# Beethoven and Classicism



## Zanralotta (Jan 31, 2009)

A while ago I lurked on a discussion board, and one member posted the question, "Is Beethoven a Romantic Composer?". To my utter surprise, people arrived at the unambiguous conclusion that no, Beethoven was a Classical composer, and asserting that he wrote Romantic music was wrong, wrong, WRONG!!!11!!!eleventy-one!!

This is a pattern I've, since then, seen repeated time and again. 

I have to admit, it breaks my brains a bit.

My music theory teacher always maintained that Beethoven was a Romantic who started out as a Classical composer (of course he mentioned that the distinction was difficult). His reasoning was mainly based on 3 points:

First and foremost, Beethoven's disregard for the strictness of form that was the "Holy Grail of Classical compositions".

Secondly, Beethoven's use of Harmonics which, at times, strays away dramatically from the restricted tonica/dominant/subdominant/parallel/relative matrix that is the ideal of Classicism.

Thirdly, Beethoven's orchestration. I can't really recall what my teacher said about that... Uhm, sorry.

There were probably a few other things he mentioned that I don't remember at the moment.

It recently occurred to me that the reason for this confusion might be that the definition of Classical and Romantic I use and the definition that others use are diametrically different.

So, please, TC members, help me understand!

Under what definition of the words "Classical" and "Romantic" is it possible to arrive at the conclusion that Beethoven's 9th Symphony is "Classical" and at the same time believe that Brahms' 1st Symphony is "Romantic"? Without feeling too twitchy about it?

Are the definitions my teacher gave me so strange? I always found them fitting almost intuitively.


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## Aramis (Mar 1, 2009)

Isn't it all about periods? If people would discover lost composer that composed Schoenberg-like music in XVIIth century, he still would be baroque composer, no matter how "diffrent" his music would sound. Same thing with Ludwig Van. All depends of what date we will consider as beginning of romanticism in music. Most people belive that it began with one of Beethoven's works - Eroica, 14th Piano Sonata etc. Did romanticism begin in 1801? 1804? Yes? Since then to his death, Beethoven was romantic composer.


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## Ignis Fatuus (Nov 25, 2008)

Are Radiohead a rock band?

What is romanticism? If you use dates as definitions then you have clear yes or no. Or is it defined by techniques used, such as exotic harmonies and abrupt modulations to distant keys? Or is it defined by the aims of the composer - self-expression over balance? When people argue about Beethoven's category, generally they share the same view of his compositional style, but have different opinions as the definitions of the periods. A crazy situation.

The convential knowledge seems to be "Beethoven was the last great composer of the classical period, and the first of the romantic". But does it matter really?


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## nickgray (Sep 28, 2008)

The easiest answer is that Beethoven was in his own league. Stylistically you can argue that his early works were classical and late - romantic, but overall they were neither, really (apart from the very early and the very late pieces).

And honestly, does it really matter? All those periods were cooked up simply for a convenience, but it certainly does not imply that a composer should somehow follow the "rules" of these periods.


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## Tapkaara (Apr 18, 2006)

True, what does it really matter, but this is still an interesting question. 

If you use the names of the various time periods (Baroque, Classical, Romatic, etc.) as convenient ways of organizing stylistic shifts in music, I'd say Beethoven is hard to classify. It's very easy, I suppose, to say that Bach is Baroque, Mozart is Classical, Schumann is early Romantic, etc., but where does Beethoven really fit if we are to attempt to classify him anyway, whether it matters or not?

I think personally he is a transitional figure that belongs really to neither the Classical or Romantic periods. There is such a huge arc from his first symphony to his 9th; I think his symphonies are the best (or at least easiest) way to chart his artistic progress from one type of expression to another.

This is exactly why Beethoven is such a monumental figure in music. Even today we are attempting to understand exactly who this guy was and what he did. At least we know what he did was great!


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## emiellucifuge (May 26, 2009)

Beethoven was forward looking composer of the romantic style who lived and worked in the classical Era.


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## Zanralotta (Jan 31, 2009)

So the view that Beethoven was a "Classical, and Classical only" composer isn't quite as common as those discussion let me to believe, it seems.
Hm...

