# Romantic philosophy applied to pre-Romantic music.



## Guest (Dec 5, 2018)

Due to the emphasis on the subjectivity of one's experiences, 'Romanticism' (of the non-musical kind) has always been a tricky concept for me to totally understand whenever I read what people like ETA Hoffmann and Caspar David Friedrich have to say about their work and the works of their contemporaries.

I'm sure there are many here who are familiar with Hoffmann's famous article on Beethoven's 5th symphony, so I won't dwell too much on it, apart from looking into the view that the nature of instrumental music is the most (or only) romantic art due to it not being bound by definite meaning or a definite portrayal of anything, rather 'a world with nothing in common with the surrounding outer world of the senses.' I believe he used the word 'infinite' as well to get that point across.

What interests me is his comments on Haydn and Mozart from the perspective of romanticism. We know that Haydn and Mozart certainly composed an abundance of instrumental works, but I think it's refreshing to consider them from alternate perspectives, and I presume that the era where romantic thought and interpretation was thriving is an era whose music is particularly appreciated by classical music fans.

The comments on Mozart and Haydn are: 


ETA Hoffmann said:


> Haydn grasps romantically the human in human life; he is more accommodating, more comprehensible for the common man.
> Mozart laid claim more to the superhuman, to the marvellous that dwells in the inner
> spirit.


But instead of actually examining Hoffmann's comments under the scrutiny of our post-modern eyeglasses, I'd be interested to see how other TCers may respond to the music of Mozart, Haydn and even earlier music using ideas found in the aesthetic philosophy of romanticism:


Wikipedia said:


> The movement emphasised intense emotion as an authentic source of aesthetic experience, placing new emphasis on such emotions as apprehension, horror and terror, and awe-especially that experienced in confronting the new aesthetic categories of the sublimity and beauty of nature.


I won't be posting too many new threads again like I did in August, btw, because I think many of them got a bit out of hand.


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## Jacck (Dec 24, 2017)

ETA Hoffmann said:


> Haydn grasps romantically the human in human life; he is more accommodating, more comprehensible for the common man.
> Mozart laid claim more to the superhuman, to the marvellous that dwells in the inner
> spirit..


to be frank, this sounds like incomprehensible babble to me. Haydn grasps romantically the human in the human life ?!? What ? 
I am instantly reminded of the Pomo: post-modern generator
http://www.elsewhere.org/journal/pomo/
(click reload to generate another text of deep meaning)


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

That wiki quote, I really don't understand what's meant by



> confronting the new aesthetic categories of the sublimity and beauty of nature.


The sublime had a special meaning in Kant, it has to do with the special emotions we might feel when we really "get" the grandeur of nature -- say, if we see a volcano erupt. But how's this relevant?

To be perfectly honest, I don't see a whole lot of difference between the emotional resources of, for example, Brahms and Mozart -- I mean there's plenty of



> intense emotion as an authentic source of aesthetic experience, placing new emphasis on such emotions as apprehension, horror and terror, and awe-


in Brahms 1 and Mozart K 550.

I don't know anything about Haydn, so I can't comment. But I know enough to say that that remark about Haydn is the sort of glib writing you might see from a first year undergraduate! This



> Haydn grasps romantically the human in human life;


 I'm inclined to agree with Jaccccccccck


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

Romanticism can be a slippery concept in discussions of music, even though there's general agreement about where the "Romantic period" begins and ends. It might help to consider its characteristics as a historical and cultural phenomenon. Here is my understanding.

Romanticism was a late 18th and 19th-century movement in the arts marked by a new focus on the individual. It celebrated personal feelings, emotions, and passions, the personal will, and the individual as an autonomous being choosing his own identity and determining his own destiny rather than measuring himself by the conventional norms and ideals of society, religion, or aesthetic doctrine. Romantic art thus questioned or renounced received ideals of classical form and order, sought forms which arose as directly as possible from the drive to expression, and relished the grandiose, the picturesque, the sensual, the ecstatic, the terrifying, and in general whatever was most immediately and deeply felt by, and peculiar to, the individual artist. 

