Romantic Era

[Peter]

Originally posted by HaydnFan:
Rod, I actually do not believe Schubert is Beethoven's heir...in terms of equality, there are clearly genres in which Schubert excels compared to Beethoven and admittedly, many more in which he does not...

...for example, in symphony. Your description of Schubert's symphonies up to the 8th and 9th are not wholly incorrect - you can very much hear the influences of other composers, esp. Haydn in my opinion. Beethoven is clearly the master of the symphony. However, Schubert's songs are probably better than those of any other composer.

Also, in my opinion, some of Schubert's string music like the Trout Quintet and String Quintet in C are better than those of other composers. I do not typically enjoy this genre, only those works of Schubert. (that is just me).

But to say that his work is "by lottery draw" and "bits and pieces of average ideas..." does not fairly describe his larger output. If you are talking about his early symphonies, this description is not completely disagreeable (however, Symphony No. 5 is quite charming).

I of course agree with every word Haydnfan!

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'Man know thyself'

[Sorrano]

Originally posted by Rod:
I have an open mind to everything, that's how I got into Handel when initially I had reservations.

It is true I look for the faults, but at this level - the suggestion that this composer is Beethoven's heir and equal - that is the first thing you should do. It is those who believe that about Schubert who have to justify it, not me my position.

The problem, Rod, is that you are not open minded about any of the music. You have a preset benchmark of Handel and Beethoven and that simply does not allow you to enjoy any music on its own merit. Even within the Handel and Beethoven spheres you benchmark the performances and anything less than what you consider to be archetypal is not valid to you. You cannot be open minded when you obsess so much about the bench marks.

[Rod]

To be honest I just want for myself what is right and what is best, you don't have to pay any attention to what I say. If it makes me crazy that I agree with his metronome marks or that the pianos he used are the best for the job so be it. But I ask you why do you think I focus on the music I do? Do you think I have any vested interest in Beethoven, Handel or the authentic movement in general? Do you think I have shares in Beethoven Inc.?


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

[This message has been edited by Rod (edited 09-20-2006).]

[DavidO]

Originally posted by Rod:
If you disagree you are probably in the wrong place. Be true to yourself and mix with the kind you feel comfortable with. When in Rome...

A clever pun to mention Rome, since the very term 'Romantic' (as applied to 'the Romantic movement') comes from the 18th-century literary school of writers like Tieck & Novalis who looked back to the Romanesque period of the Middle Ages.

As for Beethoven, I couldn't classify him as a Romantic composer (for all the excellent reasons elucidated in this thread) but he shares certain conceptual characteristics with the squarely Romantic composers. Of course, what is that really saying? Probably very little, since you could pick virtually any two composers at random from any period & find shared traits.

I like what Solomon has to say on pp. 294-295 in his B. biography:

"It was Beethoven's good fortune that he witnessed the emergence & the perfecting of several fundamental styles that arose during his lifetime in the musical centers of Europe. Instinctively he grasped the implications for his own work in each of these competing styles, which ran the gamut from early classicism to a nineteenth-century modernism that can be called late-classicism or post-classicism or even a sui generis romanticism. Unwilling to stand still, refusing to repeat himself, the result was a rapid acceleration of his stylistic evolution, even though this necessitated the constant reformulation of his musical ideas & vocabulary."

"In 1815 Beethoven faced a situation new in quality. Although there were many new musical trends developing, he was reluctant to explore them. He did not choose to work in the mixture of classicizing & Romantic styles of the new generation in Vienna; he is said to have disparaged the new Italian style exemplified by the meteorically popular Rossini as suitable only to 'the frivolous & sensuous spirit of the times.' He was then--& remained--unwilling to set supernatural & 'gothic' literary texts, which, in the operas of Louis Spohr, Conradin Kreutzer, Heinrich Marschner, & Carl Maria von Weber, were opening the door to one of the most fruitful tendencies of German Romantic music. ... He continued to be attracted to stage projects dealing with the mythical & the magical, the sombre & the supernatural, but he set aside each of these, perhaps because he was too much a child of the Age of Reason to enter wholeheartedly this realm of romanticism. (He remarked to the poet Heinrich von Collin that such subjects have 'a soporific effect on feeling & reason.')"

