# 10 Key Works of the Romantic Era



## 20centrfuge (Apr 13, 2007)

Ulfilas has a thread going about the "10 Key Works of the 20th Century" fuelled by a list by Pierre Boulez. I am asking, what are the 10 Key Works of the Romantic Era?


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## science (Oct 14, 2010)

The romantic era is so much better-known than 20th century music, but how about...


Brahms: Ein deutsches Requiem 
Chopin: Nocturnes -- let's call this one work for this purpose
Dvořák: Symphony #9 "From the New World" 
Gounod: Faust 
Mendelssohn: Octet for Strings 
Rimsky-Korsakov: Scheherazade 
Schubert: Winterreise 
Tchaikovsky: The Nutcracker 
Verdi: Aida
Wagner: Tristan und Isolde


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## Enthusiast (Mar 5, 2016)

I tend to include Beethoven from his middle period with the Romantics - I am think aesthetically rather than formally - so my list needs to have at least three of his works. I confess to thinking this list through chronologically so the works I choose are often works that were perhaps the first clear example of something shocking and new:

- Beethoven: Eroica (kick-starting the Romantic)
- Beethoven: Quartet 10 (Op. 74, _The Harp_)
- Beethoven: Sonata 29 (Op. 106, "Hammerklavier")
- Brahms: Violin Concerto
- Schubert: Symphony 9 ("The Great")
- Schubert: Winterreise
- Schumann: Etudes Symphonique
- Chopin: Preludes Op. 28 
- Wagner: Tristan und Isolde
- Mahler: Symphony 2

Oh dear - no room for Liszt (probably my ignorance) or Bruckner ... and only one Brahms piece. I know I am going to want to come back to change my choices!


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## Ravn (Jan 6, 2020)

I've decided to only include one work per composer, to avoid the list being entirely Bruckner, Mahler and Sibelius. It was a tough choice, so I decided to cheat and include two honourable mentions. In alphabetical order:

- Berlioz: Symphonie Fantastique
- Brahms: Symphony 4
- Bruckner: Symphony 8
- Glière: Symphony 3 "Ilya Muromets"
- Grieg: Concerto for Piano and Orchestra in A Minor
- Mahler: Symphony 2
- Rimsky-Korsakov: Scheherazade
- Sibelius: Symphony 5
- Verdi: Requiem
- Wagner: Tristan & Isolde

Honourable mentions: 
- Bloch - Symphony in C# Minor.
- Strauss - Also Sprach Zarathustra


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## Enthusiast (Mar 5, 2016)

Oh dear. I missed out Verdi and Sibelius.


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## Ravn (Jan 6, 2020)

Enthusiast said:


> Oh dear. I missed out Verdi and Sibelius.


Yeah, and I forgot Saint-Saëns's third symphony. Ten works is way to few. Hopefully someone else will include it.


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## Allegro Con Brio (Jan 3, 2020)

I would include Beethoven for a longer list, but since we're limited to 10, I would have to go with the following. Not all my preferred works, just what I believe are the most significant:

Schubert - Winterreise
Berlioz - Symphonie Fantastique
Chopin - Four Ballades
Wagner - Tristan und Isolde
Brahms - Symphony No. 4
Dvorak - Symphony No. 9 "New World"
Liszt - Sonata in B Minor
Bruckner - Symphony No. 8
Tchaikovsky - Symphony No. 6 "Pathetique"
Mahler - Symphony No. 2 "Resurrection"


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## janxharris (May 24, 2010)

Ravn said:


> I've decided to only include one work per composer, to avoid the list being entirely Bruckner, Mahler and Sibelius. It was a tough choice, so I decided to cheat and include two honourable mentions. In alphabetical order:
> 
> - Berlioz: Symphonie Fantastique
> - Brahms: Symphony 4
> ...


You hear Sibelius 5 as Romantic Era?


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## Art Rock (Nov 28, 2009)

I went for 10 different composers and a mix of genres.

Brahms - Ein Deutsches Requiem
Bruckner - Symphony 9
Chopin - Nocturnes
Mahler - Kindertotenlieder
Mendelssohn - Violin concerto
Schubert - String quintet
Schumann - Piano concerto
Strauss - Don Juan
Tchaikovsky - Swan lake
Wagner - Der Ring des Nibelungen


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## Kjetil Heggelund (Jan 4, 2016)

It's hard to pick only 10! I have to in a class I'm teaching ("Music in perspective") in high-school. I can't give them whole works since it would be too much for them, so...

