# Understanding Romanticism



## Evml (Mar 23, 2020)

Hi everyone,

I'm reading a book about Romanticism (Barzun, "Classic, Romantic and Modern"), and one of the points the author makes is that Romanticists were realists, in the sense that they were interested in facts, the multitude of particular truths about the world. So painters, for example, were interested in "the effects of color, motion, and shadow under every conceivable light," while 

"the romantic musicians' concern with expressiveness in melody, harmony, and orchestral color 
implies a desire to mold musical form as closely as possible on psychological and dramatic truth. 
The contour of a Schubert or Schumann song is, in this sense, the fruit of observation, just like 
the shades of Chopin's harmony or the expressive choices of Berlioz's orchestration" (Barzun 63). 

I'm wondering if anyone can elaborate on this, or suggest an example of a Schubert or Schumann song that "implies a desire to mold musical form as closely as possible on psychological and dramatic truth"? I find this topic very interesting and have always wanted to be able to appreciate the historical significance of classical music, beyond just enjoying the way it sounds. I'm classically trained in guitar and have a decent understanding of theory, so feel free to speak technically. 

Any insights at all are much appreciated,

Thanks!


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## Fabulin (Jun 10, 2019)

I think it's about the imitation of human voices and the sounds of nature, as well as other sounds (war in Beethoven's music for panharmonicon, medieval town in Bruckner's 4th, harmonic runs in Wagner's Flying Dutchman that symbolize a storm, and all sorts of human emotions and impressions in Tchaikovsky's music (for example the impression of swans swimming, and then of either them or smaller birds flying above them in the main theme of the Swan Lake Waltz, when it gets repeated in a higher register).

Joseph Joachim called his music-making psychological, and there is even a paper on it that, that I just can't find time to read:
https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/37750223.pdf

In conducting, as taught by Wagner, it was a leaning towards flexibler tempo interpretations, that highlight specific phrases, and aim for effect.

My explanations barely scratch the surface, but if they help a bit, you are welcome.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

Barzun's concept of Romanticism as "realism" might be a mite confusing, given that "realism" in literature has a different meaning, with the term sometimes synonymous with "naturalism." Still, it's obvious that Romantic music has a strong representational aspect in its attempts to translate extramusical phenomena - physical and emotional - and literary conceptions into evocative sound. How far a composer went in pursuing this objective, and how much weight he gave it relative to the pursuit of abstract form, largely determined where he fell along the "conservative-radical" continuum. The Berlioz-Liszt-Wagner axis represents the radical end, with Wagner going so far that he had to ally music with theater in order to satisfy his need for the greatest possible specificity of expression. Viewed as musical creations, his operas are virtually extended tone poems, tracing with penetrating exactness and detail the emotions of his characters and portraying their physical settings with great evocative power. But already in 1830 there was Berlioz painting a whole fantastic drama of almost cinematic vividness in his _Symphonie Fantastique._

Brahms is obviously the prime representative of the other end of the Romantic spectrum, with his insistence on containing his Romantic gestures within the fairly tight boundaries of more or less established forms. Viewing Romanticism this way, I have to say that Beethoven, with the clearly dramatic and "literary" content of his third, fifth, sixth and ninth symphonies as well as some of his piano sonatas, was more Romantic than Brahms, his power and specificity of expression - Barzun's "realism" - inspiring Berlioz and Wagner reasonably to claim him as a forebear.


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## SONNET CLV (May 31, 2014)

There remains in Romanticism a realism of truth of emotion that, say, was not necessarily parcel to the earlier "Classical" era. The "rules" were not the governing mode; rather, one's emotions provided the framework and guide to the artistic construction. The realism of this sort of truth is indeed part of Romanticism.

Yet, Romanticism is also heavily indebted to fantasy, the non-real. The above-mentioned (by Woodduck) _Symphonie Fantastique_ is a case in point. The story related is outrageously unreal, yet the emotional basis is quite human. So, with Romantic music one gets these two seemingly polar responses.

Yet, in some way, the human condition (which embodies self-awareness, consciousness and conscience, and an intellect with the ability to grow) is a similar dichotomy. We are both animal in nature and "something more", that "something more" having to do with our disconnect to instinct and our embrace of the human condition. Unlike animals we have the ability to create art and to ponder it and enjoy or hate it. Our full emotional response is rather fantastical compared to that sort of response which is found in the animal world. Romanticism celebrates this human sense. Music (and Art in general) becomes more than just a "construct" in the era of Romanticism (while the same may not be true in the earlier "Classical" era), it also becomes an expression of the artist whose thoughts and feelings and psychological/philosophical leanings shade the art. There is nothing of the emotional explosion one finds in the Berlioz symphonie in a symphony by, say, Haydn. We might conjecture, from hearing a work by Haydn, that the composer was a man with a logical mind and a keen sense of humor and an adventurous spirit, but that is nothing like the sense we get of a fully developed fiery emotional human life from the hearing of the Berlioz _Fantastique_.

