# Should we question our conception of musical eras?



## Gouldanian (Nov 19, 2015)

I'm not sure to what extent classical music fans agree upon the widely recognized classification table of musical eras (e.g. Baroque supposedly extending from 1600 to 1750, Classical from 1750 to early 19th century, Romanticism from early 19th century till meeting Impressionism and then Modernism at the turn of the 20th century).

If we take for example ''Gavotte'' from Rameau's 1706 Suite in A minor (Pièces de Clavecin - What a beautiful piece!), one can't deny the romantic vibe that transpires at end of this gem (6:45). While the first few notes starts with a standard baroque sound, it develops into something that is more classical to finally break lose in a romantic arrangement at the end.






Now, I'm sure there are other examples which could demonstrate same. Which begs the question: why do many of us consider Beethoven as the first ambassador of romanticism? What makes the romantic era one that stretches from the beginning of the 19th century onward rather than from an earlier period of time? Do you folks even care about the widely recognized classification table?

Please, enlighten me.


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## Chordalrock (Jan 21, 2014)

The categories give you some idea of what to expect, but not much.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

I think there are reasons for the period boundaries, even if there is no precise moment when one period gives way to another. We should look not only at changes in music itself, but at developments in the culture as a whole, and at how the changes in music reflect new philosophies of life, social structures, political movements, innovations in the other arts, and the overall spirit of the age. Romanticism, for example, was not just a matter of music having a certain quality of sound or feeling, but was the expression of the world view of composers who were motivated to create new musical forms by new ideas about life and society. Music doesn't exist in a social and ideological vacuum, and its evolution can't be understood purely as a succession or accumulation of techniques.


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

Some time ago I recast the music periods to make more sense.

1300-1500 - Lower hooter period
1500-1700 - Upper hooter period
1700-1760 - Cuckoo clock period
1760-1800 - Bow, scrape, and funny nickname period
1800-1830 - The Age of Rage plus Franz
1830-1870 - Hey, I'm Me! period
1870-1900 - End of the world as we know it period

After the 19th century, music developed in different directions:
The "Gosh, the way I feel is really important" school
The "Heck no, nobody cares how anybody feels" school
The "I think I just cut myself on my own music" school
The Wrist-slashing school (mostly Shostakovich and Schnittke)
The "Hey, this sounds nice and won't make your ears bleed even if it's kind of trivial" school.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

KenOC said:


> Some time ago I recast the music periods to make more sense.
> 
> 1300-1500 - Lower hooter period
> 1500-1700 - Upper hooter period
> ...


Exactly the kind of broad cultural perspective I was talking about.


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

Woodduck said:


> Exactly the kind of broad cultural perspective I was talking about.


I left out the twelve-toad school, whose music is said to cure warts. Since it has no other known use, I figured it didn't need mentioning.


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## Chordalrock (Jan 21, 2014)

Woodduck said:


> I think there are reasons for the period boundaries, even if there is no precise moment when one period gives way to another. We should look not only at changes in music itself, but at developments in the culture as a whole, and at how the changes in music reflect new philosophies of life, social structures, political movements, innovations in the other arts, and the overall spirit of the age. Romanticism, for example, was not just a matter of music having a certain quality of sound or feeling, but was the expression of the world view of composers who were motivated to create new musical forms by new ideas about life and society. Music doesn't exist in a social and ideological vacuum, and its evolution can't be understood purely as a succession or accumulation of techniques.


Do you think that the cultural Renaissance had something to do with what we think of as Renaissance music? To me it seems like it's very much disconnected. It began earlier, and the actual musical Renaissance seems entirely to be about development of musical technique that took place in a vacuum - the composers were primarily composers of the Church, primarily of religious music, conservative men in outlook, often priests themselves, possibly opposed to the spirit of the Renaissance, only developing new ideas in their music alone.

I also doubt that the musical language of many composers evolved due to extra-musical considerations, say from late Romanticism to serialism, or in Beethoven's case from Haydnesque music to something almost modern in Grosse Fugue. I suspect that the main driving force behind musical experimentation and evolution is the drive to compose new things - and the actual results are mainly determined by what music has come before, not by philosophical ideas or such, though in some cases they may have a deciding role.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

Chordalrock said:


> Do you think that the cultural Renaissance had something to do with what we think of as Renaissance music? To me it seems like it's very much disconnected. It began earlier, and the actual musical Renaissance seems entirely to be about development of musical technique that took place in a vacuum - the composers were primarily composers of the Church, primarily of religious music, conservative men in outlook, often priests themselves, possibly opposed to the spirit of the Renaissance, only developing new ideas in their music alone.
> 
> I also doubt that the musical language of many composers evolved due to extra-musical considerations, say from late Romanticism to serialism, or in Beethoven's case from Haydnesque music to something almost modern in Grosse Fugue. I suspect that the main driving force behind musical experimentation and evolution is the drive to compose new things - and the actual results are mainly determined by what music has come before, not by philosophical ideas or such, though in some cases they may have a deciding role.


I don't know enough about music of the Middle Ages and Renaissance to address your specific question. I'm sure the situation is different at different periods, and I think musical change is driven by both musical and extramusical considerations. All I'm saying is that in looking at the musical "periods" as we have them, we have to see that our designation of them is based not only on technical features of the music but on wider cultural factors which tend to find reflection in the sort of music being composed and enjoyed.

It's certainly true that the way music develops depends on what music has come before, but that leaves open the question of why it then develops in certain directions and not others. No existing music has the power to dictate what kind of music composers will compose next. That choice is determined both by what those composers find interesting and satisfying, and by what they feel called upon to produce in their social context. But even their personal artistic vision is apt to bear some relation to the society in which they live - to be shaped by the way they feel about life in their time and place.


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## TurnaboutVox (Sep 22, 2013)

KenOC said:


> I left out the twelve-toad school, whose music is said to cure warts. Since it has no other known use, I figured it didn't need mentioning.


No, no, Ken, the 12-toad school _causes_ erwartungs


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## Nereffid (Feb 6, 2013)

Chordalrock said:


> Do you think that the cultural Renaissance had something to do with what we think of as Renaissance music? To me it seems like it's very much disconnected. It began earlier, and the actual musical Renaissance seems entirely to be about development of musical technique that took place in a vacuum - the composers were primarily composers of the Church, primarily of religious music, conservative men in outlook, often priests themselves, possibly opposed to the spirit of the Renaissance, only developing new ideas in their music alone.


