# Are Baroque and Classical Eras Impersonal?



## Captainnumber36 (Jan 19, 2017)

Not that this makes it bad, but I think in my youth, that's what made me prefer the Romantics more.


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## Bulldog (Nov 21, 2013)

I don't consider those two eras impersonal, but I do find the heart-on-the sleeve tendencies of the Romantics a turn-off.


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## Nate Miller (Oct 24, 2016)

As a listener, you bring your own experiences to the aesthetic encounter with the music. So that would mean its you, not the music. 😄

to be fair, the romantic period had more "expressive" passages than the earlier periods, so maybe you were drawn to that.

but to say Bach was passionless isn't fair either. He did have 20 children, you know


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## fluteman (Dec 7, 2015)

Captainnumber36 said:


> Not that this makes it bad, but I think in my youth, that's what made me prefer the Romantics more.


This is an oft-discussed topic here, so much so that I can recommend a couple of sources that do a nice job contrasting classical aesthetic values with those of the later romantic era. W. Dean Sutcliffe, Instrumental Music in an Age of Sociability: Haydn, Mozart and Friends (Cambridge University Press 2020), and Walter Jackson Bate, From Classic to Romantic: Premises of Taste in Eighteenth-Century England (Harvard University Press 1946). 

The older book is available free online, and though its author is known primarily as a poetry and literature critic, deals with the topic of aesthetic tastes, including those in music and visual art, in general. The newer book's author is a musicologist known for his expertise in music of the classical era. Perhaps the distinction can best be summarized as one between an era where sociability was most valued to one where individuality was most valued.


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## Captainnumber36 (Jan 19, 2017)

I think art is meant to be a highly personalized tribute to somebody, even the self, and the romantics (in any genre of music) do personalize it, but it's always missing a complete connection b/c it wasn't made just for you.

That's what I think makes the Classical Era so effective in particular, it doesn't try to be personal, and is just solid entertainment.

That's why Mozart became my favorite composer.


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## Captainnumber36 (Jan 19, 2017)

But, I think when it's art and highly personalized, you can fall in love with that person and their work, but it won't be for mass consumption.


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## Captainnumber36 (Jan 19, 2017)

Nate Miller said:


> As a listener, you bring your own experiences to the aesthetic encounter with the music. So that would mean its you, not the music. 😄
> 
> to be fair, the romantic period had more "expressive" passages than the earlier periods, so maybe you were drawn to that.
> 
> but to say Bach was passionless isn't fair either. He did have 20 children, you know


I certainly don't think he was passionless, I think it's very entertaining music, I just don't see it as a deeply emotional experience as I do the Romantics.

And I think that's better for mass consumption; focus on being entertaining with class.


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## bagpipers (Jun 29, 2013)

Not at all; Baroque and early classical music is wonderful.I inherited my fathers CD collection and it has many versions of early Mozart symphony's and string quartets.Great stuff really ,I love it,I'd almost go so far as to say I like early Mozart better honestly.

And is goes without saying Bach,Handel,Scarlatti,Purcell can't beat them really!


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## Captainnumber36 (Jan 19, 2017)

bagpipers said:


> Not at all; Baroque and early classical music is wonderful.I inherited my fathers CD collection and it has many versions of early Mozart symphony's and string quartets.Great stuff really ,I love it,I'd almost go so far as to say I like early Mozart better honestly.
> 
> And is goes without saying Bach,Handel,Scarlatti,Purcell can't beat them really!



I didn't say bad, just more entertaining than moving, overall.


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## EdwardBast (Nov 25, 2013)

In a quite literal sense, yes. Before 1800, with few exceptions, the expression inherent in musical works was not understood to be personal expression, that is, not the expression of the composer or any other particular individual (except in the case of dramatic vocal music where the emotion of the characters is represented). Baroque composers were likened to orators, who used various musical-rhetorical devices to induce specific affects (see the Doctrine of the Affections) in the audience. In the Classical Era this kind of abstract, impersonal expression was assumed when it wasn't completely downplayed. in this era, the minor mode was understood to be expressive of sorrow; the major mode was considered expressively neutral for the most part.