You might explore the reaches of Romanticism (as described above) in Schubert's famous song "Erlkönig", from Goethe's famous ballad. Here is realistic truth of human feeling, yet all is ensconced within a fabric of the fantastical. And in some sense our emotional reaction to the song proves more enduring that our attention to the musical/poetic elements which structure the piece. Romanticism at its best.


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## larold (Jul 20, 2017)

I think the analysis you read is overly intellectualized. Romanticism wasn't simply about reality.

One of the first romantic-era books (1813) was Mary Shelley's "Frankenstein" which capitalized on the then-current premise of reconstructing life. Even though we can successfully replace hips, hearts and teeth we still can't do that more than two centuries later!

Listen to Schubert's wonderful song "Ganymed" to get an idea of his world of reality. "Ganymed" is a song about nature and love but, when accompanied by a piano, sounds like storm and stress. When the singer is accompanied by a full orchestra, however, the song takes on a different meaning -- more like its text:

_How in the morning light
you glow around me
beloved spring!_

Schubert's great song cycle _Winterreise_ is full of songs where the text and its meaning are not literal. Just about all of them have such elements.

One examplar, "The Linden Tree" or Der Lindenbaum, is full of dichotomies and contradictions about sweet dreams, death and finding peace. In this song peace is not good.

I wouldn't take what you read literally. It is more important to consider the elements of romantic music, especially those that separate it from classical and baroque era music. Some of those elements are:

-- Much greater variations in speed from fast to slow.
-- Much greater variations in volume from PPP to FFF.
-- Much greater duration of and number of ideas within a movement or piece of music.
-- Expansion of traditional forms; Liszt turned the recap into development, for example; so did Mahler.
-- Bigger orchestras, longer music.
-- Emphasis on storytelling often using romantic works of art as inspiration.
-- Giving names to music such as eroica, pathetique, fate, etc.

Not much of this is grounded in the reality we know as earthbound creatures.


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## hammeredklavier (Feb 18, 2018)

"The music of the romantics had adhered to a melodic style based on the voice, but the neoclassicists favored an instrumental melody that made use of wider intervals and a more extended range. Harmonically, they moved away from the chromaticism of the post-Wagnerian style to pandiatonicism, based on the seven tones of the diatonic scale. In contrast to the multitude of sharps and flats in the early 20th century, it favored a sparing use of accidentals and showed an affinity for the key of C major. Many pages of neoclassic music were prime examples of the term "white music" coined during this period. The composers of the Neoclassic period focused their attention on elegance of style and purity of taste. In exalting the how over the what, they were led to the classical virtues of order, discipline, balance, and proportion.

Neoclassicism had its most articulate spokesman in Igor Stravinsky. He moved from the Post-Impressionism of "The Firebird" through the Primitivism of "The Rite of Spring" to a more controlled classicism of his maturity. He consistently preached the formal above the emotional elements in art. "I can not compose until I have decided what problem I must solve." The problem was always aesthetic, not personal. He wrote, "I evoke neither human joy nor human sadness.""


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

larold said:


> *I think the analysis you read is overly intellectualized. Romanticism wasn't simply about reality.*
> 
> One of the first romantic-era books (1813) was Mary Shelley's "Frankenstein" which capitalized on the then-current premise of reconstructing life. Even though we can successfully replace hips, hearts and teeth we still can't do that more than two centuries later!
> 
> ...


The quote from Barzun reads: _"the romantic musicians' concern with expressiveness in melody, harmony, and orchestral color implies a desire to mold musical form as closely as possible on *psychological and dramatic truth. *The contour of a Schubert or Schumann song is, in this sense, the fruit of observation, just like the shades of Chopin's harmony or the expressive choices of Berlioz's orchestration."_

The point this makes, as I read it, is that Romantic composers, in contrast to those of preceding eras, were extremely interested in representing in a specific way the dynamics and contours of emotions and other phenomena. In the Baroque and Classical eras, the portrayal of emotion was more stylized and conventional (the doctrine of "affects"), and such expression was more contained within musical forms than determinative of them. Similarly, the portrayal in sound of phenomena in the external world wasn't a major concern and generally amounted to little more than stylized pictorial touches (as in Haydn's _Creation_), whereas with the Romantics the evocation of atmospheres and landscapes became a prominent artistic purpose from the very beginning (as in Weber's _Der Freischutz_ and Mendelssohn's _"Scottish" Symphony _- and don't forget the precedent of Beethoven's _Pastoral_).

