# Deconstructing Romantic music



## ethanjamesescano (Aug 29, 2012)

Romantic Music is not Romantic because:
.
*the term romantic was first used in literature, because of the influences of the romances found in the medieval period (the main genre found in the middle ages during their time) visual arts is also applicable to this definition

*Romantic music was called Romantic because its contemporary forms of art is Romantic and is expressive, or almost all kind of art are following the sturm und drang

what do you think?


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## Vesteralen (Jul 14, 2011)

Like many other things we use in communication, I think "romanticism" in music is a convenient label to describe the turn toward subjectivism, nature and "spiritual" as opposed to "material" concerns. Some composers happened to live and work in that era. Others (i.e. Schumann, Berlioz) actually embodied it.


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## Ingélou (Feb 10, 2013)

@Vesteralen, I agree that 'romanticism' is a convenient label. As the OP seems to point out, it matches up with the Romantic style in art & literature. Yes, we also have medieval romances, romantic as opposed to platonic love, romantic novelists (think pink!) and romantic (i.e. unrealistic) viewpoints, but I think we can cope. 

I can't see why the fact that the term originated elsewhere & is used in different contexts means that 'romantic music isn't romantic'. I'm hoping this is what you meant by the thread, though the sentence about sturm & drang has an odd (?unidiomatic?) construction. (This is not a criticism; maybe it's just me.  )


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## regressivetransphobe (May 16, 2011)

I'm afraid I don't follow.


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## Taggart (Feb 14, 2013)

Compare and contrast Byron "Dark Lochnagar", Berlioz "Symphonie Fantastique" and the wiki article on Romantic Music. You will see an almost perfect match in terms of themes. You could equally do similar links through German folklore of the same period - e.g. Des Knaben Wunderhorn set by Weber, Loewe, Mendelssohn, Schumann, Brahms, Zemlinsky, Schoenberg, and Webern.

It's not slushy, lovey-dovey, Moon-June-Spoon music but it is "romantic" in the sense of personal, "aweful", eerie, opposed to rationality.


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## Blancrocher (Jul 6, 2013)

Wikipedia gives wriggle room for deconstruction, of course:



> Characteristics often attributed to Romanticism, including musical Romanticism, are (Kravitt 1992, 93-94, 107):
> 
> a new preoccupation with and surrender to Nature
> a fascination with the past, particularly the Middle Ages and legends of medieval chivalry
> ...


For a pretty good study of Romantic music and (some) poetry, I'd recommend Charles Rosen's customarily well written "The Romantic Generation." Discussions of the genre (or period, or whatever!) can quickly become bogged down when carried on without musical examples.

To hear Rosen tell it, deconstructing Romanticism might require deconstructing the deconstruction of classical sonata form! It makes me scared!


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## GGluek (Dec 11, 2011)

The arts don't march in lockstep, but they tend to follow similar trends in similar epochs -- and we like to give these trends names. "Romantic" music in general tends to be more overtly emotional, rather than intellectual, with a freer form that serves the content rather than being more form driven. Romanticism as an idea tended to fall apart in the late nineteenth century as a casualty of diatonic harmonic but not emotionality -- which just employed different means of expression. The arts, all of them, in the decade surrounding WWI, pretty much followed and succumbed to the collapse of order that also occurred in science with the advent of relativity and quantum theory, and societally with the destruction by militant idiocy of Europe.


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## starry (Jun 2, 2009)

Vesteralen said:


> Like many other things we use in communication, I think "romanticism" in music is a convenient label to describe the turn toward subjectivism, nature and "spiritual" as opposed to "material" concerns. Some composers happened to live and work in that era. Others (i.e. Schumann, Berlioz) actually embodied it.


I think the subjective aspect is probably the main thing, an individualism. As was pointed out already in another post nature was only one of the subjects that was used. And the spiritual hadn't been absent from music in the past, and was most obviously seen in sacred music.


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## quack (Oct 13, 2011)

I think if you deny that 19th century classical music is part of the wider romantic movement in the arts and thought then people will want to ask: what was Brahms or Tchaikovsky's music if it wasn't Romantic. Was it a continuation of Mozart style classicism, despite sounding quite a bit different and did it change into Modernism, or was it something else without an intervening step?

The influences and techniques that made Romantic literature were certainly different to those needed for Romantic music or painting. _Chansons de geste_, _romans_ and folk tales was more directly connected to literature but they still made an important impact on subject matter for romantic works such as _Parsifal_, _Kullervo_ or _Harold in Italy_.

_Sturm und Drang_ is regarded as a precursor to romanticism but it is rather limited in its purpose and scope to be really regarded as part of romanticism. It emphasised dramatic powerful emotions as did romanticism but they were usually more nuanced, less melodramatic in romanticism. There wasn't same appreciation of nature or nationalism within _sturm und drang_ and while suited to German music it didn't really fit the romanticism of Russian, East European or Spanish musical movements.

If you try and define romanticism too tightly nothing much will fit it. It is deliberately less precise and less structured than the foregoing classicism.


