# Who uses the terms "neoromantic" and "neoromanticism?"



## Roger Knox (Jul 19, 2017)

I don't, because I find the term confusing. The article below captures and explains some of this.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neoromanticism_(music)

I learned the version attributed to Carl Dahlhaus. The rest I'm not at all certain about. Perhaps some who have studied music more recently have a better handle on the term.


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## Ludwig Schon (10 mo ago)

Roger Knox said:


> I don't, because I find the term confusing. The article below captures and explains some of this.
> 
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neoromanticism_(music)
> 
> I learned the version attributed to Carl Dahlhaus. The rest I'm not at all certain about. Perhaps some who have studied music more recently have a better handle on the term.


More importantly, New-Romantics, unlike Neo-Romantics (John Adams :lol::lol, actually produced some good music:


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## Roger Knox (Jul 19, 2017)

Ludwig Schon said:


> More importantly, New-Romantics, unlike Neo-Romantics (John Adams :lol::lol, actually produced some good music:


I only became aware of these popular New Romantics recently.

In the 1970's there was also a "New Romanticism" being promoted in New York classical circles, of such composers as David del Tredici and Jacob Druckman. It seems that one of the problems we have is that "romantic" is often used as a term of promotion and publicity, as is "new" (that hardly needs saying!).


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## Aries (Nov 29, 2012)

I am not exactly sure how it is used, but I heard it some times and I think it can be useful, because many 20th and 21st century romantic music does not sound like late romantic or earlier romantic music. I think it is structurally more loose, a bit more simple but accessible and emotionally very approachable, has a more diverse orchestration, the usage of is dissonance is reflected instead of absent or excessive, and it often sounds somewhat similar to film music.

Examples are Samuel Barber, or last 6-9 symphonies of Janis Ivanovs.


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

Roger Knox said:


> I don't, because I find the term confusing. The article below captures and explains some of this.
> 
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neoromanticism_(music)
> 
> I learned the version attributed to Carl Dahlhaus. The rest I'm not at all certain about. Perhaps some who have studied music more recently have a better handle on the term.


Rihm is the prime example in Europe. He is a neo romantic because his aim is to augment some contemporary ideas (e.g. form based on duration, extended vocal and instrumental techniques, serial composition) with the expressivity of music by, for example, Schumann or Brahms or Mahler. Have a listen to, for example, his Dis Kontur.


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

Other neo romantic European works:

Lachenmann - Grido
Boulez - Anthèmes II
Sciarrino - Vanitas
Finnissy - Awaz-e Niyaz

The string quartet being discussed in the group here at the moment, Dusapin’s 5th, is also an example.


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## Waehnen (Oct 31, 2021)

I consider myself a neoromanticist. It is a way of expressing that I am not a neoclassicist, a modernist or a postmodernist. From this neoromantic label you cannot really deduce any compositional technique. The freedom of expression is what drives me.


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

Waehnen said:


> I consider myself a neoromanticist. It is a way of expressing that I am not a neoclassicist, a modernist or a postmodernist. From this neoromantic label you cannot really deduce any compositional technique. The freedom of expression is what drives me.


Neoromanticism in music is a form of postmodernism.

Actually, I just looked through that wiki article, the one in the opening post. It's clear that the term isn't univocal, that neo-romanticism means one thing in the USA, another in the Europe. In Europe the term grew out of experiments in Darmstadt, attempts to find new musical languages which were liberated from the taint of traditional western music, be it folk music or the stuff that Beethoven, Brahms and Mozart etc did, and yet which were connected to all that tradition, all that history.


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## Waehnen (Oct 31, 2021)

Mandryka said:


> Neoromanticism in music is a form of postmodernism.


I strongly seperate from each other the "postmodern times" (of which we all are part of) and the postmodern musical techniques (not every neoromanticist has to use collages and style allusions etc). A neoromanticist may use purely modernist techniques should one so choose.


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## hammeredklavier (Feb 18, 2018)

There was a comment (in the comment section) that criticized this as being "bad NeoRomanticism" or something like that, but it's gone now.
Richard Kastle symphony No.5




Titanic symphony




Royce Concerto








Anyway, a queer artist indeed


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## Nawdry (Dec 27, 2020)

Roger Knox said:


> *Who uses the terms "neoromantic" and "neoromanticism?"*
> 
> I don't, because I find the term confusing. The article below captures and explains some of this.
> 
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neoromanticism_(music)


I agree the term is somewhat confusing, and it's more nebulous than "neoclassical". In my experience, the term Neo-Romanticism has been associated with music of 20th-century composers such as Virgil Thomson, Howard Hanson, Samuel Barber, William Walton, even Paul Hindemith, and others who either explicitly endeavored, or were perceived as endeavoring, to emulate the melodic and structural expressive passion of 19th-century Romanticism.


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## Roger Knox (Jul 19, 2017)

Mandryka said:


> Rihm is the prime example in Europe. He is a neo romantic because his aim is to augment some contemporary ideas (e.g. form based on duration, extended vocal and instrumental techniques, serial composition) with the expressivity of music by, for example, Schumann or Brahms or Mahler. Have a listen to, for example, his Dis Kontur.


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## Roger Knox (Jul 19, 2017)

Thanks, Mandryka, this is helpful. Incidentally my OP was not about hypothetical confusion. Actually I did get criticized by a professor for going out on a limb using the term "neoromantic" for a North American composer active in the 1970's, and felt bad about it. The professor followed the older continental European practice (e.g. by musicologist Carl Dahlhaus) of using the term for post-1850 composers/Wagner-followers of the New German School such as Bruckner and Strauss. I am glad that with Wolfgang Rihm and others the continental European practice has been updated. When Rihm first appeared on the scene his music was described as "neo-expressionist." It has changed since then and "neoromantic" fits but I'm still a bit gun-shy about using the term.


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## Aries (Nov 29, 2012)

Roger Knox said:


> I am glad that with Wolfgang Rihm and others the continental European practice has been updated. When Rihm first appeared on the scene his music was described as "neo-expressionist." It has changed since then and "neoromantic" fits but I'm still a bit gun-shy about using the term.


According to concerti.de nobody calls Rihm a Neo-romantic anymore. (Zum 70. Geburtstag von Wolfgang Rihm | concerti.de)

He was called that in the 1970s by modernists. But we should not use the term from the perspective of modernists. Not all post-modern music is neo-romantic. And expressing some kind of feelings at all is not enough to be romantic.

On the other hand music can also be too 19th century-like to be neo-romantic imo. Something like that:






Thats rather old-romantic than neo-romantic imo.

A problem is: As diverse classical music is today, definitions are too.


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

Aries said:


> According to concerti.de nobody calls Rihm a Neo-romantic anymore. (Zum 70. Geburtstag von Wolfgang Rihm | concerti.de)
> 
> He was called that in the 1970s by modernists. But we should not use the term from the perspective of modernists. Not all post-modern music is neo-romantic. And expressing some kind of feelings at all is not enough to be romantic.


Thanks for that - and please let me see any other good German articles you find about Rihm. There’s a derth of literature in English about him, especially about his work over the past 20 years, as far as I know.

In fact, in so many of his lieder the word neo-romantic seems apposite to me, because the music seems imbibed in a tradition which goes back to Wolf and early Webern. But yes, for the new Stabat Mater and the Uber die linie series, maybe the epithet neo-romantic isn’t helpful.


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## pianozach (May 21, 2018)

I find it amusing that when I first saw the title of the thread, I read it as *necroromantic" and "necroromanticism"

I don't know what those might sound like.*


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