Romance

Disappointingly enough the word romance, in the history of music, has often held a more prosaic meaning than its modern connotations imply. By the eighteenth century, however, earlier poetic meanings had largely given way to the descriptive use of the term to denote a lyrical slow movement. Romance most aptly describes the slow movement of Mozart's Eine kleine Nachtmusik (A Little Night-Music), modestly titled and written in 1787. Equally apt is the use of the word to describe the two slow movements for solo violin and orchestra written by Beethoven in the following decade, intended, it has been suggested, for an early violin concerto that was never completed. The Romance in F major, the second of the pair, is marginally better known than the first. Mozart used the term earlier to head the slow movement of his fine Piano Concerto in D minor, K. 466, one of the only two concertos he wrote in a minor key, composed during the optimist