There was plenty of secular music written in the Renaissance, though yes the church was where the power and money lay so it's no surprise to find composers in the church's employ. In that period you had the development of printing and the Reformation - surely no vacuum?



Chordalrock said:


> I also doubt that the musical language of many composers evolved due to extra-musical considerations, say from late Romanticism to serialism, or in Beethoven's case from Haydnesque music to something almost modern in Grosse Fugue. I suspect that the main driving force behind musical experimentation and evolution is the drive to compose new things - and the actual results are mainly determined by what music has come before, not by philosophical ideas or such, though in some cases they may have a deciding role.


Well, the title page of Beethoven's Eroica springs to mind immediately.


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## Guest (Nov 26, 2015)

In re Chordalrock's post: Composers are like anyone else, aware of and maybe even keenly interested in considerations outside their occupation, but probably not particularly influenced to change the way they work or the general drive to do something new. But there's something else I'd like to point out in that post that I think is a fundamental error, so fundamental that there is nothing I can do or say to change it. Why, I can't even change the way people use the word "minimalism," and that one's MUCH less fundamental than what's coming up


Chordalrock said:


> ...composers [of the Renaissance] were primarily composers of the Church, primarily of religious music, conservative men in outlook, often priests themselves, possibly opposed to the spirit of the Renaissance, only developing new ideas in their music alone.


Of the surface meaning, I have nothing to say. Of the assumptions underneath that, I have this to say, that the idea of religion of most people of the 21st century (oh, and of 20th and 19th as well) is quite askew, especially of religion in earlier times. "Most people" means I am not by any means singling out Chordalrock. It's just this post that got me out from under my rock is all.

In the first place, religious does not neatly translate into conservative, even today. It even less easily translates into that in earlier times. Priests were the educated people, the intellectual elite, the thinkers and creators. I know it's difficult for us today to imagine a person with the label of "priest" as being an intelligent, liberal, perhaps even radical thinker. Perhaps it's our sense of the label that needs to change, eh?

In the second place, religion permeating every aspect of society is not necessarily a bad thing. Or a good thing, either. Any more than science permeating every aspect of society is necessarily a good thing. Or a bad thing, either. It just is a thing. Good things about it as well as bad. Something that may surprise you: Galileo's most fervent admirer and supporter was the pope. Standard bios of Galileo will repeat over and over again that "the Church" persecuted him, that "the Church" found him to be a heretic. Um, no. It was a small cabal of cardinals who were jealous of his closeness to and influence with the pope. The whole church vs. science thing was just an excuse by those cardinals to get rid of someone they didn't like.

Politics as usual, very little more than that. Remember, the Copernican view that Galileo espoused was from a century earlier. And Copernicus had never been persecuted at all, eh? (The Protestants were not too keen about his heliocentric ideas, but the pope and other Catholics were keenly interested.)

Well, that's a pretty big old digression, eh? Or maybe not. The (implied larger) topic is questioning conceptions of things, eh?


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## Chordalrock (Jan 21, 2014)

some guy said:


> In the first place, religious does not neatly translate into conservative, even today. It even less easily translates into that in earlier times. Priests were the educated people, the intellectual elite, the thinkers and creators.


The job of the priests was, then as now, to study and lecture on "the eternal truths", which were seen as essentially unchanging. What they actually believed in the privacy of their minds is anybody's guess, but their role and caste determined the limits of what they could actually do with their minds. It was not possible for them to question dogma outloud or to admit any ideological value in ancient literature (other than what could be subsumed into Christianity).

You can see this very clearly in how religious authorities started treating typically more or less inconsequential people, in the great witch hunts of the Renaissance. Most people associate the witch hunts with the Middle Ages, but they actually occurred mostly during the Renaissance, often in Protestant territories. The hunters weren't people interested in humanism. They seemed - I say seemed, and I mean seemed - to only be interested in guarding the faith, although at least one of them was an obvious psychopath who was doing it for reasons of his own. Again, we can't exactly know what went on in the heads of the people who tortured and burned the accused, but I would argue that it was their function, their caste that ultimately defined them, inasmuch as it is actions that define a person and not their secret thoughts.

I could also speculate on how much energy such people would have left for philosophy of their own, or thoughts of their own, or new ideas or progressive ideas of someone else's, when their life's work is thinking about old dogma and teaching an old religion. Not much, I would guess.

As for the printing press that someone mentioned - it came to be widely used in the mid-16th century or so, so - a hundred years after Dufay, and almost as many years before early Baroque. Would someone seriously argue that it had any effect on the nature of the music that was being composed? The only effect it seems to have had was to make the notation of musica ficta a lot more common, since suddenly such music was reaching amateurs and other musicians who didn't have the training to correctly interpret the sheet music otherwise.


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## Nereffid (Feb 6, 2013)

Chordalrock said:


> As for the printing press that someone mentioned - it came to be widely used in the mid-16th century or so, so - a hundred years after Dufay, and almost as many years before early Baroque. Would someone seriously argue that it had any effect on the nature of the music that was being composed? The only effect it seems to have had was to make the notation of musica ficta a lot more common, since suddenly such music was reaching amateurs and other musicians who didn't have the training to correctly interpret the sheet music otherwise.


Would you not even allow that the greater dissemination of music afforded by printing played some part in the development of the "international style"?


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## Chordalrock (Jan 21, 2014)

Nereffid said:


> Would you not even allow that the greater dissemination of music afforded by printing played some part in the development of the "international style"?


Do you mean that it allowed the influence of Palestrina to be felt more widely? So we get, what? Victoria and Byrd? I think it's safe to say those composers would have been capable of studying Palestrina as easily as Josquin had been of studying Ockeghem, without having to rely on a mom-and-pop sheet music store.

You are certainly right that at some point, the printing press was starting to have an effect, but I'd say this wasn't perhaps until the classical era, and then in the same way that having ink and paper was having an effect. There was never any international style. There wasn't even a national style. Composers are more complex than that. They aren't automatons whose output is determined by the input. Their real limitations are found in what is expected of them and the ways in which they can achieve recognition. It may be Palestrina would have wanted to compose serialist music had it occurred to him, but he was too busy serving the needs of the church and preserving his image as a reputable composer. Gesualdo had no such limitations, and only a few decades after Palestrina, was composing pretty wild stuff indeed. If composer sound like each other, it is likely that they are trying to please the same people. Mozart is known to have complained that he never had the time to compose the kind of music he would have wanted to compose. Who knows what that would have been like.

