Sturm und Drang
A late 18th-century movement in German arts emphasizing emotional extremity, turbulence, and individual expression, reflected in music through minor keys and dramatic contrasts.
In Depth
Sturm und Drang (German for "Storm and Stress") was a literary and musical movement of the 1760s–1780s that rebelled against Enlightenment rationalism in favor of raw emotional expression. In music, it manifested primarily in works in minor keys featuring sudden dynamic contrasts, agitated rhythms, unexpected harmonic turns, and a generally turbulent character that broke with the prevailing galant style's emphasis on elegance and balance. Joseph Haydn's symphonies from around 1768–1772 — including the "Farewell" (No. 45), "La Passione" (No. 49), and "Trauer" (No. 44) — are the most celebrated musical examples. Mozart's Symphony No. 25 in G minor and his Piano Sonata K. 310 also embody the movement's emotional intensity. Sturm und Drang anticipated the full-blown Romantic movement by several decades and demonstrated that the Classical style's formal structures could contain far more emotional extremity than the galant surface suggested.
The movement takes its name from a 1776 play by Friedrich Maximilian Klinger — the play itself is largely forgotten, but its title became one of the most famous phrases in cultural history.