# Your thoughts about Romantic music



## ido66667 (Aug 29, 2016)

I, for some reason, can't listen to music from the classical and romantic eras, even though they are the most popular ones. Even in this forum it seems that most discussions revolve around composers and pieces from the romantic era, mostly the late romantic. 
I listen to Renaissance, Baroque, and Modern music. I can appreciate Romantic music but find the most of it quite dull, often bombastic (In late romantic pieces), and that it displays exaggerated emotionality, that sometimes I perceive as phony or fake.
I like some pieces from that era like the Grosse Fuge (Which is special among the others from the era, as you probably know). When I do hear Romantic music, it's mostly by Beethoven, I don't really bother listening to Liszt, Schubert, ect.
So what is your opinion about the romantic era?


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## hpowders (Dec 23, 2013)

Try Brahms Symphony no. 4. Brahms String Sextets 1 & 2. Brahms Clarinet Sonatas 1 & 2. Brahms Variations & Fugue on a Theme by Handel for solo piano.

See if you feel differently.

If not, no big deal.


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## Pugg (Aug 8, 2014)

ido66667 said:


> I, for some reason, can't listen to music from the classical and romantic eras, even though they are the most popular ones. Even in this forum it seems that most discussions revolve around composers and pieces from the romantic era, mostly the late romantic.
> I listen to Renaissance, Baroque, and Modern music. I can appreciate Romantic music but find the most of it quite dull, often bombastic (In late romantic pieces), and that it displays exaggerated emotionality, that sometimes I perceive as phony or fake.
> I like some pieces from that era like the Grosse Fuge (Which is special among the others from the era, as you probably know). When I do hear Romantic music, it's mostly by Beethoven, I don't really bother listening to Liszt, Schubert, ect.
> So what is your opinion about the romantic era?


We have several members very found on the music you like so lots to talk about.
Welcome to TalkClassical by the way.


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## Kieran (Aug 24, 2010)

ido66667 said:


> I, for some reason, can't listen to music from the classical and romantic eras, even though they are the most popular ones. Even in this forum it seems that most discussions revolve around composers and pieces from the romantic era, mostly the late romantic.
> I listen to Renaissance, Baroque, and Modern music. I can appreciate Romantic music but find the most of it quite dull, often bombastic (In late romantic pieces), and that it displays exaggerated emotionality, that sometimes I perceive as phony or fake.
> I like some pieces from that era like the Grosse Fuge (Which is special among the others from the era, as you probably know). When I do hear Romantic music, it's mostly by Beethoven, I don't really bother listening to Liszt, Schubert, ect.
> So what is your opinion about the romantic era?


More or less, I feel the same about Romantic music. It sounds overwrought and egotistical to me. Some of it. Obviously there's giants in there, as you say Beethoven, and of course the great Schubert. But a lot of it sounds like it "displays exaggerated emotionality", as you put it...


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## Strange Magic (Sep 14, 2015)

It all depends on one's mood and appetite at the time--depends on mine anyway.


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## Art Rock (Nov 28, 2009)

My favourite period, especially the later part (from Brahms to Mahler). But to each his own.


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## brianvds (May 1, 2013)

Kieran said:


> More or less, I feel the same about Romantic music. It sounds overwrought and egotistical to me. Some of it. Obviously there's giants in there, as you say Beethoven, and of course the great Schubert. But a lot of it sounds like it "displays exaggerated emotionality", as you put it...


Well, Brahms is fairly restrained, I would think. And perhaps Bruckner's slow movements?


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## Phil loves classical (Feb 8, 2017)

I heard Wagner and Delius in real life are real jerks, to put it mildly. But their music is really amazing to me. I don't try to judge music based on historical or biographical background, otherwise most music may be called Fake as they may have been written for money, fame, etc. And just appreciate the music itself for at least mental stimulation. I find Tchaikovsky's music the most tragic for me personally, and his life was tragic enough to back his art. So in his case at least, I don't think is fake.


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## isorhythm (Jan 2, 2015)

Lumping Schubert in with those guys is unfair, if you ask me.


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## Sloe (May 9, 2014)

Romantic music is the music I like the most. Because I think the Romantic composers wrote the most beautiful music ever.


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## Martin D (Dec 13, 2016)

I wish people who come on to forums like this one saying they don't like particular styles of classical music would tell us how long they've been listening to classical music for, in years, or in months in some cases I suspect. I strongly suspect that in the vast majority of cases they're either very young and/or inexperienced listeners. 

People who have been listening for many years and are generally clued up about classical music but who happen not to like particular styles or eras are much less likely to come to forums and seek advice on how they might overcome that dislike. 

Assuming the majority are inexperienced, I doubt that throwing a bunch of suggestions of works/composers they might try in the area they feel a lack of interest will do much good to help them. They've already stated they don't like that style. In my opinion these people should enjoy what they like, stick with that, and just wait for the inspiration to venture further afield when the time comes. It's very easy indeed for any reasonably intelligent person to find out which are the most popular examples of music from any style one cares to mention, whether it's Romantic or whatever. There are many lists published here, for example, and there are many others elsewhere.


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## Norma Skock (Mar 18, 2017)

One cannot overgeneralize about 100 years worth of music.


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## Sloe (May 9, 2014)

Martin D said:


> I wish people who come on to forums like this one saying they don't like particular styles of classical music would tell us how long they've been listening to classical music for, in years, or in months in some cases I suspect. I strongly suspect that in the vast majority of cases they're either very young and/or inexperienced listeners.
> 
> People who have been listening for many years and are generally clued up about classical music but who happen not to like particular styles or eras are much less likely to come to forums and seek advice on how they might overcome that dislike.
> 
> Assuming the majority are inexperienced, I doubt that throwing a bunch of suggestions of works/composers they might try in the area they feel a lack of interest will do much good to help them. They've already stated they don't like that style. In my opinion these people should enjoy what they like, stick with that, and just wait for the inspiration to venture further afield when the time comes. It's very easy indeed for any reasonably intelligent person to find out which are the most popular examples of music from any style one cares to mention, whether it's Romantic or whatever. There are many lists published here, for example, and there are many others elsewhere.


I think most of us know that there is at least some music from every time period that every person can like. But we still have preferences I would rather listen to a Raff symphony than anything by any Bach that is because that is the type of music I prefer.


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## SiegendesLicht (Mar 4, 2012)

ido66667 said:


> I listen to Renaissance, Baroque, and Modern music. I can appreciate Romantic music but find the most of it quite dull, often bombastic (In late romantic pieces), and that it displays exaggerated emotionality, that sometimes I perceive as phony or fake.