Romanticism was paradoxical in being at once a product of the rational individualism of the Enlightenment, which questioned and rebelled against rigid social structures and religious dogmas, and a reaction against one of the primary manifestations of Enlightenment thought, the Industrial Revolution, which to the Romantics seemed like a new form of social oppression inimical to the individual. This reaction against the forces of modern civilization took a number of forms: a love of nature and an exaltation of the "natural" in human nature and behavior; a nostalgia for a fantasied pastoral paradise represented by Medievalism and a love of Antiquity; an interest in folklore and myth, in which Romantics could see an image of man uncorrupted by modern civilization; a fascination with the exotic - Eastern cultures, religions and philosophies - and a love of travel to "picturesque" faraway paces. All of these provided artists with a fresh and exciting iconography of the human spirit, a spirit unconfined by the limiting, oppressive dogmas of tradition and the problems of modern life. The Romantic spirit abhorred limits, valued freedom above all, and yearned for a new earthly Eden in which Adam and Eve could wander naked and eat freely of the Tree of Life, unafraid of wily serpents or divine retribution.

I suppose the question here is: in what specific ways can we describe music as Romantic? And how well do our criteria apply to music written before what's generally considered the "Romantic period"?


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## Larkenfield (Jun 5, 2017)

”I'd be interested to see how other TCers may respond to the music of Mozart, Haydn and even earlier music using ideas found in the aesthetic philosophy of romanticism.”

I would see no point in looking for the application of the aesthetic ideals of the Romantics to, let’s say, the Classical era or before. The roots of the Classical area were born from the Greek and Roman ideals of form and proportion applied to music, literature, and art. The Romantic aesthetics were liberated from that for greater freedom of personal expression, more rooted in the celebration of nature, with Beethoven’s Pastoral being a good example of the Romantic ideal because there’s a sense of Beethoven wandering through nature rather than just nature talking to itself in an impersonal way as if he wasn’t the one having the experience. Romanticism was the liberation from those previous aesthetics and restraints. And I agree with ETA Hoffman about Haydn and Mozart though it’s hard to explain. But he was talking about his own personal reaction and was not trying to superimpose his meaning on anybody else, like I would imagine a true Romantic would do with a very personal and imaginative viewpoint that doesn’t necessarily have to be true.


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## Guest (Dec 5, 2018)

Woodduck said:


> Romanticism can be a slippery concept in discussions of music, even though there's general agreement about where the "Romantic period" begins and ends. It might help to consider its characteristics as a historical and cultural phenomenon. Here is my understanding.
> 
> Romanticism was a late 18th and 19th-century movement in the arts marked by a new focus on the individual. It celebrated personal feelings, emotions, and passions, the personal will, and the individual as an autonomous being choosing his own identity and determining his own destiny rather than measuring himself by the conventional norms and ideals of society, religion, or aesthetic doctrine. Romantic art thus questioned or renounced received ideals of classical form and order, sought forms which arose as directly as possible from the drive to expression, and relished the grandiose, the picturesque, the sensual, the ecstatic, the terrifying, and in general whatever was most immediately and deeply felt by, and peculiar to, the individual artist.
> 
> ...


This is great, thanks for this; it's certainly what I was thinking of when creating this thread. Those two questions at the end of your post are definitely what I intend to ask, but I think you put it better than I did!


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

Larkenfield said:


> "I'd be interested to see how other TCers may respond to the music of Mozart, Haydn and even earlier music using ideas found in the aesthetic philosophy of romanticism."
> 
> I would see no point in looking for the application of the aesthetic ideals of the Romantics to, let's say, the Classical era or before. The roots of the Classical area were born from the Greek and Roman ideals of form and proportion applied to music, literature, and art. The Romantic aesthetics weren't and were liberated from that for greater freedom of personal expression... And I agree with ETA Hoffman about Haydn and Mozart though it's hard to explain. But he was talking about his own personal reaction and was not trying to superimpose his meaning on anybody else, like I would imagine a true Romantic would do with a very personal and imaginative viewpoint that doesn't necessarily have to be true.


I gather that by the last quarter of the 18th century it was becoming trendy to apply the adjective "romantic" to aesthetic experiences, especially experiences of nature, which one found particularly thrilling or grand or picturesque. The question for us is whether that fashionable sensibility, fed by the growing popularity of novels, had much of an influence on musical aesthetics. EdwardBast recently posted in a thread about Mozart this striking piece by C.P.E. Bach:






The piece was titled "CPE Bachs Empfindungen" (C.P.E. Bach's feelings), and it was one of C.P.E.'s last works (he died in 1788), placing it within the boundaries of the cultural movement known as Romanticism. Could this work have a more Romantic title? Can we, or should we, call it Romantic music? Is it in some way characteristic of its time, exceptional for its time, ahead of its time? Should it make us rethink our usual "period" divisions?


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

(Shirime writes) The comments on Mozart and Haydn are: 



> Haydn grasps romantically the human in human life; he is more accommodating, more comprehensible for the common man.
> Mozart laid claim more to the superhuman, to the marvellous that dwells in the inner spirit.


