Romantic Era

[HaydnFan]

Hi Everyone,

How long does the Romantic Era span? I know about when it starts but when does it end? Is late 19th Century, Early 20th Century music (ex. Holst, Richard Strauss) still considered to be "Romantic" or is there another term for this era?

Thanks!

[Chaseing33rd]

I would think that Strauss, Mahler, and the like would still be Romantic, though certainly late.

Rachmaninoff? Neo-Romantic or Late Romantic?

[Peter]

Post-Romantic is the term generally used to describe these composers. But I always think the very last Romantic pieces to be written were Strauss's 4 last songs of 1948 - a real swan-song to an amazing era.

The Romantic period in music approximately covered 1830-1900 - at both ends it overlaps other styles.

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'Man know thyself'

[This message has been edited by Peter (edited 09-15-2006).]

[DavidO]

Originally posted by HaydnFan:
Hi Everyone,

How long does the Romantic Era span? I know about when it starts but when does it end? Is late 19th Century, Early 20th Century music (ex. Holst, Richard Strauss) still considered to be "Romantic" or is there another term for this era?

Thanks!

Everybody has a different (albeit sometimes only slightly) view. See Jacques Barzun's "Classic, Romantic, Modern" for examples as well as insights of the historian's own.

Also note the serious differences in categorization among the various arts (in literature, for example, the Romantic age is generally considered as having got under way by 1798, when Wordsworth published the Preface to Lyrical Ballads; & to have transmuted by the 1880s & '90s into various other "schools" such as Décadence, fin de siècle, Symbolism, the Aesthetic movement).

I consider the Strauss Four Last Songs, for example, a work of Romanticism or Post-Romanticism, & that was the late 1940s, whereas you can find major examples of musical modernism forty or even fifty years before that. That's the rub: As everyone should know, these ages don't start & stop at points. In fact, according to some postmodernist critics, Romanticism continues to this day in some music & literature, & was never fully "defeated" or stamped out by the Great War, modernism, postindustrialism, &c.

[Chaszz]

Also there was. or is, a recent movement during the last fifteen or twenty years called Neo-Romanticism, a return to the Romantic style in music. No composer of this movement seems to have made much of an impression. I remember hearing part of a symphony by a contemporary woman composer of this school (I don't recall her name), in the general style of Brahms, about five years ago, on the radio. It sounded inept and ineffective to me.



[This message has been edited by Chaszz (edited 09-17-2006).]

[Chaszz]

There are very few movements in any art that have lasted beyond their time and overlapped succeeding movements as lengthily and strongly as Romantic music. I think this is largely due to the career of Richard Strauss, who may have come at the end but in my view is one of the greatest of all composers.

Strauss' character was in marked contrast to the greatness of his music. As a conductor, his breath panted as he could not wait to take over the podium of the Jewish conductor Bruno Walter who was fired by the Nazis, and that of Toscanini who refused to conduct in Germany while it was Nazi. Also this genius and moral cipher said only, when he learned of the firebombing of Dresden which incinerated scores of thousands of his countrymen, that it was terrible that his scheduled operas would not be performed.


[This message has been edited by Chaszz (edited 09-17-2006).]

[Hofrat]

Originally posted by HaydnFan:
Hi Everyone,

How long does the Romantic Era span? I know about when it starts but when does it end? Is late 19th Century, Early 20th Century music (ex. Holst, Richard Strauss) still considered to be "Romantic" or is there another term for this era?

Thanks!

Dear HaydnFan;

Just when exactly does the Romantic Period start? That is as argumentive as the question when it ended!

Hofrat

[HaydnFan]

You are right, I should not have stated that I know when it started...that area is as murky as its end!

However, we might all agree that Beethoven's 9th is certainly a milestone and I would also put an argument in for Schubert's 8th and 9th, esp the former as "Romantic" in ideal, even if the structure still clings to Classicism. But my guess is obviously as good as anyone else's on this!

(And of course, even after these pieces, Classicism was still prevalent in Hummel and some of his contemporaries).

[Peter]

Originally posted by HaydnFan:
You are right, I should not have stated that I know when it started...that area is as murky as its end!