The entire point of it is that the emotionality of romantic music is very real, spontaneous, not fake by any means. I used to think of it the other way - that the music of the Classical and especially Baroque era, was artificial, constrained, laced into a corset and fitted out with a powdered wig. No wonder that the composers who came afterwards - the Romantics - valued the freedom of spontaneous expression so much.


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## Norma Skock (Mar 18, 2017)

SiegendesLicht said:


> The entire point of it is that the emotionality of romantic music is very real, spontaneous, not fake by any means. I used to think of it the other way - that the music of the Classical and especially Baroque era, was artificial, constrained, laced into a corset and fitted out with a powdered wig. No wonder that the composers who came afterwards - the Romantics - valued the freedom of spontaneous expression so much.


A lot of pre-romantic music has an interwoven emotion that seems to emanate from within, in a seemingly unintentional way. Romantic music, by contrast, does seem to be written with a certain emotional outcome in a mind, hence the feeling of "fakeness" some people perceive. However, the greatest romantic music is capable of producing tremendous emotions just as effortlessly, or sometimes more, than pre-romantic.


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## Manxfeeder (Oct 19, 2010)

I had a problem with the Romantic era for a while also, but it managed to sneak up on me. I don't understand it technically like I do Renaissance, Classical, and Baroque, but with the Romantics, to paraphrase Rod Serling, they stir your imagination into "greater distances, more beautiful sights, and more frightening creatures inside."


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## ido66667 (Aug 29, 2016)

Martin D said:


> I wish people who come on to forums like this one saying they don't like particular styles of classical music would tell us how long they've been listening to classical music for, in years, or in months in some cases I suspect. I strongly suspect that in the vast majority of cases they're either very young and/or inexperienced listeners.
> 
> People who have been listening for many years and are generally clued up about classical music but who happen not to like particular styles or eras are much less likely to come to forums and seek advice on how they might overcome that dislike.
> 
> Assuming the majority are inexperienced, I doubt that throwing a bunch of suggestions of works/composers they might try in the area they feel a lack of interest will do much good to help them. They've already stated they don't like that style. In my opinion these people should enjoy what they like, stick with that, and just wait for the inspiration to venture further afield when the time comes. It's very easy indeed for any reasonably intelligent person to find out which are the most popular examples of music from any style one cares to mention, whether it's Romantic or whatever. There are many lists published here, for example, and there are many others elsewhere.


I want to clarify that I have been listening to classical music for quite a few years, and I am not asking for listening advices, I wanted to hear what other people think about the subject matter, mainly because Romantic music appears to be quite popular in here. I aim to stimulate a fruitful and interesting discussion about one of the major eras of classical music.

Concerning romantic music, it was probably too harsh to use the word "fake", I meant that many times (Not all) I feel that romantic music attempts to insert emotional content into the music a bit too forcibly. 
In other music, like Bach, I think that there is much emotions in play, but as another replier said it "comes out" more naturally, at least how I perceive it.


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## Sloe (May 9, 2014)

I think romantic music is the best music first it is the music that is perceived as generic beautiful music. Second much of it gives a feeling of special music this is also what I get from modern music that is why the music I like the most is romantic and modern music.


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## Norma Skock (Mar 18, 2017)

Sloe said:


> I think romantic music is the best music first it is the music that is perceived as generic beautiful music. Second much of it gives a feeling of special music this is also what I get from modern music that is why the music I like the most is romantic and modern music.


I like how clearly you spelled it out.


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## Fugue Meister (Jul 5, 2014)

The romantic era, the most bombastic and overrated period in all of music. To skip this chapter of music history is no great loss, and to clarify I don't consider Beethoven a romantic era composer.


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## Meyerbeer Smith (Mar 25, 2016)

It's the other way round with me; nearly all of my favorite composers are 19th century (Romantic) composers, but I'm not a great fan of Baroque and Classical musicians. 

I like the colour, orchestral imagination and energy of the Romantic composers, as well as their sheer tunefulness. For me, music begins around Mozart (although I like Gluck and Haydn); I'd rather listen to Berlioz than Mozart, though. I haven't warmed to Bach or Vivaldi, whose music I find fiddly and the orchestration thin. (Not a fan of HIP productions, in general; Gluck played on period instruments sounds faded.)


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## Chronochromie (May 17, 2014)

SimonTemplar said:


> It's the other way round with me; nearly all of my favorite composers are 19th century (Romantic) composers, but I'm not a great fan of Baroque and Classical musicians.
> 
> I like the colour, orchestral imagination and energy of the Romantic composers, as well as their sheer tunefulness. For me, music begins around Mozart (although I like Gluck and Haydn); I'd rather listen to Berlioz than Mozart, though. I haven't warmed to Bach or Vivaldi, whose music I find fiddly and the orchestration thin. (Not a fan of HIP productions, in general; Gluck played on period instruments sounds faded.)


Do you like *Rameau*?


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## Meyerbeer Smith (Mar 25, 2016)

Chronochromie said:


> Do you like *Rameau*?


I've seen Platée, but that was a while ago!


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## Ekim the Insubordinate (May 24, 2015)

I greatly enjoy most music - other than opera - from Medieval (love von Bingen) through late Romantic. Still having a hard time getting into the modern stuff.

Romantic is one of my favorite eras. I love Brahms' chamber works, and most everything from Dvorak. And I wouldn't want to be without Tchaikovsky or Rachmaninoff.


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## Antiquarian (Apr 29, 2014)

I think romantic music to some sounds overwrought because it uses forces that baroque music had no access to. Excuse me if my reasoning sounds a bit rough (as I am fighting back the aftereffects of a party where Strongbow and Haitian Rum were most liberally poured) but if Bach, or even Beethoven had access to the kinds of orchestras that Schumann or Bruckner had, we would have heard huge music. What I'm trying to convey is that composers do not compose in isolation from the musicians. I love the whole panoply of music, from the earliest to the avant- garde, and my expectations of compositions are commensurate with the history in which they were written. Well, that's enough then. It's time for me to log off and bid all you good folks goodnight.


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## neoshredder (Nov 7, 2011)

SimonTemplar said:


> It's the other way round with me; nearly all of my favorite composers are 19th century (Romantic) composers, but I'm not a great fan of Baroque and Classical musicians.
> 
> I like the colour, orchestral imagination and energy of the Romantic composers, as well as their sheer tunefulness. For me, music begins around Mozart (although I like Gluck and Haydn); I'd rather listen to Berlioz than Mozart, though. I haven't warmed to Bach or Vivaldi, whose music I find fiddly and the orchestration thin. (Not a fan of HIP productions, in general; Gluck played on period instruments sounds faded.)


