Intro to the Humanities Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words

Intro to the Humanities - Essay Example The music of this era was very expressive, and melody became the central feature. Composers even used melody to display nationalism. This became a motivating force in the late Romantic period, as composers used rudiments of folk music to express their cultural identity. The romantic generation saw Beethoven as their ideal of a heroic artiste, a man who first devoted the Eroica Symphony to Consul Bonaparte as a champion of freedom and then dared Emperor Napoleon by striking him out from the dedication of the Symphony In the Romantic period, the virtuoso performances gained great popularity. Extraordinarily gifted performers - pianists, violinists, and singers all became extremely popular. Franz Liszt personified all of the great ambitions of the Romantic era, and several of its contradictions. In his early career, he was an extravagant virtuoso, an architect of new and adventurous music. Later, he became a priest, wrote sacred music, and championed the music of a new generation. As a virtuoso pianist, he filled his piano music with unbelievable technical demands, and represents the ultimate in nineteenth century virtuosity. George Gordon, Lord Byron was an Anglo-Scottish bard and a leading figure in Romanticism. Among Lord Byrons best-known works are the narrative poems Childe Harolds Pilgrimage and Don Juan. He was considered as one of the greatest European poets and remains widely read even today. Lord Byrons fame was due not only on his works but also on his life, which was marked by extravagant living, plentiful love affairs, debts, separation, and charges of incest and sodomy.The Byronic hero first created in Childe Harolds Pilgrimage is an idealized, but flawed, character exemplified in the life and writings of Lord Byron .Thomas B. Macauley defined the Byronic hero as, â€Å"proud moody, cynical with defiance on his brow, and misery in his heart implacable in revenge yet capable of deep and