Why do you think the Romantic developments you list came about? What made them necessary or attractive, if not the need to express new things, realities not addressed by earlier music? The realities of our emotional lives, our spiritual aspirations, and the world around us are the only realities we, earthbound creatures as you call us, can know.The Romantics were determined to illuminate and communicate those realities as they experienced them.

Personally, I wouldn't use the word "realism" as a _general_ description of Romanticism, and I understand how you'd be reacting to it. But I think it's clear from his phrase "psychological and dramatic truth" how Barzun intends it to be taken. He doesn't mean to exclude the world of the imagination, given that there's no more basic human reality than the world inside our heads.


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## larold (Jul 20, 2017)

_Why do you think the Romantic developments you list came about? What made them necessary or attractive, if not the need to express new things, realities not addressed by earlier music? The realities of our emotional lives, our spiritual aspirations, and the world around us are the only realities we, earthbound creatures as you call us, can know.The Romantics were determined to illuminate and communicate those realities as they experienced them._

I think the concept that these are "realities" is fanciful. I agree romanticism sought to experience more things including greater emotional appeal and attachment.

Why did the romantics invent new forms and expand old ones? For the same reason Bach expressed equal temperament, Haydn turned the string trio to the quartet, Wagner decided opera was sound, sight and scene, Schoenberg decided the 8-note scale was obsolete, and Cage postulated silence as important as sound: new times and ideas.

This happens in all art forms. If you look at film before the ratings took effect about 1970 it was restricted. Once the ratings came into being all the restrictions were gone, creating a new freedom of expression (not to mention content) for filmmakers.

Romanticism removed the emotional restrictions of the classical period along with its inherent ideas of balance and order born of the Englightenment. But none of this made any of it closer to reality.

I think everything in Haydn's The Creation is closer to reality than Beethoven's Eroica symphony, Liszt Les Preludes and the Brahms Alto Rhapsody that express greater emotions on ideas of life. And The Creation clearly came out of the classical era.

I also think Bach's St. Matthew Passion more about reality in our everyday lives than most of what I hear in romantic music.People still believe in and worship everything stated there. It represented a reality that still exists in the Christian world.

I think most romantic music is just that: romantic, puff pieces about what we'd like life to be, not what it is. Or, as Richard Nixon said comparing himself to John Kennedy, "When they see him they see what they want to be. When they see me they see what they are."

In other words the opposite of reality.


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## Allegro Con Brio (Jan 3, 2020)

For me, Romanticism is ultimately about idealism, and this applies across all the arts of the time. Poetry and symbolism are huge components of the variegated Romantic aesthetic - the most "extreme" Romantics (Melville, Wordsworth, Wagner, Mahler) looked for beauty, wildness, and spirituality in nature and other elements of reality, but also in the realm of pure emotion; moving away from the Classical/Enlightenment exaltation of reason/order and making feeling/expression the ultimate traits of art. Many of them were great innovators, inventing totally new formal vehicles for their art and experimenting widely since they believed that established forms of the past were not worthy enough for their grander endeavors. Of course there are exceptions like Brahms, who wrote music of rich passion and beauty but within a strong sense of formal order. Ultimately I see Romanticism as an idealistic quest for philosophical and aesthetic fulfillment, which provided the basis for all cultural/artistic development since then.


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## hammeredklavier (Feb 18, 2018)

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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

larold said:


> _Why do you think the Romantic developments you list came about? What made them necessary or attractive, if not the need to express new things, realities not addressed by earlier music? The realities of our emotional lives, our spiritual aspirations, and the world around us are the only realities we, earthbound creatures as you call us, can know.The Romantics were determined to illuminate and communicate those realities as they experienced them._
> 
> I think the concept that these are "realities" is fanciful. I agree romanticism sought to experience more things including greater emotional appeal and attachment.
> 
> ...


I see no value in semantic quibbling over which realities of life are "really realities."

Your statement that "most romantic music is just that: romantic, puff pieces about what we'd like life to be, not what it is" is probably key to your objections here. Disparaging terms like "puff pieces" aside, it seems a bit presumptuous to tell Schumann or Bizet or Tchaikovsky that they should regard the feelings they've put into their work as "the opposite of reality," but if you want to limit your concept of reality in that way, it's your prerogative.

