Why are realism and romanticism the mainstream of art history?

Romanticism

Romantic music has many characteristics, and those who choose it are as follows: First, it changes from big to small. Romantic music is developed by classical music school. Classical music, whether it is symphony, chamber music or solo, has a large form, and most of them are multi-movement suites. Romantic music is mostly short three-stage or two-stage music, such as instantaneous music, impromptu (Schubert), scherzo, narrative, prelude, waltz and etude. Even the concerto of the traditional three-movement suite was compressed into one movement (Liszt). Short and pithy lyric sketches abound in the works of various composers. Second, the prevalence of art songs. Almost every great composer has a considerable number of artistic songs, which not only reached the appeal (Beethoven, Mozart, Haydn all wrote artistic songs, but at that time this kind of music was considered as a small skill and was not played in concerts), but also affected the creation of symphonies, making the theme of symphonies longer, like an artistic song played with instrumental music. Third, symphonic poems with titles are popular. Performance in Berlioz, Liszt, R. Strauss and others created a large number of tracks, and French and Russian composers competed to imitate. Fourth, music emphasizes nationalization, resulting in nationalized music creation. This is related to the national movements and the establishment of national countries after the Napoleonic Wars and the Vienna Feudal Restoration Conference in the 19th century. National music schools have also emerged in the history of music. Connected with this, nationalized music is bound to be connected with folk songs and folk music. Fifth, the orchestra is expanding, the volume is expanding, and the tone configuration (color effect) is emphasized; Wagner's band reinforced the brass until Mahler's eighth symphony, known as "Symphony of a Thousand People".

Romantic music has many characteristics, but among these characteristics, the combination of music and literature is common. Romanticism seeks themes from literary works, and composers get inspiration from literary works, which is a common phenomenon.

Realism

According to Sigmund's definition, we regard the following music as realistic music, which expresses the typical reaction to the typical phenomena of our own time in a typical way. This kind of music really shows the experience of people of his time with its unique and novel artistic form. In this sense, Bach and Chopin's works are realistic music of their own time.

However, the realism in music, that is, the strong emotional response to contemporary important issues and the expression of feelings, does not necessarily emphasize the "truth of details". As we have seen in Richard strauss's symphony Alps and the ballet Don Quixote, a special "wind machine" is used to describe windmills and storms in the Alps, or a musical motive that imitates the barking of sheep is used to describe sheep. Descriptive musical motives and musical themes can only play their correct roles when they can be incorporated into the process of emotional expression and obey the rules of musical structure.

Today, this kind of purely descriptive music often appears in movies. Descriptive sound structure is widely used in this genre of music. In fact, film music must also give the overall idea of the film emotional rendering and foil, and can not be limited to the visual details provided by the film for sound description. Therefore, the title required by Marxist aesthetics must be understood in a deeper sense. What we are referring to here is the close combination of the composer's creative imagination and emotional life with the important themes of his own time, rather than the detailed description of specific phenomena in reality. The wrong and narrow understanding of zhdanov's requirements when it comes to this issue has caused many composers to vulgarize this issue in 1948. Zhdanov's request for headlines contains a series of questions, such as the idea, the connection with the most important social phenomenon and the correct emotional response to these contents, while small refers to the description of details, because this description of details will vulgarize music and lead to naturalistic description.

There are other artistic schools, such as classicism and surrealism, which are naturally less mainstream and less acceptable than romanticism and realism.