Beginning of Essay
At one point in the study of the Romantic period of music, we come upon the first of several apparently opposing conditions that plague all attempts to grasp the meaning of Romantic as applied to the music of the 19th century.  This opposition involved the relat ....

Middle of Essay
.... ultimate Romantic mode of expression, and the strong literary orientation of the 19th century, was resolved in the conception of program music.  Program music, as Liszt and others in the 19th century used the term, is music associated with poetic, descriptive, and even narrative subject matter.  This is done not by means of musical figures imitating natural sounds and movements, but by imaginative suggestion.  Program music aimed to absorb and transmit the imagined subject matter in such a way that the resulting work, although "programmed", does not sound forced, and transcends the subject matter it seeks to represent. Instrumental music thus be ....