The Romantics did not so limit it. Nothing was more real to them than the infinitely deep and broad realm of their own subjective life, and that is the reality they sought to know and reveal. It's pointless to criticize Barzun for recognizing this.

I'll just bet that your own subjective reality is pretty darned real to you too.


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## MarkW (Feb 16, 2015)

I wonder how Barzun's definition squares with pre-Romantic opera and religious music, where part of the fabric is the "realistic" following of the spiritual or emotive expressiveness of the words. (Just a thought.)

A word to Iarold about the Eroica: Doesn't the Funeral March box the compass of grief better and more "realistically" than any other piece of music before or since?


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

MarkW said:


> I wonder how Barzun's definition squares with pre-Romantic opera and religious music, where part of the fabric is the "realistic" following of the spiritual or emotive expressiveness of the words. (Just a thought.)
> 
> A word to Iarold about the Eroica: Doesn't the Funeral March box the compass of grief better and more "realistically" than any other piece of music before or since?


Maybe your phrase "part of the fabric" is the key to the difference.

I think it's important to remember that opera is a form of theater and a hybrid art form. A setting of words, as in a song or a liturgical chant, is also a hybrid, and the nature of liturgical music is further determined by its ritual function.


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## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)

I agree with WD's #47, about 'real subjectivity.' 
We didn't live in those times, so it's hard to get a grip or define what might be a very different mode of existence in a very different environment. We take so many things for granted, and are unaware of how our environment affects us. We're like goldfish, unaware of the bowl.

This general drift seems to be on the right track to me; it seems that Romanticism (and The Enlightenment) was when the individual (even the idea of such a thing) began emerging.

This shows how a breadth of general knowledge can put things into context.


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## larold (Jul 20, 2017)

*The Romantics did not so limit it. Nothing was more real to them than the infinitely deep and broad realm of their own subjective life, and that is the reality they sought to know and reveal. It's pointless to criticize Barzun for recognizing this.*

Pardon me but I don't recall criticizing anyone, just expressing my opinion. It is unwise to confuse difference with criticism.

*A word to Iarold about the Eroica: Doesn't the Funeral March box the compass of grief better and more "realistically" than any other piece of music before or since?*

It encapsualtes grief but perhaps no more so than it did in the Piano Sonata No. 12, written 2-3 years earlier, where he used the same music in the so-called "funeral march" sonata.

As to "since" I think many of Mahler's first movements, often based on funeral marches he heard as a young boy, take Beethoven's grief several steps further. These are plain to most people in Symphonies 5, 6 and 9, just to name three of them.

There is also enormous grief in the music of Miroslav Kabelac, a 20th century Czech composer whose wife was killed by and his artistic spirit broken by the communists after the 1968 Prague spring.

One of the most famous compositions of the late 20th century, Henryk Górecki's Symphony Of Sorrowful Songs, is an hour-long wail about the Holocaust. The Kabelac Symphony No. 5 for wordless voice has many of the same ingredients and feel.

There is also enormous grief in the Berg Violin Concerto when played as Antje Weithass does with Stavanger Symphony Orchestra (not her other recording of the Berg) that concentrates on grief and world-weariness and not the violence almost all others put in it.

Or _before _... such as the level of grief shown in Bach's passions, especially St. Matthew's first performed 1729, about 75 years ahead of Eroica. Listen to No. 77, "And now the Lord is laid to rest" next time you have a chance.

Or the Cantata BWV 78, "Jesus thou has gone through bitter death" another peice written a century ahead of Eroica.

Or listen to Henry Purcell's Funeral Music for Queen Mary written 1695 which surely must have been among Beethoven's influences for his funeral march.

What made the Eroica symphony the first romantic symphony was in part its second movement -- longer than any symphony ever written -- and its overall duration and number of ideas. The finale was just as important as the funeral march. But the march itself was neither the first nor last word on grief in classical music.


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## hammeredklavier (Feb 18, 2018)

Woodduck said:


> In the Baroque and Classical eras, the portrayal of emotion was more stylized and conventional (the doctrine of "affects"), and such expression was more contained within musical forms than determinative of them.


