Originally posted by Amalie:
In my view, romanticism it is a bit like the difference in literature between the age of Dr.Johnson and the age of Wordsworth.
Wordsworth was writing the lyrical ballads only a few years after the great Dr. Johnson's death, but what a change!
Dr. Johnson is the epitomy of 18th century classicism, profoundly learned and trenchent and with emotion firmly subordinated to style and delivery.
Wordsworth had no less a grasp of blank verse than Dr. Johnson, but we are suddenly in a new world with the lyrical ballads, a world of lonliness, exile, tagedy, suffering and death, we cannot say that one writer is greater than the other, but we can say that a door was opened by Wordsworth into an immesurably vaster universe of human emotion and feeling than professionally at least was acknowledged by Dr. Johnson.
Wordsworth spoke to the marginalised people in his native lake district that he met on the roads, discharged prisoners, disabled veterans from the wars, lunatics, wronged women and the destitute. He shows up to us close and personal these desparate people who are of course only images of ourselves. He does not show us the typical classical concerns of English poetry hitherto, with Gods and hero's and nymphs disporting themselves. I greatly admire and enjoy classical English poetry and prose, but it has to be said that Wordsworth's world was an immensely more profound and moving experience and we are all in a sense still the heirs of that today, for good or ill. There is of course parallels between the worlds of Haydn and Beethoven, which are similarly contiguous but profoundly different.
A point I would make of course is that Beethoven was the first composer really to go out into the open air and celebrate the natural world like Wordsworth did.
The trouble with Haydn and Dr. Johnson was that though they both had a profound understanding of life professionally their work is strictly indoor or of the chamber and one often feels that it is a bit too cloistered and lack fresh air.
So we could say classicism equals indoors, and romanticism equals outdoors, Take for instance 'Folk Music' which is the archetypal outdoor music spurned by classical composers on the whole, but incorporated by Beethoven in his symphonic works and elsewhere.
[This message has been edited by Amalie (edited February 07, 2004).]
In my view, romanticism it is a bit like the difference in literature between the age of Dr.Johnson and the age of Wordsworth.
Wordsworth was writing the lyrical ballads only a few years after the great Dr. Johnson's death, but what a change!
Dr. Johnson is the epitomy of 18th century classicism, profoundly learned and trenchent and with emotion firmly subordinated to style and delivery.
Wordsworth had no less a grasp of blank verse than Dr. Johnson, but we are suddenly in a new world with the lyrical ballads, a world of lonliness, exile, tagedy, suffering and death, we cannot say that one writer is greater than the other, but we can say that a door was opened by Wordsworth into an immesurably vaster universe of human emotion and feeling than professionally at least was acknowledged by Dr. Johnson.
Wordsworth spoke to the marginalised people in his native lake district that he met on the roads, discharged prisoners, disabled veterans from the wars, lunatics, wronged women and the destitute. He shows up to us close and personal these desparate people who are of course only images of ourselves. He does not show us the typical classical concerns of English poetry hitherto, with Gods and hero's and nymphs disporting themselves. I greatly admire and enjoy classical English poetry and prose, but it has to be said that Wordsworth's world was an immensely more profound and moving experience and we are all in a sense still the heirs of that today, for good or ill. There is of course parallels between the worlds of Haydn and Beethoven, which are similarly contiguous but profoundly different.
A point I would make of course is that Beethoven was the first composer really to go out into the open air and celebrate the natural world like Wordsworth did.
The trouble with Haydn and Dr. Johnson was that though they both had a profound understanding of life professionally their work is strictly indoor or of the chamber and one often feels that it is a bit too cloistered and lack fresh air.
So we could say classicism equals indoors, and romanticism equals outdoors, Take for instance 'Folk Music' which is the archetypal outdoor music spurned by classical composers on the whole, but incorporated by Beethoven in his symphonic works and elsewhere.
[This message has been edited by Amalie (edited February 07, 2004).]
"classical indoors- romanticism outdoors"
I like this, but it is not true in all cases. I have always felt that asthetically, music and painting seem to co-habitat the best. The baroque painters to the music of the day, classical, romantic, impressionist, expressionist... etc,etc.
But, literature can be its own animal at times. Before Wordsworth, writers like Milton and Keats sung the songs of nature beautifully and very romantically. Even Cicero's "Nature of the God's" (book 2) has a romantic feel and inflection. Goethe's writing seems to fit the music of Beethovens best in my humble opinion.
The first true moment of Romanticism (in my view) was ushered in at the first performance of the 'Eroica' symphony. Nothing was or felt like that piece at any point in art history. It seems to have come from another world really.
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v russo
[This message has been edited by v russo (edited February 08, 2004).]
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