Schubert 3 or 4 Lieder
Chopin 1 Nocturne
Schumann Symphony no. 1, 1st mvt.
Mendelssohn Violin concerto 1st mvt.
Wagner Tristan und Isolde Prelude
Verdi La Traviata part of 3rd act
Smetana Moldau
Grieg Piano concerto 1st mvt.
Mussorgsky Promenade from Pictures...
Mahler Symphony no. 8 1st mvt.

I would love to hear your ideas of my choice, which I might change a bit. The students now have 3 playlists that are 4 and a half hours all together. I told them just to get in the mood for romantic music and then we'll concentrate on ca. 10 pieces. They have lots of work to do, but I'm the one learning the most since this is my first year teaching that class. Just looked over my choices and I'm not satisfied...no Schubert quintet or Brahms...


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## Ravn (Jan 6, 2020)

janxharris said:


> You hear Sibelius 5 as Romantic Era?


I listened to it again after you made your comment, and I must say that I stand by my decision to include in a list of romantic works. I think that it has much more in common with earlier romantic works than it has with the more modern sounding pieces written around that time. Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong.


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## Ravn (Jan 6, 2020)

Kjetil Heggelund said:


> It's hard to pick only 10! I have to in a class I'm teaching ("Music in perspective") in high-school. I can't give them whole works since it would be too much for them, so...
> 
> Schubert 3 or 4 Lieder
> Chopin 1 Nocturne
> ...


When I took that course (funny that they still use the same name for it), our teacher made a comparison of Brahms and Berlioz. Our textbook included a discussion of the so-called "three B's", and whether they should be Bach, Beethoven, Berlioz or Bach, Beethoven, Brahms. He did the comparison using Brahms first symphony and Berlioz's Symphonie Fantastique. I thought it was quite clever, and it certainly made a huge impact on me.


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## Kjetil Heggelund (Jan 4, 2016)

Ravn said:


> When I took that course (funny that they still use the same name for it), our teacher made a comparison of Brahms and Berlioz. Our textbook included a discussion of the so-called "three B's", and whether they should be Bach, Beethoven, Berlioz or Bach, Beethoven, Brahms. He did the comparison using Brahms first symphony and Berlioz's Symphonie Fantastique. I thought it was quite clever, and it certainly made a huge impact on me.


From 2021/22 there will be a new curriculum in MIP, the last was 2006. I'm hoping for new books!


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## Enthusiast (Mar 5, 2016)

Ravn said:


> I listened to it again after you made your comment, and I must say that I stand by my decision to include in a list of romantic works. I think that it has much more in common with earlier romantic works than it has with the more modern sounding pieces written around that time. Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong.


It is perhaps the most heroic of the Sibelius symphonies. And along with most Sibelius we can hear wild unbridled nature - surely a big Romantic preoccupation - in the work. It was originally composed right at the end of the period that we could call the Romantic era in music (1915 - we could call the end of the Romantic earlier but not later) ... although the version we know now came a few years later. I am not sure Sibelius fits easily in any of these categories. He was certainly not a Modernist ...


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

Kjetil Heggelund said:


> It's hard to pick only 10! I have to in a class I'm teaching ("Music in perspective") in high-school. I can't give them whole works since it would be too much for them, so...
> 
> Schubert 3 or 4 Lieder
> Chopin 1 Nocturne
> ...


I think you should have the Schubert Wanderer Fantasy because of its influence on Liszt and on Schumann. I think that the Berlioz symphony was a major work. Not convinced that Mahler is right to have in the context of "key" - especially late Mahler.