"Above all, although in his last style Beethoven was to become a master of the evanescent mood, he resisted the impending Romantic fragmentation of the architecturally concentrated & controlled cyclic forms of the Classical era into small forms & lyric mood pieces. ... For the most part, his late music, to an extent never previously seen in the history of music, would be created out of the composer's imagination & intellect rather than through a combination & amplification of existent musical trends. In Beethoven's late style an apparently unprecedented style comes into being, one whose tendencies & formative materials are not readily identifiable in the music of his contemporaries or immediate predecessors."

[Sorrano]

Originally posted by Rod:
To be honest I just want for myself what is right and what is best, you don't have to pay any attention to what I say. If it makes me crazy that I agree with his metronome marks or that the pianos he used are the best for the job so be it. But I ask you why do you think I focus on the music I do? Do you think I have any vested interest in Beethoven, Handel or the authentic movement in general? Do you think I have shares in Beethoven Inc.?

Rod, there is nothing wrong in the world with what you do like. I had no intention of being critical with what you like at all and within that context I value your opinions very much. It is being outspoken with what you dislike that I and others find bothersome. Sometimes I make jokes about period instruments; if you find that offensive I apologize. But I do respect your opinions regarding period instruments and regarding the two composers you champion, as well. But to tell me that music I like is trash is a bit heavy and abrasive.



[This message has been edited by Sorrano (edited 09-21-2006).]

[Chaszz]

Originally posted by Frankli:
In my view it was not just Beethoven which caused the problem. It was also the very nature of the romantic style, which made an end to creativity concerning sonata form etc.,and which was a dead end. Schoenberg didn't come out of the blue!...

A dead end? Classicism lasted 75-80 years if we date it from about 1750 to Beethoven's death. Romanticism lasted about 130 years if we date it from about 1820 to the late 1940s when Strauss was still composing. Almost twice as long, and Rod notwithstanding a veritable cornucopia of great music. The classical period is usually summed up in three great composers: Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven, with a number of lesser figures who hardly make much of an impression and barely have any works in the contemporary repertory. I would include Gluck among the real greats, but that is still only four. Without listing them, there are probably twenty Romantic composers of real penetrating greatness who are still played often and regularly. All this is hardly a dead end, but one of the outstanding achievements of all human civilization.

Schoenberg is not Romanticism's fault; the widening and ultimate dissolution of harmony would have happened anyway, whatever style was in place, simply because it was there to be done, and the modern arts in general were bound and determined to explore every technical avenue. Would you blame Cage and Stockhausen on Romanticism also? You could just as well blame them on those weird and shocking six chords in the first movement of the Eroica.

I agree with Robert that Peter places too exclusive an emphasis on technical issues when defining Romanticism. In my opinion the overriding criteria are the psychological and political aspects which musical Romanticism shares with poetry and visual art: rebellion, individualism, a certain amount of shock directed at the bourgousie, a determination to spread political democracy, intense idealism, extreme emotion. This collection of ideas is a lot more than mere sentimentality, and is not present in the sturm-and-drang music of Mozart and Haydn. All these aspects are there markedly in Beethoven and account for his strong influence on the middle and later Romantics, whatever turning away there may have been from his concept of harmony in the early Romantics.

There is a good analogue in the painter Ingres. He fervently upheld the banner of classicism, and his style is technically classical, and he began as part of the Neoclassical movement of the late 18th and early 19th century. But his best mature pictures are animated by a barely suppressed romanticism that gives them their real strength and places him in the Romantic movement in art, whatever his technical approach.



[This message has been edited by Chaszz (edited 09-21-2006).]

