# The Beethoven-Brahms Paradox



## lehnert (Apr 12, 2016)

Here's a topic for discussion.

It is often said that Beethoven was the first romantic composer. At the same time, Brahms is considered to be his successor and the last of the classicists.

I know that periodization in music history is a complex matter (and somewhat arbitrary), so I'm just throwing it out there and I'm quite interested what your thoughts are.


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## Tchaikov6 (Mar 30, 2016)

My opinion- Brahms is not a classicist! Yes, he wrote conservatively, but certainly he is one of the most Romantic of Romantics. And frankly, many of his ideas are quite revolutionary and different from the time period. Although Brahms usually isn't credited for being revolutionary, I would disagree. Also, I'd still consider Beethoven classical. In my opinion the first truly Romantic composer was Schubert.


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## hpowders (Dec 23, 2013)

Listening to Beethoven's A minor String Quartet, parts of which sound like it could have been composed by Brahms, Beethoven has entered the Romantic Period, IMO.


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## Tchaikov6 (Mar 30, 2016)

hpowders said:


> Listening to Beethoven's A minor String Quartet, parts of which sound like it could have been composed by Brahms, Beethoven has entered the Romantic Period, IMO.


For every composer there are exceptions to their "style." Beethoven- in most cases- sticks to traditional elements. Obviously in many of his later works Beethoven is Romantic in style. But I would say he generally sticks to classical.


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## Olias (Nov 18, 2010)

If the definition of a classicist is a composer who writes in the classical period forms (sonata, rondo, variations, minuet and trio, etc), sticks generally to a homophonic texture, and exercises emotional restraint in the pursuit of structural balance, then Beethoven began as a classicist.

If the definition of a Romantic is a composer whose primary purpose is the self-expression of the composer as opposed to the formal constraints of genre, then Beethoven became a Romantic who continued to write within the classical period forms. Brahms did the same in that he did not abandon classical formal structure but composed music that stretched the limits of classical form when the emotional or expressive needs of the composer demanded it. In my humble viewpoint, labeling Brahms as a classical composer is only half the story and shows a bit of historical laziness on the person describing Brahms as such.


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## Triplets (Sep 4, 2014)

Brahms was a Romanticist, but one that put great stock in the old forms, namely Sonata Form. Many Romanticists gleefully jettisoned the rules of Sonata Form in their symphonies--Berlioz, Liszt, etc...but Brahms adhered to them, but with harmonies unknown to the Classical Period. New wine in old bottles.


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## hpowders (Dec 23, 2013)

Tchaikov6 said:


> For every composer there are exceptions to their "style." Beethoven- in most cases- sticks to traditional elements. Obviously in many of his later works Beethoven is Romantic in style. But I would say he generally sticks to classical.


How about "Classical Ethereal", neither Classical or Romantic, but a heavenly bridge between them, as in the A minor Quartet adagio and the second movement of piano sonata 32. The private realm of the super-genius that was late Beethoven.


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## Tchaikov6 (Mar 30, 2016)

hpowders said:


> How about "Classical Ethereal", neither Classical or Romantic, but a heavenly bridge between them, as in the A minor Quartet adagio and the second movement of piano sonata 32. The private realm of the super-genius that was late Beethoven.


I would consider those both Romantic.


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## MarkW (Feb 16, 2015)

If Beethoven was a Romantic Classicist, than Brahms was a Classic Romantic.


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## brianvds (May 1, 2013)

hpowders said:


> How about "Classical Ethereal", neither Classical or Romantic, but a heavenly bridge between them, as in the A minor Quartet adagio and the second movement of piano sonata 32. The private realm of the super-genius that was late Beethoven.


I have long thought that late Beethoven is really unlike anything either before or after. The 19th century romantics took off from his second period works, in terms of idealizing nature and personal expression. His last period works live in a weird and wonderful universe of their own, and seem to me not to have actually led anywhere in terms of inspiring later composers.

I am time and again struck by just how original and otherworldly some of them are. Another weird paradox: they are completely unique to him and that particular time in his life, but at the same time quite timeless - some of them could have been written yesterday. But they did not start anything new: where on earth do "go from there" if you take late Beethoven as your big inspiration?