I like all Eras. But I agree that Romantic brings the most energy. I can feel the emotions through the music. A special time in Classical Music.


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## DaveM (Jun 29, 2015)

The 19th century was the age of melody that gave solace to the soul, voice to the emotions and happiness to the heart. There never has been and never will be another such century.


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## EdwardBast (Nov 25, 2013)

ido66667 said:


> Concerning romantic music, it was probably too harsh to use the word "fake", I meant that many times (Not all) I feel that romantic music attempts to insert emotional content into the music a bit too forcibly.
> In other music, like Bach, I think that there is much emotions in play, but as another replier said it "comes out" more naturally, at least how I perceive it.


It is possible that your perception of naturalness and authenticity is related to differences in the way musical emotion or affect was understood in the two eras.

In the Baroque Era affect was abstract, impersonal, rhetorical and formulaic. It was abstract and impersonal in that no one of that era assumed the emotion in the music had any necessary connection to the composer's emotion. They would have found it bizarre, for example, to think the despair in "Dido's Lament" had anything to do with some torment Purcell was personally suffering. Rather, the composer's relation to the emotion in the music was rhetorical; the composer was like an orator whose job was to move the audience to feel a certain affect. It was formulaic in that the means for moving the audience were studied in a systematic and almost scientific way. Theorists compiled lists of musical rhetorical figures and effects and how to execute them in technical terms. They cited Classical (Greek and Roman) rhetorical treatises in thinking about musical structure. (Note that formulaic doesn't imply insincere or manipulative. One was either skilled at evoking emotion or one was not. Sincerity had nothing to do with it.)

In the Romantic Era musical emotion was subjective, personal (and ideally), spontaneous and original. It was also in a sense outside the flow of objective time. Most of this is familiar to modern listeners, for whom it is normal to think the emotion in the music is in some sense a window into the composer's internal life - or a window into the fictional life of whatever subject or persona inhabits or is represented by the music. By outside the flow of objective time I mean that a fifteen minute symphonic movement doesn't express some fifteen minute span of the composer's (or the persona's) experience. If it did, the first movement of Tchaikovsky's Fourth Symphony would be a study in psychotic mood swings.  It is more like an allegory, in which the contrasting themes express different long-term conditions of the composer's or persona's experience, and where a single movement might express the conflicts of a lifetime. In the Romantic era structure is so often tied up with expression that when there is something defective about the structure it often registers on listeners as sounding insincere. But as in the Baroque, sincerity isn't usually the issue. It is usually just a matter of good versus bad technique.

So the issue of sincerity really only comes up in the Romantic Era, because sincerity applies to truthful and accurate expression of personal feeling, and the Romantic Era was the only one in which music is centrally about personal expression. The several posters above who find Romantic music overwrought and overly emotional might be reacting to the fact that the speed with which moods change and emotions violently jostle one another in Romantic Era music is far faster than it is in the objective time of everyday life. To make it work I think it helps to listen to it as unfolding outside of objective time. This is probably why the Romantics were always saying that music expresses the infinite, the absolute, the ineffable and the sublime.


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## hpowders (Dec 23, 2013)

The Romantic composers of which I include Mendelssohn and Schumann were egoists, so damn full of themselves:

Imagine, tampering with Bach's Unaccompanied Sonatas and Partitas for Violin by adding piano accompaniments to "fill in the harmonies"....but that's what they did.

Bunch of egoistic jackasses!


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## Richard8655 (Feb 19, 2016)

I'm sorry but I have a hard time buying the above. The Baroque period defined as abstract, impersonal, rhetorical and formulaic? These broad brush strokes and generalizations certainly don't do justice to the individual composers or as an accurate stereotypical description of the period. It's reduced to a caricature.

And that's a strange interpretation of "impersonal" - music disconnected from the composer's own emotions. Generally, impersonal has been defined and understood as lacking human emotion or warmth. I don't think the great oratorios by Handel or cantatas by Bach were "impersonal" by either interpretation or any stretch of the imagination. It's beyond belief that these composers could write such works detached from their own personal emotions, as if they composed this highly passionate music in some robotic way. Their compositions certainly were not formulaic (although stylistically of their common period). Many if not most Baroque composers were deeply religious and found expression of their faith and devotion in their music.

I won't even go into the over-generalizations made of the Romantic period. I would just caution that it's dangerous to try to compartmentalize classical music into scientific equations like this. Art is not an algorithm. It's very subjective and affects listeners to many different emotional degrees that can't be quantified or reduced to formulas.


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## hpowders (Dec 23, 2013)

Richard8655 said:


> I'm sorry but I have a hard time buying the above. The Baroque period defined as abstract, impersonal, rhetorical and formulaic? These broad brush strokes and generalizations certainly don't do justice to the individual composers or as an accurate stereotypical description of the period. It's reduced to a caricature.
> 
> And that's a strange interpretation of "impersonal" - music disconnected from the composer's own emotions. Generally, impersonal has been defined and understood as lacking human emotion or warmth. I don't think the great oratorios by Handel or cantatas by Bach were "impersonal" by either interpretation or any stretch of the imagination. It's beyond belief that these composers could write such works detached from their own personal emotions, as if they composed this highly passionate music in some robotic way. Their compositions certainly were not formulaic. Many if not most Baroque composers were deeply religious and found the expression of their faith and devotion in their music.
> 
> I won't even go into the over-generalizations made of the Romantic period. I would just caution that it's dangerous to try to compartmentalize classical music into scientific equations like this.* Art* is not an algorithm. *It's very subjective and affects **listeners to many different emotional degrees that really can't be quantified or reduced to formulas.*


*
*

A perfect rational on the futility of posting on a classical music forum for most threads, without getting into an intense argument, except perhaps, threads like "Do you enjoy rum cake?"


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## Bettina (Sep 29, 2016)

EdwardBast said:


> It is possible that your perception of naturalness and authenticity is related to differences in the way musical emotion or affect was understood in the two eras.
> 
> In the Baroque Era affect was abstract, impersonal, rhetorical and formulaic. It was abstract and impersonal in that no one of that era assumed the emotion in the music had any necessary connection to the composer's emotion. They would have found it bizarre, for example, to think the despair in "Dido's Lament" had anything to do with some torment Purcell was personally suffering. Rather, the composer's relation to the emotion in the music was rhetorical; the composer was like an orator whose job was to move the audience to feel a certain affect. It was formulaic in that the means for moving the audience were studied in a systematic and almost scientific way. Theorists compiled lists of musical rhetorical figures and effects and how to execute them in technical terms. They cited Classical (Greek and Roman) rhetorical treatises in thinking about musical structure. (Note that formulaic doesn't imply insincere or manipulative. One was either skilled at evoking emotion or one was not. Sincerity had nothing to do with it.)
> 
> ...