These comments are from Hoffman's 1810 review of Beethoven's 5th Symphony. Anybody interested in reading them in context can find the first part of that review here:

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

Hoffman seems to have had a view of what "romantic" meant, which is different from the understanding of the term as it later developed.


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## starthrower (Dec 11, 2010)

That CPE Bach Fantasy in F sharp minor is a beautiful piece. I'll have to do some more listening.


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## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)

I think music had to develop to a certain point harmonically before it could be "expressive" of human emotions to the degree Romanticism is seen and defined as embodying this. The Baroque, although it could be emotional, did not have the harmonic resources to do the job as fully. Listen to the way Romantics would construct a melody, which in combination with certain effective chord progressions, could evoke hope, sadness, tragedy, etc.


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## Larkenfield (Jun 5, 2017)

Thanks, Ken. Just wow by Hoffman. I can only imagine something like this being written after the Classical era was on the way out: 

“When music is spoken of as an independent art, does not the term properly apply only to instrumental music, which scorns all aid, all admixture of other arts (poetry), and gives pure expression to its own peculiar artistic nature? It is the most romantic of all arts, one might almost say the only one that is genuinely romantic, since its only subject-matter is infinity. Orpheus’s lyre opened the gates of Orcus. Music reveals to man an unknown realm, a world quite separate from the outer sensual world surrounding him, a world in which he leaves behind all precise feelings in order to embrace an inexpressible longing.” 

I think Beethoven’s later piano sonatas are also a perfect representation of this and their relationship with the “infinite” as another dimension. It was time for humanity to spread its wings collectively as human beings with their own liberated freedom of thought and emotions and their own expanded point of view on art, literature, and music beyond the constraints of the Classical boundaries. Wonderful quote by Hoffman!


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

millionrainbows said:


> I think music had to develop to a certain point harmonically before it could be "expressive" of human emotions to the degree Romanticism is seen and defined as embodying this. The Baroque, although it could be emotional, did not have the harmonic resources to do the job as fully. Listen to the way Romantics would construct a melody, which in combination with certain effective chord progressions, could evoke hope, sadness, tragedy, etc.


Although I agree with this as a description of what occurred in general practice, harmonic devices typical of the Romantic period, incorporating chromatic voice leading, ambiguous chords, and pivots to remote key areas, were known and occasionally used much earlier, often for the precise purpose of expressing moments of intense emotion, especially in text-based works such as madrigals, oratorios and passions. In other words, composers saw the possibilities of "Romantic" harmony quite early on, but chose not to use them as a "normal" language (and in fact, constant or extreme chromaticism was not the norm even through the Romantic period itself; I suspect the theorists' preoccupation with the Wagner-Schoenberg lineage gives us something of a false picture of the 19th century as a whole).

If Marenzio, Monteverdi, Purcell, Bach, Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven - and even Mendelssohn - were well acquainted with the ingredients of chromatic harmony that Liszt, Wagner and company would later exploit to the hilt, the real question is: why didn't they use it?


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## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)

Woodduck said:


> If Marenzio, Monteverdi, Purcell, Bach, Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven - and even Mendelssohn - were well acquainted with the ingredients of chromatic harmony that Liszt, Wagner and company would later exploit to the hilt, the real question is: why didn't they use it?


Perhaps this sort of emoting could easily turn into "Romantic" yearnings of a sexual nature. Most everybody was Catholic back then, and things like this were not discussed. That's one theory.

It seems like Liszt crossed the line, and probably was made to regret it. He turned to the Church to "repent" of all of it. Is there a "harmonic sexual component" in chromaticism? Maybe only certain kinds of curves would work, certain kinds of gestures, certain expressiveness...suggestions of freedom, heroic deeds, fervent, hot progressions, performers sweating, emoting, looking handsome or showing cleavage, all the artistic ingenuity they could muster, simulated musical "orgasms" and flights of ecstacy...all the things poets are interested in.


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## hammeredklavier (Feb 18, 2018)

_"why do you think Beethoven wrote such a powerful but rather serene piece, in one of his darkest periods of his life?"