On the question of why this matters: It made me question my understanding of music to see people vehemently deny any Romantic leanings in Beethoven's compositions. 
I'm a selfish creature, you see. 
Honestly, had I only seen two or three people do this, I wouldn't have bothered, but since I've encountered this at least half a dozen times, I started to think there was more to it. 

I'm still curious to see if a definition of "Classical" and "Romantic" exists that would have Beethoven's 9th as Classical and Brahms' 1st as Romantic. I mean, apart from the "everything written before the year x is Classical, everything written after is Romantic" definition with year x chosen more or less arbitrarily.
That would be interesting.


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## emiellucifuge (May 26, 2009)

IF youre talking Style instead of Eras then I would definitley say Beethovens symphonies after Eroica are definitely romantic symphonies, so are those of Brahms. 

The fact is beethoven lived in a classical era, where composers worked for the rich and he did follow many of the traits of his age. He did however also break free of many of these 'historical' bonds.


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## Chi_townPhilly (Apr 21, 2007)

Zanralotta said:


> A while ago I lurked on a discussion board, and one member posted the question, "Is Beethoven a Romantic Composer?". To my utter surprise, people arrived at the unambiguous conclusion that no, Beethoven was a Classical composer, and asserting that he wrote Romantic music was wrong, wrong, WRONG!!!


Yeah- it seems like some people respond to this in a sort of hot-button way, occasionally.

I've mused on this topic before. Here is one sampling of my thoughts on this matter. This contribution may be of more tangential interest, but might touch on some relevant points as well.


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## starry (Jun 2, 2009)

I don't think Beethoven is anything like Liszt, Chopin, or later romantics like Wagner. The whole basis of his music is classicism. He composed in classical forms and developed those. 

Also built into this assumption that Beethoven was somehow completely separate from his predecessors is the assumption that he was also very superior to them. But it's not always helpful to read the history of music backwards.

Just because a teacher says he was wasn't a classicist doesn't mean that alot of people don't consider him to be that. The composer Beethoven most admired incidentally was Handel (probably followed by Mozart and Bach).


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## Aramis (Mar 1, 2009)

starry said:


> I don't think Beethoven is anything like Liszt, Chopin, or later romantics like Wagner.


Really? Many times while listening to his later piano concertos I thought "damn, this sounds like romantic piano music, just like Chopin".


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## Ignis Fatuus (Nov 25, 2008)

I think it's fair to say the the transition from classicism to romanticism was an evolutionary process rather then the slightly more revolutionary and rebellious natures of the Baroque and Classical periods. I would say that is why it is hard to categorize Beethoven.


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## starry (Jun 2, 2009)

Ignis Fatuus said:


> I think it's fair to say the the transition from classicism to romanticism was an evolutionary process rather then the slightly more revolutionary and rebellious natures of the Baroque and Classical periods. I would say that is why it is hard to categorize Beethoven.


Yeh this is what I think, music is always evolutionary in a sense anyway (not meaning that it gets better, it just changes).


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## nefigah (Aug 23, 2008)

Aramis said:


> Really? Many times while listening to his later piano concertos I thought "damn, this sounds like romantic piano music, just like Chopin".


Hmm, really? You'll have to cite examples of which Beethoven sounds like which Chopin, because I tend to quite like the former's piano music and not care for the latter's.

(Though I will admit to being not a huge concerto fan in general. Sonatas prz kthx)


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## Tapkaara (Apr 18, 2006)

starry said:


> I don't think Beethoven is anything like Liszt, Chopin, or later romantics like Wagner. The whole basis of his music is classicism. He composed in classical forms and developed those.


So are Lizst, Chopin and Wagner the true creators of Romanticism? In other words, where does so-called classicism end and so-called romanticism begin, if not with Beethoven?


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## starry (Jun 2, 2009)

Aramis said:


> Really? Many times while listening to his later piano concertos I thought "damn, this sounds like romantic piano music, just like Chopin".


I suppose you could say that about some Mozart pieces too though. Beethoven took all kinds of influences, dance music of the time, modal scales, baroque etc Like all the best composers he was interested in exploring and developing. That is why these composers are not so limited to the styles of their period (like some of their contemporaries, nice though they may be) and are considered as more universal.


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## starry (Jun 2, 2009)

Chopin and Liszt specialized in short piano forms, Beethoven developed the already existing longer classical form of the sonata.


