# Where might the Classical style have led in the absence of Romanticism?



## Ostinato (Jun 24, 2009)

Was the Romantic style an inevitable successor to Classicism? If not, where might Classicism have led? Can one envisage a development of the Classical style in a direction quite different from Romanticism?

There are two strands to this question:

(a) The 'pure' Late Classical style. The leading composers of the 1780s/90s brought this style to a level of great sophistication, e.g. Haydn's final Piano Sonata in E flat, his F minor Piano Variations, and his oratorios; Mozart's late symphonies, Clarinet Concerto and Requiem.

(b) The 'semi-Classical' style(s) of Beethoven and Schubert. Notable here are innovative works such as Beethoven's late Piano Sonatas, Ninth Symphony, and late String Quartets; and Schubert's last String Quartet (D887) and String Quintet, as well as some parts of his late Piano Sonatas, e.g. the slow movement of D959. Some of these - e.g. Beethoven's late string quartets and the first movement of Schubert's D887 - seem to bypass the Romantic style entirely and look forward to later styles.

Could the Classical and/or semi-Classical styles have developed, in the hands of one or more composers of genius, into something radically different from anything we know?


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## Gaspard de la Nuit (Oct 20, 2014)

Everything is always a reaction to what came before it....In the general sense, people in the Classical Era eventually must have felt their art and the whole ethos of what was prioritized lacked the things Romanticism had - heightened sense of individualism, preference for strong, overpowering emotions, narrative arc and depiction of human struggle, disinterest with Enlightenment-era positivism, expanded imagination and disregard for formal constraints, etc....and after that you see people reacting in contradiction to Romantic excess and emotionalism, albeit in different ways.

What's interesting to me is that if you take avante-garde composers like Beethoven or Wagner, at the end of their life, despite their music becoming progressively more advanced, younger composers' music somehow has a more 'modern' feel, the way Schubert's does compared to Beethoven or even Wagner and Liszt's early pieces that were written in the decade following Beethoven's death. It's like the younger generations are living in a totally different world.


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## afterpostjack (May 2, 2010)

Gaspard de la Nuit said:


> Everything is always a reaction to what came before it....In the general sense, people in the Classical Era eventually must have felt their art and the whole ethos of what was prioritized lacked the things Romanticism had - heightened sense of individualism, preference for strong, overpowering emotions, narrative arc and depiction of human struggle, disinterest with Enlightenment-era positivism, expanded imagination and disregard for formal constraints, etc....and after that you see people reacting in contradiction to Romantic excess and emotionalism, albeit in different ways.
> 
> What's interesting to me is that if you take avante-garde composers like Beethoven or Wagner, at the end of their life, despite their music becoming progressively more advanced, younger composers' music somehow has a more 'modern' feel, the way Schubert's does compared to Beethoven or even Wagner and Liszt's early pieces that were written in the decade following Beethoven's death. It's like the younger generations are living in a totally different world.


I think that this is an interesting matter. Most ground-breaking composers are only ground-breaking for a short while, as they usually develop a personal style and then stick to it for much of their career. Schubert's last symphonies sound, in my opinion, much more romantic than any works of Beethoven although they were written around the same time as Beethoven wrote his 9th symphony. Also, one could contrast Bruckner's last works with the early works of Mahler and Strauss (which were written around the same time). It seems that adolescence and early adulthood are highly important in shaping a composer's style.


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## isorhythm (Jan 2, 2015)

You could broaden this question to ask whether any development in music was inevitable - was people often assume, either explicitly or implicitly - or whether they were more or less arbitrary, and could in other circumstances have gone in some completely other direction that would feel equally inevitable today.

It may be that at certain key moments there have been sort of forks in the road, but once a path has been chosen its implications must be followed for a while. I tend toward this view.


