The Topical Vocabulary of the Nineteenth Century

Abstract

Since Leonard Ratner's initial introduction of topoi in Classic Music: Expression, Form, and Style, topical analysis has slowly gained acceptance, due largely to the writings of such noted authors as Kofi Agawu, Wye Jamison Allanbrook, Jonathan Bellman, and Raymond Monelle. Ratner provided a succinct lexicon of common eighteenth-century topoi, and while various authors have added nineteenth-century topics to his list, to this point none have offered a specific lexicon of Romantic topics. Similar to their eighteenth-century cousins, Romantic topics feature simple dance types and styles, but expand to incorporate more complex musical dialects such as the Chivalric and Demonic styles—all illustrative of Romantic ideology.