"*There is a popular myth that composers write the way they feel, which is simply not true.* For example, "Tchaikovsky wrote his Pathetique when he was suicidal"- not at all. You cannot write music if you're suicidal. You stay in bed, depressed."_


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## MarkW (Feb 16, 2015)

Just listen to (where possible) or read about how Beethoven, Haydn, Mozart, Bach etc. were performed commonly between, say, 1850 and 1940. [Klemperer's St. Matthew Passion, for instance, or read about how Wagner suggests you conduct Beethoven,)


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

KenOC said:


> (Shirime writes) The comments on Mozart and Haydn are:
> ​These comments are from Hoffman's 1810 review of Beethoven's 5th Symphony. Anybody interested in reading them in context can find the first part of that review here:
> 
> https://sites.google.com/site/kenocstuff/eta-hoffman-on-beethoven
> ...


Not different, I'd say, but partial. We can see the dimensions of the Romantic phenomenon in historical context, whereas Hoffmann, and others in the midst of the turmoil, would have singled out what he wanted the movement to be, and interpreted the art of his time to accord with his own biases. It's impossible for us to call Haydn a Romantic, since we distinguish Romanticism from Classicism, while to Hoffmann the two concepts may actually have applied to the same music (though I'm speaking theoretically). His description of Beethoven as "a purely romantic composer" shows his bias, but his feeling that "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" is one that we can understand even if, when we compare the "Eroica" to symphonies written before it, we can accept his statement only with qualifications. It may have been Hoffmann who called _Don Giovanni_ a Romantic opera, but aside from the effectively spooky appearance of the stone guest, it would be hard to call its music or sensibility Romantic today.


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## Larkenfield (Jun 5, 2017)

What Bernstein _doesn't_ say in his rambling video about Beethoven is that a composer cannot write a work that has a sense of peace and well-being without experiencing those emotions himself at the time that he's writing, even if only temporarily. It's impossible. Such a consciousness cannot be faked or artificially created, or the work would have no life - it would be dead. But it doesn't mean that the work is a reflection of the total state of the composer's life at the time it was being composed; his life could still be full of turbulence and problems but not during those moments when he's composing. He would have to be consciously experiencing that state of 'being' and peace for it to be real.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

Larkenfield said:


> What Bernstein _doesn't_ say in his video about the 6th is that a composer cannot write a work that has the sound of peace and well-being without experiencing those emotions, even if only temporarily. It's impossible. Such a state of consciousness cannot be faked or artificially created, or the work would have no value - it would not be convincing. But it doesn't have to mean that the work is a total reflection of the composer's life when it was being written, which could be full of turbulence and problems.


Good distinction. As an artist (painter) I used to tell people who asked about "self expression" in my work that although my paintings definitely said something about my sense of life and emotional makeup, they were painted in cold blood. A work that expresses a feeling vividly to an audience is rarely created in the grip of that feeling, and will usually succeed better as art if it isn't. I love Aaron Copland's statement that a musical composition begins not with an inner feeling but with an inner singing. The singing embodies feeling, but that feeling, paradoxically, is largely unfelt - unconscious, or subconscious - during the act of creation, in which the forms seem to have a life of their own and progressively reveal the artist to himself.

Art might be said to be the transcription of a memory of experience which comes back to the artist only in the act of giving it perceptible form, and the memory may very well come as a partial surprise to him. Thus a stranger may tell the artist something about his work that he never intended or thought of.


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## Guest (Dec 6, 2018)

I can relate to what Copland says about ‘inner singing.’ Thanks for bringing it up, I actually hadn’t heard of it before but I’ve always held the same belief. 

Music (or any art) created whilst experiencing something of an intense emotion or experience will probably be very unfocussed and frankly rather bad.


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## Jacck (Dec 24, 2017)

the romantic vs classical period. In my view, one set of ideals (rationality, classicism) was replaced with another set of ideals (the irrational, emotional). I read some authors from this period, most notably Goethe. His novel "Das Leiden des jungen Werthers" is a prototypical Sturm und Drang work, and Sturm und Drang was a revolt against too much rationality. I kind of sympathize with the movement. The classicism was too restrictive, too many rules and constraining ideals.

Is is possible to tell, if a give work is classical or romantic based on the music/text alone? Probably not. Both tendencies, the classical and the romantic existed at the same times in history, just the emphasis was different. So we can find emotional romantic works in the classical period and vice versa.

PS: it is also interesting to read Faust. Goethe wrote Faust over his whole life. The first part of Faust was written by a young man and is clearly Sturm und Drang, while the second part of Faust was written by an old man and leans much more to classicism (inspiration by ancient Rome and Greece).