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## mbhaub (Dec 2, 2016)

1. Berlioz: Symphony Fantastique
2. Weber: Der Freischutz
3. Schumann: Carnaval
4. Schubert: Winterreise
5. Mendelssohn: The Hebrides
6. Brahms: Symphony no. 1
7. Wagner: Der Ring des Nibelungen
8. Puccini: La Boheme
9. Liszt: Les Preludes (or other symphonic poem)
10. Tchaikovsky: Swan Lake


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## Bulldog (Nov 21, 2013)

Mahler - Symphony no. 2
Mussorgsky - Pictures at an Exhibition
Schubert - String Quintet
Schumann - Kreisleriana
Chopin - Preludes, op. 28
Wagner - Der Ring des Nibelungen
Strauss - Elektra
Bruckner - Symphony no. 8
Tchaikovsky - Symphony no. 6
Dvorak - Symphony no. 9


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## Simplicissimus (Feb 3, 2020)

I’d propose three symphonies, two piano concerti, one violin concerto, two solo piano works/cycles, one string quartet, and one opera:

Brahms 4th
Berlioz Symphonie Fantastique 
Tchaikovsky 6th

Brahms 1st
Rachmaninoff 1st

Bruch Violin Concerto No. 1

Liszt Années de Pèlerinage
Chopin Nocturnes

Schubert String Quartet No. 14

Wagner die Meistersinger


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## Orfeo (Nov 14, 2013)

Ravn said:


> I've decided to only include one work per composer, to avoid the list being entirely Bruckner, Mahler and Sibelius. It was a tough choice, so I decided to cheat and include two honourable mentions. In alphabetical order:
> 
> - Berlioz: Symphonie Fantastique
> - Brahms: Symphony 4
> ...


Gliere's Third Symphony is an early 20th Century work (1908-1911) and actually toying with early modernism a la Scriabin.


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## flamencosketches (Jan 4, 2019)

Hmm... Let me try:

Schubert: String Quintet in C
Schumann: Fantasy in C
Chopin: 24 Préludes, op.28
Berlioz: Symphonie Fantastique
Wagner: Der Ring des Nibelungen (does this count as a single "work"?)
Brahms: Piano Concerto No.2
Liszt: Piano Sonata in B minor
Mahler: Symphony No.2
Smetana: Ma vlást
Saint-Saëns: Symphony No.3

Surely some Verdi belongs here, but I'm unfortunately not familiar with any of his work.



Enthusiast said:


> It is perhaps the most heroic of the Sibelius symphonies. And along with most Sibelius we can hear wild unbridled nature - surely a big Romantic preoccupation - in the work. It was originally composed right at the end of the period that we could call the Romantic era in music (1915 - we could call the end of the Romantic earlier but not later) ... although the version we know now came a few years later. I am not sure Sibelius fits easily in any of these categories. *He was certainly not a Modernist ...*


Care to explain why you say this with such certitude? I suspect we will agree to disagree (as in the case with Beethoven, who you place so firmly into the category of Romanticism), but to me, Sibelius certainly _was_ a Modernist, through and through. In any case, I'm curious.


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## Allegro Con Brio (Jan 3, 2020)

I've never thought of Sibelius as either a Romantic or a Modernist. His language is entirely unique and individual. The 1st Symphony and some of the juvenilia are certainly Romantic, but from the 2nd onward, he was just Sibelius! Maybe "postromantic" (like how some people refer to Vaughan Williams) is a good word. The 4th could have been written by any bona fide modernist. And by the time we get to the 6th, 7th, and Tapiola; we've entered a musical realm that is truly unclassifiable.


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## NightHawk (Nov 3, 2011)

Beethoven 9th Sym
Schubert _Wintereise_
Berlioz Sym Fantastique
Chopin Nocturnes
Wagner Tristan
Brahms 4th Sym
Brahms Deutsche Requiem
Bruckner 9th Sym
Mahler 2nd Sym
R.Strauss Ein Heldenleben


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## Ravn (Jan 6, 2020)

Orfeo said:


> Gliere's Third Symphony is an early 20th Century work (1908-1911) and actually toying with early modernism a la Scriabin.


I view it as a transitional piece, which to my ears sound much more romantic (although late romantic) than modernistic. I find Scriabin's works much more modernistic both in form and harmonics. Again, as with my addition of Sibelius 5, I may be wrong in viewing these works as romantic. However, as I don't believe that the romantic perioded ended abruptly on new year's eve 1899 (or 1909 depending on who you ask), I do believe that adding Glière 3 and Sibelius 5 should be allowed.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

I take "key" to mean "representative" rather than "best," because it would be impossible to get any sort of consensus on the latter and impossible to limit the list to ten works. Ten is too limiting in any case, but that's the assignment. I take the Romantic movement to be fundamentally about expressing specific ideas and feelings, particularly literary (narrative or poetic) or pictorial ones, through the medium of music, and so most of my choices are either implicitly or explicitly programmatic, or actually inclusive of words.

