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Music of the Romantic Period

Code: 100639
Credits: 6
2026/2027
Degree programme Type Course
Musicology OB 3

Contact lecturer

Name :
Francesc D Assi Cortes Mir
Email :
francesc.cortes@uab.cat

Teaching staff

Anna Fusté Labaila

Group languages

You can consult this information at the end of the document.

Prerequisites

No specific prior knowledge is required to take the course, although adequate and sufficient knowledge of music theory and harmony is desirable.

Objectives

1. To identify the different trends and models that emerged in the Romantic period of music

2. To learn the technical characteristics for each movement, tendency, and model of this chronological period – in terms of composition, performance, and reception.

3. To analytically reason through musical listening regarding the main characteristics of Romantic works.

4. To be able to justify the stylistic tropes, compositional techniques and the links that unite them with the aesthetics of each period.

5. To be able to use the bibliography and musicographic sources of the aforementioned historical period with critical knowledge and scientific correctness.

Learning outcomes

  1. Produce correct, precise and clear argumental and terminological writing of knowledge acquired, both in the area of musical specialisation and dissemination.
  2. Integrate knowledge acquired in the production of clear and concise appropriate to the academic and specialist communication.
  3. Analysing ideas about an artistic phenomenon in a given cultural context.
  4. Analysing the creators of an artistic phenomenon in a specific cultural context.
  5. Analysing the recipients of an artistic phenomenon in a specific cultural context.
  6. Identify the complexity of music reception processes.
  7. Solve problems of a methodological nature in the area of musicology.
  8. Apply the conceptualisation of philosophy, history, literature and anthropology to musical research.
  9. Interrelate technological and scientific changes in each period with the creation and reception of music.
  10. Identifying the specific methods of history and their relationship with the analysis of particular facts.
  11. Identifying the context of the historical processes.
  12. Use specific vocabulary of history correctly.
  13. Use the vocabulary of musicology related to each period of history.
  14. Identify the stylistic properties of each historical period.
  15. Interpret the most important theoretical texts of each period.
  16. Correctly identify the essential repertoire and the main composers of each historical period.
  17. Present knowledge about the history, art or other cultural movements.
  18. Define the processes of periodisation and stylistic classification and usual typology in the historical conceptualisation of the musical fact.
  19. Contextualise new tendencies in musical creation in general historical evolution and observe its incorporation in the sociopolitical panorama in which they are framed.
  20. Consider the subject as a whole and identify the context in which the processes studied are inscribed and their interrelationship with the elements and factors that are involved in their sociohistorical development.
  21. Link the periods of the history of music to periods of the history of art, in their similarities and differences.
  22. Identify phenomena of the circulation of ideas in music proficiency.
  23. Contextualise musical works in their hsitorical and cultural setting from a critical perspective.
  24. Identify and critically place different musical typologies in their historical periods.
  25. Critically identify the different orientations of musical praxis that musicians apply to the music of each hsitorical period.
  26. Recognise in musical praxis element of different cultures and different historical periods.
  27. Identify situations in which a change or improvement is needed.
  28. Propose new experience-based methods or alternative solutions.
  29. Communicate using language that is not sexist or discriminatory.
  30. Assess the reliability of sources, select relevant data and contrast information.
  31. Identify and critically assemble the basic bibliography that has shaped the field of study.

Contents

1. Origins and significance of the concept of “Romanticism”. Periodization.
2. New determinants of the musical event: the phenomenon of genius, virtuosity, consumption and Western bourgeois society.
3. Public and private spaces. The case of the musical salons.
4. Musical language during the 19th century.
5. From the beginnings to 1830.
6. The ideological and aesthetic turn between 1830 and 1848: the romantic plenitude.
7. Late Romanticism: monumentality versus intimacy.
8. The rise of orchestral music: musical societies and the phenomenon of the concert.
9. The emergence of “peripheral” musical nationalisms.
10. The symbiosis between music and the arts at the turn of the 20th century

Learning activities and methodology

Title Hours ECTS Learning outcomes
Text commentary and listening 10 0.4
Search for information 37 1.48
Article reading and study 30 1.2
Musical analysis 13 0.52
Commentaries, lectures, listening and orchestration 20 0.8
Master class 25 1

The course will combine theoretical and practical aspects, while ensuring a cross-cutting connection of knowledge. There will be practical activities and lectures. Individual study and work done in the classroom will also be taken into account.

Annotation: within the schedule set by the centre or degree programme, 15 minutes of one class will be reserved for students to evaluate their lecturers and their courses or modules through questionnaires.