Thanks for an incredibly thought-provoking and eloquent post! I can definitely see how the emotional contrasts in Romantic music would create a sense of unfolding outside chronological time.

My question is: would you consider this to be a continuation of Classical era/18th-century practice, or does it strike you as something specific to the Romantic movement? Many works by CPE Bach, Mozart, Haydn and others have abrupt changes in style and mood from one phrase to the next. In fact, contrasting affects are a huge part of the Classical style. In your opinion, are these contrasts similar to what you have described in Romantic music? Is there the same sense of the music unfolding outside time?


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## Richard8655 (Feb 19, 2016)

hpowders said:


> A perfect rational on the futility of posting on a classical music forum for most threads, without getting into an intense argument, except perhaps, threads like "Do you enjoy rum cake?"


Yes, maybe true. Should have tried to control myself.


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## hpowders (Dec 23, 2013)

Richard8655 said:


> Yes, maybe true. Should have tried to control myself.


I believe most of us are aware of the built-in flaws of trying to debate subjective reactions to music by people firmly set in the belief that there is no other worthy opinion possible save their own.

For me, it's simply a time killer. I don't take any of it too seriously.


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## hpowders (Dec 23, 2013)

hpowders said:


> I believe most of us are aware of the built-in flaws of trying to debate subjective reactions to music by people firmly set in the belief that there is no other worthy opinion possible save their own.
> 
> For me, it's simply a time killer. I don't take any of it too seriously.


Except when composers add piano accompaniments to Unaccompanied Bach for Violin.

Those Romantic composing dudes are lucky they are dead!!


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## hpowders (Dec 23, 2013)

Bettina said:


> *Thanks for an incredibly thought-provoking and eloquent post!* I can definitely see how the emotional contrasts in Romantic music would create a sense of unfolding outside chronological time.
> 
> My question is: would you consider this to be a continuation of Classical era/18th-century practice, or does it strike you as something specific to the Romantic movement? Many works by CPE Bach, Mozart, Haydn and others have abrupt changes in style and mood from one phrase to the next. In fact, contrasting affects are a huge part of the Classical style. In your opinion, are these contrasts similar to what you have described in Romantic music? Is there the same sense of the music unfolding outside time?


Yes. The Bast I've seen in a long time.


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## laurie (Jan 12, 2017)

hpowders said:


> The Romantic composers of which I include Mendelssohn and Schumann were egoists, so damn full of themselves:
> 
> Imagine, tampering with Bach's Unaccompanied Sonatas and Partitas for Violin by adding piano accompaniments to "fill in the harmonies"....but that's what they did.
> 
> Bunch of egoistic jackasses!


.... :lol: ! Don't hold back, hpowders; tell us how you _really_ feel! :lol:


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## Bettina (Sep 29, 2016)

hpowders said:


> Yes. The Bast I've seen in a long time.


Yes, he's in his full Music Theorist/Musicologist mode.


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## hpowders (Dec 23, 2013)

laurie said:


> .... :lol: ! Don't hold back, hpowders; tell us how you _really_ feel! :lol:


Only when it is warranted.


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## Meyerbeer Smith (Mar 25, 2016)

Baroque and Classical music was abstract. Look at the titles: Quintet in D, Quintet in B flat, String Quartet in B flat, Trio in A major, Cello Suite in G, Cello Suite in D minor, String Quartet in C, String Quartet in E, Horn Concerto in D, Trumpet Concerto in E flat, Piano Sonata in F, Piano Sonata in B flat major...

Exciting, aren't they? It's all about the form.

The Romantics, on the other hand, looked at the outside world and wanted to depict it in all its richness and variety. People often think, wrongly, of the Romantics as a lot of dreamers in big shirts, lying on daffodils and contemplating their emotions. The nineteenth century was the age of the specific and the concrete. It was the great age of the historical novel; the age when Europe discovered Shakespeare (immediate in a way that Racine with all his windy abstractions wasn't);an age interested in myth, history and non-European cultures - not as part of an amorphous common humanity, but with their own particularities. It was, if you like, the age that discovered cultural relativism.

That's reflected in the music. Dawn over the Moskva River; My Night with a Bald Mountain (why doesn't it wear a wig?), the sequel to "I'm in love with a mountain, and I'm only 4 ft 3"; Witches' Sabbaths; Corsairs; Steppes of Central Asia; Scheherazade; Russian Easter; Deserts and Sélams, with caravan marches, desert storms, Muslim prayers, muezzins, sunset and sunrise, soldiers, shepherds, and djinni.


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## ido66667 (Aug 29, 2016)

EdwardBast said:


> It is possible that your perception of naturalness and authenticity is related to differences in the way musical emotion or affect was understood in the two eras.
> 
> In the Baroque Era affect was abstract, impersonal, rhetorical and formulaic. It was abstract and impersonal in that no one of that era assumed the emotion in the music had any necessary connection to the composer's emotion. They would have found it bizarre, for example, to think the despair in "Dido's Lament" had anything to do with some torment Purcell was personally suffering. Rather, the composer's relation to the emotion in the music was rhetorical; the composer was like an orator whose job was to move the audience to feel a certain affect. It was formulaic in that the means for moving the audience were studied in a systematic and almost scientific way. Theorists compiled lists of musical rhetorical figures and effects and how to execute them in technical terms. They cited Classical (Greek and Roman) rhetorical treatises in thinking about musical structure. (Note that formulaic doesn't imply insincere or manipulative. One was either skilled at evoking emotion or one was not. Sincerity had nothing to do with it.)
> 
> ...


I think you are correct, interesting analysis, but I have a few reservations. 
I am not convinced that my personal disdain for romantic music stems only from the fact it is somewhat detached from objective time. But I think that it feels like that to me because it appears to me that romantic composers sometimes, due to the aesthetics of the era, "force" emotion unto the music because they were "expected" to write emotionally turbulent, charged and highly programmatic music.

Also it is worth to note that while abstract music was more popular than program music in the baroque and renaissance, you can still find much music that expresses personal feelings, like the Tombeaux tradition of lutenists (A good example is De Visée's "Tombeau pour Mesdemoiselles De Visée" which was written for his late daughters who dies from a plague).