Now that composers can compose pretty much anything they want, there's a staggering variety of styles. Rather than making things more homogenous, wide dissemination and easy access are making things less so - because composers are better aware of what not to compose in their search for originality.


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## Taggart (Feb 14, 2013)

Woodduck said:


> It's certainly true that the way music develops depends on what music has come before, but that leaves open the question of why it then develops in certain directions and not others. No existing music has the power to dictate what kind of music composers will compose next. That choice is determined both by what those composers find interesting and satisfying, and by what they feel called upon to produce in their social context. But even their personal artistic vision is apt to bear some relation to the society in which they live - to be shaped by the way they feel about life in their time and place.


Several good examples of this in the UK. Avison adapted Scarlatti for the abilities of his local Newcastle musicians. He was also a fan of Geminiani and represents a late Baroque hangover. Interestingly, Niel Gow was a fan of Corelli and although he adapted to the new music being played in Edinburgh he remains in the folk tradition. Thomas Erskine, 6th Earl of Kellie, was a major proponent of the Mannheim school in Scotland - learned through his travels - but was also helped by the (short) flowering of a concert tradition in Edinburgh. St Cecilia's hall is the oldest purpose-built concert hall in Scotland and the second oldest still in use (after Oxford's Holywell Room) in the British Isles.

It is precisely these blurrings at the edges that make precisely dated periods suspect.


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## DaveM (Jun 29, 2015)

Gouldanian said:


> I'm not sure to what extent classical music fans agree upon the widely recognized classification table of musical eras (e.g. Baroque supposedly extending from 1600 to 1750, Classical from 1750 to early 19th century, Romanticism from early 19th century till meeting Impressionism and then Modernism at the turn of the 20th century).
> 
> If we take for example ''Gavotte'' from Rameau's 1706 Suite in A minor (Pièces de Clavecin - What a beautiful piece!), one can't deny the romantic vibe that transpires at end of this gem (6:45). While the first few notes starts with a standard baroque sound, it develops into something that is more classical to finally break lose in a romantic arrangement at the end.
> 
> ...


First of all, thanks for posting the piece. I was not familiar with it- an above average work, particularly the finale! I'm not sure I hear characteristics of the so-called Romantic period, but it certainly moves into development that is beyond typical Baroque. Btw, it occurs to me that a piece like this may tend to sound beyond its years when played on a modern grand piano.

I find classification of the periods generally useful, but they aren't by any means exact nor should they be looked on or used that way.


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## brotagonist (Jul 11, 2013)

^ I agree with that, except that "above average" greatly diminishes the impact the piece had on me.


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## Gouldanian (Nov 19, 2015)

Woodduck said:


> I think there are reasons for the period boundaries, even if there is no precise moment when one period gives way to another. We should look not only at changes in music itself, but at developments in the culture as a whole, and at how the changes in music reflect new philosophies of life, social structures, political movements, innovations in the other arts, and the overall spirit of the age. Romanticism, for example, was not just a matter of music having a certain quality of sound or feeling, but was the expression of the world view of composers who were motivated to create new musical forms by new ideas about life and society. Music doesn't exist in a social and ideological vacuum, and its evolution can't be understood purely as a succession or accumulation of techniques.


Understood. But I'll submit that such cultural changes and new philosophies (from which the change of music stems) would (could) have occurred at earlier periods than the ones we know. In other words, Our boundaries could be questioned for the other cultural elements as well.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

Gouldanian said:


> Understood. But I'll submit that such cultural changes and new philosophies (from which the change of music stems) would (could) have occurred at earlier periods than the ones we know. In other words, Our boundaries could be questioned for the other cultural elements as well.


I don't know what you mean. Things occur when they occur. What does it mean to say that they "could" occur at some other time?


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## Gouldanian (Nov 19, 2015)

DaveM said:


> First of all, thanks for posting the piece. I was not familiar with it- an above average work, particularly the finale! I'm not sure I hear characteristics of the so-called Romantic period, but it certainly moves into development that is beyond typical Baroque. Btw, it occurs to me that a piece like this may tend to sound beyond its years when played on a modern grand piano.
> 
> I find classification of the periods generally useful, but they aren't by any means exact nor should they be looked on or used that way.


You're welcome and thanks for your response. I however disagree that the piece is merely ''above average''!


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## Gouldanian (Nov 19, 2015)

Woodduck said:


> I don't know what you mean. Things occur when they occur. What does it mean to say that they "could" occur at some other time?


Just like we can find examples of romanticism in music prior to the 19th century, I,m sure we can find the same in paintings, writing and other forms of art.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

Gouldanian said:


> Just like we can find examples of romanticism in music prior to the 19th century, I,m sure we can find the same in paintings, writing and other forms of art.


But what do you mean by "examples of Romanticism"? Should Bach's use of highly unstable chromatic harmony in his _Chromatic Fantasy,_ and Haydn's at the beginning of his _Creation_, be called Romanticism? Or are these just exceptional instances of a kind of harmony which wasn't used extensively before the Romantic period because it didn't accord with the sensibility of earlier times and so people didn't feel the need for it?


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## Becca (Feb 5, 2015)

_"You can know the name of [a] bird in all the languages of the world, but when you're finished, you'll know absolutely nothing whatever about the bird. You'll only know about humans in different places, and what they call the bird. So let's look at the bird and see what it's doing-that's what counts." (I learned very early the difference between knowing the name of something and knowing something.)_ - Richard Feynman

So what if we have names for periods and (rather arbitrary) time periods, what does it really tell you about the music?


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

Becca said:


> _"You can know the name of [a] bird in all the languages of the world, but when you're finished, you'll know absolutely nothing whatever about the bird. You'll only know about humans in different places, and what they call the bird. So let's look at the bird and see what it's doing-that's what counts." (I learned very early the difference between knowing the name of something and knowing something.)_ - Richard Feynman
> 
> So what if we have names for periods and (rather arbitrary) time periods, what does it really tell you about the music?


Knowing that an opera is from the early Italian Baroque actually tells me a great deal about what sort of music to expect, if I've listened to early Italian Baroque opera.