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## Richannes Wrahms (Jan 6, 2014)

Nope. Music is such a late artcraft that the forms it takes depend almost entirely on the pre-established cultural environment.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

Romanticism was a cultural movement, not just a musical one, and it was manifesting in literature in Mozart's time. It's manifestation in music was inevitable in that context.


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## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)

Ostinato said:


> Was the Romantic style an inevitable successor to Classicism? If not, where might Classicism have led? Can one envisage a development of the Classical style in a direction quite different from Romanticism?
> 
> There are two strands to this question:
> 
> ...


I agree that Romanticism was a cultural thing, not independent of its context.

I see in Haydn and Beethoven (of course, since he was both) the Romantic. I think a major component of Romanticism was its "poetic" nature, and associations with literature, and individual introspection.

Classicism was born out of the power structure of Church and kings, not the individual.

The Ninth Symphony of Beethoven is "populist" and so fails that criterion for bypassing the Romantic. In fact, LBV's late quartets and sonatas have already reached a new paradigm of individual expression and introspection, which we seem to have assimilated unconsciously, so I question the whole idea of Romanticism as some sort of "by-passable" stage. Romanticism was simply the "waking up" of artists to the fact that they are communicators to all people; not just for the privileged few or the powers that be.


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## ArtMusic (Jan 5, 2013)

Where would a carriage be without wheels? Unfortunately, nowhere because wheels are needed. Same goes with Romanticism.


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## violadude (May 2, 2011)

ArtMusic said:


> Where would a carriage be without wheels? Unfortunately, nowhere because wheels are needed. Same goes with Romanticism.


Trying out some of that "modernist symbolism" huh, Artmusic?


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## tdc (Jan 17, 2011)

millionrainbows said:


> Classicism was born out of the power structure of Church and kings, not the individual.


I don't think its quite as simple as this. All music is born both from societal influences and the individual.


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## tdc (Jan 17, 2011)

Then one day there was Beethoven who gave us the music of the _individual_ as if to say - "here you go, this is the kind of music artists would've been composing all along if it wasn't for power structures and churches and kings."

Not.

Society changed in a certain way and the art of the time reflected those societal changes. Since that time society has continued to change a lot, and the influence of the Romantic era is not any more prevalent on present day thinking than ideas of other eras.

I think a lot of people have realized that focusing on the individual is good to an extent, but too much can lead to some pretty selfish and destructive behavior.


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## TheLastGreatComposer (Aug 13, 2015)

*Perhaps a Different Beginning, but the Same Outcome*

The Romantic era of music was the next natural step in the evolution of music. People strive to find something more out of all forms of expression; this is why music naturally left the constrains of the Classicism over time. Certain historical events throughout history led humanity to need more out of music. The idea of freedom and liberty spread like wildfire through the entire world. People began to feel there voice was important, and all at once tried to expressed themselves uniquely. This is true not only in the history of music, but also in the history of every form of art.

If historical events were different, then perhaps the Romantic era may have ben prolonged. But I believe eventually we would have made it to the same place, it's part of who we are.


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## tdc (Jan 17, 2011)

TheLastGreatComposer said:


> The idea of freedom and liberty spread like wildfire through the entire world. People began to feel there voice was important, and all at once tried to expressed themselves uniquely. This is true not only in the history of music, but also in the history of every form of art.


But in general I don't think that these historical events made any improvements in art necessarily, it changed what artists were doing and expanded the different styles of music we have, just as artists are doing today and have always done.

Also, I think the ideas of freedom and liberty have been around for a very long time - long before there was even notated music.

There were also power structures then, just as there are now, different, yet similar. The power of the church has shifted to corporations - still highly influential on society and artists are being influenced by these power structures.


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## neoshredder (Nov 7, 2011)

It could've skipped to modernism. Shostakovich leading the way.


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## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)

tdc said:


> Then one day there was Beethoven who gave us the music of the _individual_ as if to say - "here you go, this is the kind of music artists would've been composing all along if it wasn't for power structures and churches and kings."
> 
> Not.
> 
> ...


