The Romantic revival in serious music arose in the 1960s after decades of relatively conservative and traditional offerings by the world’s concert presenting organizations and record companies. After

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...

there was an over-emphasis on the canon of standard “great masterpieces”, co-existing with disdain for any music that was perceived as not profound in intent. The gray and uninteresting scope of music at the time was complemented by attempts to have contemporary

twelve-tone music The twelve-tone technique—also known as dodecaphony, twelve-tone serialism, and (in British usage) twelve-note composition—is a method of musical composition first devised by Austrian composer Josef Matthias Hauer, who published his "law o ...

accepted into the mainstream. Similarly, there was a widespread and profound change in the way music was taught, with the traditional conservatory bar-by-bar reading of the text (score) replacing the earlier centuries' interest in spontaneity, imagination and personality in performance. This revitalization of the musical scene was brought about by a number of musicians who had been trained in the old style, and a smaller number of musicologists and music company executives who were interested in viable compositions that had been excluded from the canon, as well as more flexible and expressive ways of performing. The subject was one of the favorites of Harold C. Schonberg, then music critic of the ''

New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid d ...

''. Schonberg credited

Frank Cooper Frank Cooper may refer to: * Frank B. Cooper (1855–1930), American education administrator, superintendent of Seattle Public Schools, 1901–1922 * Frank Arthur Cooper (1872–1949), premier of Queensland, 1942–1946 * Frank Cooper (judge) (186 ...

and his

Festival of Neglected Romantic Music The Festival of Neglected Romantic Music was founded by musicologist Frank Cooper at Butler University in Indianapolis, Indiana in 1968. History Cooper directed the Festival for the next eleven years, during which time many seminal works of the ...

with jump starting the revival. In the 1970s, through reviews in ''Records & Recording'', Ates Orga championed the movement in Britain, leading later to his 1994 Virtuoso Romantics series with

Marc-André Hamelin Marc-André Hamelin, OC, CQ (born September 5, 1961), is a Canadian virtuoso pianist and composer. Hamelin is recognized worldwide for the originality and technical proficiency of his performances of the classic repertoire. He has received 11 Gr ...

at the Wigmore Hall. Now in the beginning of the 21st century, because of those efforts, the repertoires of orchestras, string quartets, opera houses, ballet troupes and solo instrumentalists are far more likely to contain a wide variety of music from all periods, including 19th century works by composers other than

Beethoven Ludwig van Beethoven (baptised 17 December 177026 March 1827) was a German composer and pianist. Beethoven remains one of the most admired composers in the history of Western music; his works rank amongst the most performed of the classical ...

, Schubert and Brahms, that had been previously excluded before the revival. This late 20th century movement is to be distinguished from the late 18th century movement known as

Romanticism Romanticism (also known as the Romantic movement or Romantic era) was an artistic, literary, musical, and intellectual movement that originated in Europe towards the end of the 18th century, and in most areas was at its peak in the approximate ...

References

Romantic Revival
''Time'' magazine, May 30, 1969.
Ates Orga 'The Historical Piano', ''Records & Recording'', March 1977; ''Records & Recording Classical Guide 78'' 20th-century classical music ....... .... .............