# Musical differences between Romanticism and Neo Romanticism



## BachMacCruimein (1 mo ago)

Hello, I've been wondering what exactly differentiates Romantic composers like Wagner, Verde, and Mahler from Neo Romantic composers like MacMillan, Taafe Zwilich, and Rochberg, such as scales, harmonies, melodies, and rhythms.


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## Aries (Nov 29, 2012)

BachMacCruimein said:


> Hello, I've been wondering what exactly differentiates Romantic composers like Wagner, Verde, and Mahler from Neo Romantic composers like MacMillan, Taafe Zwilich, and Rochberg, such as scales, harmonies, melodies, and rhythms.


The term neo-romanticism needs some more clarification. The impression I have is that it is often used for romantic music of the 20th and 21st century that does not fit the term late-romantic music or earlier forms of romantic music.

Imo it incorporates more often dissonant harmonies and less common instruments than late romantic music but to a very moderate degree compared to avantgarde music.

But more importantly the focus seems to be more on a easy approachable musical language than on a complicated structure like in Late-Romanticism. The forms are shorter, but I at least have often difficulties to see a form at all, but it may be because I don't hear it as often. The themes seem to be more interwoven in a sharp contrast to the style of Mozart or Haydn.


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

BachMacCruimein said:


> Hello, I've been wondering what exactly differentiates Romantic composers like Wagner, Verde, and Mahler from Neo Romantic composers like MacMillan, Taafe Zwilich, and Rochberg, such as scales, harmonies, melodies, and rhythms.


Rochberg said that _Circles of Fire _is the "grand summation" of his musical thinking (in Robert R. Reilly and George Rochberg, "The Recovery of Modern Music: George Rochberg in Conversation" _Tempo _(Jan., 2002). ) To me, the scales, harmonies, melodies, and rhythms in that piece sound nothing at all like those in Wagner, Verdi, and Mahler. He found his own voice.

On the other hand _Ricordanza _is inspired by Beethoven op 102/1, you can hear it I think.


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## larold (Jul 20, 2017)

Neo-anything came after the fact such as neo-Nazi, neo-Con, neo-Classical etc.

Romantic composers wrote in the 19th century and into the early 20th century. Later romantics such as Samuel Barber would rightfully be classified neo-romantic.


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## Aries (Nov 29, 2012)

larold said:


> Romantic composers wrote in the 19th century and into the early 20th century. Later romantics such as Samuel Barber would rightfully be classified neo-romantic.


Yes, but while I would classify Samual Barber as neo-romantic, I would classify Wilhelm Furtwängler as late-romantic even tough they both composed in the same time. There is a stilistic difference imo.


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## Enthusiast (Mar 5, 2016)

The "Romantic movement" had a philosophy underlying it but I'm not sure that is true of neo-romantic music. True Romantic music reflected the philosophy of the movement in a wide variety of ways (Schumann's Romanticism was very different to that of Brahms and so on with Wagner, Chopin, Liszt, Bruckner etc) and Romanticism slowly gave way to the "pre-Modernism" of Mahler, Debussy and Sibelius. Neo-romantic music is a way of producing music that talks to the modern age but uses a language not so far removed from that of the true Romantics. The best neo-romantic music is very distinctive - think Shostakovich - but a lot is aesthetically rather bland. It is often popular because so many people like big tuneful gestures but I suspect that time will prune it down to the more distinctive examples.


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

What do you guys think of this one? 







In particular, is it really any worse than this one? 






How can you feel one is OK and the other is crappy?


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## SONNET CLV (May 31, 2014)

Romanticism v. Neo-Romanticism

As larold said, "Neo-anything came after the fact..." And as Enthusiast suggests: "The 'Romantic movement' had a philosophy underlying it..." I agree with both these statements. "Neo", of course, means "new"; thus the term implies a return to something from the past. But such returns carry with them baggage, as well as additional history unknown to the original source. I disagree with Enthusiast's further remark concerning an applicable "philosophy" behind (or lack of one behind) neo-romanticism: "...but I'm not sure that is true of neo-romantic music." In order to be neo-anything, there must be a philosophy guiding the judgment. _And_, rejections of other philosophical views is a philosophical view itself.

