Rise of Romantic music

Romantic music was the dominant style of Western classical music during the nineteenth century, putting emotion, imagination and individual expression ahead of the balance and restraint of the Classical era. Beethoven's late works opened the way for Schubert, Schumann, Chopin, Liszt and Berlioz, followed by Wagner, Verdi, Brahms and Tchaikovsky. Orchestras grew larger, piano virtuosos became celebrities, and composers wrote programme music that told stories, and operas on nationalist themes. Late in the century Mahler and Richard Strauss stretched the style to its limits, before twentieth-century modernists turned in new directions.

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