# Was Beethoven the first Romantic composer?



## Cyclops (Mar 24, 2008)

Most sources say that Schumann was the first of the Romantic period(some say Schubert) but listening to Beethoven's late piano sonatas I think to myself,no way that is Classical. The piece I'm listening to now,his Hammerklavier is magnificent and powerful but no way does it fit the Classical label. It surely is Romantic in the strictest meaning of the word. 
He died in 1827 but surely he was ushering in a new era with music like this!


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## Bach (Jun 2, 2008)

The strictest meaning of the word 'romantic' in reference to music comes from the French word for novel rather than any associations with love. Romantic music should therefore have a close relationship to literature - often describing or capturing an event or telling a story. Schubert's songs were some of the first romantic compositions, along with Beethoven's overtures and the Pastoral Symphony. Perhaps the first romantic composer was Berlioz, with early works (written only two or three years after Beethoven's death) like Symphony Fantastique telling stories and describing scenes. 

The Hammerklavier is in Beethoven's late style - unique - neither classical or romantic, nobody really attempted to imitate this style or take it any further (if that was ever, indeed, possible).


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## starry (Jun 2, 2009)

I'm not sure about this classical / romantic divide. Didn't the classical style just continue but slightly changed with many composers anyway? People like Scriabin, Liszt, Debussy, Wagner maybe mark more of a different approach, but many are following on from the classical masters just slightly differently coloured.


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## Cyclops (Mar 24, 2008)

Yes Bach I was correcting someone on another forum about this the other day. The poster naturally assumed that Romantic was all to do with love and longing etc,but I explained to him that in music it refers to a period of more free expression,not so bound by the tenets of classical composition. In Mozart's and Haydn's day music was a job,a profession,and to be successful you HAD to comply. I think Beethoven was like,huh,stuff that,I'll write it the way I want. 
That to me is the spirit of romanticism.


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## starry (Jun 2, 2009)

Mozart broke away and became freelance. Even Haydn eventually broke the chains of his employment. Beethoven wrote to commission just like them. I'm sure all the great composers must have wrote something just out of pure pleasure and individuality anyway. No doubt even Bach did back in baroque period at one time or another.


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## Cyclops (Mar 24, 2008)

You know its funny,but listening to the Hammerklavier I couldn't help noticing a similarity to Bach! Fast and precise piano runs,no ornamentation.


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## starry (Jun 2, 2009)

Would the greatest composers really care about what category they are put into anyway, lol. To them maybe music is simply music. Perhaps they might have liked to see themselves as successors in some ways to composers of the past that they admired.


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## emiellucifuge (May 26, 2009)

I always consider Beethoven to be largely into the romantic style of thinking. I mostly listen to his symphonies but i think they are th best examples of this, their style are so far ahead from the symphonies of say.. Mozart or Haydn. (barring maybe 1-4)


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## starry (Jun 2, 2009)

emiellucifuge said:


> I always consider Beethoven to be largely into the romantic style of thinking. I mostly listen to his symphonies but i think they are th best examples of this, their style are so far ahead from the symphonies of say.. Mozart or Haydn. (barring maybe 1-4)


But what is 'the romantic style of thinking', and didn't those who are called romantics now want to 'romanticize' composers like Bach, Beethoven, Mozart etc anyway?


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## Bach (Jun 2, 2008)

Cyclops said:


> You know its funny,but listening to the Hammerklavier I couldn't help noticing a similarity to Bach! Fast and precise piano runs,no ornamentation.


Or perhaps the fact that the entire last movement is a giant fugue..


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## Chi_townPhilly (Apr 21, 2007)

Cyclops said:


> He died in 1827 but surely he was ushering in a new era...


*I agree*.


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## Bach (Jun 2, 2008)

Chi_town/Philly said:


> *I agree*.


Not many people would disagree..


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## Guest (Jun 4, 2009)

i think Beethoven was not a romantic composer but he set the tone for romantic period. his late sonatas and compositions were hardly accepted that time. did the old Beethoven become rebellious? i don't think so. it's the re-awakening of his music making that influenced the younger composers.