1. Weber: Der Freischutz 
2. Schubert: Winterreise
3. Berlioz: La Damnation de Faust
4. Chopin: Nocturnes or Preludes
5. Schumann: Kreisleriana
6. Wagner: Tristan und Isolde
7. Verdi: La Traviata
8. Brahms: Piano Quintet in F minor 
9. Tchaikovsky: Symphony #6, "Pathetique"
10. Mahler: Symphony #2, "Resurrection"


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## Ulfilas (Mar 5, 2020)

20centrfuge said:


> Ulfilas has a thread going about the "10 Key Works of the 20th Century" fuelled by a list by Pierre Boulez. I am asking, what are the 10 Key Works of the Romantic Era?


Here's my list:

Beethoven: Symphony no. 9

Berlioz: Symphonie Fantastique

Mussorgsky: Boris Godunov

Schubert: Winterreise

Wagner: Tristan und Isolde

Wagner: Parsifal

Verdi: Requiem

Liszt: Sonata in B minor

Bruckner: Symphony no. 9

Chopin: Etudes


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## MusicSybarite (Aug 17, 2017)

I've seen some examples that fit better to late-Romanticism instead of Romanticism. Are Strauss tone poems and early operas considered within Romantic period? I also have some doubts about Mahler's 2nd Symphony. For me it's more late-Romantic or post-Romantic.

Beethoven - String Quartet No. 14
Berlioz - Symphonie Fantastique
Bizet - Carmen
Brahms - Symphony No. 4
Liszt - Années de Pèlerinage
Schubert - Symphony No. 8 _Unfinished_ (considered for many as the first Romantic symphony)
Verdi - Any opera of these: Otello, Falstaff, Aida or La Traviata
Wagner - Tristan und Isolde, The Ring, Parsifal


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## Ulfilas (Mar 5, 2020)

Personally I don't see Strauss as "key" if you have Wagner and Mahler.


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## Allegro Con Brio (Jan 3, 2020)

For me Mahler's 2nd represents the late extreme of Romanticism, stretched to its breaking point. The 6th onward I consider to be pivotal bridging works to the 20th century.


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## MaxKellerman (Jun 4, 2017)

Woodduck said:


> I take "key" to mean "representative" rather than "best," because it would be impossible to get any sort of consensus on the latter and impossible to limit the list to ten works. Ten is too limiting in any case, but that's the assignment. I take the Romantic movement to be fundamentally about expressing specific ideas and feelings, particularly literary (narrative or poetic) or pictorial ones, through the medium of music, and so most of my choices are either implicitly or explicitly programmatic, or actually inclusive of words.
> 
> 1. Weber: Der Freischutz
> 2. Schubert: Winterreise
> ...


I agree completely with your sentiments, but I'm interested in your reasoning for including La Damnation de Faust over other works by Berlioz like the Symphonie Fantastique or Roméo et Juliette.


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## Phil loves classical (Feb 8, 2017)

Tchaikovsky Symphony 4
Borodin String Quartet 2
Liszt Transcedental Etudes
Dvorak Symphony 9
Wagner Tristan Isolde
Schumann Piano Quintet
Berlioz Symphonie F.
Chausson Symphony
Brahms Clarinet Quintet
Faure Requiem


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

MaxKellerman said:


> I agree completely with your sentiments, but I'm interested in your reasoning for including La Damnation de Faust over other works by Berlioz like the Symphonie Fantastique or Roméo et Juliette.


Musically, it makes little difference which of Berlioz's major works we choose (though I think _Damnation_ is stronger overall than _Romeo_).But Goethe's story of Faust, with its theme of man's aspiration to overcome the limitations of his mortality and his willingness even to make a pact with the forces of evil in order to do it, dominated the Romantic imagination, inspiring songs, cantatas, operas, tone poems and symphonies by Beethoven, Spohr, Berlioz, Mendelssohn, Alkan, Schubert, Schumann, Liszt, Wagner, Gounod, Boito, Mahler, et al. Almost any of these composers' Faust-inspired pieces could serve as representatives of Romanticism.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

Allegro Con Brio said:


> For me Mahler's 2nd represents the late extreme of Romanticism, stretched to its breaking point. The 6th onward I consider to be pivotal bridging works to the 20th century.