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## Steatopygous (Jul 5, 2015)

Woodduck said:


> Knowing that an opera is from the early Italian Baroque actually tells me a great deal about what sort of music to expect, if I've listened to early Italian Baroque opera.


That is true, and that is partly why we have such taxonomies. But Becca is right that it is only a guide. The movement from Monteverdi to Handel to Gluck to Mozart is more usefully described in other, more concrete, ways.


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## Steatopygous (Jul 5, 2015)

Chordalrock said:


> Do you think that the cultural Renaissance had something to do with what we think of as Renaissance music? To me it seems like it's very much disconnected. It began earlier, and the actual musical Renaissance seems entirely to be about development of musical technique that took place in a vacuum - the composers were primarily composers of the Church, primarily of religious music, conservative men in outlook, often priests themselves, possibly opposed to the spirit of the Renaissance, only developing new ideas in their music alone.
> 
> I also doubt that the musical language of many composers evolved due to extra-musical considerations, say from late Romanticism to serialism, or in Beethoven's case from Haydnesque music to something almost modern in Grosse Fugue. I suspect that the main driving force behind musical experimentation and evolution is the drive to compose new things - and the actual results are mainly determined by what music has come before, not by philosophical ideas or such, though in some cases they may have a deciding role.


The social changes that saw Haydn the employee of an aristocratic family most of his life, that saw Mozart start as a liveried servant, that saw Beethoven as an independent man of intermittent means are hardly irrelevant to what they composed - both the forces they employed, and the musical styles.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

Steatopygous said:


> That is true, and that is partly why we have such taxonomies. But Becca is right that it is only a guide. The movement from Monteverdi to Handel to Gluck to Mozart is more usefully described in other, more concrete, ways.


Sure. Names and categories are not a substitute for experience, but a way to orient ourselves among an infinity of possible experiences. We ought to use the terms that orient us most effectively. Our names for musical periods tell us something, but we need to qualify their application in the light of more experience and knowledge.

I recall a thread in which someone asked whether Mozart's music could be called a transition to Romanticism, or something like that. I think that's a really interesting question, and that the answer is both yes and no. Romanticism as a broad cultural movement was born in the late 18th century, it was even identified by name, and among the arts it appeared first in literature, which makes some kind of sense since literature deals directly with ideas. We usually date Romanticism in music from the second decade of the 19th century, the time of Schubert and Weber, with someone like Spohr perhaps a transitional figure. But it's fascinating to note that in the 19th century Mozart's _Don Giovanni_ was considered a Romantic opera, and was performed without its very 18th-century final scene (where all the characters convene to moralize about the Don's immoral life and just deserts) in order to put the emphasis on the dark and spooky elements of the tale and, concommitantly, of the music. I think it's undeniable that Mozart's later works exhibit an increasingly subjective expressivity (without, of course, abandoning a Classical sense of formal and emotional balance). He wasn't composing Romantic music, technically, but the spirits were hovering outside the studio door.


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## TradeMark (Mar 12, 2015)

Now I'm no expert on music but that Rameau piece you posted sounds clearly baroque all the way through to me. A Romantic piece of music wouldn't have all that ornamentation and it would be much more chromatic. It does sound very emotional but that is not the sole qualifier for being Romantic.

BTW, I love that Rameau piece.


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## ArtMusic (Jan 5, 2013)

The Rameau piece sounds late French Baroque. It's exquisite as with much of Rameau. He was one of France's greatest composers, without a doubt.


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## Gouldanian (Nov 19, 2015)

TradeMark said:


> Now I'm no expert on music but that Rameau piece you posted sounds clearly baroque all the way through to me. A Romantic piece of music wouldn't have all that ornamentation and it would be much more chromatic. It does sound very emotional but that is not the sole qualifier for being Romantic.
> 
> BTW, I love that Rameau piece.


To me, the main difference between Baroque and Romanticism is the subject of the music. In Romanticism, the subject is the composer himself. He tries to communicate his own sentiments. Conversely in Baroque, the music is very abstract and its subject is the Devine.

Now compare Rameau's piece with, let's say, François Couperin (same nationality, same era, was living and composing the year Rameau's Gavotte from his Suite in A minor was composed) and you'll find how different they're music sounds. Cooperin sounds like real Baroque whereas Rameau not so much.


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## Gouldanian (Nov 19, 2015)

ArtMusic said:


> The Rameau piece sounds late French Baroque. It's exquisite as with much of Rameau. He was one of France's greatest composers, without a doubt.


Late French Baroque reminds me of François Couperin which sounds nothing like Rameau.


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## DaveM (Jun 29, 2015)

Gouldanian said:


> You're welcome and thanks for your response. I however disagree that the piece is merely ''above average''!


My calling it 'above average' was not meant to diminish it. On repeated listening, I am ready to call it exceptional . (The excellent performance also helps.)

Btw: I was surprised to see that that is a Yamaha piano. I know from experience that the best of them are good grand pianos, but this one sounds as good as a Steinway.


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## Gouldanian (Nov 19, 2015)

DaveM said:


> My calling it 'above average' was not meant to diminish it. On repeated listening, I am ready to call it exceptional . (The excellent performance also helps.)
> 
> Btw: I was surprised to see that that is a Yamaha piano. I know from experience that the best of them are good grand pianos, but this one sounds as good as a Steinway.


You're right, I had the same reaction when I saw it was a Yamaha.


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## ArtMusic (Jan 5, 2013)

Gouldanian said:


> Late French Baroque reminds me of François Couperin which sounds nothing like Rameau.


That's good. But it is a historical fact that Rameau was the last of the great French Baroque composers (and one of that nation's finest).


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## Gouldanian (Nov 19, 2015)

ArtMusic said:


> That's good. But it is a historical fact that Rameau was the last of the great French Baroque composers (and one of that nation's finest).


Well you said: ''the Rameau piece *sounds* late French Baroque'', to which I responded that as far as ''sounds like'' is concerned, Rameau doesn't sound as Baroque as does Couperin.

As far as them being alive at the same time and Rameau being the true last French _Baroque era_ composer, I agree. I was talking about the sound of his music.


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## TradeMark (Mar 12, 2015)

Gouldanian said:


> To me, the main difference between Baroque and Romanticism is the subject of the music.


So not the actual music itself then.


