# Do you feel the Romantics going forward had more personality than their predecessors?



## Captainnumber36 (Jan 19, 2017)

On the whole that is, there are certainly a few counter-examples like Mozart's PC#21mvt2 or Bach's B-minor mass.

But perhaps there is some truth to this, be it for better or worse.


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## chu42 (Aug 14, 2018)

Well, the very essence of the Romantic era was the triumph of individuality over pastronship; i.e., composing what you wanted to compose rather than composing what someone else wanted you to compose.


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## Captainnumber36 (Jan 19, 2017)

chu42 said:


> Well, the very essence of the Romantic era was the triumph of individuality over pastronship; i.e., composing what you wanted to compose rather than composing what someone else wanted you to compose.


very true, indeed.


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## ArtMusic (Jan 5, 2013)

Captainnumber36 said:


> On the whole that is, there are certainly a few counter-examples like Mozart's PC#21mvt2 or Bach's B-minor mass.
> 
> But perhaps there is some truth to this, be it for better or worse.


In terms of what Romanticism represented, that was the intention. Now in practice, in terms of what the great composers composed, I don't think personality versus periods had much influence one way or another. Mozart's music was Classical in idiom but his personality was all over his music. Likewise with Bach, you can tell it's Bach. Conversely, with any weaker composer in any period, whether Baroque or Romantic, it all sounds "the same".


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## EdwardBast (Nov 25, 2013)

No, they were just the first composers convinced that their personalities were and should be relevant to what they composed.


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## hammeredklavier (Feb 18, 2018)

While it is true to some extent, if you examine closely, you'll find many of the "pre-Romantics" also sound pretty different from each other. 
Bach sounds pretty different from Zelenka, for example. (Look at the style of orchestration in 



 ). C.P.E. Bach had a slightly different style from the Rococo, called "empfindsamer stil". People tend to compare Schumann, Mendelssohn, Chopin with one another when it comes to this subject, -but try comparing Chopin with, for example, one of the brillante-style pianist-composers of central Europe, such as Hummel or Moscheles. 








Or Charles Mayer; one of his pieces (Valse-melancolique) was once wrongly attributed to Chopin.


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## hammeredklavier (Feb 18, 2018)

hammeredklavier said:


> "In Salzburg, if not throughout his life, Mozart was writing in a lingua franca and many of the features of that language are to be found in Michael Haydn too. That Mozart recognized Michael Haydn's mastery is suggested by a letter he sent to his father from Vienna, asking for the latest symphonies of Michael, so that he could perform them in that city." -David Wyn Jones
> 
> ..........
> 
> ...


https://www.talkclassical.com/69460-thamos-king-egypt-mozart.html#post1995150


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## BrahmsWasAGreatMelodist (Jan 13, 2019)

EdwardBast said:


> No, they were just the first composers convinced that their personalities were and should be relevant to what they composed.


Come on........


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## cheregi (Jul 16, 2020)

Based on my recent delving into the history of performers' relationships to the score, I think it's quite plausible that for at least the last several hundred years (i.e., even before the beginning of music recording, for which we _know_ the following to be true) there has been a gradual shift from looking to the _performer_ to bring personality to a work, to looking to the _composer_'s personality, but I can't be sure - of course it also makes sense to imagine that personality simply wasn't always highly valued, which we can see in various other art musics around the world...

Another thought I have is it seems that knowledge of composition techniques has gradually become more standardized and broadly-available, and it is only against this background of 'assumed common knowledge' that the romantic and modern emphasis on each composer's individual 'voice' could even become a norm... in contrast to, say, Bach needing to make an arduous journey to visit Buxtehude to pick up specific music-theoretical knowledge he wouldn't have otherwise had access to. But maybe this is a skewed view of history, I'm just speculating!



hammeredklavier said:


> We tend to compare Schumann, Mendelssohn, Chopin with one another when discussing this subject, -but try comparing Chopin with, for example, one of the brillante-style pianist-composers of central Europe, such as Hummel or Moscheles.
> 
> 
> 
> ...


This is very interesting, I know nothing of this style and the similarities with Chopin are striking to me.


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## Captainnumber36 (Jan 19, 2017)

cheregi said:


> Based on my recent delving into the history of performers' relationships to the score, I think it's quite plausible that for at least the last several hundred years (i.e., even before the beginning of music recording, for which we _know_ the following to be true) there has been a gradual shift from looking to the _performer_ to bring personality to a work, to looking to the _composer_'s personality, but I can't be sure - of course it also makes sense to imagine that personality simply wasn't always highly valued, which we can see in various other art musics around the world...
> 
> Another thought I have is it seems that knowledge of composition techniques has gradually become more standardized and broadly-available, and it is only against this background of 'assumed common knowledge' that the romantic and modern emphasis on each composer's individual 'voice' could even become a norm... in contrast to, say, Bach needing to make an arduous journey to visit Buxtehude to pick up specific music-theoretical knowledge he wouldn't have otherwise had access to. But maybe this is a skewed view of history, I'm just speculating!
> 
> This is very interesting, I know nothing of this style and the similarities with Chopin are striking to me.


Well put. I hadn't thought of the performer's role in bringing out personality in pre-romantic era work.


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## EdwardBast (Nov 25, 2013)

BrahmsWasAGreatMelodist said:


> Come on........


The OP asked if Romantic composers had more personality than their predecessors. Had we been asked about their compositions, my answer might have been different.


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## Enthusiast (Mar 5, 2016)

Personality in music is presumably best identified by the music being distinctively by the composer who wrote it. That being the case, the answer to the OP must be "no". But there is perhaps something else that we are latching onto. Ego? Expressiveness?


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## consuono (Mar 27, 2020)

cheregi said:


> ...
> 
> This is very interesting, I know nothing of this style and the similarities with Chopin are striking to me.


Here's another uncanny anticipation of Chopin:


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## hammeredklavier (Feb 18, 2018)

Wilhelm Friedemann Bach sounds rather "capriciously light" in feel compared to his brothers:













Carl Philipp Emanuel:









Joseph Haydn:













Michael Haydn:



























I think this 'Missa subtitulo st. Leopoldi in fest innocentium (1805)' gives us a glimpse of the idiom Mozart would have written in if he lived past 1791 and took the kapellmeister position at st. Stephen's cathedral in Vienna-


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## tdc (Jan 17, 2011)

Yes, 'personality' doesn't seem quite the right word. The era perhaps was more focused on individual expression over universality.

There are interesting things about either approach. I've always been drawn to what I perceive as more of a universal aesthetic, for example the similarities we see between the pyramids and statues of ancient Egypt and ancient South America. This to me is stunning art that seems reflective of universal principles.


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