I do think that the audience changed, in that poetry is a private, introspective thing. In poetry, there is an imagined audience, which is assumed to be able to relate to the artist on a human level. This is a quite different agenda from 'divertissiments' for royals, fireworks displays, banquets, etc.

Chamber music played a part, I'm sure, and people began to be able to afford pianos.


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## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)

tdc said:


> Also, I think the ideas of freedom and liberty have been around for a very long time - long before there was even notated music.
> 
> There were also power structures then, just as there are now, different, yet similar. The power of the church has shifted to corporations - still highly influential on society and artists are being influenced by these power structures.


But you're completely ignoring history, as Democracy and liberty became viable ideas in France and elsewhere. These events just happen to coincide with Romanticism. Are you opposing the idea that art is affected by its social environment? I think several here already agree with this.


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## tdc (Jan 17, 2011)

millionrainbows said:


> But you're completely ignoring history, as Democracy and liberty became viable ideas in France and elsewhere. These events just happen to coincide with Romanticism. Are you opposing the idea that art is affected by its social environment? I think several here already agree with this.


No, I agree that the social environment effects art, what I disagree with is that this represents some kind of a new turning point for mankind in a linear progression, or that the ideas are specific to the Romantic era. The idea of democracy goes back to at least the 5th century B.C.

Sure, there were some good ideas in the air at that time and artists found them inspiring, but I don't think these ideas were more important to music and art than other ideas that happened say in the Renaissance period. I don't think the view of music "focusing on the individual" is anymore of a valid form of music creating than what Bach was doing - it is simply a different approach. I don't see classical music that is being created today as being more influenced by one or the other, it builds off an amalgamation of influences. I don't even necessarily believe there is more freedom and liberty in today's society than there was previous to the Romantic era - there has simply been a shift in power.


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## Copperears (Nov 10, 2013)

I won't get into the more complex debate (or I'll get wordy), but I think it helps to consider both the _intrinsic_, formal evolution of music, i.e the exploration and eventual exhaustion of structures and practices, and the _extrinsic_ cultural influences that bias the points where such intrinsic exhaustion leads to innovation and new forms, separately.

Simply put, there's a logic to the formal evolution of music itself independent of its cultural context, but that logic intertwines with cultural context as influencer. In my opinion, at least.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

Copperears said:


> I won't get into the more complex debate (or I'll get wordy), but I think it helps to consider both the _intrinsic_, formal evolution of music, i.e the exploration and eventual exhaustion of structures and practices, and the _extrinsic_ cultural influences that bias the points where such intrinsic exhaustion leads to innovation and new forms, separately.
> 
> Simply put, there's a logic to the formal evolution of music itself independent of its cultural context, but that logic intertwines with cultural context as influencer. In my opinion, at least.


Can you be more specific about what structures and practices you see as having evolved by their own logic? What forms and techniques were exhausted, and what new forms had to come into being, for reasons intrinsic more to the current state of music itself than to the needs of the culture for certain kinds of expression? Did composer X in 1850 begin using certain harmonic progressions because he felt that music needed to evolve in that way or because, being a person alive in his time and place, they spoke strongly to his sensibility? Did composer Z in 1750 refrain from using those same progressions because he was unable to imagine them, because the evolution of music had not yet exhausted other harmonies, or because, as a person of his time and place, he did not find them appealing or useful? To be concrete, why did harmonic progressions found in Bach (Chromatic Fantasy and Fugue in D-minor) and Haydn (The Creation) not become a basic part of the tissue of music until Wagner?

I'm not challenging you to give a definitive answer. I just wonder frequently about the evolution of art and its supposed inevitabilities.