As to the question posed by the OP, it highlights the fuzziness of terms like classicist and romanticist. To me, second period Beethoven is very much romantic - Beethoven used classical forms, but he was now busy expressing himself and his own issues, and patrons be damned if they didn't like it. In some ways, Brahms was actually _more_ classical than Beethoven, and generally showed far more restraint in his emotional expression, especially as he got older; some of his earlier works are kind of tumultuous. But on the whole, I'd still call him a romantic: he was quite thoroughly uncompromising when it came to his artistic goals, and I don't really see him composing "pleasing" stuff simply because some mindless aristocrat wanted it.

The romantic era was pretty unique, actually: before it, artists and composers were artisans producing products to please patrons or the masses; now they were suddenly gods, or at least more in touch with the gods than common mortals. It was all perhaps a tad over the top, if you ask me.


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

brianvds said:


> I have long thought that late Beethoven is really unlike anything either before or after. The 19th century romantics took off from his second period works, in terms of idealizing nature and personal expression. His last period works live in a weird and wonderful universe of their own, and seem to me not to have actually led anywhere in terms of inspiring later composers.


I think that's absolutely true. Who was really inspired by Beethoven? Who could really profit from his example? Probably his real lesson to the 19th century and beyond was that music could be whatever you wanted it to be, provided you could get away with it!


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## Triplets (Sep 4, 2014)

I disagree with the notion that Brahms was restrained emotionally in his work. There are plenty of "heart -on-sleeve" moments--try the second movement of the Piano Quintet, or the slow movements of some of his early Piano Sonatas, or a considerable amount of his lieder. 
What he and Beethoven had in common was that they kept their most intimate feelings out of their big 'public' works, the Symphonies and the Concertos. You won't find a Beethoven Symphonic movement that has the pathos of the slow movement of the Op 132 String Quartet, and the same for Brahms. There is an ethos that one's most heart wrenching intimate feelings are best expressed by more intimate means-solo piano, accompanied singer, string quartet, etc--and that the Symphonic works were grander statements that excluded the most personal of confessions.


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## hpowders (Dec 23, 2013)

Tchaikov6 said:


> I would consider those both Romantic.


So do I, actually.


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## Pugg (Aug 8, 2014)

MarkW said:


> If Beethoven was a Romantic Classicist, than Brahms was a Classic Romantic.


Now this is a good one. :tiphat:


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## hpowders (Dec 23, 2013)

OP: I believe that the "Brahms is Beethoven's successor" argument was an old-fashioned Romantic Period notion. They were also boasting that Brahms First Symphony was Beethoven's Tenth. Those Romanticists could be quite full of themselves.

I don't believe any modern musicologists believe that Brahms was Beethoven's direct successor and that Brahms was a strict classicist.

Brahms was a musical conservative, but the last of the classicists, no. He was a genuine Romantic Period composer.


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## Omicron9 (Oct 13, 2016)

lehnert said:


> Here's a topic for discussion.
> 
> It is often said that Beethoven was the first romantic composer. At the same time, Brahms is considered to be his successor and the last of the classicists.
> 
> I know that periodization in music history is a complex matter (and somewhat arbitrary), so I'm just throwing it out there and I'm quite interested what your thoughts are.


Just one person's opinion follows.

LVB's early period was of the classical period; yet if you listen to the op. 18 quartets, you can already hear him moving away from the classical period/aesthetics. I think he essentially founded the school of Romanticism. If you fast-forward ahead to the Grosse Fuge and listen closely to that piece, LVB is sounds as if he is predicting or pointing toward 20th-century compositions.

Brahms was certainly of the Romantic period. No Brahms without LVB. If you think Brahms was of the classical period, or composed as if he was part of that period, allow me to kindly suggest that you listen to Brahms 1st symphony, most notably the opening of the 1st movement with that remarkable pedal point.

Again: all just one listener's thoughts.

-09


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## EdwardBast (Nov 25, 2013)

hpowders said:


> OP: I believe that the "Brahms is Beethoven's successor" argument was an old-fashioned Romantic Period notion. They were also boasting that Brahms First Symphony was Beethoven's Tenth. Those Romanticists could be quite full of themselves.


