The Romantic period (1750-1837) began in Western Europe around mid 1700s and continued onto the early 1800s. Unlike those who lived during the Enlightenment Era who proclaimed radical science proofs and reasoning, people of the Romantic Era embraced strong emotions such as horror, gothic, or love. They incorporate their strong feelings and combine them with their passions into their love of the natural world to create their unique style of expressing themselves. Idealism was favored for it is the perfect way to allow the expressing of Romantics’ desire for a life that is different than the previous. Their imagination influences their creation for the arts, such as music, drawing, literature and more. While different from the Enlightenment Era, they mixed reason with feeling. Approximately in the early 19th century, Beethoven started to compose in a way the no others had done before. In 1824, one of his famous pieces, Symphony No.9 was created. The piece was well known for its complications for the fact that Beethoven brought in several vocalists with addition chorus while the orchestra plays the piece; he explains that music alone couldn’t express his feelings to the fullest. Many other artists viewed Beethoven as their example and began to experiment with their pieces with freer styles than before. Visual artists also started to create paintings that are evolutionary; they combined spiritual feelings with their fascination of nature by soften the image they were trying to create and let the audiences’ emotions and imagination take place. One example of such work is Steamer in a Snowstorm by Joseph M. W. Turner. This style is later known as Impressionism, which the colors used and the feeling expressed are more important than the actual objects in the piece.
Ashley Chang, Diana Kim, Justin Park, Jenny Yu
Asher.p2.t1.Romantic Era Blog Response
ReplyDeleteBy Brianna Loo, Calvin Chan, Christina Yang, Jane Lu
Overall, great effort! The response definitely highlights the important aspects of the Romantic era as you guys talk about the strong emotions and “unique style of expressing themselves.” You guys also give good examples to prove your thesis! The example Steamer in a Snowstorm seems to be a great illustration of such and it is interesting how you guys tied it to Impressionism as well. However, what might have further strengthened the synthesis answer would to talk more about how the common man is this era represented as being secular and not religious. We decided to talk about the common ratio and how mathematician Johannes Kepler expanded on the theory of the golden ratio and the underlying presence of the proportion in all aspects of life for our synthesis answer. However, Kepler made no connection to religion at all but instead he formulated a relationship between the golden ratio and Pythagoras’s Theorem, calling it the Kepler triangle. Later the golden ration was published into books and art. For example, the famous painter Mondrian used the ratio extensively in his geometric paintings; while, in addition, the Swiss architect Le Corbusier centered his design philosophy on systems of harmony and proportion and is also well known for the implementation of the golden proportion. But, regardless, keep up the good work! Good job. :)