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## RICK RIEKERT (Oct 9, 2017)

Quite right, EdwardBast. Every type of Baroque music was concerned, both theoretically and practically, with the ways of producing, in a very rational way, the many forms of emotional states in the listener’s mind. Emotion, however, wasn’t viewed as a spontaneous production. It was based on a number of precise and predefined features of composition including sound, meter, counterpoint development, metaphor, tonality, rhythm, modulations, inflections, articulations, etc.. The traditional forms of compositions (fugue, minuet, saraband, etc.) and the new ones which emerged all conveyed a certain form of emotion. The Baroque strove for a strong systemizing of structure, the means and stereotypes used to develop a musical rhetoric that every educated person knew. Every person _then_, that is. To us, the children of Romanticism, the whole enterprise may seem artificial, with emotion to be experienced, if you like, almost at one remove. Haydn was perhaps one of the last major composers who strictly adhered to this classical rhetoric of the Baroque era.


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## EvaBaron (Jan 3, 2022)

As I understand it, from zero research or musical education, baroque and classical periods appeal to universal emotions and feelings, and the romantic period is the emotions and feelings of the composer himself, and that Beethoven’s 3rd symphony was the gateway to the romantic period because he modelled the symphony after himself. So by that logic baroque and classical periods would be impersonal.


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## jegreenwood (Dec 25, 2015)

fluteman said:


> This is an oft-discussed topic here, so much so that I can recommend a couple of sources that do a nice job contrasting classical aesthetic values with those of the later romantic era. W. Dean Sutcliffe, Instrumental Music in an Age of Sociability: Haydn, Mozart and Friends (Cambridge University Press 2020), and *Walter Jackson Bate*, From Classic to Romantic: Premises of Taste in Eighteenth-Century England (Harvard University Press 1946).
> 
> The older book is available free online, and though its author is known primarily as a poetry and literature critic, deals with the topic of aesthetic tastes, including those in music and visual art, in general. The newer book's author is a musicologist known for his expertise in music of the classical era. Perhaps the distinction can best be summarized as one between an era where sociability was most valued to one where individuality was most valued.


I took his legendary class on Samuel Johnson.


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## Yabetz (Sep 6, 2021)

...


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## fluteman (Dec 7, 2015)

jegreenwood said:


> I took his legendary class on Samuel Johnson.


One of my favorite college professors, William H. Pritchard, and a legendary teacher in his own right, was a graduate student of Prof. Bate.


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## Yabetz (Sep 6, 2021)

EdwardBast said:


> In a quite literal sense, yes. Before 1800, with few exceptions, the expression inherent in musical works was not understood to be personal expression, that is, not the expression of the composer or any other particular individual (except in the case of dramatic vocal music where the emotion of the characters is represented). Baroque composers were likened to orators, who used various musical-rhetorical devices to induce specific affects (see the Doctrine of the Affections) in the audience. In the Classical Era this kind of abstract, impersonal expression was assumed when it wasn't completely downplayed. in this era, the minor mode was understood to be expressive of sorrow; the major mode was considered expressively neutral for the most part.


But to me that raises a question: how do we know that? How do we know there was this dividing line at all times between a composer's feelings or emotions and the feelings and emotions that the composer was hoping to convey? Now I realize that in literature, occasionally taking on another persona was a frequent technique, but at the same time I don't think we have any reason to believe that Milton never really meant and felt what he wrote. "Lycidas" was artificial to an extent, but it doesn't mean the late sonnets were. Handel's operas probably didn't exactly mirror his own inner world, but it doesn't necessarily mean his own beliefs and feelings aren't reflected in the Messiah.


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## hammeredklavier (Feb 18, 2018)

Captainnumber36 said:


> That's why Mozart became my favorite composer.











My Love of Mozart Has Been Steady


For those of you who have known me on here for a while know I've been all over the place with what I like. But Mozart has been my favorite composer for a while now, it's a great feeling to know who you are! :)




www.talkclassical.com






hammeredklavier said:


> I've known you long enough to know what you intend by constantly reviving or creating threads of titles and OPs with controversial statements about Mozart.
> 1. Trigger Mozart-naysayers to respond
> 2. Proceed to your "denouement"; _"Beethoven is Better"_
> eg. Captainnumber36: "How do you feel about Beethoven Norman Bates? I think he's much more the expressionist when compared to Mozart. He has the tortured artist concept going for him, and much of his music is filled with a dark intellectual beauty." <from the thread Mozart is the Van Gogh of CM>


(I'm posting this ^ just so everyone is aware of the context)


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## hammeredklavier (Feb 18, 2018)

Captainnumber36 said:


> just more entertaining than moving, overall.