Gouldanian said:


> In Romanticism, the subject is the composer himself. He tries to communicate his own sentiments.


But how can you know this? Unless the composer specifically wrote that he was trying to communicate his own feelings, there is know way to know if a composer was trying to do this.


Gouldanian said:


> Conversely in Baroque, the music is very abstract and its subject is the Devine.


There has been music on the subject of the divine in all eras. There has been abstract or "absolute" music in every era since the baroque era.


Gouldanian said:


> Now compare Rameau's piece with, let's say, François Couperin (same nationality, same era, was living and composing the year Rameau's Gavotte from his Suite in A minor was composed) and you'll find how different they're music sounds. Cooperin sounds like real Baroque whereas Rameau not so much.


Rameau sounds a lot closer to Couperin to me than he does to any Romantic composers.


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## Gouldanian (Nov 19, 2015)

TradeMark said:


> So not the actual music itself then.
> 
> But how can you know this? Unless the composer specifically wrote that he was trying to communicate his own feelings, there is know way to know if a composer was trying to do this.
> 
> ...


You can't be serious when you say that we don't know whether or not Romantic composers were expressing their own feelings (at least most of time)... We have plenty of historical facts and evidence that match specific moments of their life when they composed certain pieces of music (Beethoven and his failed love affaires, him going deaf, Chopin's feelings towards his homeland, etc.)

I can't be the first one telling you that...


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## violadude (May 2, 2011)

Well, to answer your question, first we have to establish what the "Baroque sound" is. The Baroque era was a relatively long period of time and it developed quite a bit throughout its duration. The music of the high Baroque era ended up sounding fairly distinct from the music at the beginning of the Baroque Era. When the Baroque Era started its intentions were to get away from the complex polyphony of the Renaissance and write music that was simple, monodic and conveyed direct expressive content to the listener. Musically, the features of early Baroque music include: 

The introduction of basso continuo as a means of structuring music
a clear distinction between melodic parts and accompaniment parts 
most chords in root position 
expressive content taking precedent over then current expectations of good harmonic preparation and voice leading.

By the time the High Baroque came about, there had been various developments that had influenced the music of that time. As I mentioned earlier, these developments had made the High Baroque Era very distinct from the Early Baroque. One of the most important of these was the more frequent use of 1st and 2nd inversion chords. This gave the bass more freedom, which allowed it to become an independent voice that could partake in the musical action rather than act only as a support structure for the harmony. This in turn was part of the reason why highly polyphonic music made a comeback later in the Baroque.

As for Rameau, he was a composer right on the cusp of the Classical Era and right at the end of the Baroque Era. A few things that distinguishes these two eras were:

-The Classical Era made much greater use of cadences as a way of structuring music. Therefore, the cadences in a Classical Era piece are most likely to be accentuated, while cadences in the Baroque Era are more likely to be blurred over or run on into the next phrase of the music.

-Classical Era music is more dramatic in the sense that there are clear focal points throughout the movement/piece that stick out from the rest of it (the introduction of the second theme, the start of the recapitulation being a couple standard ones). These focal points, as well as the tension between the two keys of a sonata form, give the music a sense of dramatic structure. Baroque Era music is more about the culminative effect of the whole movement/piece. For the most part, the "drama" is more spread out across the entire piece rather than being concentrated within certain sections. 

-A movement in a High Baroque piece is more likely to be concerned only with one primary theme and expression. A Classical Era movement is more likely to have contrasting themes and modes of expression. Also, in instrumental music especially, a Baroque Era piece is more likely to be relatively mono-expressive across all the movements while a Classical Era piece is more likely to have a greater degree of expressive contrast across the movements. This applies less to larger scale works in the Baroque Era, such as operas, oratorios or other large religious works. 

-Similarly, a movement in the Classical Era is more likely to be rhythmically diverse. This isn't necessarily to say that the rhythm of the Classical Era was more complex, but that in a Classical Era movement, the rhythmic pulse (not to be confused with the tempo) changes more often than in a Baroque Era movement. 

-The Major/Minor underpinnings of CP harmony were fully formalized and more concrete in the Classical Era than in the Baroque Era.

-The Classical Era introduced Classical Theme and Variations, Sonata Form, Sonata-Rondo form and the 4 movement Symphonic structure. 

Listening to this Rameau piece, it sounds to me to have a more Classical bent, which makes sense for Rameau because he was a fairly forward thinking composer right in the middle of the transition between the High Baroque and Classical Eras. It also makes sense, considering he was the musical theorist primarily responsible for codifying the Major/Minor tonal system as it came to be known in the Classical Era and into the Romantic Era. This piece resembles a Classical Theme and Variations movement much more than it resembles the continuous development variations of the Baroque Era (Chaccone, Passicaglia and chorale-prelude). 

To be honest with you though, I didn't hear anything in the piece that even came close to resembling the music of the Romantic Era in any concrete fashion. I even skipped to the time stamp you gave, but I didn't hear it. Maybe you could elaborate a little more on what you found "Romantic" about that part? I would be interested to know.


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## TradeMark (Mar 12, 2015)

Gouldanian said:


> You can't be serious when you say that we don't know whether or not Romantic composers were expressing their own feelings (at least most of time)... We have plenty of historical facts and evidence that match specific moments of their life when they composed certain pieces of music (Beethoven and his failed love affaires, him going deaf, Chopin's feelings towards his homeland, etc.)
> 
> I can't be the first one telling you that...


What do Beethoven's failed love affairs have to do with his music? And his deafness more than likely did affect how he composed but I doubt he was trying express "deafness" in his music. On top of all that Beethoven wasn't even a Romantic composer.

Sure there were Romantic composers who wrote program music that attempts to express the composer's inner feelings, but they're hardly representative of the whole era. And those feelings are just extra musical content, they don't actually describe the music.


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## Gouldanian (Nov 19, 2015)

TradeMark said:


> What do Beethoven's failed love affairs have to do with his music? And his deafness more than likely did affect how he composed but I doubt he was trying express "deafness" in his music. On top of all that Beethoven wasn't even a Romantic composer.
> 
> Sure there were Romantic composers who wrote program music that attempts to express the composer's inner feelings, but they're hardly representative of the whole era. And those feelings are just extra musical content, they don't actually describe the music.


I respect your opinion but strongly disagree. Given that we've both expressed our view on the matter with no success at convincing the other, I think we'll have to accept our divergence of opinions.