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## Copperears (Nov 10, 2013)

Woodduck said:


> Can you be more specific about what structures and practices you see as having evolved by their own logic? What forms and techniques were exhausted, and what new forms had to come into being, for reasons intrinsic more to the current state of music itself than to the needs of the culture for certain kinds of expression? Did composer X in 1850 begin using certain harmonic progressions because he felt that music needed to evolve in that way or because, being a person alive in his time and place, they spoke strongly to his sensibility? Did composer Z in 1750 refrain from using those same progressions because he was unable to imagine them, because the evolution of music had not yet exhausted other harmonies, or because, as a person of his time and place, he did not find them appealing or useful? To be concrete, why did harmonic progressions found in Bach (Chromatic Fantasy and Fugue in D-minor) and Haydn (The Creation) not become a basic part of the tissue of music until Wagner?
> 
> I'm not challenging you to give a definitive answer. I just wonder frequently about the evolution of art and its supposed inevitabilities.


Right, we tend to think of things Wagner and Mahler do as discovering possibilities Bach or Haydn "could never have come up with."

I can't think of a very explicit example at the moment, unfortunately, though if I made some effort such a tangible would be useful for discussion. Every writer, composer is probably thinking both in terms of their own work, and in terms of other artists prior to them (or contemporary with them). It just seems like in the Baroque era, and to some extent in the Classical era as well, that composers didn't feel a need to radically exceed either their or their predecessors' compositions with each new piece.

He wrote a lot of them, but Haydn's symphonies seem to me, at least, to take much smaller steps between them than, say, Mahler's, or Beethoven's, for that matter. Was there less of a need to "do something new" in the Baroque and Classical eras, or did it have to do with more sustained patronage? You're writing a series of pieces to please a persistent patron, or audience, whose expectations you're eager to fulfill? Whereas by the time the Romantic era has gone into full swing, shocking or challenging your audience has become more the thing to do?

Those are the extrinsic factors I think of, whereas the intrinsic ones would be more along the lines of, I feel like resolving this harmonic sequence in 8 bars rather than 4, or using more 2nds than 5ths than I did the last time, etc.etc.

I don't think it's a question of the ability of a later generation of composer being more able to imagine certain combinations than an earlier one, otherwise one would make the spurious argument that Berio is smarter than J.S. Bach.  Certainly later composers were more willing to do things that were simply wrong by the standards of their predecessors; that would be a question of aesthetic values, yes?

Beethoven's late quartets start to explore possibilities in rhythm that seem new compared with everything he's done before -- it's been a long time since I've studied that in depth enough to remember why, but his is an interesting case as if he'd gone completely deaf, one would wonder what would have motivated the evolution of his music in that state. Was he completely unable to hear, or did he use the primitive tech available back then to listen, still? I believe there were things that could be used to essentially transmit sound vibrations through the jaw that brought some rudiments of hearing back, was that possible for Beethoven?

What I should really do is go back and read this book:

http://www.amazon.com/The-Classical-Style-Beethoven-Expanded/dp/0393317129

One of the masterpieces of musical history and thinking, I think; Charles Rosen is a hero of mine.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

Copperears said:


> Every writer, composer is probably thinking both in terms of their own work, and in terms of other artists prior to them (or contemporary with them). It just seems like in the Baroque era, and to some extent in the Classical era as well, that composers didn't feel a need to radically exceed either their or their predecessors' compositions with each new piece.
> 
> He wrote a lot of them, but Haydn's symphonies seem to me, at least, to take much smaller steps between them than, say, Mahler's, or Beethoven's, for that matter. Was there less of a need to "do something new" in the Baroque and Classical eras, or did it have to do with more sustained patronage? You're writing a series of pieces to please a persistent patron, or audience, whose expectations you're eager to fulfill? Whereas by the time the Romantic era has gone into full swing, shocking or challenging your audience has become more the thing to do?