So ultimately, you're trying to say;


Captainnumber36 said:


> In the end, I find Mozart to be pop classical.





Captainnumber36 said:


> I do find many of his works quite shallow, yet catchy.





Captainnumber36 said:


> I must admit that when I listen to Mozart for a prolonged period, his sugar gets too sweet after a while.


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## Captainnumber36 (Jan 19, 2017)

hammeredklavier said:


> So ultimately, you're trying to say;


Yes. Good catches.


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## Captainnumber36 (Jan 19, 2017)

But, I'm not looking down on it really, not anymore. I'm currently having an inner battle between what I consider to be art and what I consider to be entertainment.

I need to relax and just let myself enjoy what I enjoy.


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

RICK RIEKERT said:


> Quite right, EdwardBast. Every type of Baroque music was concerned, both theoretically and practically, with the ways of producing, in a very rational way, the many forms of emotional states in the listener’s mind. Emotion, however, wasn’t viewed as a spontaneous production. It was based on a number of precise and predefined features of composition including sound, meter, counterpoint development, metaphor, tonality, rhythm, modulations, inflections, articulations, etc.. The traditional forms of compositions (fugue, minuet, saraband, etc.) and the new ones which emerged all conveyed a certain form of emotion. The Baroque strove for a strong systemizing of structure, the means and stereotypes used to develop a musical rhetoric that every educated person knew. Every person _then_, that is. To us, the children of Romanticism, the whole enterprise may seem artificial, with emotion to be experienced, if you like, almost at one remove. Haydn was perhaps one of the last major composers who strictly adhered to this classical rhetoric of the Baroque era.


What do you think is supposed to be going on, at the level of expression and of form, in the fantasia?


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

Hhhhhhsbshshsbdudbdjbddj


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

RICK RIEKERT said:


> Quite right, EdwardBast. Every type of Baroque music was concerned, both theoretically and practically, with the ways of producing, in a very rational way, the many forms of emotional states in the listener’s mind. Emotion, however, wasn’t viewed as a spontaneous production. It was based on a number of precise and predefined features of composition including sound, meter, counterpoint development, metaphor, tonality, rhythm, modulations, inflections, articulations, etc.. The traditional forms of compositions (fugue, minuet, saraband, etc.) and the new ones which emerged all conveyed a certain form of emotion. The Baroque strove for a strong systemizing of structure, the means and stereotypes used to develop a musical rhetoric that every educated person knew. Every person _then_, that is. To us, the children of Romanticism, the whole enterprise may seem artificial, with emotion to be experienced, if you like, almost at one remove. Haydn was perhaps one of the last major composers who strictly adhered to this classical rhetoric of the Baroque era.


It would be interesting to look at a specific example - the expression of anger in Liszt’s Wilde Jagd and Monteverdi’s combattimento. Or the expression of love in a song by Machaut (I’m listening to song called Riches D’amour on Orlando Consort’s Fortunes Child) and, for example, Berlioz’s nuits d’ivresse.


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## Kreisler jr (Apr 21, 2021)

There is music from the late Renaissance early baroque like Dowland's and other Elizabethan songs and also Madrigals from all over Europe that certainly seem rather personal in expression. I am aware of the theoretical stances that changed over time but the results are not necessarily so different as the different "background" might suggest.


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## Rogerx (Apr 27, 2018)

Captainnumber36 said:


> But, I'm not looking down on it really, not anymore. I'm currently having an inner battle between what I consider to be art and what I consider to be entertainment.
> 
> *I need to relax and just let myself enjoy what I enjoy.*


Realizing that is the best medicine. 👍


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## premont (May 7, 2015)

Captainnumber36 said:


> I'm currently having an inner battle between what I consider to be *art *and what I consider to be *entertainment*.


Excellent distinction. 

Admittedly entertainment may be of high quality, but often it doesn't stand repetition equally well as art.


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## jegreenwood (Dec 25, 2015)

Captainnumber36 said:


> But, I'm not looking down on it really, not anymore. I'm currently having an inner battle between what I consider to be art and what I consider to be entertainment.
> 
> I need to relax and just let myself enjoy what I enjoy.


But you need to define the terms. My (extremely) shorthand distinction between Haydn and Mozart is that Mozart wrote music that more readily provokes emotion - maybe not what the composer felt, but what he causes me to feel, while Haydn wrote music simply for the pleasure of creating music. And for me that is entertaining. But it is also art,


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## RICK RIEKERT (Oct 9, 2017)

Mandryka said:


> What do you think is supposed to be going on, at the level of expression and of form, in the fantasia?