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## Enthusiast (Mar 5, 2016)

I've tried to post on this subject here a couple of times but have not had the theoretical background to do so clearly enough. It surprises me that many have a difficulty differentiating between Romantic music (music from a certain period and informed by a certain set of philosophies and interests) and romantic tendencies in composers outside of this "movement". I don't know for sure but think I can remember this being a commonplace in the study of literature (the Romantic period vs. romantic tendencies in literature). I am no scholar but am sure I can remember a view that there has always been a tension between classical and romantic tendencies in literature. I have long found the same in music.

To put it in its simplest form and to summarise what I have understood to date, I see classical tendencies being manifest in a strong (almost dominant) concern for _form _with discipline coming to the fore in helping the composer to realise this. And I see romantic tendencies as more concerned with _expression_, with form mostly being of interest only to deliver expression. A more classically inclined composer might explore form and the different possibilities of different forms and keys and even moods in quite a systematic way and a more romantically inclined composer might be more likely to go about it "from the other end", finding ways to express an apparently emotional idea through music. The former (the classical) seems to invoke feelings within me/us (I think I detect it beyond just me) concerned with the human and the community, while the latter seems to more likely to invoke feelings of "something bigger than the merely human" (yes, the infinite, but also landscape and big events). I do definitely see Mozart as considerably "more romantic" than Haydn - despite the evident romanticism in the sturm und drang symphonies and works like The Creation.

As most of what is quoted within the OP seems broadly to coincide with this, I don't find it difficult to understand and to broadly agree with it. But the idea of music being always abstract and therefore always romantic to some extent is newer to me. And it may also be unnecessary. What about when music sets words or serves drama - does it suddenly lose its automatic membership of the romantic club? We can acknowledge romantic tendencies in all art and classical tendencies. It can be interesting to look at all music and to try to identify where it might be placed on the romantic-classical continuum - and I think it helps to go some way towards developing a better understanding of a given piece, perhaps especially the new but also the pre-Classical. I suppose, if we go back a long way, the very act of knowing the identity of the composer - and the apparent egoism on the composer's part involved in this - signposts a growth in (or even the appearance of?) romanticism.


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## Enthusiast (Mar 5, 2016)

shirime said:


> I won't be posting too many new threads again like I did in August, btw, because I think many of them got a bit out of hand.


Stimulating posts and posts that keep us in touch with thinking that goes beyond what most of us are aware of (it seems) liven the place up considerably! It is sad that they can sometimes get out of hand.

Some ideas and some "music" seem to make some people "angry beyond reason" so that it is not enough for them to simply say "I hate that" or even "I hate it because.." or (the more reflective) "that music makes me angry because ...". Our apparent inability to explore new ideas and the outer reaches of our subject without a communal meltdown is a real shame. I guess obsession is a common character flaw among CM devotees! But the need to dominate a discussion on certain subjects (to keep repeating a view that _has _been heard but might not be an answer for everyone - rather like talking English more loudly to someone who seems not to understand the language!) so that the discussion can't flower (or even just die if there is no interest) is regrettable for all that. If we all went ballistic when another member's style or beliefs or values irritated us we wouldn't get anywhere. And surely, if this is to be the civilised place you would expect it to be, we can welcome newer members (not that you are new any more) with openness .... and if they also bring their newer ideas so much the better.

I urge you to continue to post interesting ideas and examples but do recognise that the cost to you (in terms of your mood especially) must be great.


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## larold (Jul 20, 2017)

Romanticism in music isn't limited to some philosophical underpinning, any idea. It also -- perhaps even more importantly -- registers in musical concept and technique. 

One reason Beethoven's "Eroica" symphony 3 is called the first Romantic symphony is because the slow movement is in itself the duration of any other symphony written to that time -- 1803. There were also great swells of sounds from pianissimo to fortissimo that were uncommon for its time. It also had a programmatic name, something uncommon in the Baroque and Classical eras.

These are the three characteristics of Romantic music that differentiate it from Baroque or Classical music: duration in time and musical ideas of conception, volume and program. 

Whatever ETA Hoffman or anyone else wrote about Romanticism may be prelude but the techniques of music changed. This was less so in literature; Mary Shelley's "Frankenstein" from 1823 was not longer than any book written to its time though it did deal with ideas never before broached. Delacroix's revolutionary painting, which represented the French revolution, was similar.

As to Haydn, if you've ever heard "The Spirit's Song" from the 12 Canzonettas, based on a poem from his friend Mrs. Hunter, you'll know he had ideas that transcended human life. He also portrayed them in the Creation oratorio and, to lesser extent, in The Seasons oratorio.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

Identification of Classicism as an "emphasis on form" and Romanticism as an "emphasis on expression" is an oversimplification, and mistakes effect for cause. 