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## Weston (Jul 11, 2008)

For me it's not about a date - it's the style that puts music in a category in my world (or in my mind). Thus Mendelssohn's youthful string symphonies are baroque and galant pre-classical exercises regardless of when they were written, and Respighi's Ancent Airs and Dances suites are Renaissance and baroque music.

Beethoven stylistically is still classical throughout most of his career. His music may be loaded with emotion, and he may have disregarded some established forms, but his work is still very much about form. In his later years some of his experiments don't lead the way to the romantic era to my ears - they skip over it completely and explore some genre or period yet unknown to mankind. 

I categorize him as classical and beyond. I'm not rabid about it however. Musicology is all in marvelous shades of gray and multicolored.


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## Ignis Fatuus (Nov 25, 2008)

Weston said:


> I'm not rabid about it however.


Hehe, I think that's how all these debates should end.


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## Il Seraglio (Sep 14, 2009)

The whole time period explanation doesn't really wash with me. For instance Schubert died only a few years after Beethoven, but he was always labled a romantic (perhaps we might have viewed him differently had he died of something non-syphilis related).

I have no qualms dubbing Beethoven a Romantic composer. For instance, what could more easily be mistaken for a late 19th century piece? Beethoven's Fidelio or the so called 'early romantic' Rossini's Barber of Seville?


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## Tapkaara (Apr 18, 2006)

Il Seraglio said:


> I have no qualms dubbing Beethoven a Romantic composer. For instance, what could more easily be mistaken for a late 19th century piece? Beethoven's Fidelio or the so called 'early romantic' Rossini's Barber of Seville?


Very good point about Fidelio vs The Barber of Seville. It's a good argument that the dates are less significant than one might think.


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## Cortision (Aug 4, 2009)

It seems that the classification of music into periods is more a useful aid to remembering music history than it is a science. If Romantic music is defined as that which places emphasis on emotional expression rather than strict form, then a lot of what Beethoven wrote has romantic leanings to my ear - and emotion has never been lacking in music, even in Bach. But there is no doubt either that Beethoven had a great mastery of classical form. I have heard Beethoven called a 'transitional' composer.

It would be nice if the Romantic era began on March the 22nd, 1803, after which date composers decided to throw aside the legacy of Haydn and Mozart and begin something new. Real life, however, doesn't appear to be that simple.


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## Artemis (Dec 8, 2007)

I don't quite understand the opening post in this thread where it is stated that on some other Forums the vast majority of commentators rejected the notion that Beethoven was a Romantic composer, but instead argued that he was primarily a Classical composer. As far as I'm aware, opinion on this matter, of both learned and not-so-learned type, is more mixed than this account suggests, especially in the context of discussions on classical music Forums.

To check this I've had a look back at several discussions on various other Boards over the past few years which I have bookmarked, and in no way can it be argued that they point clearly in any one direction as to whether Beethoven could be labelled unambiguously a Classicist or Romantic. Rather, opinion is divided with perhaps only a slight majority favouring the view that Beethoven remained primarily a Classical composer. Some of those discussions were very much more technical in nature than the kind of much looser opinion that is typical of T-C.

From my reading of the situation, the once-held notion that Beethoven was the first great Romantic composer is no longer the predominant view. It was once held, very naively in my opinion, that Romanticism began with the "Eroica", and somehow everything that Beethoven wrote after that was Romantic. This doesn't make much sense if only because musical history is nothing like so clear-cut. It's clear nonsense because, for example, Beethoven wrote a lot of later material - e.g., Symphony No 8 which in fact Beethoven himself thought was better than his Symphony No 7 - is pretty much like any classical symphony in form.

Charles Rosen in his book "The Classical Style" argued that Beethoven is one of the three primary exponents (along with Haydn and Mozart) of this style and remained so throughout his career. Beethoven also made little use of genres that were to become central to Romanticism, including the song cycle and piano pieces such as nocturnes. Complicating the matter is that people tend to assume that there was a clear starting point of Romanticism after which all composers were Romantic. This isn't the case. There were major composers in the so-called Romantic period who remained essentially classical, Mendelssohn and Brahms being perhaps the most obvious.