Not all Baroque fantasias are alike but their primary characteristic is musical freedom. Its lasting use may be attributed to the compositional freedom it offers, which enabled the composer to display a wide variety of mostly keyboard techniques. Composers focus less on rhythm, tempo, and strict meter, instead emphasizing virtuosity and experimental harmony. Despite sounding improvisatory, the fantasia has formal and structural characteristics related to those of other contemporary genres, such as dance movements, preludes, capriccios, and others. Bach’s Chromatic Fantasia and Fugue, for example, is full of musical-rhetorical devices directly connected to the expression of emotions.


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## hammeredklavier (Feb 18, 2018)

jegreenwood said:


> But you need to define the terms. My (extremely) shorthand distinction between Haydn and Mozart is that Mozart wrote music that more readily provokes emotion - maybe not what the composer felt, but what he causes me to feel, while Haydn wrote music simply for the pleasure of creating music. And for me that is entertaining. But it is also art,


That might be because Mozart is 'Germanic', whereas Haydn is 'Viennese' in terms of emotional stability when it comes to vertical harmony.
There's all kinds of half-truths and myths propagated by the later figures such as Berlioz, Brahms, Wagner, Schoenberg that Mozart was some kind of an "avant-gardist proto-Romantic" by his own will. (eg. "But the theorists told Mozart during his lifetime what a dissonance chaser he was, and how all too often he gave in to the passion to write something ugly, and how with his talent such writing really wasn't necessary." -Schoenberg)
But I think a more plausible explanation for it would be that he simply grew up in the environment or hearing, performing, composing music of this harmonic style, and "got used to it" from childhood; Bach being his distant predecessor. (likewise, A.C. Adlgasser, F.J. Aumann, G.V. Pasterwitz also would have exhibited similar characteristics to some extent, but there were also many foreigners who worked in the Bavarian Salzburg or other German lands who didn't, such as L. Gatti). I've thought about it as I posted the following excerpts in the opera subforum (in a thread about lesser-known operas.)

"On the other hand, for the French, Mozart was certainly not 'one of us' from a national point of view. At the beginning of the nineteenth century, before Berlioz's time, some influential critics - for instance, Julien-Louis Geoffroy - rejected Mozart as a foreigner, considering his music 'scholastic', stressing his use of harmony over melody, and the dominance of the orchestra over singing in the operas - all these were considered negative features of 'Germanic' music." {'Mozartian Undercurrents in Berlioz' (Benjamin Pearl)}


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

RICK RIEKERT said:


> Not all Baroque fantasias are alike but their primary characteristic is musical freedom. Its lasting use may be attributed to the compositional freedom it offers, which enabled the composer to display a wide variety of mostly keyboard techniques. Composers focus less on rhythm, tempo, and strict meter, instead emphasizing virtuosity and experimental harmony. Despite sounding improvisatory, the fantasia has formal and structural characteristics related to those of other contemporary genres, such as dance movements, preludes, capriccios, and others. Bach’s Chromatic Fantasia and Fugue, for example, is full of musical-rhetorical devices directly connected to the expression of emotions.



I think prima facie something like Purcell's one note fantasia is as expressive as any music and it's doing it without recourse to standardised rhetorical structures. I could find plenty of other works where I'd say the same thing -- fantasies by Luis Milan for example.

By the way, there's a book I once saw (I got it on approval but didn't keep it) which assimilated fantasies to the renaissance and baroque understanding of natural landscape (random twists and turns, a surprise round every corner!)


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

Re entertainment and art, we can have the question, "what is bad entertainment?" and the answer is something along the lines that it's not very agreeable. And we can have the question "what is bad craft?" Bad craft is something which doesn't follow the conventional rules, like the Preislied in Maestersinger. But what is bad art? I'm not sure that question even makes sense, but insofar as it does, I guess the answer has to do with fake, inauthentic. Bad art is not "meant".


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## Captainnumber36 (Jan 19, 2017)

I did have the recent thought that all definitions, such as entertainment vs art, aren't factual and vary from person to person and are all opinion.

That said, I think everything in the universe is art in that it makes you feel and/or think something and we just pick our favorite artists.