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## violadude (May 2, 2011)

Gouldanian said:


> Late French Baroque reminds me of François Couperin which sounds nothing like Rameau.


To be fair, Couperin and Rameau are about a generation apart from each other, more or less. Rameau was born 15 years after Couperin was born. Rameau died 31 years after Couperin died.

Doesn't sound like THAT much. But keep in mind that Couperin composed during a time when there was a well established, stable musical zeitgeist. Rameau composed primarily during a time when the former musical style was collapsing and would soon be replaced by Classicism. It makes sense that their music would sound different.


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## Nereffid (Feb 6, 2013)

Gouldanian said:


> You can't be serious when you say that we don't know whether or not Romantic composers were expressing their own feelings (at least most of time)... We have plenty of historical facts and evidence that match specific moments of their life when they composed certain pieces of music (Beethoven and his failed love affaires, him going deaf, Chopin's feelings towards his homeland, etc.)
> 
> I can't be the first one telling you that...


Yes, and Mahler wrote his 6th symphony at one of the happiest times of his life. The Romantic composers were certainly attempting to express feelings in their music, but not necessarily the feelings they were feeling at the time.


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## Mahlerian (Nov 27, 2012)

Nereffid said:


> Yes, and Mahler wrote his 6th symphony at one of the happiest times of his life. The Romantic composers were certainly attempting to express feelings in their music, but not necessarily the feelings they were feeling at the time.


The Kindertotenlieder, too.


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## Gouldanian (Nov 19, 2015)

Nereffid said:


> Yes, and Mahler wrote his 6th symphony at one of the happiest times of his life. The Romantic composers were certainly attempting to express feelings in their music, but not necessarily the feelings they were feeling at the time.


How do you know he was ''feeling'' happy (as opposed to appearing happy)? I psychology there is something called ''reaction formation'' where some people, when feeling negative towards something, react the exact opposite (e.g. you hate your colleague and would like to choke him or her to death but instead you become best friends with that person).

''Reaction formation is a kind of psychological defense mechanism in which a person perceives their true feelings or desires to be socially, or in some cases, legally unacceptable, and so they attempt to convince themselves or others that the opposite is true, often in a very exaggerated performance.''

So a lot of people who are feeling down might give you the false impression that they are cheerful and that everything in their life is great. How do you know that Mahler really felt great at the time he wrote his 6th? Maybe he did, but maybe he didn't. Or maybe he did but he was expressing old sentiments towards something that has happened at a younger stage of his life.


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

Chordalrock said:


> Do you mean that it allowed the influence of Palestrina to be felt more widely? So we get, what? Victoria and Byrd? I think it's safe to say those composers would have been capable of studying Palestrina as easily as Josquin had been of studying Ockeghem, without having to rely on a mom-and-pop sheet music store.
> 
> You are certainly right that at some point, the printing press was starting to have an effect, but I'd say this wasn't perhaps until the classical era, and then in the same way that having ink and paper was having an effect. There was never any international style. There wasn't even a national style. Composers are more complex than that. They aren't automatons whose output is determined by the input. Their real limitations are found in what is expected of them and the ways in which they can achieve recognition. It may be Palestrina would have wanted to compose serialist music had it occurred to him, but he was too busy serving the needs of the church and preserving his image as a reputable composer. Gesualdo had no such limitations, and only a few decades after Palestrina, was composing pretty wild stuff indeed. If composer sound like each other, it is likely that they are trying to please the same people. *Mozart is known to have complained that he never had the time to compose the kind of music he would have wanted to compose. Who knows what that would have been like.*
> 
> Now that composers can compose pretty much anything they want, there's a staggering variety of styles. Rather than making things more homogenous, wide dissemination and easy access are making things less so - because composers are better aware of what not to compose in their search for originality.


Can you provide a reference for that thing about Mozart not having time to compose the music he wants?


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## violadude (May 2, 2011)

Gouldanian said:


> How do you know he was ''feeling'' happy (as opposed to appearing happy)? I psychology there is something called ''reaction formation'' where some people, when feeling negative towards something, react the exact opposite (e.g. you hate your colleague and would like to choke him or her to death but instead you become best friends with that person).
> 
> ''Reaction formation is a kind of psychological defense mechanism in which a person perceives their true feelings or desires to be socially, or in some cases, legally unacceptable, and so they attempt to convince themselves or others that the opposite is true, often in a very exaggerated performance.''
> 
> So a lot of people who are feeling down might give you the false impression that they are cheerful and that everything in their life is great. How do you know that Mahler really felt great at the time he wrote his 6th? Maybe he did, but maybe he didn't. Or maybe he did but he was expressing old sentiments towards something that has happened at a younger stage of his life.


Occam's Razor, dude. The idea that Mahler was subconsciously reacting opposite to how he truly felt with regards to a successful period of his life is a lot to assume just to support your narrative that Romantic Music is usually conveying the composer's personal emotions. There are less dubious assumptions involved with the idea that Mahler was going through a succesful time, was happy at the time and just wrote music that didn't necessarily reflect that.


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## Gouldanian (Nov 19, 2015)

violadude said:


> Occam's Razor, dude. The idea that Mahler was subconsciously reacting opposite to how he truly felt with regards to a successful period of his life is a lot to assume just to support your narrative that Romantic Music is usually conveying the composer's personal emotions. There are less dubious assumptions involved with the idea that Mahler was going through a succesful time, was happy at the time and just wrote music that didn't necessarily reflect that.


Well with all due respect, I don't believe you can write great music just like that... You got to be convinced of what you're composing. You have to feel each one of your notes deep within. The Baroque era composer wrote beautiful music because it came from their inner feelings towards God, Bach being the greatest example. Classical composers wrote music that sounded different from Baroque because their composition were a reflection of their feelings at the time, which, for the most part, was one of a liberation from dedicating music to God and the higher purpose. Why? Because in 1800 people felt differently from a century before. Romantics took it to a whole new level with a almost pathetic expression of their feelings and Debussy and the impressionists did the same.

To say that those guys simply wrote music that was beautiful and that had nothing to do with how they felt or how they perceived life and the world around them is not something I can second.