Romantic traits in music did not just include a greater expression of emotion (in which of course Beethoven excelled), but also a willingness to experiment in new musical forms (e.g. character piano pieces like nocturnes, and personally expressive songs and song cycles), different key structures, and the desire to express through music the power of words and poetry. As the 19th Century progressed, the composers who most clearly exhibited Romantic traits were Berlioz, Chopin, Liszt, Schumann, Wagner, and Tchaikovsky.

It is not clear that Beethoven made much of a "splash" in all these areas. In my personal opinion, Beethoven remained primarily a Classical composer who dabbled in some aspects of Romanticism as he matured, probably unwittingly. For me Schubert was the first great Romantic. He wrote a great deal of material in genres typical of that style. Purely on the emotional level, Beethoven wrote nothing to compare with for example the impact of the second movements of Schubert's B flat piano sonata (No 21), and that of his valedictory String Quintet.


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## starry (Jun 2, 2009)

Artemis said:


> As the 19th Century progressed, the composers who most clearly exhibited Romantic traits were Berlioz, Chopin, Liszt, Schumann, Wagner, and Tchaikovsky.
> 
> It is not clear that Beethoven made much of a "splash" in all these areas. In my personal opinion, Beethoven remained primarily a Classical composer who dabbled in some aspects of Romanticism as he matured, probably unwittingly. For me Schubert was the first great Romantic. He wrote a great deal of material in genres typical of that style. Purely on the emotional level, Beethoven wrote nothing to compare with for example the impact of the second movements of Schubert's B flat piano sonata (No 21), and that of his valedictory String Quintet.


Tchaikovsky's favourite composer was Mozart. 

And Schubert saw himself as a follower of Beethoven more than anything. He was aiming to succeed in the absolute music of sonatas, quartets and symphonies. Schubert had some influence on what came later but I wonder if he saw himself as a classicist, or wanted to be seen as continuing in that tradition.


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## scytheavatar (Aug 27, 2009)

Schubert's most famous works, his last 2 symphonies, late piano sonatas, Winterrise, last few string quartets, Arpeggione sonata, etc, are all written at the last few years of his life and are very romantic in nature. But if you check out his eariler, lesser known works they sound more like something from Haydn and Mozart. So I am not sure if it's fair to label him as a romantic either.


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## Ignis Fatuus (Nov 25, 2008)

scytheavatar said:


> Schubert's most famous works, his last 2 symphonies, late piano sonatas, Winterrise, last few string quartets, Arpeggione sonata, etc, are all written at the last few years of his life and are very romantic in nature. But if you check out his eariler, lesser known works they sound more like something from Haydn and Mozart. So I am not sure if it's fair to label him as a romantic either.


Exactly, look at Symphony No.5 for example, one might say he belongs more to Mozart's category, than Wagner's. But we just have to accept the limited (but still present) utiliy of these categories and move on.


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## Artemis (Dec 8, 2007)

starry said:


> Tchaikovsky's favourite composer was Mozart.


And Mendelssohn's favourite composer was J S Bach, but that didn't make Mendelssohn a baroque composer. Beethoven's favourite was Handel but neither did that make Beethoven a baroque composer.



> And Schubert saw himself as a follower of Beethoven more than anything. He was aiming to succeed in the absolute music of sonatas, quartets and symphonies. Schubert had some influence on what came later but I wonder if he saw himself as a classicist, or wanted to be seen as continuing in that tradition.


Yes, Schubert greatly admired Beethoven but he also admired Mozart and Handel. Scholarly opinion (e.g. by Charles Rosen who has very highly regarded books on the Classical and Romantic styles) reckons that Schubert tended to write in a style which, if anything, followed Mozartean principles than Beethoven's. Therefore the notion that he aimed to continue the tradition of Beethoven does not seem correct to me. Personally, I see nothing of Beethoven in Schubert, and vice versa. Had he lived longer I reckon Schubert would have continued to find fame in the world of opera, an area he had previously tried to succeed in but largely failed due to lousy choice of (or rather bad luck) of decent librettists. This is not an area that Beethoven showed much interest in partly because was not much good as a composer for voice.

My main point previously was that, while both Beethoven and Schubert are essentially transitional composers, it was Schubert who made greater strides towards Romanticism than did Beethoven. I was thinking of Schubert's much greater output of lied/song cycles, his long-standing characteristic of being more daring in experimenting with unusual key relationships, inclination to write in new varieties of solo piano forms eg impromptus. This is not to deny that Beethoven also had quite strong leanings towards some aspects of Romanticism especially in his later works, but the mere fact that Beethoven wrote some music with high emotion levels does not suffice to make him a Romantic composer, per se.


