The classic romantic beethoven

[Marta]

Originally posted by John Rasmussen:
We all have such passionate view about Beethoven, and about classic and romantic, that I really ever doubt we'll come to agreement about whether Beethoven was one or the other. And we see so many different aspects of his greatness. For some, it's the mastery or the expansion of musical form. For others it's his intensity and power. And many can point to no single quality but merely count him the greatest.

We talk about multiculturalism; well, here it speaks!

Hi John.

Well said....this is the greatness of mankind and individuality.
It really doesn't matter to me if Beethoven's music is or is not Romantic, what matters is what I feel when I listen this glorious music, and how has fulfilled my entire life.
As Poulanc said.......'please, don't analize my music, just enjoy it'......and yes I agree with you, for me Beethoven is the greatest.

Marta

[lysander]

Originally posted by orpheus:
I am sorry, I don't really understand all of what you are saying here, but I think what you are getting at is that Romanticism is somehow something, sublime and indefinable. Perhaps I misunderstand, but if not I must say I disagree. Romaticism is completely definable, as it is only a word and nothing more or less than that. It's just that there are no right or wrong definitions, only those that seem to reflect a commonality of agreement between the likes of us. What is perhaps interesting, however, is to consider what "Romanticism" meant - as an ideal, aesthetic etc. - for those composers to which we are referring. From this perspective it genuinly has meaning beyond a mere word and sheds light on the music itself as we come to get at the ideas behind it, ot inspiring it. Otherwise, as I siad earlier in this thread, we end up going in semantic circles.

Is this Blair's dumned down Britian, words don't mean anything, because everything is complicated and threatening, lets keep everything simple and non-judgemental.
The importance of romanticism is that it is the largest recent movement to transform the lives and thoughts of the Western world.
It is the greatest single shift in the consciousness of the West that has ocurred, and all the other shifts that has ocurred in the course of the 19th and 20th century , are influenced by it.

With romanticism, it is not a question of semantics, and with greatest respect, that is a very superficial view. This is an incredibly important movement which has largely defined the modern world and continuess to shape our lives and cultural influences, and it can hardly therefore be dismissed as a matter of non importance.
That is like saying because we still don't understand fully the factors that led to the fall of the Roman Empire, therefore the fall itself has no real meaning and had no lasting effect, which is of course nonesense. In music, however difficult it may be to define romanticism we must make the effort, because music is the purest expression of the human spirit with religion and was a vehichle and gene of romaticism.
Look at it this way, we would all probably agree that Haydn or Bach are classical figures and Schubert and Lizst are romantics, it might be difficult to define to the sea change in music from one to the other, but it is nonesense on stilts to say there has been no change at all.
In fact romanticisms truimph was pretty much complete by the time of say Berlioz, and I cant think of any composers after that time who were writing in a classical spirit because that world was dead and gone and had been exploded by the French Revolution which utterly destroyed the classical world of the ancien regime in the European cultural powerhouse of France.

The history not only of thought, but of consciousness, opinion, action too, of morals, politics, aesthetics, is to a large degree a history of dominant models.
Whenever you look at any particular civilisation, you will find that its most characteristic writings and other cultural products reflect a particular pattern of life which those who are responsible for these writings - or paint these paintings, or produce these particular pieces of music - are dominated by.



[This message has been edited by lysander (edited May 14, 2003).]

[Peter]

Originally posted by lysander:

The importance of romanticism is that it is the largest recent movement to transform the lives and thoughts of the Western world.
It is the greatest single shift in the consciousness of the West that has ocurred, and all the other shifts that has ocurred in the course of the 19th and 20th century , are influenced by it.

I should say the Renaissance was the greatest 'recent' shift! However I do agree that Romanticism was a very important arts movement that had its roots in the 18th century Enlightenment and continued to exert an influence well into the 20th century - it occurs to me that the argument whether Beethoven was classic or Romantic is similar to was Turner an early Impressionist? You look at a work such as the 'Scarlet sunrise' and you can see into the future, but Turner's aims were very different to the Impressionists - he did not share their interest in complimentary colours, but was concerned with contrasts of warm and cool, dark and light. This for me sums up the Beethoven situation on this matter.