Here is a good version by Hopkinson Smith:





Concerning rhetorics, I actually read a bit about rhetorics in the lute songs of John Dowland, interesting subject indeed. For example, Dowland loves to create descending scales in the accompaniment whenever tears are mentioned in the lyrics, which is definitely a rhetoric device.


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## Phil loves classical (Feb 8, 2017)

ido66667 said:


> I think you are correct, interesting analysis, but I have a few reservations.
> I am not convinced that my personal disdain for romantic music stems only from the fact it is somewhat detached from objective time. But I think that it feels like that to me because it appears to me that romantic composers sometimes, due to the aesthetics of the era, "force" emotion unto the music because they were "expected" to write emotionally turbulent, charged and highly programmatic music.
> 
> Also it is worth to note that while abstract music was more popular than program music in the baroque and renaissance, you can still find much music that expresses personal feelings, like the Tombeaux tradition of lutenists (A good example is De Visée's "Tombeau pour Mesdemoiselles De Visée" which was written for his late daughters who dies from a plague).
> ...


You convinced me on this post. I also feel after certain compositions such as Beethoven's 9th, and Schubert's Unfinished, that some others jumped on the bandwagon, and started using the same conventions and musical language. People will kill me if I start naming names who I feel are those.


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## ido66667 (Aug 29, 2016)

Phil loves classical said:


> You convinced me on this post. I also feel after certain compositions such as Beethoven's 9th, and Schubert's Unfinished, that some others jumped on the bandwagon, and started using the same conventions and musical language. People will kill me if I start naming names who I feel are those.


I agree with you that the Progenitors of romantic music were very sincere about it but some later composers felt obligated to follow the same convention.

Maybe the same can be said about 12-tone/Serial music, as Schoenberg, Webern, Berg, Et Al felt very strongly that it is indeed the best way to compose (And they composed great works this way like Schoenberg's "Survivor From Warsaw", for example), but it became the standard accepted by the "Elite" of that classical world so some composers "Jumped on the Bandwagon" as you said untill the 80's when other styles like Post-Romanticism and Minimalism also became accepted.


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## Captainnumber36 (Jan 19, 2017)

ido66667 said:


> I want to clarify that I have been listening to classical music for quite a few years, and I am not asking for listening advices, I wanted to hear what other people think about the subject matter, mainly because Romantic music appears to be quite popular in here. I aim to stimulate a fruitful and interesting discussion about one of the major eras of classical music.
> 
> Concerning romantic music, it was probably too harsh to use the word "fake", I meant that many times (Not all) I feel that romantic music attempts to insert emotional content into the music a bit too forcibly.
> In other music, like Bach, I think that there is much emotions in play, but as another replier said it "comes out" more naturally, at least how I perceive it.


I see what you are saying and can understand it. But I am actually learning to appreciate Baroque and Classical styles more these days as I have always leaned towards the Romantics growing up. It just comes down to preference, perhaps one day you will let the romantics into your ears, or not!


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## neoshredder (Nov 7, 2011)

Captainnumber36 said:


> I see what you are saying and can understand it. But I am actually learning to appreciate Baroque and Classical styles more these days as I have always leaned towards the Romantics growing up. It just comes down to preference, perhaps one day you will let the romantics into your ears, or not!


Yeah it's just a matter of taste. Can't say one style is better. Just different. Whatever flavor you like best.


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## Phil loves classical (Feb 8, 2017)

neoshredder said:


> Yeah it's just a matter of taste. Can't say one style is better. Just different. Whatever flavor you like best.


Mint chocolate.. Yummy...


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## Captainnumber36 (Jan 19, 2017)

Look at something like Beethoven's 6th Symphony, the colors you get in that piece are magnificent and can't be found in a similar manner in Baroque and Classical eras. This isn't to put one over the other, but I think where at times the romantics were forced, they were also able to bring out textures and colors not capable of being produced in the past, and that is certainly valued by me. 

I think I still lean towards the romantics/impressionists, but have definitely come to appreciate Bach/Mozart more! Their emotional highs seem more inspired by mechanics of music and understanding of theory for expression which doesn't come off as colorful to me as the the pieces composed by romantics. But, what Baroque/Classical does inspire in me is rationality and critical thinking which the romantics do not, not nearly to the same level.


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## Phil loves classical (Feb 8, 2017)

Captainnumber36 said:


> Look at something like Beethoven's 6th Symphony, the colors you get in that piece are magnificent and can't be found in a similar manner in Baroque and Classical eras. This isn't to put one over the other, but I think where at times the romantics were forced, they were also able to bring out textures and colors not capable of being produced in the past, and that is certainly valued by me.
> 
> I think I still lean towards the romantics/impressionists, but have definitely come to appreciate Bach/Mozart more! Their emotional highs seem more inspired by mechanics of music and understanding of theory for expression which doesn't come off as colorful to me as the the pieces composed by romantics. But, what Baroque/Classical does inspire in me is rationality and critical thinking which the romantics do not, not nearly to the same level.


Were you listening to baroque with period instruments? Can't get more colourful than that. I find the music very similar to the paintings of the period, like Francois Boucher.


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## Captainnumber36 (Jan 19, 2017)

Phil loves classical said:


> Were you listening to baroque with period instruments? Can't get more colourful than that. I find the music very similar to the paintings of the period, like Francois Boucher.


But wouldn't you agree that the romantics seem to be expressing inner emotional states much more than Baroque/Classical?


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## Phil loves classical (Feb 8, 2017)

Captainnumber36 said:


> But wouldn't you agree that the romantics seem to be expressing inner emotional states much more than Baroque/Classical?


Sure. I thought you meant instrumental colour


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## Bettina (Sep 29, 2016)

Captainnumber36 said:


> But, what Baroque/Classical does inspire in me is rationality and critical thinking which the romantics do not, not nearly to the same level.


I agree with that for the most part, but there are some exceptions. That is, there are some Romantic composers, such as Mendelssohn and Brahms, whose music is based more on cleverly constructed patterns than on emotional outpourings. Particularly in their contrapuntal works, they come close to an 18th-century aesthetic of craftsmanship.


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## Schumanniac (Dec 11, 2016)

Think its largely a matter of personality difference coupled with how precisely it is that music rewards you. Some prefer it as means of stimulation on a more cerebral level, or pure relaxation in which case Bach and Mozart are probably the kings respectively. Others, like me, see music more as a story or means of "draining" emotions in which case the intensely emotional, straight forward romantic music is most likely to achieve that. 