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## violadude (May 2, 2011)

Gouldanian said:


> Well with all due respect, I don't believe you can write great music just like that... You got to be convinced of what you're composing. You have to feel each one of your notes deep within. The Baroque era composer wrote beautiful music because it came from their inner feelings towards God, Bach being the greatest example. Classical composers wrote music that sounded different from Baroque because their composition were a reflection of their feelings at the time, which, for the most part, was one of a liberation from dedicating music to God and the higher purpose. Why? Because in 1800 people felt differently from a century before. Romantics took it to a whole new level with a almost pathetic expression of their feelings and Debussy and the impressionists did the same.
> 
> To say that those guys simply wrote music that was beautiful and that had nothing to do with how they felt or how they perceived life and the world around them is not something I can second.


Woah, hold on there, Hoss. I think you're moving the goal post on me here. There's a difference between a composer's music reflecting how they are feeling at that moment in their life, and their music reflecting the general zeitgeist of the time and their general perception of it. Of course there are cultural influences, personal worldviews and a number of other different factors that come into play when a composer composes music.

But that doesn't mean that a composers work is always a direct musical reflection of their biography or it should reflect what their emotions are at the very moment. That doesn't make any sense to me.

I think you have a little bit of an overly-Romanticized view of composition. Yes, there is inspiration involved with composing. But a great deal of the process is a lot more detached than one would think. Composers don't wake up every morning and go "OH I need to write what's in my heart of hearts. I just need to get it out there onto the page".

Sure, there's a general feeling that you are writing something in which you hope expresses what you want to express. And of course the music in a general sense reflects you to some degree. But more often than not the process of composing is such that a composer wakes up and goes: "Oh damn, this commission is due in 3 months. Okay, so I have my themes sketched down, hmm this one might work. Maybe I should try this here. Nah, that's stupid. This might work. Well, it might not work but it sounds kinda cool so I'm sticking it in there. Can flutes do that? I need to look it up. Nope, it's out of their range".

Not, "I'm so sad I need to pour my sadness onto this page" *weeps bitterly and chugs vodka*

Okay, maybe Russian composers are like that  Just joking.

Anyway, I'm not sure where you get this idea that composers can't write great music without "feeling each one of your notes deep within" Sometimes I just come up with an idea and slap it down on the page because I think it will be kinda cool. And sometimes it is really cool and I keep it. And all these assumptions about where composers got their inspiration from is...well I just think you should consider a broader perspective of things. "The Baroque era composer wrote beautiful music because it came from their inner feelings towards God" Maybe some did. Bach seems to have drawn a lot of his inspiration from religion and God but a lot of it was inspired by other things. I'm sure some of the great composers throughout time were simply inspired by their paychecks (as unartistic an idea as that sounds). Not for all their commissions, but surely some of them.

I just think overall you are making way too many assumptions and generalizations.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

violadude said:


> Woah, hold on there, Hoss. I think you're moving the goal post on me here. There's a difference between a composer's music reflecting how they are feeling at that moment in their life, and their music reflecting the general zeitgeist of the time and their general perception of it. Of course there are cultural influences, personal worldviews and a number of other different factors that come into play when a composer composes music.
> 
> But *that doesn't mean that a composers work is always a direct musical reflection of their biography or it should reflect what their emotions are at the very moment.* That doesn't make any sense to me.
> 
> ...


This is so good, so exactly right, I think I'll just keep quiet.



Nah. 

I'll just add that an artist - and I'm a visual artist as well as a composer (though much more the former) - cannot possibly sustain, through the process of creating a work, any particular emotional state; that he wouldn't try to do so; and that if he did, it would make the clear-headed decisions artistic creation requires impossible.

The idea that art has to arise literally and immediately out of the feelings its subject matter or content expresses, suggests, or hopes to evoke, is a popular illusion non-artists have about the way we artists work. In point of fact the process of bringing our conceptions to physical reality is often much more about "The Frustration and the Drudgery" than "The Agony and the Ecstasy" (Irving Stone obviously wasn't around to talk to Michelangelo about painting that monster ceiling lying on his back with paint dripping in his eyes).

I always used to tell people that the only difference my mood made to my paintings was in how efficiently it allowed me to get the work done. And that is true regardless of subject matter: a composer needs to feel just as "up" to write a tragic opera as to write a comic one. You won't be able to write Isolde's "Love Death" if you feel as if your lover has just died in your arms and you want to die yourself to be with him.

The underlying truth to the popular conception is the indisputable fact that in order to create art which expresses anything meaningful about life, one needs to have lived and experienced some meaning in life. But it's surprising how little actual living - how few years of life, as we observe in prodigies such as Mendelssohn - is needed to prompt the creation of wonderfully rich and moving works (listen to his early quartets and trios). The way in which the mind of an artist recognizes aesthetic qualities as carriers of meaning, and the exacting process by which he brings those qualities into a form in which they can move and delight us all, can't be explained - and least of all by the artist in the thick of creation. But there's no doubt that successful creation requires a cool head even more than a warm heart. And that goes for the symphonies of a heart-on-sleeve Romantic like Tchaikovsky as much, or nearly as much, as for those of a cheerful Classicist like Haydn.


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## violadude (May 2, 2011)

Thanks, Woodduck. You said that a lot better than I did haha.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

violadude said:


> Thanks, Woodduck. You said that a lot better than I did haha.


I'd prefer to think that our styles complement one another. I'm the old stuffy one.


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## Strange Magic (Sep 14, 2015)

The several biographies of Prokofiev I've read confirm the fact that composers spend an enormous percentage of their time grinding out the actual finished product once the overall outlines of what they wish to execute begin to be clear in their minds. Prokofiev, like so many successful authors, was fanatical about putting in time every day, day in and day out, getting the music down on paper--as I recall, he spent his mornings hard at this, leaving afternoons free for other pursuits. During WWII, at a wartime retreat for Soviet artists and composers, Kabalevsky reported that P became a role model for the others there to diligently practice their several crafts day in, day out, without letup or procrastination. The reservoir for much of his creativity came in the form of a notebook which he always carried with him, in which he was constantly jotting down melodic ideas as they occurred to him, and which he tapped during the process of composition. So Thomas Edison's notion of genius as 10% (or whatever) inspiration and 90% perspiration seems pretty accurate for composers as well.


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

Woodduck said:


> ... But there's no doubt that successful creation requires a cool head even more than a warm heart. And that goes for the symphonies of a heart-on-sleeve Romantic like Tchaikovsky as much, or nearly as much, as for those of a cheerful Classicist like Haydn.