[robert newman]

I completely agree with this. It's new found individualism which was and still is the context and real reason for what we can call Romanticism (or at least the better part of it) this expressed in a tremendous number of works that are great by any fair reckoning. Beethoven was among them in many of his great works as a pioneer though of course not nearly so much in others.

[robert newman]

Dear Peter,

I missed a really good earlier post on this thread by you where you wrote -

'Without resorting to technical matters such as tonality how else are we to define a style? It is not enough to use solely the terms you mention because elements of this to some degree can be found also in music of the 18th century. There is no strict crossover period granted, and the stylistic definitions themselves are really inadequate to describe the music of either the 18th or 19th centuries. The most accurate way we have of determining what the differences are, is through the approach to tonality. To dismiss that is to lump the whole of western music under the same umbrella - Romantic'

Well, first of all, Romanticism (despite you arguing that it must necessarily be technically defined) is in a musical sense an expression of emotional individualism. Since individualism can be abused so can Romanticism. So can any style. What is more sublime in western art and culture than individualism ? But what's more ridiculous in art/music than individualism for it's own sake ? There is, in the hands of gifted composers, a self-regulating aspect to Romantic music, without which it's neither creative nor even music.

I agree there's no sharply defined time when one style ends and the other begins. Even music of the so-called 'Sturm und Drang' movement can in my opinion be viewed as a failed prototype to Romanticism (i.e. hardly as musical as Romanticism because it was not (despite the claims of its supporters) the product of individualism. It was pseudo-romanticism. So in my view the Baroque has a natural transition to the Romantic. It can be no coincidence these two styles are such striking features of Beethoven's work.

[Frankli]

Originally posted by Chaszz:
A dead end? Classicism lasted 75-80 years if we date it from about 1750 to Beethoven's death. Romanticism lasted about 130 years if we date it from about 1820 to the late 1940s when Strauss was still composing. Almost twice as long, and Rod notwithstanding a veritable cornucopia of great music. The classical period is usually summed up in three great composers: Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven, with a number of lesser figures who hardly make much of an impression and barely have any works in the contemporary repertory. I would include Gluck among the real greats, but that is still only four. Without listing them, there are probably twenty Romantic composers of real penetrating greatness who are still played often and regularly. All this is hardly a dead end, but one of the outstanding achievements of all human civilization.

What I meant is that sonata form as used by the romantic movement was a dead end.
For composers who lived between 1770 and 1820 the use of sonata form was like breathing. They knew how to handle it instictively. They explored its possibilities and they developed it.
The end of a style is always characterized by the appearance of books in which this style is described.
Same with the classical style. I don't know exactly when the treatises started to appear; Rosen somewhere sums then up in his famous book. But it's from these books that composers like Brahms, Dvorak, etc. learned how to use sonata form. Brahms only knew 3 or 4 different ways of using it, and he didn't need more. Sonata form had become a kind of trick, a vehicle, a skeleton, but it wasn't being developed further - impossible anyhow, since it was fully explored by the generation before, with Beethoven as the supreme master of it.
All that romantic composers did with sonata form was weakening the tonal structure, stretching it, especially the development section, which took away the drama inherent to the form.
So yes, a dead end.

[Peter]

Originally posted by Chaszz:
A dead end? Classicism lasted 75-80 years if we date it from about 1750 to Beethoven's death. Romanticism lasted about 130 years if we date it from about 1820 to the late 1940s when Strauss was still composing. Almost twice as long, and Rod notwithstanding a veritable cornucopia of great music. The classical period is usually summed up in three great composers: Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven, with a number of lesser figures who hardly make much of an impression and barely have any works in the contemporary repertory. I would include Gluck among the real greats, but that is still only four. Without listing them, there are probably twenty Romantic composers of real penetrating greatness who are still played often and regularly. All this is hardly a dead end, but one of the outstanding achievements of all human civilization.

Schoenberg is not Romanticism's fault; the widening and ultimate dissolution of harmony would have happened anyway, whatever style was in place, simply because it was there to be done, and the modern arts in general were bound and determined to explore every technical avenue. Would you blame Cage and Stockhausen on Romanticism also? You could just as well blame them on those weird and shocking six chords in the first movement of the Eroica.

