# Transitional composers.



## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

EdwardBast said:


> In general I tend to like so-called "transitional" figures, although this classification is silly in [CPE] Bach's case. He had an internally consistent style that doesn't fit his era or any other particularly well. I don't hear his music as pre-Haydn or almost Mozart, but as its own thoroughly original world.


That comment went through my mind while listening to some Chopin mazurkas this morning. And it made me wonder if there were any others who are both "transitional" and in their "own thoroughly original world."


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## Enthusiast (Mar 5, 2016)

I do hear CPE Bach as striving towards the language of Haydn and so transitional between the old Baroque style and the incoming Classical style. I don't think that means that he doesn't have a distinctive voice, merely that it doesn't fit neatly in a Baroque or Classical pigeonhole. Further, I hears him as a major contributor to the development of the Classical style. I have no idea if I am historically correct, though.

I suppose the biggest transitional composer was (early) Beethoven?


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

"Transitional" is a somewhat arbitrary construction, and generally not too flattering. If you're a transitional composer, what comes before and after you is more important than you are, unless you're Beethoven, in which case you might be more important than what came before and after you. I remember studying music history and coming away with the impression that music composed after Bach and Handel and before Haydn and Mozart was useful mainly as accompaniment to elegant dinners and games of whist. The term "rococo" sounded as silly as it actually is, and whether anyone in my college class ever heard a note of it I don't recall.

I really discovered CPE Bach, his brothers, and their contemporaries much later, and later still decided to stop thinking of them as "transitional." CPE being such a distinctive character, that's not too hard to do in his case. It's a bit harder to do with his brother JC, who leads so clearly into Mozart, but maybe it helps to think of young Mozart as a JC imitator. The particular way we divide music into periods isn't entirely meaningless - the sonata idea turned out to be pretty useful for a pretty long time - but composers writing between 1740 and 1770 weren't just whistling Dixie.


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## MarkW (Feb 16, 2015)

Actually, all composers are "transitional" -- transitioning between a world without their music and one with it.


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## Chronochromie (May 17, 2014)

Woodduck said:


> "Transitional" is a somewhat arbitrary construction, and generally not too flattering. If you're a transitional composer, what comes before and after you is more important than you are, unless you're Beethoven, in which case you might be more important than what came before and after you. I remember studying music history and coming away with the impression that music composed after Bach and Handel and before Haydn and Mozart was useful mainly as accompaniment to elegant dinners and games of whist. The term "rococo" sounded as silly as it actually is, and whether anyone in my college class ever heard a note of it I don't recall.
> 
> I really discovered CPE Bach, his brothers, and their contemporaries much later, and later still decided to stop thinking of them as "transitional." CPE being such a distinctive character, that's not too hard to do in his case. It's a bit harder to do with his brother JC, who leads so clearly into Mozart, but maybe it helps to think of young Mozart as a JC imitator. The particular way we divide music into periods isn't entirely meaningless - the sonata idea turned out to be pretty useful for a pretty long time - but composers writing between 1740 and 1770 weren't just whistling Dixie.


Also: Monteverdi.


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

I'm always amused to see Beethoven labeled a "transitional" composer. All that means is he doesn't fit neatly in the buckets that the bulging braincase musicologists like to create.


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## brianvds (May 1, 2013)

It is obviously only in retrospect that we can identify a composer as transitional, so I'm not sure the term actually means anything.

As others pointed out, Beethoven was _the_ big transitional gun. I think he might have been quite amused to hear his whole career was actually just a transition. 

Oh, and let's go tell the likes of Hummel and Field they were doing nothing more than paving the way for Chopin and Mendelssohn.

And then we can go tell J.S. Bach that had he been a really great composer, he would have been paving the way for someone instead of indulging himself with all that old fashioned stuff.


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## Pat Fairlea (Dec 9, 2015)

KenOC said:


> I'm always amused to see Beethoven labeled a "transitional" composer. All that means is he doesn't fit neatly in the buckets that the bulging braincase musicologists like to create.


Well yes, quite. I wouldn't call Beethoven 'transitional' because, although he was rooted in the same genre as Mozart et al, his music developed along its own distinctive trajectory and it would be difficult to say whose music lies at the other end of that 'transition': one of a kind. Tchaikovsky, on the other hand, had obvious roots (Glinka, Dargomijsky) and obvious successors (Scriabin, Rachmaninov), so maybe he could be called 'transitional' even though that would understate his individuality and contribution.

Better to avoid the label, really?


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## EdwardBast (Nov 25, 2013)

Another composer I like because his music stands out from his contemporaries and because it doesn't fit the standard story of stylistic evolution is Henry Purcell. Although contemporary with Corelli, who is often cited for his role in crystallizing and rationalizing common practice harmony, Purcell in his instrumental music maintains the searching quality and sense of fantasy of the early baroque as it was before the circle of fifths achieved total hegemony and made tonal progression so predictable. I love his fantasies for viols and his trio sonatas, which would probably have sounded rough and anachronistic to his Italian contemporaries. Sweelinck is another composer I like for similar reasons.


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

The one I would pick is Tobias Hume, whose music seems to be so full of psychology as to almost prefigure romanticism.


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

KenOC said:


> I'm always amused to see Beethoven labeled a "transitional" composer. All that means is he doesn't fit neatly in the buckets that the bulging braincase musicologists like to create.


I've been trying to make sense of this post. Is it that you think this:

"When you say a composer is transitional, you essentially relegate them to a secondary role in history. They may have done some fascinating experimental work which helped form a new paradigm, but because they are _between_ paradigms they are _outside_ of paradigms, and hence in some sense, quirky by nature.

"The composers at the top of the pile are the one who do the lasting work _within_ the major established musical styles."


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## Klassic (Dec 19, 2015)

KenOC said:


> ...bulging braincase musicologists...


Yes, they are a funny breed.


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## isorhythm (Jan 2, 2015)

There are no smarty-pants musicologists who are trying to denigrate Beethoven by saying he was transitional.

The fact is he was both a singular genius and in some important senses transitional.

It seems to me these often go together: it's the singular geniuses who play the biggest role in discovering the new thing, ushering in the new era.


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## Chronochromie (May 17, 2014)

Hatred of musicologists seems to me as irrational as hatred of audiences.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

Chronochromie said:


> Hatred of musicologists seems to me as irrational as hatred of audiences.


You have to blame somebody if nobody listens to your music.


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## ArtMusic (Jan 5, 2013)

The great Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach was the greatest transitional composer between High Baroque and Classicism.


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