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## Captainnumber36 (Jan 19, 2017)

I do really enjoy Schiff's Mozart Sonatas and Lang Lang's Goldberg Variations.


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

Captainnumber36 said:


> I do really enjoy Schiff's Mozart Sonatas and Lang Lang's Goldberg Variations.


Why are you posting just to say what you enjoy? Do you think it could possibly matter to anyone except you?


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## Captainnumber36 (Jan 19, 2017)

Mandryka said:


> Why are you posting just to say what you enjoy? Do you think it could possibly matter to anyone except you?



I'm not looking for acceptance in my choices, just sharing what I enjoy in a thread that it is relevant in.


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## larold (Jul 20, 2017)

Not impersonal, just not loud, fast and garish like Romantic era music. J.S. Bach's St. Matthew Passion is as profound as anything written in the Romantic era as is Handel's Messiah and Haydn's The Creation. These masterpieces deal with the most monumental events of humanity and Christianity. No one in the Romantic era came close to this on the same topics. Wagner's Ring cycle, the most profound masterpiece of the Romantic era, deals with national folklore.


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## EdwardBast (Nov 25, 2013)

Yabetz said:


> But to me that raises a question: how do we know that? *How do we know there was this dividing line at all times between a composer's feelings or emotions and the feelings and emotions that the composer was hoping to convey?* Now I realize that in literature, occasionally taking on another persona was a frequent technique, but at the same time I don't think we have any reason to believe that Milton never really meant and felt what he wrote. "Lycidas" was artificial to an extent, but it doesn't mean the late sonnets were. Handel's operas probably didn't exactly mirror his own inner world, but it doesn't necessarily mean his own beliefs and feelings aren't reflected in the Messiah.


Except in the case of dramatic characterization in opera, song, or ballet, I don't assume composers generally hope to convey specific feelings and emotions as a central aspect of musical creation. I think it more likely they create musical ideas that happen to possess certain adjunct expressive qualities, and that sorting passages according to these expressive qualities in such a way as to convey metaphorically a coherent sequence of inner states is an important element in laying out musical structures in much music from the 19thc on. Absent specific avowal by the composer or convincing documentary evidence, I believe the affect and "personal" expression in instrumental music should not be attributed to the composer, but rather to a fictional being whose experience the music is understood to be. Edward T. Cone and a number of writers who've followed his lead suggest calling this fictional being the _musical persona_. In so doing they are adopting a critical stance common in the interpretation of poetry, whereby what is expressed is attributed to "the speaker" of the poem rather than to the poet (once again, in the absence of a specific avowal or clear biographical data).


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## RICK RIEKERT (Oct 9, 2017)

Mandryka said:


> I think prima facie something like Purcell's one note fantasia is as expressive as any music and it's doing it without recourse to standardised rhetorical structures. I could find plenty of other works where I'd say the same thing -- fantasies by Luis Milan for example.


I certainly wouldn't want to be without those wonderful works by Purcell and Luis Milan. As I said, not all fantasias are alike and those from different eras and nations share at most a family resemblance. In any case, I have no wish to torture the freewheeling fantasia on a procrustean bed of rhetorical devices. In the case of Luis Milan, as a rule composers and writers of the sixteenth century could not even agree on how to explain what a fantasia (or the related ricercare) was, which resulted in some confusion about the terms. However, I think on further investigation you’ll find that the fantasia genre of the vihuelistic repertoire responds to structural elements linked to rhetoric procedures. A good discussion of Purcell’s use of rhetorical elements in the _Fantasias_ is Ted Conner’s, _Musical-Rhetorical Gestures in the Fantasias of Henry Purcell_ in the _Journal of the Viola da Gamba Society of America, _vol.39, 2002, pp.5-49. Dr. Conner is the leader of his celebrated Jazz quartet and Artistic Director of Nights Black Bird, an early music ensemble here in the northeast USA in which he plays viola da gamba and lute.


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

Captainnumber36 said:


> I'm not looking for acceptance in my choices, just sharing what I enjoy in a thread that it is relevant in.



I know, and what I said was too aggressive. I'm sorry. I just thought it was a bit like telling everyone your favourite colour or something!