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## Argus (Oct 16, 2009)

The problem with any genre or style label is that they are very good in general but upon closer inspection and scrutiny they hold no answers, only more questions. The extremes of Romantic and Classical styles are quite seperable but there is a quite obvious grey area blurring the boundaries between them, especially in this modern age with all the new styles they sound even more similar.

A good method to decide whether in your opinion Beethoven was a Classical or Romantic composer would be to think of your ideal composer who embodies that genre. So for Classical it could be Mozart, Haydn, Gluck or whoever and for Romantic it could be Berlioz, Schumann, Mahler, Liszt etc. Now out of your 2 choices who does Beethoven more resemble. Maybe just look at one facet of his output, like his symphonies or piano sonatas, as most people believe these to be his most important.

Personally, I class him as a Romantic, not only due to his music but taking into consideration everything about him, he just is too different from Mozart to be purely classical. As has been said many times already, he is a transitional figure like von Weber, Schubert, even Paganini and can therefore be described legitimately as both.


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## starry (Jun 2, 2009)

scytheavatar said:


> Schubert's most famous works, his last 2 symphonies, late piano sonatas, Winterrise, last few string quartets, Arpeggione sonata, etc, are all written at the last few years of his life and are very romantic in nature. But if you check out his eariler, lesser known works they sound more like something from Haydn and Mozart. So I am not sure if it's fair to label him as a romantic either.


Exactly, his roots were classicsm, same as Beethoven. Of course his style developed over time as it did with all the best composers (including Mozart).


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## starry (Jun 2, 2009)

Artemis said:


> And Mendelssohn's favourite composer was J S Bach, but that didn't make Mendelssohn a baroque composer. Beethoven's favourite was Handel but neither did that make Beethoven a baroque composer.
> 
> Yes, Schubert greatly admired Beethoven but he also admired Mozart and Handel. Scholarly opinion (e.g. by Charles Rosen who has very highly regarded books on the Classical and Romantic styles) reckons that Schubert tended to write in a style which, if anything, followed Mozartean principles than Beethoven's. Therefore the notion that he aimed to continue the tradition of Beethoven does not seem correct to me. Personally, I see nothing of Beethoven in Schubert, and vice versa. Had he lived longer I reckon Schubert would have continued to find fame in the world of opera, an area he had previously tried to succeed in but largely failed due to lousy choice of (or rather bad luck) of decent librettists. This is not an area that Beethoven showed much interest in partly because was not much good as a composer for voice.
> 
> My main point previously was that, while both Beethoven and Schubert are essentially transitional composers, it was Schubert who made greater strides towards Romanticism than did Beethoven. I was thinking of Schubert's much greater output of lied/song cycles, his long-standing characteristic of being more daring in experimenting with unusual key relationships, inclination to write in new varieties of solo piano forms eg impromptus. This is not to deny that Beethoven also had quite strong leanings towards some aspects of Romanticism especially in his later works, but the mere fact that Beethoven wrote some music with high emotion levels does not suffice to make him a Romantic composer, per se.


To be more of a romantic composer I think you have to compose in new forms like to some extent Chopin and certainly Liszt did. Wagner created a whole new kind of opera. Schubert created within the classical forms like the symphony, sonata and quartet. I never said his style was very similar to Beethoven but that he composed in the same forms and continued on from him in that sense.

If Brahms is a classicist I think Tchaikovsky was to an extent as well. In the orchestral suites and Rococo Variations he does like a graceful approach. He didn't like Wagner's approach and it wouldn't surprise me if he wasn't a fan of Liszt either. To quote the wikipedia article "Tchaikovsky sought expressive value in music that was immediately comprehensible and appreciable - in other words, what was apparent on the surface." His comment on Bizet: "This music has no pretensions to profundity, but it is so charming in its simplicity, so vigorous, not contrived but instead sincere". Yes he can sometimes get very passionate, so can Beethoven, but often he doesn't go other the top like Wagner or Strauss for instance.


