Romanticism in the 20th century (1900- )
Many composers born in the 19th century continued to compose well into the 20th century in styles which were recognizably connected to the previous musical era, including Sergei Rachmaninoff, Richard Strauss and Kurt Atterberg. In addition many composers who would later be musical modernists composed works in Romantic styles early in their career, Igor Stravinsky with his Firebird ballet, Arnold Schoenberg's Gurrelieder, Béla Bartók's Bluebeard's Castle stand as well known examples. But the vocabulary and structure of the late 19th century was not merely held over, Jean Sibelius, Ralph Vaughan Williams, Erich Korngold, Berthold Goldschmidt and from time to time Sergei Prokofiev composed works in recognizably Romantic styles until after 1950.
While new tendencies such as neo-classicism and atonal music challenged the preeminence of the romantic style, the desire to compose in tonally centered chromatic vocabularies remained present in major works. Samuel Barber, Benjamin Britten, Gustav Holst, Dmitri Shostakovich, Malcolm Arnold and Arnold Bax while considering themselves modern and contemporary composers, drew frequently from musical Romanticism in their works.
Musical romanticism reached a rhetorical and artistic nadir around 1960: it seemed as if the future was all with avant garde styles of composition, or with neo-classicism of some kind. While Hindemith moved back to a style more recognizably rooted in romanticism, most composers moved in the other direction. Only in the conservative academic hierarchy of the USSR and China did it seem that musical romanticism had a place. However, by the late 1960s a revival of music using the surface of musical romanticism began: composers such as George Rochberg switched from serialism to models drawn from Gustav Mahler, a project which found him the company of Nicholas Maw and David Del Tredici. This movement is described as "Neo-Romanticism", and is considered to include works such as John Corigliano's First Symphony.
Another area where the style of Mahler and Strauss survived, and even flourished, was in film scoring. Many of the early émigrés escaping from Nazi Germany were Jewish composers who had studied, or even studied under, Gustav Mahler's disciples in Vienna. Max Steiner's lush score for Gone With The Wind provides an example of the use of Wagnerian leitmotifs and Mahlerian orchestration. The "Golden Age of Hollywood" film music rested heavily on the work of composers such as Korngold and Steiner as well as Franz Waxman and Alfred Newman. The next generation of film composers, Alexander North, John Williams and Elmer Bernstein drew on this tradition to write some of the most familiar orchestral music of the late 20th century.
Many composers born in the 19th century continued to compose well into the 20th century in styles which were recognizably connected to the previous musical era, including Sergei Rachmaninoff, Richard Strauss and Kurt Atterberg. In addition many composers who would later be musical modernists composed works in Romantic styles early in their career, Igor Stravinsky with his Firebird ballet, Arnold Schoenberg's Gurrelieder, Béla Bartók's Bluebeard's Castle stand as well known examples. But the vocabulary and structure of the late 19th century was not merely held over, Jean Sibelius, Ralph Vaughan Williams, Erich Korngold, Berthold Goldschmidt and from time to time Sergei Prokofiev composed works in recognizably Romantic styles until after 1950.
While new tendencies such as neo-classicism and atonal music challenged the preeminence of the romantic style, the desire to compose in tonally centered chromatic vocabularies remained present in major works. Samuel Barber, Benjamin Britten, Gustav Holst, Dmitri Shostakovich, Malcolm Arnold and Arnold Bax while considering themselves modern and contemporary composers, drew frequently from musical Romanticism in their works.
Musical romanticism reached a rhetorical and artistic nadir around 1960: it seemed as if the future was all with avant garde styles of composition, or with neo-classicism of some kind. While Hindemith moved back to a style more recognizably rooted in romanticism, most composers moved in the other direction. Only in the conservative academic hierarchy of the USSR and China did it seem that musical romanticism had a place. However, by the late 1960s a revival of music using the surface of musical romanticism began: composers such as George Rochberg switched from serialism to models drawn from Gustav Mahler, a project which found him the company of Nicholas Maw and David Del Tredici. This movement is described as "Neo-Romanticism", and is considered to include works such as John Corigliano's First Symphony.
Another area where the style of Mahler and Strauss survived, and even flourished, was in film scoring. Many of the early émigrés escaping from Nazi Germany were Jewish composers who had studied, or even studied under, Gustav Mahler's disciples in Vienna. Max Steiner's lush score for Gone With The Wind provides an example of the use of Wagnerian leitmotifs and Mahlerian orchestration. The "Golden Age of Hollywood" film music rested heavily on the work of composers such as Korngold and Steiner as well as Franz Waxman and Alfred Newman. The next generation of film composers, Alexander North, John Williams and Elmer Bernstein drew on this tradition to write some of the most familiar orchestral music of the late 20th century.