To answer your question what i love about the romantic era is precisely the thundering grandeur, the soft melancholy, the sweeping lyrical melodies. It does not strike me as forced, as some mentioned, but more an expression of the subconscious, rather than expression trough the technical. Whereas baroque and classical, while conveying the same emotions, seem to me more restrained, more controlled, hidden behind a veil of elegance or incredible technicalities thats difficult to my untrained, laughably uneducated ears. Though naturally its impossible to truly define an entire era of music containing thousands of composers. Brahms was reserved too, while Handel could be as overtly emotional as anything written by, say, Schumann.


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## Totenfeier (Mar 11, 2016)

Captainnumber36 said:


> Look at something like Beethoven's 6th Symphony, the colors you get in that piece are magnificent and can't be found in a similar manner in Baroque and Classical eras. This isn't to put one over the other, but I think where at times the romantics were forced, they were also able to bring out textures and colors not capable of being produced in the past, and that is certainly valued by me.
> 
> I think I still lean towards the romantics/impressionists, but have definitely come to appreciate Bach/Mozart more! Their emotional highs seem more inspired by mechanics of music and understanding of theory for expression which doesn't come off as colorful to me as the the pieces composed by romantics. But, what Baroque/Classical does inspire in me is rationality and critical thinking which the romantics do not, not nearly to the same level.


Beethoven poured the fullness of Romantic content into Classical form. That is why, at least in my opinion, he is unique.


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## DeepR (Apr 13, 2012)

I love it. It's where my heart is. It's where music reached its highest peaks. But there are other magnificent peaks as well.


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## Strange Magic (Sep 14, 2015)

It's perhaps odd, but I find Brahms to be one of the most emotionally rich and expressive of composers; a very strong component among the several that justify my appreciation for his music. He is, in a limited sense, a German Tchaikovsky. Odd also in that Tchaikovsky and Brahms both freely affirmed that they loathed one another's music, but got on famously the very few (perhaps one?) times they met. Compared to Mendelssohn, say, Brahms' heart is on his sleeve, to my ears--a textured, ever-evolving flow of often affirmation, simple pleasure, or of attention to powerful inner surgings of both joy and pain. For someone often cited for his classicist leanings, I find his romanticism overt and compelling.


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## superhorn (Mar 23, 2010)

The more classical music you listen to , the more you realize that you'll have your likes and dislikes in the music of every period . 
I have very Catholic tastes in classical, and I just happen to love so much music from the 19th and early 20th century , the so-called "romantic period ". I fail to see how anyone could call the music of Schumann, Brahms, Wagner, Bruckner, Mahler, Tchaikovsky , Sibelius, Rimsky-Korsakov, Dvorak, Smetana, Borodin , Rachmaninov, Liszt, Richard Strauss and other giants of the period "dull ".


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## EdwardBast (Nov 25, 2013)

Bettina said:


> Thanks for an incredibly thought-provoking and eloquent post! I can definitely see how the emotional contrasts in Romantic music would create a sense of unfolding outside chronological time.
> 
> My question is: would you consider this to be a continuation of Classical era/18th-century practice, or does it strike you as something specific to the Romantic movement? Many works by CPE Bach, Mozart, Haydn and others have abrupt changes in style and mood from one phrase to the next. In fact, contrasting affects are a huge part of the Classical style. In your opinion, are these contrasts similar to what you have described in Romantic music? Is there the same sense of the music unfolding outside time?


There are 18thc precedents for a new Romantic conception of musical time but, on the whole, I think the two eras had opposing views on the issue - or rather, the Romantics had a view and Classical composers didn't know there was an issue. This situation is illustrated by differences in the nature of program music in the two eras. Pre-Romantic program music almost universally takes place in something like objective time, representing battles, storms, onomatopoeic nature scenes, conversations and so on, whereas the experience in much Romantic program music seems to bear little relationship to external time and action. Consider Tchaikovsky's Romeo and Juliet, whose themes don't represent any specific actions from the Shakespeare play but instead seem to embody its abstract themes and motives, like conflict and love, and play them off against one another in a kind of allegorical drama outside of any objective time frame. When Tchaikovsky interprets the first movement of his Fourth Symphony he does so in the same abstract, quasi-allegorical terms. The themes represent Fate, the persona's lamentation in the face of Fate, and an escapist ideal fantasy respectively. Liszt's tone poems are similarly abstract. Half of Strauss's (e.g. Till Eulenspiegel or Don Quixote) portray actions unfolding in something close to objective time, while the others (e.g. Death and Transfiguration, Also Sprach) unfold in virtual time (Susanne Langer's term from Feeling and Form).

As for the contrasts in Classical Era music: I think those in the relatively rare minor mode works of Mozart seem to embody a Romantic conception of time. But I'm not sure how meaningful it is to speak of contrasts of affect in most Classical Era music. Affect was secondary and no one thought about organizing the sequences of moods in a global narrative sense. There are exceptions in the work of CPE Bach.

Anyway, this is a complicated subject and trying to summarize it briefly as I have done just makes a hash of it. I have written and published on this topic at length and if this bit hasn't put you off the topic I could send you a link.


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## Bettina (Sep 29, 2016)

EdwardBast said:


> There are 18thc precedents for a new Romantic conception of musical time but, on the whole, I think the two eras had opposing views on the issue - or rather, the Romantics had a view and Classical composers didn't know there was an issue. This situation is illustrated by differences in the nature of program music in the two eras. Pre-Romantic program music almost universally takes place in something like objective time, representing battles, storms, onomatopoeic nature scenes, conversations and so on, whereas the experience in much Romantic program music seems to bear little relationship to external time and action. Consider Tchaikovsky's Romeo and Juliet, whose themes don't represent any specific actions from the Shakespeare play but instead seem to embody its abstract themes and motives, like conflict and love, and play them off against one another in a kind of allegorical drama outside of any objective time frame. When Tchaikovsky interprets the first movement of his Fourth Symphony he does so in the same abstract, quasi-allegorical terms. The themes represent Fate, the persona's lamentation in the face of Fate, and an escapist ideal fantasy respectively. Liszt's tone poems are similarly abstract. Half of Strauss's (e.g. Till Eulenspiegel or Don Quixote) portray actions unfolding in something close to objective time, while the others (e.g. Death and Transfiguration, Also Sprach) unfold in virtual time (Susanne Langer's term from Feeling and Form).
> 
> As for the contrasts in Classical Era music: I think those in the relatively rare minor mode works of Mozart seem to embody a Romantic conception of time. But I'm not sure how meaningful it is to speak of contrasts of affect in most Classical Era music. Affect was secondary and no one thought about organizing the sequences of moods in a global narrative sense. There are exceptions in the work of CPE Bach.
> 
> Anyway, this is a complicated subject and trying to summarize it briefly as I have done just makes a hash of it. I have written and published on this topic at length and if this bit hasn't put you off the topic I could send you a link.