I find the "Resurrection" a thoroughly Romantic work. It's program is Romantic through and through, its overall concept descends from Beethoven's 9th, and it's less musically challenging than _Parsifal. _ It's opening movement is as conventional as any that Mahler wrote. Mahler sent the score to Brahms, who was less grumpy and more encouraging than usual.

Even Mahler's later works, I would argue, are substantially Romantic in sensibility; their philosophical idealism keeps their Expressionist, nightmarish elements within a humanist frame. The 8th symphony looks back to that favorite Romantic obsession, _Faust;_ what could be more Romantic - less Modernist - than the inspirational, aspirational chorus, "the eternal feminine draws us upward"? Just compare this with what became of that "eternal feminine" in Berg's _Lulu._


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## janxharris (May 24, 2010)

Ravn said:


> I listened to it again after you made your comment, and I must say that I stand by my decision to include in a list of romantic works. I think that it has much more in common with earlier romantic works than it has with the more modern sounding pieces written around that time. Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong.


I do disagree but I'm not 'correcting' you  Everyone's view is valuable even if not shared.

I feel the earlier symphonies, especial 1 and 2 (and perhaps 3) have the romantic era sound. But 5 seems a world apart to me - something about it not overly indulging the human emotions. I know Sibelius made 'classical' comparisons of the 7th - and the 5th has a similar feel.


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## larold (Jul 20, 2017)

What makes music "romantic," as well as being composed in the 19th century, being long and loud, is being about some type of romantic idea or legend. Romantic music is often inspired by and named after other romantic works or legends. Here are 10:

*Beethoven "Erocia"* the first Romantic symphony...about heroism, death and more

*Schubert "Unfinished" Symphony*...life being unfinished business

Liszt *Les Preludes* & *Hunnerschlacht*..."what is life but a series of preludes leading to...death" Liszt asked. That's where a lot of Huns ended in the battle.

Wagner *Die Fliegende Hollander.*..the legend of the flying dutchman

Tchaikovsky *Romeo and Juliet*...Shakespearean tragedy in short form

Rimsky Korsakov *Scheherazade*...legend of 101 Arabian nights

Dvorak *"New World" Symphony*...European view of the new world

Mendelssohn *Elijah*...travails of the Biblical prophet

Weber *Der Freischütz.*..one of the first romantic operas


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## Enthusiast (Mar 5, 2016)

flamencosketches said:


> Care to explain why you say this with such certitude? I suspect we will agree to disagree (as in the case with Beethoven, who you place so firmly into the category of Romanticism), but to me, Sibelius certainly _was_ a Modernist, through and through. In any case, I'm curious.


For Sibelius, I thought I had explained - the heroic nature of his music (at least the 5th) and his apparent encapsulation of wild unbridled nature both seem Romantic hallmarks. Once he had escaped Tchaikovsky's influence, he stood outside of what was considered the mainstream of his time (and he played a big role in reorienting that for he was too good to sideline) but was in his way as "late Romantic" as were, say, Mahler. But I don't hear anything in his music, except perhaps in his 4th symphony, that strikes me as Modern (like, for example, Debussy, Stravinsky, Schoenberg and even late Mahler). What Modernist traits do you detect in his music?

As for Beethoven and our use of these terms in general, I think we all use them differently at their edges. We agree mostly about which composers are at the heart of the Baroque, the Classical or the Romantic (while occasionally detecting small c classicism in Brahms and small r romanticism in Mozart etc.) but, for the edges, what we are hearing are transitions handled differently by different composers. I prefer to give little relevance to dates - but still find them pulling at me when I hear late Saint-Saens, late Elgar and Strauss as "Romantic but written in times when Romanticism was supposed to be over". And - perhaps as a musical illiterate - I am very uncomfortable with using forms and structures to define whether a composer is or is not a Romantic or a Classical composer. To me the question is aesthetic and is closely linked to similar developments and divisions among novelists, poets and artists.