Little-known quote from Beethoven I've always liked. "An artist must be able to assume many humors." To some extent, art is prevarication. At least the good art is!


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## Gouldanian (Nov 19, 2015)

I always found it difficult to believe that artists don't somehow display their inner feelings through their art.

When Mozart was commissioned to write the Requiem he was supposed to be a distant figure to the composition. It wasn't his idea to write it, he didn't know who commissioned it and he didn't know the deceased. He couldn't care less, right? All he had to do is run his ''genius'' into creating a random Requiem, get the money, which he greatly needed, and move on.

Yet when he got to composing it, at a time when his health was severely deteriorating, he couldn't help but implicitly appropriate the work as if it were a Requiem for his own imminent death. He was unable to finish it in part because he believed he was composing his own mass.

I'm not saying that artists can't paint or compose a piece of work that is distant from their actual feelings. Most artists nowadays paint, write and compose work that has nothing to do with their feelings just so they can sell a lot and sell fast, hence why the level of beautify and sophistication of today's art isn't comparable to the past. All I said is that the most captivating pieces of art often stem from the creator's own feelings. We can't possibly be better at expressing abstract feelings than at expressing our very own.

My personal opinion folks. You won't convince me the opposite.


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## violadude (May 2, 2011)

Gouldanian said:


> My personal opinion folks. You won't convince me the opposite.


Okay then. But it's not good to preemptively decide that you won't be convinced of a certain position. When people start doing that, they stop growing.


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## Mahlerian (Nov 27, 2012)

Gouldanian said:


> I'm not saying that artists can't paint or compose a piece of work that is distant from their actual feelings. Most artists nowadays paint, write and compose and most of their work is considered garbage. All I said is that the most captivating pieces of art often stem from the creator's own feelings. We can't possibly be better at expressing abstract feelings than at expressing our very own.
> 
> My personal opinion folks. You won't convince me the opposite.


So wait, do you think people today have a harder time expressing their personal feelings through art than previous generations, or choose less frequently to allow their music to be influenced by their personal feelings?

Based on what?

I would say that people today have a different relationship to their art than they did 150 years ago, but the people then had a different relationship to their art than the eras before them as well.

Whether or not it's your personal opinion really doesn't matter when you start insulting people and making false accusations.


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## Gouldanian (Nov 19, 2015)

violadude said:


> Okay then. But it's not good to preemptively decide that you won't be convinced of a certain position. When people start doing that, they stop growing.


You're right, I misspoke. I didn't exactly mean it like that.

What I meant is that you've spent considerable time and energy explaining your position, which I respect and obviously read and thought about, but yet ain't convinced, not the least, and would feel bad should you waste more time trying to genuinely get the point across (which you have).

I never shut my mind to the views of others, it's the biggest sign of ignorance and ignorant is what I most hate to be.

My bad for the poor choice of words.


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## Gouldanian (Nov 19, 2015)

Mahlerian said:


> Whether or not it's your personal opinion really doesn't matter when you start insulting people and making false accusations.


Just who exactly have I insulted?


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

Gouldanian said:


> Just who exactly have I insulted?


I for one have been insulted. Insulted and deeply humiliated before my friends and peers. I have suffered significant pain and suffering as well as economic damage that can be readily monetized. But we can still settle this amicably out of court. My legal counsel will be contacting you. I take PayPal. :lol:


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

Welcome to the TC rogue's gallery, Gouldanian. Ya gotta have a sense of humor 'round these parts.

I suspect Mahlerian was referring to your statement that most art now is garbage. I guess that could be construed as an insult to those artists. Me, I'm not too much bothered by it. I tend to agree with whoever said that 99% of everything is junk. I even think that a fair amount of what I produce is junk. But then I'm an elitist. :lol:

If you do want to test your ideas about how music is made, I'd suggest talking to more composers - or writing some music yourself. You might be surprised at how inconspicuous those deep feelings are when you've worked half an hour deciding whether to use a French or a German sixth in bar 48, you have to pee, and the rice just boiled over on the stove.


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## Chordalrock (Jan 21, 2014)

Mandryka said:


> Can you provide a reference for that thing about Mozart not having time to compose the music he wants?


I must have read it somewhere over ten years ago. I have no recollection at all where. I did read Hildesheimer's "Mozart" back then, so could have been that, but I wouldn't count on it. I wish I had kept some sort of notebook about interesting bits of information I had read somewhere.

But I remember that bit of information clearly, because it explained to me why Mozart spent so much time on works in major keys, even though his minor key works are so much better, and it explained why he seemed to have composed so much throw-away stuff, mainly endless symphonies of which only two struck me as truly special (both of them minor key works).


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

Chordalrock said:


> But I remember that bit of information clearly, because it explained to me why Mozart spent so much time on works in major keys, even though his minor key works are so much better, and it explained why he seemed to have composed so much throw-away stuff, mainly endless symphonies of which only two struck me as truly special (both of them minor key works).


Mozart's minor-key works were highly valued in the romantic era because they seemed to reflect the values of those times. I'm not sure anybody considers them "superior" any more. His A major piano concerto seems to be a favorite these days, and (along with the C minor) the Prague and Jupiter symphonies, both major key works. And the Clarinet Concerto. And the E-flat piano/wind quintet. And...


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## Chordalrock (Jan 21, 2014)

KenOC said:


> Mozart's minor-key works were highly valued in the romantic era because they seemed to reflect the values of those times. I'm not sure anybody considers them "superior" any more. His A major piano concerto seems to be a favorite these days, and (along with the C minor) the Prague and Jupiter symphonies, both major key works. And the Clarinet Concerto. And the E-flat piano/wind quintet. And...


Well I do, generally speaking, and that was the point - it helped me remember that tidbit of information.

I do enjoy many of his works in major keys. They seem to often have a kind of joy and characterfulness that I find somewhat lacking in Haydn. But did Mozart compose anything as beautiful as his own F sharp minor slow movement from piano concerto 23 or parts of the D minor Requiem (Intro, Confutatis)? Did he compose anything as impressive as the first movement of D minor piano concerto or kyrie from Requiem? Or anything as distinctive as the first movement of symphony 40 in G minor? Or a piano sonata nearly as great as the one in A minor? Nah, I don't think he did.


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