Romanticism came into existence, not to make art expressive - people in all times and places consider their art expressive - but to express a particular view of life and particular aspects of human experience which people felt had been repressed by the institutions and norms of society. In art, including music, that repression was felt by the Romantics to be embodied in the "neoclassical" (imputed Greek and Roman) ideals of beauty and balance. 

Music and art in the Classical era was not unconcerned with expressing feelings, but the spectrum of feelings which it was acceptable to express, and the manner in which they were expressed, were governed by a sense that there existed natural laws of proportionality and balance which should be observed in order to keep the expression of feeling from becoming ugly, vulgar and offensive. People saw in the fine proportions of ancient temples and the measured and precise thought of ancient philosophers an Elysian ideal exemplifying a rational, balanced life in which the baser impulses of human nature were kept in check - a "Christian" ideal as well - and by which an orderly and humane civilization was assured. The sharp clarity of form which we observe in Classical period music, with its concern for easily perceived order, balance of affects, and resolution of tensions, is the product of this attitude toward emotional expression, and we can observe it even in music in which we find an exceptionally intense or poignant portrayal of feelings. It isn't that Classical composers wanted to "emphasize form" over expression. It's that they sought form in which emotions were properly presented according to an Apollonian ideal of moderation, balance and beauty. Such qualities defined good taste, and good taste, for the Classical temper, was virtually a moral imperative.

Moderation, balance and beauty were not the ideals of Romanticism. A true Romantic would rather contemplate the gutted ruins of a Greek temple under a stormy sky than the alabaster purity of a temple shining in the sun. Romanticism is attracted to the forbidden, the forgotten, the imaginary, the strange, the frightening, the overwhelming, the infinite, the sublime - to those aspects of experience which resist balance and defy the supposed "laws" of beauty. Obviously, such a sense of life, translated into aesthetic terms, poses problems for the question of form which require new thinking and new solutions. How does a composer express the irrational and the inexpressible in terms of form? We see Romantic composers solving those problems in different ways and with varying degrees of effectiveness. Romantic music does not lack form; form is as critical to its success as it is to any other music. Not surprisingly, certain forms which evolved to meet the expressive needs of earlier periods proved quite adaptable to the goals of much Romantic music: "sonata form," in particular, with its narrative logic and force, had a long lifespan. But new forms and genres were needed to express Romantic emotions, ranging in scope from the piano impromptu to the music drama. The essential Romantic problem was to find forms in which the sense of uninhibited, spontaneous and unlimited emotion could be communicated coherently, and the great Romantic composers worked as hard and as self-critically at that task as any Classical composer worked at achieving his own artistic ideals.


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## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)

It seems that Classicism, with its restraint and control, represent's Man's rational side, while Romanticism, with its emphasis on emotion and impulse, represents the more unrestrained and Dionysian side.


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## janxharris (May 24, 2010)

millionrainbows said:


> Perhaps this sort of emoting could easily turn into "Romantic" yearnings of a sexual nature. Most everybody was Catholic back then, and things like this were not discussed. That's one theory.
> 
> It seems like Liszt crossed the line, and probably was made to regret it. He turned to the Church to "repent" of all of it. Is there a "harmonic sexual component" in chromaticism? Maybe only certain kinds of curves would work, certain kinds of gestures, certain expressiveness...suggestions of freedom, heroic deeds, fervent, hot progressions, performers sweating, emoting, looking handsome or showing cleavage, all the artistic ingenuity they could muster, simulated musical "orgasms" and flights of ecstacy...all the things poets are interested in.


The obvious example is Wagner's Tristan prelude. Could anything be more suggestive of carnal passion and longing - albeit infused with harmonic portents of the looming tragedy?


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## Eschbeg (Jul 25, 2012)

To clarify one point: what makes Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven romantic for Hoffman is not simply what they express in their music but how they express it--i.e. through instrumental, abstract music rather than texted, programmatic music. Here is what he writes, with the relevant bits highlighted:

_Mozart and Haydn, the creators of the instrumental music of today, show us the art for the first time in its full glory; the one who has looked on it with an all-embracing love and penetrated its innermost being is--Beethoven! The instrumental compositions of all three masters breathe *the same romantic spirit, which lies in a similar deep understanding of the essential property of the art*..._

He goes on to acknowledge that what each of the three composers expresses is quite different from each other, hence all his talk of Haydn expressing "what is distinctly human about human life" and Mozart expressing "the superhuman," etc. But as far as defining romanticism goes, Hoffman is more interested in the means of expression rather than the ends. Fairly little of his essay is about emotions specifically.


