Incomplete And Utter History Of Classical Music

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et me step back, for a moment, and try and gain some sort of overview, if I can, of the first half of the nineteenth century. It's basically all about one word: revolution. How many revolutions per month you have all depends on which part of the world you live in. The background is still that of France and the US - huge, world-changing revolutions, which made their effects felt everywhere, not least in the field of music. Hand in hand with this is, of course, nationalism. Everybody wanted to be themselves. They wanted to be of their own country, as it were. I can understand that. It's all just about 'a heightened sense of worth, individual freedom and personal expression'. Now, hold on to that phrase, if you would; hold on to that thought - 'a heightened sense of worth, individual freedom and personal expression'. Because if you lift that phrase and graft it on to the world of music, well, what you have, more or less, is a viable definition of the word Romanticism. In fact, you didn't need to separate the worlds of music and political revolution: ever since Beethoven had been some two parts revolutionary to three parts artist, revolutionary life and art had been inextricably linked. You not only didn't need to separate them, you COULDN'T.

Various people seemed to be on the move: 1838 - the Boers started the Great Trek; ten years later the Mormons would set out for the Great Salt Lake. And, oddly enough, with the exploration of the new, came an increased passion for the old - it may sound odd, but it's fi Revolutions per minute. true: the homeland becomes all the more cherished when it is left behind. So nationalism would increase apace - and it would be matched in music. Not just Chopin, with his urn of Polish earth, but deeper, in the very heart of music. Glinka wrote the first truly Russian opera in 1836 - A Life for the Tsar, with its story of real Russian peasants, not nobility, and complete with real Russian folk songs, embedded into the score.