Assessment

Continuous assessment activities

Title Weight Hours ECTS Learning outcomes
Individual task 35% 6.5 0.26 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 20, 23, 24, 26, 29, 30, 31
Group task. Analysis and Presentation 35% 6.5 0.26 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 22, 23, 27, 28, 29, 31
Exam 30% 2 0.08 1, 2, 6, 8, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 20, 21, 23, 24, 25, 26, 29

To pass the course, the student must obtain an average of 5/10.

During the course, the following assessable activities will be carried out:

  1. An individual paper on one of the proposed topics or on a topic of the student's choice, subject to prior approval by the lecturer. This activity makes up 35% of the overall grade.
  2. A group project involving the presentation and defense of a selected work from the nineteenth-century repertoire. This activity makes up 35% of the overall grade.
  3. A final exam covering the theoretical content and listening materials studied in class. 30% of the overall mark.


In case of partial failure of the tasks, the students may only opt for the retake of 2 of the evaluation items, on the date set by the Faculty, providing that they have obtained a minimum average of 3,5/10.


Resit assessments may not be used as a means of improving the grade of students who have already passed the course.


In the event that tests or exams cannot be taken onsite, they will be adapted to an online format made available through the UAB’s virtual tools (original weighting will be maintained). Homework, activities and class participation will be carried out through forums, wikis and/or discussion on Teams, etc.


If the student delivers one of the tasks or participates in one of the written tests, this will be considered as course participation. Therefore, only the student who has not participated in any evaluation items during the course may be considered as \"not assessed.\

"

In the event of a student committing any irregularity that may lead to a significant variation in the grade awarded to an assessment activity, the student will be given a zero for this activity, regardless of any disciplinary process that may take place. In the event of several irregularities in assessment activities of the same subject, the student will be given a zero as the final grade for this subject.


SINGLE ASSESSMENT

Three evidences will be taken into account on a date that will be indicated once the course has started on the Virtual Campus: a written exam with the contents of the first part (35%), a written exam with the contents of the second part (35%), and the delivery of an analysis paper (30%). The continuos assessment system will be applied for retaking the single assessment elements.


EXCHANGE STUDENTS:

Erasmus and exchange students who request to advance an exam must present a document from their home university justifying their request.


Use of Artificial Intelligence:

For this subject, the use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) technologies is allowed exclusively in support tasks, such as bibliographic or information searches, text correction or translations. The student must clearly identify which parts have been generated with this technology, specify the tools used and include a critical reflection on how these have influenced the process and the final result of the activity. The lack of transparency in the use of AI in this assessable activity will be considered a lack of academic honesty and may lead to a partial or total penalty in the grade of the activity, or greater sanctions in serious cases. If there is no critical reflection that contrasts the suitability, or not, of the information found, it will be subtracted from the grade obtained.


Bibliography

AISLING, Kenny; WOLLENBERG, Susan (ed). Women and the Nineteenth-Century Lied, Routledge, 2019.

di BENEDETTO, Renato. Historia de la música, 8. El siglo XIX, primera parte. Madrid, Turner Música, 1987.

CASARES, Emilio (ed); ALONSO, Celsa (ed). La música española en el siglo XIX. Oviedo, Servicio de Publicacions de la U. de Oviedo, 1995.

CASINI, Claudio. Historia de la música. El siglo XIX, segunda parte. Madrid, Turner Música, 1987.

DAHLHAUS, Carl. La idea de la música absoluta. Barcelona, Idea Books, 1999.

DAHLHAUS, Carl. Nineteenth-century music. Berkeley, Los Angeles, University of California Press, 1989.

EINSTEIN, Alfred. La música en la época romántica. Madrid, AlianzaMúsica, 1986.

FREEMAN-WHALEN, Meg. A little republic filled with grace: the nineteenth-century music salon. Women of note Quarterly, 1995.

PLANTINGA, Leon. La música romántica. Madrid, ed. Akal, 1992.

ELLIS, Katherine. Interpreting the musical past. Early music in the nineteenth century France. Oxford University Press, 2008.

SARSON, Jim. The Cambridge History of Nineteenth-Century Music. Cambridge University Press, 2001.

TAYLOR, Benedict. The Cambridge Companion to Music and Romanticism. Cambridge University Press, 2021.

Software

No necessary

Course groups and languages

The information provided is provisional until November 30. After this date, you will be able to consult the language of each group through this link. To access the information, you will need to enter the course CODE

Type of teaching Group Language Semester Shift
(TE) Theory 1 Catalan first semester morning-mixed
(PAUL) Classroom practices 1 Catalan first semester morning-mixed