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## Tchaikov6 (Mar 30, 2016)

millionrainbows said:


> It seems that Classicism, with its restraint and control, represent's Man's rational side, while Romanticism, with its emphasis on emotion and impulse, represents the more unrestrained and Dionysian side.


Eh... I never really liked that definition. Look at Mendelssohn, who I'd say is a restrained Romantic, or Handel or Vivaldi, who can be complete emotional and unrestrained Baroque composers. I find that genres are only good for showing specific time periods or periods of stylistic development, not emotional or depth development. There are pieces by Bach just as "romantic" as Mahler or Schumann.


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## Enthusiast (Mar 5, 2016)

Tchaikov6 said:


> Eh... I never really liked that definition. Look at Mendelssohn, who I'd say is a restrained Romantic, or Handel or Vivaldi, who can be complete emotional and unrestrained Baroque composers. I find that genres are only good for showing specific time periods or periods of stylistic development, not emotional or depth development. There are pieces by Bach just as "romantic" as Mahler or Schumann.


But you seem to be arguing the opposite? You find romantic tendencies in the music of Handel, Vivaldi and "even" Bach. Isn't this the sort of thing that was asked for in the OP. We get confused because there are movements or periods (or genres if you will) in music called Classical and Romantic. But we can also recognise that there are relatively "classical" (small c) Romantics (I suggest Brahms) and relatively romantic composers (and pieces) of the Classical and Baroque. Finding where composers or works (regardless of when they were) fall on a continuum between the two tendencies is one way of understanding what their music "is about".


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

Eschbeg said:


> To clarify one point: what makes Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven romantic for Hoffman is not simply what they express in their music but how they express it--i.e. through instrumental, abstract music rather than texted, programmatic music. Here is what he writes, with the relevant bits highlighted:
> 
> _Mozart and Haydn, the creators of the instrumental music of today, show us the art for the first time in its full glory; the one who has looked on it with an all-embracing love and penetrated its innermost being is--Beethoven! The instrumental compositions of all three masters breathe *the same romantic spirit, which lies in a similar deep understanding of the essential property of the art*..._
> 
> He goes on to acknowledge that what each of the three composers expresses is quite different from each other, hence all his talk of Haydn expressing "what is distinctly human about human life" and Mozart expressing "the superhuman," etc. But as far as defining romanticism goes, Hoffman is more interested in the means of expression rather than the ends. Fairly little of his essay is about emotions specifically.


Hoffmann's view of what Romanticism means is obviously biased, and is theoretical, not empirical: he isn't looking at what the composers of his time are doing, but philosophizing/fantasizing about what he thinks they _should_ do to be "Romantic." He writes:

_"When music is spoken of as an independent art, does not the term properly apply only to instrumental music, which scorns all aid, all admixture of other arts (poetry), and gives pure expression to its own peculiar artistic nature? It is the most romantic of all arts, one might almost say the only one that is genuinely romantic, since its only subject-matter is infinity...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. Might this not explain why his vocal music is less successful, since it does not permit a mood of vague yearning but can only depict from the realm of the infinite those feelings capable of being described in words?" _

Considering that the Romantic movement was born in the field of literature, that poetry was a primary vehicle of Romantic expression, and that among the signature forms of Romantic music were the art song (in which music sought intimate alliance with literature), the tone poem (which most often had literary inspiration), and opera (in which quintessentially Romantic literary subjects could be dramatized through passionate music and the magic of the theater), Hoffmann's notion that it was purely instrumental music that was somehow most essentially Romantic seems merely a conceit - a very Romantic conceit! The truth is that Romantic music concerned itself with a great many human experiences less grandiose than "infinity" - that, in fact, it became adept at portraying the nuances of feeling with great specificity. The expressively specific alliance of music and words, in genres ranging from the Schubert _Lied_ to the Wagnerian _Musikdrama,_ is one of the hallmarks of the era.

If Beethoven excelled more in instrumental than in vocal music, it wasn't his Romantic temperament that limited him. And it was precisely Schubert's Romantic soul that enabled him to respond to the moods of poetry with such unprecedented resource and sensitivity.


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## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)

I think the Romantic/Classical distinction is based on human psychology. What makes either one dominant in a particular era is the context it is put in. For Mozart's time, Classical was the way to be; as society changed, as power structures shifted from the Church to the sciences, Romanticism cropped up. It will probably continue to cycle like this between the poles of Man's psyche. 