When we come to Modernism and the use of the term Modernist we have a bigger problem because most (all, in fact) Modern art is no longer at all modern! And we do not really have a working terminology for what came after Modernism. The term post-modern is very unhelpful. Representing the multiple strands of the current scene by specific -isms (spectralism, polystylism, serialism, neoromanticism, neoclassicism, even nationalism) might better reflect the reality but it also draws us away from what music from a broadly similar periods has in common. As time passes the music of both Bartok and Stalin-period Shostakovich - once seen as opposites or opponents - comes to seem distinctively of their period and to have more in common than we once dreamed.


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## janxharris (May 24, 2010)

Enthusiast said:


> For Sibelius, I thought I had explained - the heroic nature of his music (at least the 5th) and his apparent encapsulation of wild unbridled nature both seem Romantic hallmarks. Once he had escaped Tchaikovsky's influence, he stood outside of what was considered the mainstream of his time (and he played a big role in reorienting that for he was too good to sideline) but was in his way as "late Romantic" as were, say, Mahler. But I don't hear anything in his music, except perhaps in his 4th symphony, that strikes me as Modern (like, for example, Debussy, Stravinsky, Schoenberg and even late Mahler). What Modernist traits do you detect in his music?


I am rather baffled that you hear modernism in Mahler but very little in Sibelius. Could you be more specific? Mahler, for me, is painfully backward looking in his harmony (in general) whilst Sibelius seems to strike out in a totally unique way. I struggle to think of anyone who has sounded like him.

Of course, Sibelius sound very much in the same vane as Tchaikovsky in his earlier works as you mention - and this makes the contrast with his later matter all the more stark.


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## Enthusiast (Mar 5, 2016)

^ I am reluctant to engage on how Mahler and Sibelius fit within the individual frameworks of different individual members because in my experience of such discussions (I have been in quite a few!) there is no way to resolve them. That is why I attempted the rather wordy later paragraphs of post you quote from! It may be no more than that I can see clearly how Mahler's music led into the music of many undeniably modernist composers - and how the division between their Modernism and late Mahler seems quite slight - whereas I am not sure where Sibelius took us. Don't get me wrong. You can hear the voice of Sibelius in many works from later composers but I'm not sure that any major composers clearly picked up where Sibelius left off. But do, please, feel free to categorise composers in ways that make sense to you - everyone else does!


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## janxharris (May 24, 2010)

Enthusiast said:


> ^ I am reluctant to engage on how Mahler and Sibelius fit within the individual frameworks of different individual members because in my experience of such discussions (I have been in quite a few!) there is no way to resolve them. That is why I attempted the rather wordy later paragraphs of post you quote from! It may be no more than that I can see clearly how Mahler's music led into the music of many undeniably modernist composers - and how the division between their Modernism and late Mahler seems quite slight - whereas I am not sure where Sibelius took us. Don't get me wrong. You can hear the voice of Sibelius in many works from later composers but I'm not sure that any major composers clearly picked up where Sibelius left off. But do, please, feel free to categorise composers in ways that make sense to you - everyone else does!


That's fine Enthusiast - we don't have take it further - and I do agree that Sibelius seems to have led to a full stop without anyone taking the baton (though of course I admit my limited knowledge of relevant works).

I guess one can look at this in at least two ways - either Mahler was the focus for what came after because of his greater relevance and influence or that Sibelius was an extremely difficult act to follow. I am convinced that the latter is true at least.


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## janxharris (May 24, 2010)

I guess Einojuhani Rautavaara is somewhat redolent of Sibelius.


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## Art Rock (Nov 28, 2009)

janxharris said:


> I guess Einojuhani Rautavaara is somewhat redolent of Sibelius.


I don't hear that. At all.


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## janxharris (May 24, 2010)

Art Rock said:


> I don't hear that. At all.


You are probably right in general - I was struggling to find anyone - but the beginning of his 8th perhaps?


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

janxharris said:


> Could you be more specific? Mahler, for me, is painfully backward looking in his harmony (in general)


It's strange and I'm really not a Mahlerian. But listening to Veni Creator Spiritus in the 8th symphony this morining I was struck by how bold the harmonies are, how modern! I was listening to an old Proms performance with Boulez in 1975, for all I know he could have brought this out more than others.