Look at it this way, we would all probably agree that Haydn or Bach are classical figures and Schubert and Lizst are romantics, it might be difficult to define to the sea change in music from one to the other, but it is nonesense on stilts to say there has been no change at all.


Bach was Baroque,Schubert really classical but was developing along romantic lines. I agree defining the moment of change from one era to another precisely is not easy (even within Beethoven's own 3 periods) and I think we all accept that there has been change!

romanticisms truimph was pretty much complete by the time of say Berlioz, and I cant think of any composers after that time who were writing in a classical spirit because that world was dead and gone and had been exploded by the French Revolution which utterly destroyed the classical world of the ancien regime in the European cultural powerhouse of France.


Well Brahms was accused of doing just that, wrongly in my view as I think his music can be quite forward looking in many ways although he retained the classical forms.

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'Man know thyself'



[This message has been edited by Peter (edited May 15, 2003).]

[Gurn Blanston]

Well, I am not going to go off on some long diatribe for or against, but I think that there is an essential point that seems to be being missed by what I have read so far. There is a basic difference between classical and romantic that can't be simply glossed over; classical is about form, romantic is about content. The prevailing aspect of classical composition is that if you take a theme and work it through the various stages of the form using some creative imagination, you will undoubtedly end up with a very nice composition. This is not true about the romantic composition; even the sonatas are hard to tell to be sonatas, and name a good, identifiable romantic rondo allegro! This is because form no longer matters. So the shift that occurred in style is not so much an evolution, but rather a different paradigm in which older forms were discarded altogether and new content ideas were able to have free rein without the constraints of having to be fit into a rather rigid formal structure. Of course there are many exceptions, such as Brahms who continued to use formal structure, but even Brahms' ability to use it was seriously impaired by the fact that he was not grounded in formal tradition like B was. Where B could state an expository idea and tell you where the development was going all in 4 bars, Brahms took 48, but at least he tried! That's my opinion, I may be wrong.
Regards, Gurn

[Chaszz]

This is the third intensive go-round for this topic in the time that I've been here, so I think that in some way it's a continually meaningful and fresh one.
Somewhere on the web this week I read a commentary on the 19th century which held that classicism and Romanticism, though opposed polarities in the arts, actually mingled quite a bit; there were many who had one foot in one school and the other foot in the other. Brahms would be one example. Another good one is the painter Ingres, who championed classicism strongly in his work and his words. Yet for our time the best of his paintings are those where an intense kind of hothouse Romantic sensuality animates the forms (notably his nudes and his formal portraits of women). His classical history and mythology pictures are less admired today and seem bland in comparison. Bach is Baroque in period and style, but I think underlying that in many of his works is a profound classical calm and serenity that is like the vast gently rocking ocean. So although these two polarities are everywhere, I think many artists contain both, and Beethoven is one of them.

[Chaszz]

Originally posted by Gurn Blanston:
Well, I am not going to go off on some long diatribe for or against, but I think that there is an essential point that seems to be being missed by what I have read so far. There is a basic difference between classical and romantic that can't be simply glossed over; classical is about form, romantic is about content. The prevailing aspect of classical composition is that if you take a theme and work it through the various stages of the form using some creative imagination, you will undoubtedly end up with a very nice composition. This is not true about the romantic composition; even the sonatas are hard to tell to be sonatas, and name a good, identifiable romantic rondo allegro! This is because form no longer matters. So the shift that occurred in style is not so much an evolution, but rather a different paradigm in which older forms were discarded altogether and new content ideas were able to have free rein without the constraints of having to be fit into a rather rigid formal structure. Of course there are many exceptions, such as Brahms who continued to use formal structure, but even Brahms' ability to use it was seriously impaired by the fact that he was not grounded in formal tradition like B was. Where B could state an expository idea and tell you where the development was going all in 4 bars, Brahms took 48, but at least he tried! That's my opinion, I may be wrong.
Regards, Gurn

In the novel by Hemann Hesse from which our Steppenwolf takes his username, I think I remember a scene where Brahms is in hell, walking along pulling a long trail of his extraeneous unneeded notes. But when listening to something good by Brahms, I think its difficult or impossible to think of his being impaired! He has the right number of notes for what he wants to say.