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

RICK RIEKERT said:


> I certainly wouldn't want to be without those wonderful works by Purcell and Luis Milan. As I said, not all fantasias are alike and those from different eras and nations share at most a family resemblance. In any case, I have no wish to torture the freewheeling fantasia on a procrustean bed of rhetorical devices. In the case of Luis Milan, as a rule composers and writers of the sixteenth century could not even agree on how to explain what a fantasia (or the related ricercare) was, which resulted in some confusion about the terms. However, I think on further investigation you’ll find that the fantasia genre of the vihuelistic repertoire responds to structural elements linked to rhetoric procedures. A good discussion of Purcell’s use of rhetorical elements in the _Fantasias_ is Ted Conner’s, _Musical-Rhetorical Gestures in the Fantasias of Henry Purcell_ in the _Journal of the Viola da Gamba Society of America, _vol.39, 2002, pp.5-49. Dr. Conner is the leader of his celebrated Jazz quartet and Artistic Director of Nights Black Bird, an early music ensemble here in the northeast USA in which he plays viola da gamba and lute.



I kind of knew at the back of my mind that I was letting myself in for that sort of response. A little knowledge is a dangerous thing!

The idea of fantasia is interesting because some contemporary music has no easily perceivable form. Subjectively it appears to be just a sequence, a collage, of effects. Rihm's music is like this in many cases, I think. And I want to say that the tradition of this sort of music goes back to the fantasia.


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## ORigel (May 7, 2020)

larold said:


> Not impersonal, just not loud, fast and garish like Romantic era music. J.S. Bach's St. Matthew Passion is as profound as anything written in the Romantic era as is Handel's Messiah and Haydn's The Creation. These masterpieces deal with the most monumental events of humanity and Christianity. No one in the Romantic era came close to this on the same topics. Wagner's Ring cycle, the most profound masterpiece of the Romantic era, deals with national folklore.


Romantic composers wrote great sacred works as well, like Wagner's Parsifal.


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## RICK RIEKERT (Oct 9, 2017)

Mandryka said:


> I kind of knew at the back of my mind that I was letting myself in for that sort of response. A little knowledge is a dangerous thing!
> 
> The idea of fantasia is interesting because some contemporary music has no easily perceivable form. Subjectively it appears to be just a sequence, a collage, of effects. Rihm's music is like this in many cases, I think. And I want to say that the tradition of this sort of music goes back to the fantasia.


C'mon my friend, you know a lot more than you let on. As for having a little knowledge, I don't know enough about Rihm to comment. I will say there is a freedom about Rihm’s music which seems to be owing to a lack of dogmatism and not compositional arbitrariness. In this respect he resembles Schönberg_*.*_


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## Captainnumber36 (Jan 19, 2017)

Mandryka said:


> I know, and what I said was too aggressive. I'm sorry. I just thought it was a bit like telling everyone your favourite colour or something!


It's ok.


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## Captainnumber36 (Jan 19, 2017)

To get back to the discussion of art vs. entertainment, I think you have to define these terms for yourself and be respectful of other's ways of defining their terms. You can engage in conversation, and perhaps see something in a new light, and arrive at a new conclusion, perhaps, and should if you are convinced of a different way of looking at it, for yourself.

For me, everything in the universe is art in that it expresses an idea and/or an emotion and we just pick our favorite artists.

For example, a tree I enjoy the way it has grown thus far in its life in my current time of viewing and appreciating it, is expressing, for example, ideas of beauty and causing an emotional reaction within myself. In this way, all the creators (artists) of this tree I am viewing in this particular time of me viewing and appreciating it are my favorite artists.

That brings me to another point, in the example of the tree above, I implied that there are multiple artists to create the art. Even in music, for example, there are always multiple artists who helped create the work, even if it written by one consciousness. This is because, art is not created without having had experiences of any sort, and every experience that went into creating the work, either on a conscious or sub-conscious level, are artists that helped create the work.


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## Laraine Anne Barker (8 mo ago)

Nate Miller said:


> As a listener, you bring your own experiences to the aesthetic encounter with the music. So that would mean its you, not the music. 😄
> 
> to be fair, the romantic period had more "expressive" passages than the earlier periods, so maybe you were drawn to that.
> 
> but to say Bach was passionless isn't fair either. He did have 20 children, you know


I find listening to Bach's sacred music is enough to make me realise he wasn't without passion.


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## Laraine Anne Barker (8 mo ago)

Bulldog said:


> I don't consider those two eras impersonal, but I do find the heart-on-the sleeve tendencies of the Romantics a turn-off.


Is that why I'm not all that keen on 19th century music? I always thought it was because I find so much of it too noisy!