However, we might all agree that Beethoven's 9th is certainly a milestone and I would also put an argument in for Schubert's 8th and 9th, esp the former as "Romantic" in ideal, even if the structure still clings to Classicism. But my guess is obviously as good as anyone else's on this!

(And of course, even after these pieces, Classicism was still prevalent in Hummel and some of his contemporaries).

Beethoven's 9th is certainly a milestone and it is unique in Beethoven's symphonic output because of the choral finale -however it cannot be thought of as the first Romantic symphony - Berlioz's Symphonie Fantastique is a more fitting contender (written only a few years after the 9th). The 9ths impact on the first generation of Romantics was a negative one in that it was a daunting colossus best avoided. Just consider Brahms's comments when writing his first symphony some 50 years later.
The 9th had to wait for the later Romantics for its influence to be really felt. So in a way the early Romantics bypassed Beethoven and looked elsewhere - Italian opera, Weber, Hummel and Sphor.


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'Man know thyself'

[Hofrat]

A leading 18th century musicologist wrote to me several years ago:

"Beethoven was an 18th-century composer. Do not be fooled by all that Romantic nonsense. He was a brilliant manipulator of form and the universality of his vision was one of the great legacies of the late 18th century."


Hofrat

[Rod]

Originally posted by Hofrat:
A leading 18th century musicologist wrote to me several years ago:

"Beethoven was an 18th-century composer. Do not be fooled by all that Romantic nonsense. He was a brilliant manipulator of form and the universality of his vision was one of the great legacies of the late 18th century."

Hofrat

I've never though of Beethoven as a musical Romantic. His 'sentiment' (I emphasis this) is not typically classical either to my mind, but looking back even earlier (whatever the Beethoven period we are considering). Which I why I sometimes call him a Quasi-Baroque Classisist. Add a touch of the French spirit and there you have the whole package. Of course the Classical structures are developed to their most advanced form with Beethoven.


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"If I were but of noble birth..." - Rod Corkin


[This message has been edited by Rod (edited 09-18-2006).]

[Chaseing33rd]

Originally posted by Rod:
I've never though of Beethoven as a musical Romantic. His 'sentiment' (I emphasis this) is not typically classical either to my mind, but looking back even earlier (whatever the Beethoven period we are considering). Which I why I sometimes call him a Quasi-Baroque Classisist. Add a touch of the French spirit and there you have the whole package. Of course the Classical structures are developed to their most advanced form with Beethoven.

Interesting. I certainly can't hear the variations of Opus 111 as anything but Romanticism at its most profound.

[robert newman]

It seems great artists can have different periods of their life when different emphasis was placed by them on aspects of their art within the whole span or their creative output. I think a good analogy can be found with painters. Piccaso, for example. Art historians seem to agree his 'Blue Period' was roughly 1901-4, that his so-called 'Rose Period' was from approximately 1905 to 1908. That his 'Analytical Cubism' lasted from approximately 1909 to 1912. And that this was followed by his 'Synthetic Cubism' period which lasted from approximately 1912 to 1919.

Similarly, in Beethoven's music we can detect periods of his career when he placed emphasis on particular aspects of musical style and content. There is no precise time when these creative periods began or ended and it would miss the point to be dogmatic on such issues. We can only speak in general terms. But that Beethoven was greatly interested in romanticism is surely true. Just as he was interested in the baroque. Even in attempting to synthesise various styles and forms.

But they were all the same Beethoven.

Orchestration and scoring has a lot to do with it. But the essence that is Beethoven, or Bach, or any great composer (even in their early or later 'periods') can perhaps be distilled down to a very small number of things. A sort of 'musical DNA' that is recognisably Beethoven regardless of form or content. Whether we can identify this with precision is another issue. We love his music - perhaps that is enough for most of us.

[Rod]

Originally posted by Chaseing33rd:
Interesting. I certainly can't hear the variations of Opus 111 as anything but Romanticism at its most profound.

No way hosay. Romanticism is never profound, not one note of it have I heard.

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"If I were but of noble birth..." - Rod Corkin

[Peter]

Originally posted by Rod:
No way hosay. Romanticism is never profound, not one note of it have I heard.

That is far from the truth Rod and you have to accept your bias against the music is behind this! Just a little prelude such as Chopin's E minor is a good example.

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'Man know thyself'