For instance the 1960's was a 'Dionysian' time; now, what was being done then (experimentation, 30 minute guitar solos, underground FM stations, drug-influenced music) is considered 'over the top' or inappropriate. 
If Dr. Phil can't dance to it, it is 'sociopathic' music created by narcissistic ne'r-do-wells. Music must be "certified" by society's standards. Those standards presently are: players can not be on drugs, players must have a healthy perspective and not be 'outsiders' like Jimi Hendrix, volume must be controlled, music must not 'incite' or be overtly political (such as anti-war), and must not "offend" any groups of people who are recognized as 'accepted' in society.

Now, in the present, music is more controlled than ever. "Experts" know what music is, and what's good. In the 60's, nobody knew. A "poetic" group like The Doors would never have lasted.

Doesn't this pretty much explain it? I guess to really understand the differences and reasons behind Classicism/Romanticism, you "had to be there."


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

millionrainbows said:


> . Those standards presently are: players can not be on drugs, players must have a healthy perspective and not be 'outsiders' like Jimi Hendrix, volume must be controlled, music must not 'incite' or be overtly political (such as anti-war), and must not "offend" any groups of people who are recognized as 'accepted' in society.


Not here, listen to some Brixton Drill.


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## Enthusiast (Mar 5, 2016)

But then the last stuff Hendrix recorded - songs like Dolly Dagger and Earth Blues - were quite disciplined, tight and controlled. He was moving toward to classical.


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## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)

If Hendrix had lasted, he would have felt the pressure to conform to today's "Apollonian" standards. Punk rock was the last dying breath of the Dionysian, and even they disparaged drugs. Now, back to Katy perry.


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## Gallus (Feb 8, 2018)

I would say that the main difference between Romantic aesthetics and previous periods is in the direction of emotion, or where it was centred. 

In e.g. the Baroque, the composer was a craftsman who used a common store of techniques for the purpose of creating an emotion in the listener with the goal of pleasing them and/or improving them morally. That is not to say that a classical composer never felt sad and decided to write a sad piece, but that their concern was always how they would be affecting the listener: this is why form and harmonic language were strongly regulated, because to break the bounds of taste in the use of extreme affects would make the listener a slave of the passions, a barbarian, that music would be morally harmful. 

The Romantic period saw a shift away from the composer affecting the listener to the composer writing what affects themselves and letting the listener empathise with him, as what affected oneself took on a universal spiritual importance; that is, one could understand the universe by listening to one's own soul (particularly if one was a 'genius') as the souls of men and nature were fundamentally in sympathy with each other, the natural soul of man was pure and childlike (in contrast to the degenerated society it dwelled in) and as long as it was true to itself could never express anything immoral. That is not to say that the Romantic artist never wrote a piece for the purpose of pleasing the listener, but that their general concern was to write something which was fundamentally in accord with their own being.


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

Gallus said:


> I would say that the main difference between Romantic aesthetics and previous periods is in the direction of emotion, or where it was centred.
> 
> In e.g. the Baroque, the composer was a craftsman who used a common store of techniques for the purpose of creating an emotion in the listener with the goal of pleasing them and/or improving them morally. That is not to say that a classical composer never felt sad and decided to write a sad piece, but that their concern was always how they would be affecting the listener: this is why form and harmonic language were strongly regulated, because to break the bounds of taste in the use of extreme affects would make the listener a slave of the passions, a barbarian, that music would be morally harmful.
> 
> The Romantic period saw a shift away from the composer affecting the listener to the composer writing what affects themselves and letting the listener empathise with him, as what affected oneself took on a universal spiritual importance; that is, one could understand the universe by listening to one's own soul (particularly if one was a 'genius') as the souls of men and nature were fundamentally in sympathy with each other, the natural soul of man was pure and childlike (in contrast to the degenerated society it dwelled in) and as long as it was true to itself could never express anything immoral. That is not to say that the Romantic artist never wrote a piece for the purpose of pleasing the listener, but that their general concern was to write something which was fundamentally in accord with their own being.


It's an interesting idea, you make 19th century music sound like the expression of a perception of the real workings of the composer's internal mental life, as if Schumann, for example, was the natural predecessor of the expressionist Schoenberg. However, I'm not sure how widely this idea can be applied -- Wagner? Liszt? Chopin? It's not obvious to me, and there would be a lot of work to do to make back it up.

The Mozart /Da Ponte operas challenge conventional morality. There's plenty in Mozart which uses "extreme affects " -- think Symphony 40. I don't know about other classical composers, but I'd be surprised if what you said was true (think Haydn op 33/6 iii.)

Have you heard any of Froberger's representational music?


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