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## bdelykleon (May 21, 2009)

According to an important comtemporary, the writer and amateur composer ETA Hoffman, the first Romantic composers were... *Haydn *and *Mozart*...


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## Rasa (Apr 23, 2009)

> The strictest meaning of the word 'romantic' in reference to music comes from the French word for novel rather than any associations with love. Romantic music should therefore have a close relationship to literature - often describing or capturing an event or telling a story.


This doesn't hold up for Chopin. The only music with program he wrote was his Ballades (poems by Mickiewicz, at least that's what Schumann tells us), and his songs.

It's definitely a romantic source of inspiration, but it won't serve as a definition.
Maybe it should be searched in the extension of the forms (both extending the exiting ones and the creation of new ones: ballades, fantaisies, nocuturnes...), style of construction (less defined phrases...) and the extention of harmony (9th, 11th...)


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## starry (Jun 2, 2009)

People in the future always want to read history backwards though as if it's progressing inevitably towards something. But art arguably is more about building on what has gone before, there is very little that is completely new, most things are influenced by what has gone before in some way. Sonata form seems to have been something of a new idea as the baroque era eventually gave way, although even some baroque ideas were probably transformed or used in new ways in the classical era.


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## Bach (Jun 2, 2008)

Rasa said:


> This doesn't hold up for Chopin. The only music with program he wrote was his Ballades (poems by Mickiewicz, at least that's what Schumann tells us), and his songs.
> 
> It's definitely a romantic source of inspiration, but it won't serve as a definition.
> Maybe it should be searched in the extension of the forms (both extending the exiting ones and the creation of new ones: ballades, fantaisies, nocuturnes...), style of construction (less defined phrases...) and the extention of harmony (9th, 11th...)


No, it does apply to Chopin - his music might not be programmatic but it is composed with a huge number of non-functional, unessential notes for the purpose of colour and emotion rather than the utilitarian diatonicism found in much classical and baroque music.


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## starry (Jun 2, 2009)

Programmatic music was around for a while, Vivaldi's 4 Seasons was based on poems. Ok it was more popular in the 19th century, but still not maybe revolutionary.

The unessential notes idea is interesting, but does that mean composers like Brahms, Dvorak, Mendelssohn, Tchaikovsky or even Schumann are closer to Wagner than to Beethoven? I'm not sure I would think so. Surely the classical style developed beyond the high classical.

An *impressionistic* style did perhaps develop alongside the 19th century classical style. Wagner, Debussy, Scriabin... Perhaps this became one of the strands of modern classical music alongside serialism, the modern classic style etc. In other words more than one style can exist in an era.


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## Bach (Jun 2, 2008)

Chopin used more unessential notes than all of the composers you just listed. They're more inclined towards chromatic alteration - much like Beethoven.


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## starry (Jun 2, 2009)

Didn't Chopin love Mozart though? I wonder if he liked Mozart's Fantasia in C minor....


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## Bach (Jun 2, 2008)

I love Mozart, but my music is atonal.


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## Yosser (May 29, 2009)

Bach said:


> The Hammerklavier is in Beethoven's late style - unique - neither classical or romantic, nobody really attempted to imitate this style or take it any further (if that was ever, indeed, possible).


We can agree on that!


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## Yosser (May 29, 2009)

emiellucifuge said:


> I always consider Beethoven to be largely into the romantic style of thinking. I mostly listen to his symphonies but i think they are th best examples of this, their style are so far ahead from the symphonies of say.. Mozart or Haydn. (barring maybe 1-4)


Erm, was that a mistype? The Eroica is widely regarded as one of the great breakthroughs in musical form. It is this symphony that marks a clean break between Beethoven and his predecessors. The 4th may be light in tone -- Beethoven liked to mix it up --- but can you name a prior orchestral work that matches it for sheer wit?


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## Cyclops (Mar 24, 2008)

Chi_town/Philly said:


> *I agree*.


I think I missed all the action as it were but hmm from what I've seen that Nicola seemed to have stirred up quite a storm on one or two occasions!


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