From what I understand, the "Doctrine of the affections" is a Baroque method of composition where each movement would have only one feeling or mood. This was no longer a thing in the Classical period, where composers varied moods by incorporating elements of contrast -especially with the rise of the sonata form.



hammeredklavier said:


> Professor Craig Wright views Mozart as an innovator, in his 3 lectures:
> 14.1 - Piano Concerto in D minor
> "... Just as Haydn was more or less the inventor of the modern string quartet, so Mozart was the father of the piano concerto. He set out the structural framework of the piano concerto, one that lasted into the romantic era, here it is. Mozart developed a stereotypical approach to the first movement of the concerto. It goes by several names, concerto form, double exposition form are the two most common. Double exposition form is a good name for this form because there are as you can see, two expositions. We have one exposition as we had in sonata-allegro form development, recapitulation. But now we have another exposition added at the beginning. The first exposition allows the orchestra to present most of the themes by itself. The pianist will add a couple later on, and do so all in the tonic key.
> ...
> Well I hope you'll share with me my beliefs that this is an extraordinary movement, and how different from the ethos or the feeling of a Baroque concerto of the sort that we experienced with Bach and Vivaldi. Baroque concertos usually just have one mood for a movement. Mozart is full of many different moods. And that helps make these classical movements very exciting, very dramatic. And with its D minor sound, it's almost demonic. ..."





hammeredklavier said:


> In missa longa K262 for example, the way he creates contrast and tension and then relieves them is masterful. At 10:48, there is this serene, lyrical section "Et incarnatus est", but at 11:41, the C minor "Crucifixus" hits like a thunderbolt, and then in going from the dominant to a new key in G major, 12:38 "Et resurrexit" (with somewhat "neo-Handelian" characteristics of effect) counteracts and relieves the tension. The use of strettos in "Et vitam venturi" 18:00 is just masterful as well.


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## hammeredklavier (Feb 18, 2018)

MarkW said:


> I wonder how Barzun's definition squares with pre-Romantic opera and religious music, where part of the fabric is the "realistic" following of the spiritual or emotive expressiveness of the words. (Just a thought.)


_<Mozartian Undercurrents in Berlioz: Appreciation, Resistance and Unconscious Appropriation> by Benjamin Perl_ is an interesting read regarding this topic.

"... To sum up: Haydn and Mozart enjoyed playing with notes, but lacked poetic ideas. Their expressivity came to light only when it was aroused by words. This distinction between 'notes for notes' sake' and 'expressive' or 'poetic' music is essential for understanding Berlioz's way of thinking about music. The abstract combination of sounds, the purely 'musical' aspect of music, without forthright reference to feelings, events or images, leaves him indifferent. Thus most of the instrumental music of Mozart (and Haydn and Bach, for that matter) remains opaque to his eyes. Beethoven's instrumental works were perceived differently, because they had, at least in the Romantic conception, a 'poetic' content. ..."


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## Zhdanov (Feb 16, 2016)

Evml said:


> Romanticists were realists,


realism but as they wanted to see it.

there was a certain amount of demonism to their perspective.

whilst classicists insinuated overthrowing tyrants, romanticists foresaw the end of world order.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

hammeredklavier said:


> From what I understand, the "Doctrine of the affections" is a Baroque method of composition where each movement would have only one feeling or mood. This was no longer a thing in the Classical period, where composers varied moods by incorporating elements of contrast -especially with the rise of the sonata form.


The Doctrine of Affects (or Affections) was the 17th- and 18th-century theory that emotions could be represented by particular audible or visible signs, which were largely conventionalized (sighing apoggiaturas, descending chromatic lines for sorrow and grief, etc.). It makes no difference how many different emotions are represented. You're correct, though, that Baroque music generally focused on one basic emotion in a composition - keyboard fantasias being an obvious exception to this - and that this changed later, especially with the advent of sonata form which featured explicit angtipodes, allowing for a kind of dramatic narrative.

The point I was making is that Romanticism had no use for such a theory, since it assumed that conveying emotions was what music was fundamentally about. As the Baroque aesthetic was left behind, music's vocabulary of expression moved far beyond reliance on conventional signaling, although some of the conventions remained essential parts of the musical language simply because they worked.


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## AeolianStrains (Apr 4, 2018)

At what point were these composers following a program or composing music in a consciously Romantic style as opposed to following their ears and creating new things in a soundscape that was already very familiar to them?

Was Chopin's music consciously Romantic like Schumann's, or did he just think it sounded amazing to him when he was composing?


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

AeolianStrains said:


> At what point were these composers following a program or composing music in a consciously Romantic style as opposed to following their ears and creating new things in a soundscape that was already very familiar to them?
> 
> Was Chopin's music consciously Romantic like Schumann's, or did he just think it sounded amazing to him when he was composing?


I don't know how many composers actually called themselves "Romantic," but I know that the term was in popular use in the 1790s, well before the music we call Romantic was written. The exact meaning of the word has not been fixed over time; I think it was applied by some to Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven, and we still debate "borderline cases" at the beginning and end of what we call the Romantic era. I doubt that many composers applied it to themselves, but they were certainly attuned to the new sensibilities of their time.


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