Editing Opera in German (section)

===Early Romanticism===
In the early years of the nineteenth century, the vast cultural movement known as [[Romanticism]] began to exert an influence over German composers. The Romantics showed a keen interest in the [[Middle Ages]] as well as German folklore. The fairy tale collections of the [[Brothers Grimm]] and the rediscovered Medieval German epic the ''[[Nibelungenlied]]'' were major sources of inspiration for the movement. There was also often a quest for a distinctively German identity, influenced by the new [[nationalism]] which had arisen in the wake of the [[Napoleon]]ic invasions. Romanticism was already firmly established in German literature with writers such as [[Ludwig Tieck|Tieck]], [[Novalis]], [[Joseph Freiherr von Eichendorff|Eichendorff]] and [[Clemens Brentano]]. One of the most famous German Romantic authors, [[E. T. A. Hoffmann]], was also a music theorist and a composer in his own right and in 1816 he produced an opera, ''Undine'', in Berlin. Another important early Romantic opera was ''[[Faust (Spohr)|Faust]]'' by [[Louis Spohr]] (also 1816). Both Hoffmann and Spohr took the basic form of the ''Singspiel'' as their starting point but began to group the individual numbers into extended scenes. They also employed "reminiscence motifs", recurring musical themes associated with characters or concepts in the opera, which would pave the way for [[Richard Wagner|Wagner's]] use of the [[leitmotif]].{{sfn|Parker|1994|pp=207–209}}{{sfn|Grout|2003|loc="Romantic Opera in Germany", pp. 417–436}}