[Rod]

Originally posted by Chaszz:
Bach is Baroque in period and style, but I think underlying that in many of his works is a profound classical calm and serenity that is like the vast gently rocking ocean. So although these two polarities are everywhere, I think many artists contain both, and Beethoven is one of them.

Well it is a mistake people make to connect Romantisism alone with meaning and profundity in music. In my opinion the opposite is the case. It became merely art for art's sake. But I associate profundity more with the Baroque period and less with the Classical, which is why I regard Beethoven as Quasi-Baroque Classical. Putting it roughly - the forms used generally Classical, the latent sentiment late Baroque, the quality and consistanct of invention, of course, Beethoven.


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

[Sorrano]

Originally posted by Gurn Blanston:
Well, I am not going to go off on some long diatribe for or against, but I think that there is an essential point that seems to be being missed by what I have read so far. There is a basic difference between classical and romantic that can't be simply glossed over; classical is about form, romantic is about content. The prevailing aspect of classical composition is that if you take a theme and work it through the various stages of the form using some creative imagination, you will undoubtedly end up with a very nice composition. This is not true about the romantic composition; even the sonatas are hard to tell to be sonatas, and name a good, identifiable romantic rondo allegro! This is because form no longer matters. So the shift that occurred in style is not so much an evolution, but rather a different paradigm in which older forms were discarded altogether and new content ideas were able to have free rein without the constraints of having to be fit into a rather rigid formal structure. Of course there are many exceptions, such as Brahms who continued to use formal structure, but even Brahms' ability to use it was seriously impaired by the fact that he was not grounded in formal tradition like B was. Where B could state an expository idea and tell you where the development was going all in 4 bars, Brahms took 48, but at least he tried! That's my opinion, I may be wrong.
Regards, Gurn

And then you've got to consider the likes of Bruckner who's main emphasis with his symphonies was form and balance. Even to the numbering of measures per phrase. While the harmonic content was much expanded from the theories of Haydn and Mozart the formal structures were perhaps even more rigid for Bruckner than for those before him that are considered as pure classicists.

[Gurn Blanston]

Originally posted by Sorrano:

And then you've got to consider the likes of Bruckner who's main emphasis with his symphonies was form and balance. Even to the numbering of measures per phrase. While the harmonic content was much expanded from the theories of Haydn and Mozart the formal structures were perhaps even more rigid for Bruckner than for those before him that are considered as pure classicists.

Oh yes, I have no problem with that, you have found the exception that proves the rule! This is why I dislike generalizations so much, because there is always an exception or 2, but I certainly must generalize if I wish to include the multitude of composers in the Romantic; the focus was primarily content rather than form, an inversion of priorities from the classical.
Regards, Gurn

[Peter]

Originally posted by Gurn Blanston:
Oh yes, I have no problem with that, you have found the exception that proves the rule! This is why I dislike generalizations so much, because there is always an exception or 2, but I certainly must generalize if I wish to include the multitude of composers in the Romantic; the focus was primarily content rather than form, an inversion of priorities from the classical.
Regards, Gurn

Yet how can this argument hold up ? Schumann, Mendelssohn, Brahms, Tchaikovsky, Dvorak to name just a few of the best known Romantic composers all wrote symphonies, sonatas, concertos and chamber music based on the classical model! What happened after and during Beethoven's time was a change in the approach to tonality, this is where the fundamental difference between the two styles lies.