This is indeed a fascinating issue and I appreciate your insights into all of this! Maybe I should clarify what I meant by "contrasting affects" in 18th-century music. I was referring to the frequent shifts of topic--a phenomenon that Kofi Agawu calls "Playing with Signs." Singing style one moment, learned style the next, then a hunting horn imitation, and so on. Leonard Ratner wrote about this extensively, from the perspective of topic theory/semiotics.

It seems to me that many 18th-century topics have distinct affects; thus, a change in topics would often bring about contrasting affects. In that sense, I would argue that the affective contrasts in 18th-century music could be thought of as prefiguring a Romantic sensibility, in which the mood changes frequently from one phrase to the next. But maybe I shouldn't conflate topics with affects...

I would definitely be interested in reading your writings on this (so to speak!) topic. It would be great if you could send me a PM with a link/citation.


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## Harmonie (Mar 24, 2007)

ido66667 said:


> I, for some reason, can't listen to music from the classical and romantic eras, even though they are the most popular ones. Even in this forum it seems that most discussions revolve around composers and pieces from the romantic era, mostly the late romantic.
> I listen to Renaissance, Baroque, and Modern music. I can appreciate Romantic music but find the most of it quite dull, often bombastic (In late romantic pieces), and that it displays exaggerated emotionality, that sometimes I perceive as phony or fake.
> I like some pieces from that era like the Grosse Fuge (Which is special among the others from the era, as you probably know). When I do hear Romantic music, it's mostly by Beethoven, I don't really bother listening to Liszt, Schubert, ect.
> So what is your opinion about the romantic era?


I agree with you. I always feel kind of ashamed to have this opinion. I know there is a lot great about Romantic music, but most of it I just find boring. When the local classical station plays Romantic I'm never too excited, it's even worse when it's Romantic violin soloistic pieces. I can't do those, at all.

I particularly like how you described it as too "bombastic". That's a word I've been looking for to describe it.

This isn't to say that I can't appreciate a number of Romantic pieces, but the general stuff that is played on the radio... No thanks.


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## Phil loves classical (Feb 8, 2017)

Well, i relistened to Mahler's Symphonies 2 last night, 3 and 6 today. It was torture. Mahler is a gifted orchestrator, but his idea of the "Symphony must be like the world, it must contain everything" doesn't work for me.


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## Sloe (May 9, 2014)

Phil loves classical said:


> Well, i relistened to Mahler's Symphonies 2 last night, 3 and 6 today. It was torture. Mahler is a gifted orchestrator, but his idea of the "Symphony must be like the world, it must contain everything" doesn't work for me.


I am not so fond of Mahler either but torture is a too strong word.


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## ido66667 (Aug 29, 2016)

Harmonie said:


> I agree with you. I always feel kind of ashamed to have this opinion. I know there is a lot great about Romantic music, but most of it I just find boring. When the local classical station plays Romantic I'm never too excited, it's even worse when it's Romantic violin soloistic pieces. I can't do those, at all.
> 
> I particularly like how you described it as too "bombastic". That's a word I've been looking for to describe it.
> 
> This isn't to say that I can't appreciate a number of Romantic pieces, but the general stuff that is played on the radio... No thanks.


Yeah, for a while I felt that I "ought" to like Romantic music as it is the most popular era, but after trying to like it for no avail, I have just given up on the prospect (For the time being) and I rarely listen to it, except when I come across a piece that I like (For example, the Lied "In stiller nach" by Brahms, which is a little gem, I think).

The classical radio station here almost only plays Romantic music, so I don't really listen to it, I mostly find pieces that fit my rather eccentric tastes (Obscure lute composers from the renaissance and baroque, weird modern stuff (For lack of a better term) on the web.


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## Funny (Nov 30, 2013)

I used to be all about 19th-century composers, but I'm increasingly convinced the Romantic era and the Romantic "aesthetic" was basically one long-running scam.


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## neoshredder (Nov 7, 2011)

Sloe said:


> I am not so fond of Mahler either but torture is a too strong word.


Mahler takes a while to get into. For late Romanticism, Sibelius, Dvorak, and Tchaikovsky I enjoy.


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## hpowders (Dec 23, 2013)

Funny said:


> I used to be all about 19th-century composers, but I'm increasingly convinced the Romantic era and the Romantic "aesthetic" was basically one long-running scam.


Yes. Schumann was the biggest perpetrator. Imagine thinking he could improve Bach by tampering with the Unaccompanied Partitas and Sonatas for Violin by adding a piano accompaniment to "fill in the harmonies and add texture."

For doing this, Brahms should have stolen Clara and run away with her, just for spite!! :lol:


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## lluissineu (Dec 27, 2016)

Strange Magic said:


> It's perhaps odd, but I find Brahms to be one of the most emotionally rich and expressive of composers; a very strong component among the several that justify my appreciation for his music. He is, in a limited sense, a German Tchaikovsky. Odd also in that Tchaikovsky and Brahms both freely affirmed that they loathed one another's music, but got on famously the very few (perhaps one?) times they met. Compared to Mendelssohn, say, Brahms' heart is on his sleeve, to my ears--a textured, ever-evolving flow of often affirmation, simple pleasure, or of attention to powerful inner surgings of both joy and pain. For someone often cited for his classicist leanings, I find his romanticism overt and compelling.


I totally agree with every word. Brahms music is profound and when you listen to different approaches or different recordings you can easily choose good from bad ones because you instantly notice they lack intensity or depth. Afterwards, you can Have a second selection and choose your favourite ones, but when played without conviction, intensity or depth it's immediately noticed.


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## EdwardBast (Nov 25, 2013)

Bettina said:


> This is indeed a fascinating issue and I appreciate your insights into all of this! Maybe I should clarify what I meant by "contrasting affects" in 18th-century music. I was referring to the frequent shifts of topic--a phenomenon that Kofi Agawu calls "Playing with Signs." Singing style one moment, learned style the next, then a hunting horn imitation, and so on. Leonard Ratner wrote about this extensively, from the perspective of topic theory/semiotics.
> 
> It seems to me that many 18th-century topics have distinct affects; thus, a change in topics would often bring about contrasting affects. In that sense, I would argue that the affective contrasts in 18th-century music could be thought of as prefiguring a Romantic sensibility, in which the mood changes frequently from one phrase to the next. But maybe I shouldn't conflate topics with affects...
> 
> I would definitely be interested in reading your writings on this (so to speak!) topic. It would be great if you could send me a PM with a link/citation.