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## Sid James (Feb 7, 2009)

I remember reading a book, comparing Beethoven to Schubert. It compared them to explorers and said, Beethoven took us to the edge of uncharted territories, while Schubert actually began to explore those territories. I think that's a pretty good analogy & reinforces the view that Beethoven was a transitional figure in the history of classical music, especially with regard to the Romantic movement...


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## Romantic Geek (Dec 25, 2009)

scytheavatar said:


> Schubert's most famous works, his last 2 symphonies, late piano sonatas, Winterrise, last few string quartets, Arpeggione sonata, etc, are all written at the last few years of his life and are very romantic in nature. But if you check out his eariler, lesser known works they sound more like something from Haydn and Mozart. So I am not sure if it's fair to label him as a romantic either.


The early early Schubert works, I would totally agree with you, but Schubert was the first composer to _really_ exploit things that define the Romantic era. Character pieces, lieder, harmonies, key shifts, modulations to the mediant.

It's simply not about time period but the overall body of work. I believe Rosen hits it right on by stating that the Classical period is championed by three composers: Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven. I really can't imagine Eroica as being Romantic. Is it Romantic because of that blasted C#? You know, there's chromaticism in baroque too. It's called secondary dominants (or applied chords) 

Beethoven was just starting to touch on these things, but he didn't fully embrace them. You see some Romantic qualities in the Waldstein Sonata, but I wouldn't call that Romantic. Certainly, you have to look at Beethoven as a transitional figure, but if you had to classify him, I would say he is mainly classical given the fact that he still embraced more classical era techniques than Romantic.

Late Schubert and Schumann really usher in the Romantic era because their music is distinctly different than what Beethoven wrote. They took that extra step. Same with Berlioz and orchestration. Certainly, he was paying homage to Beethoven, but take the 3rd movement of Symphonie Fantastique and compare it to Beethoven's Pastorale Symphony...and there is definitely a significant change.

It's hard to see him as a Romantic figure. I'm really having a hard time justifying it.


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## Artemis (Dec 8, 2007)

Romantic Geek said:


> The early early Schubert works, I would totally agree with you, but Schubert was the first composer to _really_ exploit things that define the Romantic era. Character pieces, lieder, harmonies, key shifts, modulations to the mediant.
> 
> It's simply not about time period but the overall body of work. I believe Rosen hits it right on by stating that the Classical period is championed by three composers: Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven. I really can't imagine Eroica as being Romantic. Is it Romantic because of that blasted C#? You know, there's chromaticism in baroque too. It's called secondary dominants (or applied chords)
> 
> ...


Interesting, but doesn't all this basically repeat what I set out in post #23, including reference to Charles Rosen?


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## Romantic Geek (Dec 25, 2009)

Artemis said:


> Interesting, but doesn't all this basically repeat what I set out in post #23, including reference to Charles Rosen?


I'm sorry? Did you wake up on the wrong side of the bed today?


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## Artemis (Dec 8, 2007)

Romantic Geek said:


> I'm sorry? Did you wake up on the wrong side of the bed today?


No but you have basically repeated what I wrote.


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## Polednice (Sep 13, 2009)

Seeing as "Post #23" was written in November and has now been brought back from the dead, a repetition isn't completely unjustified...


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## Artemis (Dec 8, 2007)

Polednice said:


> Seeing as "Post #23" was written in November and has now been brought back from the dead, a repetition isn't completely unjustified...


Thank you for this comment. As always, I am grateful to receive your viewpoint, and I do agree that the same points are worth bringing up again because they are material. 

I should have said that I most certainly do not lay any claim to any kind of originality of thought on this matter. On the contrary, I made it clear in my earlier post #23 that the views expressed there were based partly on what I had read elsewhere, and with which I agreed. 

Incidentally, I know that you are keen to get stuck into the more technical aspects of music. I can't recommend stongly enough that you check out the books written by Charles Rosen, as mentioned above, which are all well written and very informative, but one does need some knowledge about music and the ability to read it well.


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## Polednice (Sep 13, 2009)

Artemis said:


> Incidentally, I know that you are keen to get stuck into the more technical aspects of music. I can't recommend stongly enough that you check out the books written by Charles Rosen, as mentioned above, which are all well written and very informative, but one does need some knowledge about music and the ability to read it well.


Thanks for the suggestion; I've read elsewhere that Charles Rosen is a good read, so, seeing as you further that view, I'll put him to the top of my 'to-read' list


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