the music was simple - pinballing between the tonic and the dominant, or the relative major or minor... never really doing anything "unexpected".

Contrast that with the Romantic era - these guys went nuts. They weren't interested in your Chord I,IV, V and vi. They didn't care about your 2nd Subject being in the dominant.

The resulting sound was more adventurous - much more chromatic, much more distant and interesting! The melody and harmony would wander off, flitting between major keys, minor keys, chromatic scales and chromatic harmonies. Sometimes a composer would go "dissonance-daft" and really tart up the basic triads with suspended 2nds, added 6ths and augmented and diminished chords were used much more regularly.

Timbre:

You're a Romantic composer. You're sick of the Classical lads. You've got this massive orchestra... what do you do?

You use it.

The composers made much more adventurous use of the orchestra. You'll hear thick, luscious tones from the strings, brass, and woodwind, punctuated by the large and comprehensive percussion section. New timbres like metallic cymbal sounds, gongs, xylophones and shakers can be heard in several Romantic pieces of music. Listen to the opera Carmen - the music is heavily glittered with the percussion section of the orchestra.

In terms of strings - the composers in the Romantic era enjoyed a tremolando string section, scrubbing the note back and forth and creating a buzzy haze effect. They also liked to play with the effect of con sordino - making the instruments sound muffled and distant. Another boom in Romantic music for strings was the use of pizzicato, again, to punctuate and vary the timbre of the music. Often this was used at the same time as arco playing - it gave the strings a whole extra dimension of sound.

Often a symphony contained a Brass Fanfare - giving the brass guys a chance to wake up and make some noise!

Dynamics

The dynamic range reflects the expanse of expression poured into the music of the Romantic era - it swells and shrinks, and the composers make copious use of sforzando accents. 

Check out this movement from Tchaikovsky's 4th Symphony - it's a beast.

This particular symphony starts with a Fanfare - you hear it? A full minute of Brass guys enjoying themselves.

During that minute - can you hear the unexpected chords? The accented staccato chords that don't "fit" elegantly with the key? It's brilliant. In the first movement alone he's packed it full with just about every trick he could use to build drama, suspense and contrast.

Go listen to some Romantic Symphonies. Enjoy yourself. Sit, with a cup of coffee, and click through the playlist. While you do it, try and fathom what the composer might've been trying to express.