The Fantastic Between Social Reality and Musical Progress

The criticism of musical Romanticism in general is, as already shown above, specifically expressed in the criticism of the fantastic in musical Romanticism. This becomes acute again around 1848 and is concretized with significant objections to the work of Robert Schumann. While previously, with reference to imitation aesthetic premises, the fantastic in art was criticized for its lack of connection to reality in the form of nature and the world of reception of the individual, now the lack of reality of the fantastic is formulated with regard to the reality of the current social upheaval, the “questions of the time”, the “demands of the present”.