The neo-romantic artist finds a kinship with his earlier counterpart. But the "advantage" (if I may term it that) he or she has over the elder spokespersons is that _development_ has occurred, giving the neo-artist tools available that the original did not have. In the realm of music this will include the advances in tonality, rhythms, harmony, form made by the Impressionists (Debussy and Ravel, for instance), the high romantics (R. Strauss, Mahler), the atonalists (Schoenberg and his crowd), the experimentalists (Varese, Cage, Stockhausen, Penderecki, Xenakis....). The contemporary neo-romantic has a larger palette of colors to pick from than did Schumann and Tchaikovsky and Brahms. Which is why the best of neo-romantic music (that composed by its strongest proponents) has the suggestion of the music of Schumann, Tchaikovsky, and Brahms but cannot be mistaken for it, because there is an added element to the design -- that element being the new "tools" available due to years of musical development, tools which tend to seep into the work of even the most conservative of neo-romantics and give it a _modernism_ the original lacks.

I remain a fan of Romantic music (especially the later period Romantic age, second half of the 19th century including Tchaikovsky, Brahms, and Bruckner), which propels me into fandom for neo-romantic music. I have long held that Howard Hanson's Second Symphony ranks as my favorite symphony of all time. I recognize that it is not the "best" or "greatest" of symphonies, but I certainly like the work, listen to it often in various recordings, and enjoy it immensely whenever I hear it. There is little mistaking the philosophy behind Hanson's symphony, yet it cannot be mistaken for Schumann, Tchaikovsky, or Brahms. It is uniquely modern as well as being neo-romantic. 

All musical advances build upon past doings. Nothing in art comes out of nowhere. Past knowledge and production and philosophical direction provide for new ideas. But all new ideas have some tie to what is already present and available. Schoenberg could only create a twelve-tone based music because music had already established itself as having twelve-tones. The micro-tonalists could expand the number of tones available, the tones between the cracks, so to speak, because the musical scale allowed for such cracks to exist. 

Every piece by Hanson does not sound like that Second Symphony, subtitled "The Romantic". Some of his music is more modern-sounding than 19th century sounding. But roots of Romanticism seem to cling to all of it. Still, Hanson was greatly familiar with what was going on around him musically and did not live in a vacuum. We may term him a neo-romantic, but he is as validly a modern composer, too.

Anyhow, though I am not well steeped in musical history or definitions, I offer these thoughts on the subject you propose: "what exactly differentiates Romantic composers like Wagner, Verde, and Mahler from Neo Romantic composers like MacMillan, Taafe Zwilich, and Rochberg."

By the way, as I type, I have playing over my speakers the music from a Louisville Orchestra First Edition release, a monaural vinyl record, LOY-585 featuring music by Roger Goeb (Concertino for Orchestra II) and Gail Kubik (Symphony No. 2 in F). It's one of my favorite Louisville records. And the music presents fine examples of neo-romanticism, which might explain why I treasure this disc so much.


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## Aries (Nov 29, 2012)

Mandryka said:


> What do you guys think of this one?
> 
> In particular, is it really any worse than this one?
> 
> How can you feel one is OK and the other is crappy?


I think the first work focuses much more on the expression. It is good.
The second work focuses more on details, it plays much more with motivs, harmonies and contrasts of different themes. For me it is more gripping and has the Beethoven greatness.

I think it is typical for neo-romanticism to apply what seems to be a more modern musical achivement to be able to be more directly touching, while 19th century music can be perceived as more dry in this regard. On the other hand it is also typical for neoromanticism that it misses the sophistication, structure, development and complexity of 19th century music.


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