I was also struck by the counterpoint. When I was a kid and first discovered Mahler it was the counterpoint in the first movement of the 8th which impressed me, and it still does.


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## Enthusiast (Mar 5, 2016)

^ You could try Tevot by Ades - it always seemed to me a little Sibelian.


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## janxharris (May 24, 2010)

Mandryka said:


> It's strange and I'm really not a Mahlerian. But listening to Veni Creator Spiritus in the 8th symphony this morining I was struck by how bold the harmonies are, how modern! I was listening to an old Proms performance with Boulez in 1975, for all I know he could have brought this out more than others.
> 
> I was also struck by the counterpoint. When I was a kid and first discovered Mahler it was the counterpoint in the first movement of the 8th which impressed me, and it still does.


Thanks - I'll check it out - it's the one symphony of his I haven't yet.


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

janxharris said:


> Thanks - I'll check it out - it's the one symphony of his I haven't yet.


Ah! What a surprise. Let me know if you want the Boulez concert and I'll upload it for you.


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## Allegro Con Brio (Jan 3, 2020)

It's very true that _harmonically_, Mahler stayed thoroughly Romantic throughout his life save for the 10th, which gives us glimpses of barren sonic landscapes soon to be inhabited by the Second Viennese School. But I consider Mahler to be a "bridging" composer, a defining artist of the first quarter of the 20th century, due to the incredible uniqueness of his merging of music and philosophy. Everything from No. 6 onward is, as Woodduck aptly calls it, "expressionism," which I see as early modernism rather than late Romanticism. I interpret it thusly: in the 6th we hear the crushing machines and soulless mind of modern industrial "tragic" man, in the 7th we hear who-the-heck-knows-what (just a collage of Mahlerian imagination IMO), the 8th perhaps the greatest attempt to storm the heavens ever written so far, in Das Lied an achingly personal musical outpouring, and in the 9th a Freudian psychological journey. All represent a shift away from the formal boundaries of the Romantic Era and into the unbridled expression and, some might say, organized chaos that would come to mark the century. For me, Mahler is a pivotal composer in music history that does neatly fit any category, and who is often treated as an oddity when I believe that his art was very indicative of general cultural sentiments as we head into the most trying century yet seen. All a matter of interpretation.

As for Sibelius, I will concede one thing: his indelible influences of the natural world are quintessentially Romantic. But the way in which he expressed them was, IMO, thoroughly unique. To me, his last three great compositions seem to stop sounding like music at all - they simply sound like the heartbeat of the earth. Rarely has 20th century music reached such titanic heights of inspiration.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

Allegro Con Brio said:


> It's very true that _harmonically_, Mahler stayed thoroughly Romantic throughout his life save for the 10th, which gives us glimpses of barren sonic landscapes soon to be inhabited by the Second Viennese School. But I consider Mahler to be a "bridging" composer, *a defining artist of the first quarter of the 20th century, due to the incredible uniqueness of his merging of music and philosophy. Everything from No. 6 onward is, as Woodduck aptly calls it, "expressionism," which I see as early modernism rather than late Romanticism.* I interpret it thusly: in the 6th we hear the crushing machines and soulless mind of modern industrial "tragic" man, in the 7th we hear who-the-heck-knows-what (just a collage of Mahlerian imagination IMO), the 8th perhaps the greatest attempt to storm the heavens ever written so far, in Das Lied an achingly personal musical outpouring, and in the 9th a Freudian psychological journey. All represent a shift away from the formal boundaries of the Romantic Era and into the unbridled expression and, some might say, organized chaos that would come to mark the century. For me, Mahler is a pivotal composer in music history that does neatly fit any category, and who is often treated as an oddity when I believe that his art was very indicative of general cultural sentiments as we head into the most trying century yet seen. All a matter of interpretation.


Although you've brought my name into this, I think you may have misunderstood me. In fact I _disagree_ with your view that Mahler abandoned his Romantic essence after his 5th symphony and became an "Expressionist." We might say that his work became "more expressionistic," but Expressionism as an artistic movement of Mahler's place and time is pretty well-defined, and I don't think he sits comfortably inside it even in his last works.