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## mstar (Aug 14, 2013)

Well.... You must understand that the meanings of words are slightly altered over time. There is hardly a single word that has not been at least altered in meaning, or has had meanings added on, over the fast few centuries. 

Therefore, it is really alright if we use the term "romantic" for the era. It can now jsut be used in a different way. Anyway, if we never altered the meanings of some words, the language itself would not be developing nearly as well. For example, since the 1800s, how have words such as "sentimental" been used? Did you know that "nice" used to mean exactly the opposite than it does today?


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## PetrB (Feb 28, 2012)

If you get too literal-minded, and refer only to prior or later meanings of the word, you're going to get quite hung up, on only one usage of a word for which the meaning has morphed over the centuries.

[If I read your question literally, it would be about literally deconstructing romantic music, and the closest I can think of to that would be the progress of Schoenberg's overall work, which started out richly late romantic and became quite something else as to its musical vocabulary and procedures while keeping a lot of the romantic ethos and impulse within it.]

Romantic era music, art and literature are very much on or around personal expression and viewpoint, nature, some occasional sweet sentiments, but for the most part they are about _ Angst, Weltschmhertz, Schadenfreude, lost or unrequited love, the recognition that a way of life and thinking long practiced for centuries had slowly changed and was at the brink of being gone forever._

In other words, this has nothing to do with either medieval idealism or later 20th century treacle-sweet notions about personal relationships.

It is dark and lugubrious, when it is sweet it is often decay-sweet, not sugar sweet.

And, since music is what I learned about much earlier than I did about medieval chivalry and that sort of meaning of romantic, I know one from the other and feel no conflict because there are two very aspects to the word, in addition to the contemporary notion of "Romantic" as hearts and flowers, sweet sentiments and feel good movies.

Romantic era music and art _is romantic,_ in that awful and dark and ominous way.


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

E.T.A. Hoffman, in 1810, identified Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven as "romantic" composers.

"Mozart and Haydn, the creators of modern instrumental music, first showed us the art in its full glory; but the one who regarded it with total devotion and penetrated to its innermost nature is Beethoven. The instrumental compositions of all three masters breathe the same romantic spirit for the very reason that they all intimately grasp the essential nature of the art; yet the character of their compositions is markedly different...

Haydn romantically apprehends the humanity in human life; he is more congenial, more comprehensible to the majority.

Mozart takes more as his province the superhuman, magical quality residing in the inner self.

Beethoven's music sets in motion the machinery of awe, of fear, of terror, of pain, and awakens that infinite yearning which is the essence of romanticism. He is therefore a purely romantic composer."

A more complete version here:

https://sites.google.com/site/kenocstuff/eta-hoffman-on-beethoven


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## PetrB (Feb 28, 2012)

KenOC said:


> E.T.A. Hoffman, in 1810, identified Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven as "romantic" composers.
> 
> "Mozart and Haydn, the creators of modern instrumental music, first showed us the art in its full glory; but the one who regarded it with total devotion and penetrated to its innermost nature is Beethoven. The instrumental compositions of all three masters breathe the same romantic spirit for the very reason that they all intimately grasp the essential nature of the art; yet the character of their compositions is markedly different...
> 
> ...


All that recognized, but a pity the later guys who set up the brackets tended to go for the more tangible evidence of harmonic procedures and forms, which leaves Mozart and Beethoven completely in the classical bracket -- those 'emotive' qualities they manifested being _precursors_ of the era designated as the Romantic.


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## ethanjamesescano (Aug 29, 2012)

I was deconstructing the word romantic, not the music of it.
can someone please help me on how to edit a thread, so everyone would know this statement


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## Taggart (Feb 14, 2013)

ethanjamesescano said:


> I was deconstructing the word romantic, not the music of it.
> can someone please help me on how to edit a thread, so everyone would know this statement


There is a time limit on this. The FAQ's refere to the generic vBulletin software so simply say:



> If you have registered and are logged in, you may be able to edit and delete your posts (although the administrator may have turned off this option). Your ability to edit your posts may be time-limited, depending on how the administrator has set up the forum.


I am not sure that you can do one without the other, since if you are trying to deconstruct romanticism, you are trying to is to identify and question all the binary oppositions at work in a text and that will inevitably involve the music as a major signifier.


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## PetrB (Feb 28, 2012)

Taggart said:


> There is a time limit on this. The FAQ's refere to the generic vBulletin software so simply say:
> 
> I am not sure that you can do one without the other, since if you are trying to deconstruct romanticism, you are trying to is to identify and question all the binary oppositions at work in a text and that will inevitably involve the music as a major signifier.


Too right, then it should not be / have been presented in the classical music thread, as "Deconstructing Romantic *Music*" but instead put up in some other more general category.


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## violadude (May 2, 2011)

I'm a little bit disappointed to be honest. I thought this was going to be an awesome thread about analyzing Romantic area pieces. But instead it's a boring discussion about a semantic point that I was already well aware of.


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## violadude (May 2, 2011)

I meant to say era in that last post....how did I miss that?


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