Grieg's famous In the Hall of the Mountain King is an obvious ancestor of modern soundtracks, given that it was composed to accompany a play.įaure's Pavane is a beautiful and well-known late Romantic piece with similar orchestration (including a chorus), although it's less dark and epic. It also sometimes brings in more modern elements such as modern percussion, styles from global musical traditions, or rock-inspired progressions.ĭvorak's New World Symphony is considered a classic of the late Romantic style. The big difference in contemporary soundtrack music is that it often uses a mashup of the instrumental and choral styles, and uses a wide palette of elements that might have originally been favored by different composers or in separate longer works. Romantic music was often programmatic (based around a narrative theme) so it's a natural for soundtracks, and it was one of the most lush, melodic and emotionally passionate periods in classical music. The use of a wider range of dynamics, for example from ppp to fff, supported by large orchestration

The classical period often used short, even fragmentary, thematic material while the Romantic period tended to make greater use of longer, more fully defined and more satisfying themes Programme music became somewhat more common Ī greater emphasis on melody to sustain musical interest.

The use of new or previously not so common musical structures like the song cycle, nocturne, concert etude, arabesque and rhapsody, alongside the traditional classical genres. It is based on European classical music of the mid to late Romantic period. This is a common musical style for soundtracks.

Company of heroes 2 soundtrack location