I agree with Robert that Peter places too exclusive an emphasis on technical issues when defining Romanticism. In my opinion the overriding criteria are the psychological and political aspects which musical Romanticism shares with poetry and visual art: rebellion, individualism, a certain amount of shock directed at the bourgousie, a determination to spread political democracy, intense idealism, extreme emotion. This collection of ideas is a lot more than mere sentimentality, and is not present in the sturm-and-drang music of Mozart and Haydn. All these aspects are there markedly in Beethoven and account for his strong influence on the middle and later Romantics, whatever turning away there may have been from his concept of harmony in the early Romantics.

There is a good analogue in the painter Ingres. He fervently upheld the banner of classicism, and his style is technically classical, and he began as part of the Neoclassical movement of the late 18th and early 19th century. But his best mature pictures are animated by a barely suppressed romanticism that gives them their real strength and places him in the Romantic movement in art, whatever his technical approach.

[This message has been edited by Chaszz (edited 09-21-2006).]

Well you contradict yourself Chaszz if on the one hand you claim a date of 1820 for Romanticism and then claim Beethoven as a Romantic. I actually generally agree with your dating as being the best we have to define the stylistic changes that occurred. As for making a political statement, what about Figaro - What could be more so? What about Haydn's 'Farewell' symphony - was he not making a protest? By storming out on Archbishop Colloredo, was Mozart not expressing individuality and rebellion? Is there no emotion in the music of Bach and Handel? By your criteria we would have to include these composers as Romantic and do away with the terms Classical and Baroque altogether.

The point I'm making is that all the elements you describe can be found to some extent in music earlier than 1820 which is why something more is needed to identify the real changes in style that did take place at that time. It seems to me that some here do not like it when musical definitions are used as the basis for analysis, but unfortuntately since we are talking about music you can't ignore these issues - there is a difference in the handling of tonality by Romantic composers from Classical composers and it is this which defines the music of the 19th century. It is this that distinguishes Beethoven from Schumann and Chopin but links him to Mozart and Haydn. To the Classical composer, form is master and tonality its servant - to the Romantic the lyrical and emotional content are the driving factor.

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'Man know thyself'



[This message has been edited by Peter (edited 09-21-2006).]

[Rod]

German Romanticism begins with Weber.

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

[Chaszz]

Originally posted by Peter:
Well you contradict yourself Chaszz if on the one hand you claim a date of 1820 for Romanticism and then claim Beethoven as a Romantic. I actually generally agree with your dating as being the best we have to define the stylistic changes that occurred. As for making a political statement, what about Figaro - What could be more so? What about Haydn's 'Farewell' symphony - was he not making a protest? By storming out on Archbishop Colloredo, was Mozart not expressing individuality and rebellion? Is there no emotion in the music of Bach and Handel? By your criteria we would have to include these composers as Romantic and do away with the terms Classical and Baroque altogether.

The point I'm making is that all the elements you describe can be found to some extent in music earlier than 1820 which is why something more is needed to identify the real changes in style that did take place at that time. It seems to me that some here do not like it when musical definitions are used as the basis for analysis, but unfortuntately since we are talking about music you can't ignore these issues - there is a difference in the handling of tonality by Romantic composers from Classical composers and it is this which defines the music of the 19th century. It is this that distinguishes Beethoven from Schumann and Chopin but links him to Mozart and Haydn. To the Classical composer, form is master and tonality its servant - to the Romantic the lyrical and emotional content are the driving factor.

I used the date 1820 as an implicit concession to the Beethoven-pure-classicists to show that even with conservative dating, the Romantic movement is still almost twice as long as the Classical. I should have stated this as a concession-dating for the sake of avoiding a specific dating argument. I would actually date it from Beethoven's Third Symphony, which puts it very close to the dates of the English poetry that really inaugurated the movement proper.