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'Man know thyself'

[Chaszz]

Originally posted by Peter:
Yet how can this argument hold up ? Schumann, Mendelssohn, Brahms, Tchaikovsky, Dvorak to name just a few of the best known Romantic composers all wrote symphonies, sonatas, concertos and chamber music based on the classical model! What happened after and during Beethoven's time was a change in the approach to tonality, this is where the fundamental difference between the two styles lies.

Peter, could you expand on that a bit please?
What is the difference between say first-movement sonata form as used by the classicists and then the Romantics? Longer lines with more notes? Less concision? Longer developments?

And what do you mean about harmonics? I can see that tonic-dominant cadences were used all thru (after the Middle Ages, when they had not yet developed (is this correct?)); I don't see real variation here until Wagner started writing chromatically but even then he still usually resolved eventually to a tonic. You said something some time ago about the subdominant being used more by the Romantics, but I can't quite see that, as I hear it quite a bit in Bach and Handel, especially with the flatted seventh of the tonic often leading to the subdominant. Maybe this is not true in Mozart and Haydn?



[This message has been edited by Chaszz (edited May 15, 2003).]

[Marta]

Originally posted by Chaszz:
Peter, could you expand on that a bit please?
What is the difference between say first-movement sonata form as used by the classicists and then the Romantics? Longer lines with more notes? Less concision? Longer developments?

And what do you mean about harmonics? I can see that tonic-dominant cadences were used all thru (after the Middle Ages, when they had not yet developed) ; I don't see real variation here until Wagner started writing chromatically but even then he still usually resolved eventually to a tonic. You said something some time ago about the subdominant being used more by the Romantics, but I can't quite see that, as I hear it quite a bit in Bach and Handel, especially with the flatted seventh of the tonic often leading to the subdominant.

[This message has been edited by Chaszz (edited May 15, 2003).]

Hi Chaszz.

Beethoven's use of the *sonata form* provided the model for most Romantic composers, although major differences in emphasis are evident.
The Romantic sonata form main different characteristic resides in the treatment of the themes, usually with a tendency to focus on the secondary theme as a self-contained highly expressive cantabile melody.
Other attributes of the Romantic sonata form are: more frequent omissions of repeated signs; in the development section a tendendency toward variations -episodic treatment; a tendency to shorten the recapitulation in favor of longer codas, which usually contains the apotheosis or climax of the movement.

The expanded tonality of the 19th century, was typified by chromaticism. One notorious effect of this expansion was the increase of remote keys mainly in the secondary themes, those were commonly followed, however, by a progression to the dominant by the end of the exposition.
Chaszz, not only Wagner uses chromaticism, beginning with Chopin, basically this harmonic treatment can be found in many of the Romantic composers.
Another harmonic characteristic was the weakeness of the dominant function, by adding unresolved non-harmonic tones, and by sustituing other chords for the dominant in the cadences.


Marta



[This message has been edited by Marta (edited May 15, 2003).]

[arbaqi]

Originally posted by lysander:
The classical and romantic aspects in Beethoven's music are part of a much broader movement in European history.
A brilliant lecture I recently listened to on CD by the great English philosopher, Sir Isaiah Berlin points up the massive and cataclysmic collisions that resulted from these two forces in philosophy, art, politics and music, and that continues to have critical effects in the modern world.
Classicism, basically posits a relationship between observer and observed and maintains that there is an external world that man is subject to and whose rules he must submit to in order to attain the good life.
The whole of classicism is about finding virtuous models from the past to copy and emmulate in one's life.
Romanticism is really this fantastic, horrifying even supernatural force of nature or within man that rejects all the dead wood of classicism and its sterility, replacing it with a numinous mysterious sense of oneness with everything in the universe.
There is no observer and observed here, we are all part of everything and everything is part of us.
Berlin cannot really account for in my view where this fantastic, almost otherworldly metaphysics sprang from, and he locates it to a number of discontented educated and under employed public officials in 18th century Prussia.
Even today it is staggering to think just how different romanticism is from classicism and just where it all came from is really a mystery. On music Schopenhauer said, 'the composer reveals to us the intimate essence of the world, he is the interpreter of the profoundest wisdom, speaking a language which reason cannot understand'
Romanticism is not chaos however, and everyone doing there own thing, one only has to think of the mathematical harmonies of Beethoven to realize how diciplined the great romantics were.
The greatest romantic came from the land of the most unromantic people, the English Lord Byron. Beethoven would have instinctively empathized with Byron's romantic sensibility, even if he would haved detested his debauched lifestyle, and Byron's hero, Manfred would have struck a deep chord with Beethoven.