Some topics have clear overlap with affect, many do not. Funereal and military topics do. Learned contrapuntal and singing allegro do not. Bach fugues all fall into the learned contrapuntal category but they range in affect from dancing exuberance to slow brooding and sweet lyricism. Singing allegros can be tense or furtive or lighthearted. So, yes, conflating topics with affects seems problematic. Do you know Robert Hattan's work in musical semiotics? His _Musical Meaning in Beethoven_ has some very good interpretive criticism.

I would say sharp thematic contrasts in 18thc music don't so much "prefigure a Romantic sensibility" as they prefigure the formal templates the romantics exploited in "narrativising" such contrasts.

I'll send a link.


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## Razumovskymas (Sep 20, 2016)

The romantics believed in fairytales and ghost stories, that's what's so tricky about them.


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## Phil loves classical (Feb 8, 2017)

In further response to the OP, what I'm discovering is the interpretion has a lot to do with these "fake" emotions. I found Brahms Symphonies to be very fake before, as well as Mahler, but Haintink reined in those wild emotions (in my view) other conductors had for Brahms, and Barbirolli for Mahler (too bad he only did 5 and 9), and distilled the music to its what I see as its essence, and can appreciate the works better.


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## Lenny (Jul 19, 2016)

Razumovskymas said:


> The romantics believed in fairytales and ghost stories, that's what's so tricky about them.




You are quite correct here. Before romantics... well they served one God, and the music was systematic, and with FULL of emotion (for me reneissance and baroque are the most emotional.. sometimes too much to deal with). Romantics, especially German idealists had some pretty interesting ideas about "stuff", and that we can hear, I believe.

But in a way I can understand what OP means. I guess for many people, there's a line. For me it is the Russian romantics, that's just too hairy for me. German romantics, otoh I like just perfect.


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## Bettina (Sep 29, 2016)

Razumovskymas said:


> The romantics believed in fairytales and ghost stories, that's what's so tricky about them.


In other words, that's what's so wonderful about Romanticism!


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## Meyerbeer Smith (Mar 25, 2016)

neoshredder said:


> Mahler takes a while to get into. For late Romanticism, Sibelius, Dvorak, and Tchaikovsky I enjoy.


Really? I started listening to Mahler at the end of last year. I'd so often heard that he was difficult to follow that I was surprised how _easy_ he was. Clear phrases - and often quite hummable!


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## EdwardBast (Nov 25, 2013)

Bettina said:


> In other words, that's what's so wonderful about Romanticism!


In explaining that wonderfulness some Romantic my brain now refuses to remember said something like: There is no true beauty that lacks an admixture of the strange.


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## Bettina (Sep 29, 2016)

EdwardBast said:


> In explaining that wonderfulness some Romantic my brain now refuses to remember said something like: There is no true beauty that lacks an admixture of the strange.


I think that might have been Francis Bacon. Chronologically, he predated the Romantic era, but some of his statements certainly do sound quite Romantic!


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

Another overgeneralization to consider: In pre-Romantic music, expression seems contained by the form. In Romantic music, it seems to create the form. When the opposite occurs, we hear a "foretaste" of Romanticism - or an archaic "neoclassicism."


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## Strange Magic (Sep 14, 2015)

Woodduck said:


> Another overgeneralization to consider: In pre-Romantic music, expression seems contained by the form. In Romantic music, it seems to create the form. When the opposite occurs, we hear a "foretaste" of Romanticism - or an archaic "neoclassicism."


Excellent observation above. A similar, non-music-related theme was expressed by actor William Hurt decades ago, when he was asked why he chose to pursue his theatrical training in America rather than in England. He replied that he chose America "because I preferred the passion that seeks the form rather than the form that seeks the passion".


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## EdwardBast (Nov 25, 2013)

Bettina said:


> I think that might have been Francis Bacon. Chronologically, he predated the Romantic era, but some of his statements certainly do sound quite Romantic!


Yes! Bacon said:

"There is no excellent beauty, that hath not some strangeness in the proportion."

I think the quotation I read was in Meyer H. Abrams' _The Mirror and the Lamp_, possibly someone paraphrasing Bacon? Unfortunately, the index in that book is not all that helpful - too people oriented with concepts neglected. The title of this book concisely embodies the difference between Classical Era aesthetics and Romantic aesthetics - reflecting nature versus illuminating it from within.


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## Strange Magic (Sep 14, 2015)

EdwardBast said:


> Yes! Bacon said:
> 
> "There is no excellent beauty, that hath not some strangeness in the proportion."
> 
> I think the quotation I read was in Meyer H. Abrams' _The Mirror and the Lamp_, possibly someone paraphrasing Bacon? Unfortunately, the index in that book is not all that helpful - too people oriented with concepts neglected. The title of this book concisely embodies the difference between Classical Era aesthetics and Romantic aesthetics - reflecting nature versus illuminating it from within.


I'll have to check out that book. Bacon's aphorism strikes me as having a whiff of Romanticism to it, prefiguring perhaps Burke on the sublime. Palladio, the Greeks, may have had other notions about the importance of symmetry, balance, " golden" ratios, etc.


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## EdwardBast (Nov 25, 2013)

Strange Magic said:


> I'll have to check out that book. Bacon's aphorism strikes me as having a whiff of Romanticism to it, prefiguring perhaps Burke on the sublime. Palladio, the Greeks, may have had other notions about the importance of symmetry, balance, " golden" ratios, etc.


It is an excellent study of literary Romanticism, with a few pages devoted to music and maybe too much emphasis on English writers.


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## Sloe (May 9, 2014)

neoshredder said:


> Mahler takes a while to get into. For late Romanticism, Sibelius, Dvorak, and Tchaikovsky I enjoy.


I have heard Mahler several times and I still don't reslly like his music I was going to listen to his sixth symphony today but after 10 minutes I could not listen to it more and continued listen to Parsifal instead.


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## regenmusic (Oct 23, 2014)

Wouldn't Liszt be considered Romantic? He's in his own genre in some ways. Try him, but with any composer, you have to try a lot of their work to avoid the popular pieces which often are overplayed and not even as interesting as others.


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