Like "impressionism," the term "expressionism" originally applied to painting. Generically, it's a style in which the appearances of the external world are highly exaggerated and distorted in order to intensify the expression of interior, psychological states. More specifically, Expressionism (upper case "E") was an art movement arising in Germany in the pre-WW I period, in which the method of visual distortion was pushed to an extreme in order to explore the pathologies of human nature and society. In pursuit of this expressive goal virtually all traces of Romantic idealism are deliberately expunged, and in that respect Expressionism shows a closer alliance with literary Naturalism than with Romanticism.

Application of the term "expressionism" to music is obviously debatable, since music contains no appearances of external reality to be depicted in distorted form, but music can convey a sense of psychological extremity and abnormality, most obviously when allied with suitable texts as it is in such recognizably Expressionist works as Schoenberg's _Erwartung_ and _Pierrot Lunaire,_ as well as the operas of Berg (the alliance of Naturalism and Expressionism is nicely embodied in Berg's _Wozzeck,_ a study of both social and psychic dysfunction). Schoenberg made the turn from Romanticism to Expressionism by means of atonality and the use of texts focused with morbid intensity on private psychic states. Mahler, by contrast, never made a comparable artistic move; however emotionally intense and personal his music is, he remained concerned with larger questions of a metaphysical, even a religious or quasi-religious nature. We see this very obviously in the 8th symphony, but also in _Das Lied von der Erde:_ that work's title embodies the Romantic's turning to nature in search of the infinite sublime, and it's use of Chinese poetry the Romantic's looking to the traditions and sensibilities of Asia (as Schopenhauer and Wagner looked to Buddhism) for an expression of life's transient beauty and a vision of salvation.

In a sense, Expressionism might be seen as what's left of Romanticism when hope and ideals are abandoned and feeling is not yet exhausted. Mahler may seem at times to be pushing 
at the boundaries, but that comes only from the burden of having to sustain the intensity of his own emotional complexities. This, in my view, makes him a "defining artist of the 20th century" only as a chronicler of the exhaustion of Romanticism as a cultural movement. He is much, much more an end than a beginning.


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## Kjetil Heggelund (Jan 4, 2016)

I have to teach my class digital now...Schools shut down until April 3rd. Home assignment tomorrow will be to analyze Mazurka op. 7 no. 1 by Chopin, chords and form. Maybe simple stuff.


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## Allegro Con Brio (Jan 3, 2020)

Woodduck said:


> Although you've brought my name into this, I think you may have misunderstood me. In fact I _disagree_ with your view that Mahler abandoned his Romantic essence after his 5th symphony and became an "Expressionist." We might say that his work became "more expressionistic," but Expressionism as an artistic movement of Mahler's place and time is pretty well-defined, and I don't think he sits comfortably inside it even in his last works.
> 
> Like "impressionism," the term "expressionism" originally applied to painting. Generically, it's a style in which the appearances of the external world are highly exaggerated and distorted in order to intensify the expression of interior, psychological states. More specifically, Expressionism (upper case "E") was an art movement arising in Germany in the pre-WW I period, in which the method of visual distortion was pushed to an extreme in order to explore the pathologies of human nature and society. In pursuit of this expressive goal virtually all traces of Romantic idealism are deliberately expunged, and in that respect Expressionism shows a closer alliance with literary Naturalism than with Romanticism.
> 
> ...


I definitely agree that he is more of an end than a beginning. The histrionic emotion, fervent search for meaning, and interest in the spiritual that marked the "wild" side of the Romantic movement (Berlioz, Liszt, Tchaikovsky) sees its ultimate realization in Mahler. The 9th sounds like Romanticism decaying before our ears, the finale an ode to the wilted beauty of days gone by. And I do believe that, had he lived, we would be talking about his late works as modernistic. But such hypothetical scenarios are fruitless, and I think your last paragraph above sums up Mahler better than anything else I've ever read.


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## Flossner (Mar 8, 2020)

- Beethoven: Symphony #3
- Schubert: Wanderer Fantasy
- Schumann: Manfred Overture
- Berlios: Symphonie Fantastique
- Chopin: Etudes
- Brahms: Violin Concerto
- Wagner: Tristan und Isolde
- Verdi: Aida
- Tchaikovsky: Piano Concerto #1
- Dvorak: Cello Concerto


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