It's clear that in some eras, artists exhibit much less of a tendency to innovate. I think there's a natural desire most people have to try new things, just so as not to repeat themselves and bore either themselves or their audience. But even that desire seems not to have been very strong in certain cultures and eras. My impression is that in stable cultures, where ideas and institutions don't change and ancestral traditions are venerated, art varies within very narrow parameters and changes little or not at all over time. The individual artist is judged primarily by his level of mastery of the techniques of art, the meaning and purpose of which is established by tradition. Artistic individuality might be appreciated to a degree, but not as arbitrary "self-expression" at the expense of respect for traditional values and agreed-upon social purposes.

Between that view of art and the artist, conspicuous in traditional, native cultures, and the view prevalent in the modern West, is a distance of light years. Western culture reached the point, by the early twentieth century if not sooner, of accepting the idea that an artist who did not innovate and present an unmistakable personal vision was culturally and historically insignificant ("derivative" becoming a virtual synonym for "mediocre"). I see the accelerating rate of innovation in art, including music, of the West as reflecting the shift from a culture of stable, rigid, hierarchical social structures toward one recognizing the individual as the basic unit of society. I also hear the forms and expressive qualities of music changing over time to reflect this, with perhaps the most decisive shift occurring in the move away from poyphony (the confluence of equal voices) to homophony (the centrality of the individual voice), and the consequent evolution of forms which could portray the situation and emotions of the individual person. Romanticism represents the climactic stage of the individuation of expression in the arts, and in that respect I think that Modernism, even as it responded to new currents in thought and politics, and even as a prominent strain of it repudiated what it viewed as Romanticism's emotional self-indulgence, basically perpetuates the assumptions of Romanticism in its exalting of innovation and stylistic individualism.


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## Copperears (Nov 10, 2013)

Woodduck said:


> It's clear that in some eras, artists exhibit much less of a tendency to innovate. I think there's a natural desire most people have to try new things, just so as not to repeat themselves and bore either themselves or their audience. But even that desire seems not to have been very strong in certain cultures and eras. My impression is that in stable cultures, where ideas and institutions don't change and ancestral traditions are venerated, art varies within very narrow parameters and changes little or not at all over time. The individual artist is judged primarily by his level of mastery of the techniques of art, the meaning and purpose of which is established by tradition. Artistic individuality might be appreciated to a degree, but not as arbitrary "self-expression" at the expense of respect for traditional values and agreed-upon social purposes.
> 
> Between that view of art and the artist, conspicuous in traditional, native cultures, and the view prevalent in the modern West, is a distance of light years. Western culture reached the point, by the early twentieth century if not sooner, of accepting the idea that an artist who did not innovate and present an unmistakable personal vision was culturally and historically insignificant ("derivative" becoming a virtual synonym for "mediocre"). I see the accelerating rate of innovation in art, including music, of the West as reflecting the shift from a culture of stable, rigid, hierarchical social structures toward one recognizing the individual as the basic unit of society. I also hear the forms and expressive qualities of music changing over time to reflect this, with perhaps the most decisive shift occurring in the move away from polyphony (the confluence of equal voices) to homophony (the centrality of the individual voice), and the consequent evolution of forms which could portray the situation and emotions of the individual person. Romanticism represents the climactic stage of the individuation of expression in the arts, and in that respect I think that Modernism, even as it responded to new currents in thought and politics, and even as a prominent strain of it repudiated what it viewed as Romanticism's emotional self-indulgence, basically perpetuates the assumptions of Romanticism in its exalting of innovation and stylistic individualism.


That is spot on. The value of innovation is a pretty recent thing; for most of human history, it would have been considered a sign of either incompetence (lack of understanding of the practices) or insanity.


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## tdc (Jan 17, 2011)

As far as the value placed on innovation that seemed to become prominent in the Romantic era - I agree with this observation, but also feel that it did not necessarily result in composers having more variety in their works - over-all. There became less personal repetition, yes but also a significant decrease in the over-all output, so the factors balanced each other out to a large extent.


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

I remember reading a question asked by Bartok of his friends after an early performance of his music: "Well, what do you think? Was it modern enough?"


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