" Apart he stalked in joyless reverie,
with pleasure drugged he almost longed for woe,
and e'en for change of scene would seek the shades below,
there was in him a vital scorn of all
He stood a stranger in this breathing world
So much he soared beyond or sunk beneath
The men with whom he felt condemned to breathe"


Romanticism opens up vast new abysses's of the mind. We suddenly seem to be plunged into a world where there is no classical sense of security, nothing to hide behind and we are at one with the sublime awfulness of the universe.
I think really what Beethoven is doing is using the classical form to promote a romantic agenda as it were, but only his greatness could forge a new musical language that fuses both, and seems to have a foot in both camps.


[This message has been edited by lysander (edited May 11, 2003).]

[arbaqi]

hi :
i am a new mwmber here.
i have read some of the disscusions abiut the questions set by ahmad.
i found the answers really interesting and motivating.
for me i think that the most important thing about the way that beethoven composed his music is his deep thinking and the ability to see through people to their inside and things really work or done in real life for example i can see the real struggle in the moon light sonata between people which is witnessed by the moon in the night .
the struggle as well in the fifth symphony between man and fair is something really applies to real real life and even which we are acrually living every day and that what makes beethoven even a great thinker and a wise person to know the people as they really are and his ability to conform that into music .

[Peter]

Originally posted by Chaszz:
Peter, could you expand on that a bit please?
What is the difference between say first-movement sonata form as used by the classicists and then the Romantics? Longer lines with more notes? Less concision? Longer developments?

And what do you mean about harmonics? I can see that tonic-dominant cadences were used all thru (after the Middle Ages, when they had not yet developed (is this correct?)); I don't see real variation here until Wagner started writing chromatically but even then he still usually resolved eventually to a tonic. You said something some time ago about the subdominant being used more by the Romantics, but I can't quite see that, as I hear it quite a bit in Bach and Handel, especially with the flatted seventh of the tonic often leading to the subdominant. Maybe this is not true in Mozart and Haydn?

[This message has been edited by Chaszz (edited May 15, 2003).]

Ok Chaszz - Well the full power of the Tonic-Dominant relationship only really became possible with the establishment of equal temperament in the 18th century. This enforced the strength of sharp keys over flat keys - for example going from C major to G major is stronger than going from C to F. Before equal temperament composers were just as likely to use the plagal Cadence (IV-I) relationship as the perfect (V-I). With the High Baroque of Bach and Handel yes they go to the dominant key but they never really establish it as a form of contrast to the tonic - i.e in a simple piece in binary form the first section would modulate to the dominant in the last few bars. The second section would just as quickly modulate back to the tonic. With the Classical era the Tonic-Dominant relationship is fundamental as a means of contrast - therefore in the exposition the dominant is established well before the end of that section with new material generally being introduced in the contrasting key. Now i have talked before about Beethoven's 'substitute' dominants - his use of the mediant (III) or submediant (VI) which serve the same function of dominants because they move towards the sharp direction rather than the subdominant flat direction. This is not to say Beethoven doesn't use the subdominant key, but it is not established as the main contrasting tonality. With the first generation of Romantic composers, there music frequently employs the subdominant as the main secondary tonality, thus weakening the tension - particularly when they write in the freer forms such as ballades and are not trying to produce a text-book sonata form movement. Chopin's Ab Ballade for example never goes to the dominant Eb. So this is not about modulating through different keys, it is about the establishment of a contrasting tonality.


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'Man know thyself'