The collection of related ideas I cited - rebellion, individualism, a certain amount of shock directed at the bourgousie, a determination to spread political democracy, intense idealism, extreme emotion - do not ALL appear in Haydn and Mozart, but do in Beethoven and the Romantics. They are hardly present in Baroque music at all. By extreme emotion I mean an emphasis on emotion at the expense of form - which in Beethoven occurs in the unwieldy STRETCHING of form so that it is sometimes like a pulled rubber band, and occurs as early as the Eroica. Let's remember that one of the primary attributes of classicism, whther in Greek temples, Renaissance madonnas or Mozart and Haydn is serene balance and harmony of proportions - hardly a feature of Beethoven in many of his imortant works, which just restrain themselves from bursting the bounds of the forms.

In my opinion it is a mistake to define musical movements in isolation from the other arts, especially in the case of Romanticism and literature, which was very important as an influence on Beethoven and the composers who followed him in the 19th century. This affinity produced the song cycle, which Beethoven virtually invented and which was a leading feature of Romantic music.

Also to call the looser use of sonata form and its eventual abandonment a dead end is again defining an art form too technically, ignoring the positive values that Romantic music brought forth to focus instead on an outmoded feature that it used for a time and eventually left by the wayside. Early movies into the 1930s often opened as books - title pages, sometimes credits pages which turned like the pages of a book, etc. This doesn't mean they betrayed the novel by not actually being books. New forms often use older structures as a shell until they get their own bearings.

We've been over this issue several times before and I may not trouble to answer the rejoinders which are sure to appear shortly. Perhaps we can just agree to disagree for the time being anyway.



[This message has been edited by Chaszz (edited 09-21-2006).]

[Peter]

Originally posted by Chaszz:

By extreme emotion I mean an emphasis on emotion at the expense of form - which in Beethoven occurs in the unwieldy STRETCHING of form so that it is sometimes like a pulled rubber band, and occurs as early as the Eroica. Let's remember that one of the primary attributes of classicism, whther in Greek temples, Renaissance madonnas or Mozart and Haydn is serene balance and harmony of proportions - hardly a feature of Beethoven in many of his imortant works, which just restrain themselves from bursting the bounds of the forms.


[This message has been edited by Chaszz (edited 09-21-2006).]

You are wrong here I'm afraid Chaszz - to expand the form as Beethoven certainly does is not to undermine it. Beethoven is recognised as the greatest master of form, the greatest musical architect and here you are saying his music is unbalanced! In the Eroica for example, the Coda perfectly balances the development. In performance Beethoven's repeat of the Exposition should be observed to maintain the correct proportions - it rarely is.

I suggest you read the books on this by the eminent pianist and musicologist Charles Rosen - you'll find he explains it a good deal better than I am able to. It's just that he's written two of the most highly regarded and authorative books on the subject. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Rosen


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'Man know thyself'



[This message has been edited by Peter (edited 09-21-2006).]

[Rod]

Originally posted by Peter:
You are wrong here I'm afraid Chaszz - to expand the form as Beethoven certainly does is not to undermine it or the balance. Beethoven is recognised as the greatest master of form and here you are saying his music is unbalanced! - in the Eroica for example, the Coda perfectly balances the development.

This emotion at the expense of form is precisely what I mean in regard to the Romantics but you DO NOT find it in Beethoven!

I suggest you read the books on this by Charles Rosen - you'll find he explains it a good deal better than I am able to. He demonstrate incredible insight into what is admittedly a complex issue.

"You are wrong here I'm afraid Chaszz..."
Ah good, you've been reading my book on humility again.

But in this case you are right...

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

[Hofrat]

Originally posted by HaydnFan:

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?

Dear HaydnFan;

I just noticed on eBay a CD called "The Romantic Cello" featuring works by Beethoven, Brahms, and Debussy. I guess that in the eyes of the recording industry, the Romantic Era starts with Beethoven and ends with Debussy!


Hofrat