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## neoshredder (Nov 7, 2011)

Baroque is quite enjoyable. Great for relaxing. They definitely restrained from angry or heavy music. It makes a great playlist to mix Baroque/Classical and Romanticism together to get a variety.


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## Laraine Anne Barker (8 mo ago)

neoshredder said:


> Baroque is quite enjoyable. Great for relaxing. They definitely restrained from angry or heavy music.


Perhaps because music is supposed to have "charms to soothe a savage breast"? ;-) (William Congreve, 1697)


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## premont (May 7, 2015)

Laraine Anne Barker said:


> Is that why I'm not all that keen on 19th century music? I always thought it was because I find so much of it too noisy!


Maybe a combination of too much heart-on-the-sleve and too much noise. This is how I see it.


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## Rogerx (Apr 27, 2018)

Laraine Anne Barker said:


> Is that why I'm not all that keen on 19th century music? I always thought it was because I find so much of it too noisy!


 One thing for sure, now one has to listening to things they don't like.


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## Laraine Anne Barker (8 mo ago)

Rogerx said:


> One thing for sure, now one has to listening to things they don't like.


No. I gave up on the 20th century after playing the LP I bought (Bloch violin concerto played by Menuhin) at least 6 times. As I told myself, "Well, I can follow it now, but I sure can't like it."


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## hammeredklavier (Feb 18, 2018)

Laraine Anne Barker said:


> Is that why I'm not all that keen on 19th century music? I always thought it was because I find so much of it too noisy!


Try Grieg Lyric Pieces youtube.com/watch?v=5TbQftYOKms&list=PLD0AADF64997933E6&index=1


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## Laraine Anne Barker (8 mo ago)

hammeredklavier said:


> Try Grieg Lyric Pieces youtube.com/watch?v=5TbQftYOKms&list=PLD0AADF64997933E6&index=1


They're lovely. Thanks very much. My favourite 19th century music is Brahms's 1st and 2nd violin sonatas. You can keep the third. They're very expressive, ecstatically so. Brahms must have been going through a happy period then. They need to be played with utter abandon (no "classical restraint"). Most violinists don't manage that. I'm still looking for my ideal performance. I inherited the one I have from my middle sister.


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

allamjxcalscmjspl;vcmjszolpvnmjxszolpvnmj


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## Laraine Anne Barker (8 mo ago)

Rogerx said:


> One thing for sure, now one has to listening to things they don't like.


I did quite a lot of that when I started listening to what is now called Concert (Radio New Zealand). It was helpful in a way. I remember, because I know Schumann's Rhenish symphony (No. 3), I was able to recognise that a work I'd never heard before was by him. I wonder if 'd still recognise the Rehenish? I haven't heard it for nearly 50 years.


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

Laraine Anne Barker said:


> No. I gave up on the 20th century after playing the LP I bought (Bloch violin concerto played by Menuhin) at least 6 times. As I told myself, "Well, I can follow it now, but I sure can't like it."


You rejected 100 years of music on the basis of your experience of one performance of one piece.


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## EvaBaron (Jan 3, 2022)

Mandryka said:


> You rejected 100 years of music on the basis of your experience of one performance of one piece.


I suggest she listen to Vaughan William’s Tallis Fantasia, an amazing piece of music that you will surely like


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## Laraine Anne Barker (8 mo ago)

Mandryka said:


> You rejected 100 years of music on the basis of your experience of one performance of one piece.


No. I heard enough 20th century music on the radio. I listened to lots of different music on the radio, but in those days there was no guidance for people who wanted to teach themselves appreciation of classic music. It's only thanks to WRC I was able to buy LPs (shorthand-typists were badly paid; hence I never had any male colleagues) and all I managed was apron 800–850. I sold them (for probably about 50c each) on TradeMe. It was hard work and I know I'd have got a lot more for some of them if I'd been able to sell on eBay. They weren't all WRC. I didn't want them landing at the dump after my death. My middle sister joined me in my quest and she bought mostly19th century orchestral music, whereas I landed up with a passion for solo and chamber music. But we started from the same LP: Swan Lake Suite and one of the L'Arlesienne Suites conducted on a 10-inch LP by SirJohn Barbirolli. Mum was buying almost any LP on special for her new radiogram. We couldn't stop her playing it; her house; her radiogram. Not that I remember we didn't wang her playing it. But in the end it was the only LP Colleen and I wanted to play!


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