I always took the Beethoven's Tenth thing as deprecating applied to either Brahms's first or Mahler's. With Brahms it is a poke at how much one of his finale themes resembles the Ode to Joy. But maybe I missed something?


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## beetzart (Dec 30, 2009)

hpowders said:


> Listening to Beethoven's A minor String Quartet, parts of which sound like it could have been composed by Brahms, Beethoven has entered the Romantic Period, IMO.


I'm listening to that quartet at the moment. I love the charging and angry end to the first movement, but this quartet has one of the finest adagios ever written. Maybe the slow movement of the 16th surpasses it but there isn't a lot in it. Yes, I think Brahms was highly influenced by this piece.


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## hpowders (Dec 23, 2013)

beetzart said:


> I'm listening to that quartet at the moment. I love the charging and angry end to the first movement, but this quartet has one of the finest adagios ever written. Maybe the slow movement of the 16th surpasses it but there isn't a lot in it. Yes, I think Brahms was highly influenced by this piece.


Yes. The A minor Quartet has a deep and noble adagio. I believe Mahler may have used it as the model for his symphonic adagios.


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## AfterHours (Mar 27, 2017)

Olias said:


> If the definition of a classicist is a composer who writes in the classical period forms (sonata, rondo, variations, minuet and trio, etc), sticks generally to a homophonic texture, and exercises emotional restraint in the pursuit of structural balance, then Beethoven began as a classicist.
> 
> If the definition of a Romantic is a composer whose primary purpose is the self-expression of the composer as opposed to the formal constraints of genre, then Beethoven became a Romantic who continued to write within the classical period forms. Brahms did the same in that he did not abandon classical formal structure but composed music that stretched the limits of classical form when the emotional or expressive needs of the composer demanded it. In my humble viewpoint, labeling Brahms as a classical composer is only half the story and shows a bit of historical laziness on the person describing Brahms as such.


I agree with this assessment ^^^


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## AfterHours (Mar 27, 2017)

beetzart said:


> I'm listening to that quartet at the moment. I love the charging and angry end to the first movement, but this quartet has one of the finest adagios ever written. Maybe the slow movement of the 16th surpasses it but there isn't a lot in it. Yes, I think Brahms was highly influenced by this piece.


I wholeheartedly agree.

While listening to this _supreme masterpiece_ I have thought to myself on multiple occasions: "Is this the greatest work of art I've ever experienced?" I am not sure there is a more profound or moving work of music yet composed. The Molto Adagio is so _inward_ and movingly soul-baring, not to mention the rest of the work...


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## AfterHours (Mar 27, 2017)

Off the top of my head, it seems that as early as his Pathetique Sonata (1798) Beethoven was moving in the direction of Romantic music.


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## Tchaikov6 (Mar 30, 2016)

AfterHours said:


> Off the top of my head, it seems that as early as his Pathetique Sonata (1798) Beethoven was moving in the direction of Romantic music.


I would go even before that- maybe even the first F Minor sonata.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

The problem of "Classical" vs. "Romantic" didn't arise for Beethoven. It did for Brahms, in whom a self-conscious determination to hold the Classical fort is sometimes audible in his structural joinery.


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## Triplets (Sep 4, 2014)

This discussion would have some meaning if people would be precise in their understanding of what the terms Classicist and Romantic meant


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## beetzart (Dec 30, 2009)

Tchaikov6 said:


> I would go even before that- maybe even the first F Minor sonata.


I agree. Again he uses a simple idea at the beginning and develops it in every way possible. This is where he starts to slowly break away from traditional classicism.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

Triplets said:


> This discussion would have some meaning if people would be precise in their understanding of what the terms Classicist and Romantic meant


Want to go first?


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## AfterHours (Mar 27, 2017)

Tchaikov6 said:


> I would go even before that- maybe even the first F Minor sonata.


You may be right, excellent point!


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## lehnert (Apr 12, 2016)

Triplets said:


> This discussion would have some meaning if people would be precise in their understanding of what the terms Classicist and Romantic meant


Please, enlighten us.


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## EdwardBast (Nov 25, 2013)

Some of the defining ideas and characteristics of musical romanticism include:

— A basis in expressive aesthetics (as opposed to imitative aesthetics, which was the dominant mode of thought in the Classical Era), meaning that the humanistic content and significance of music was thought to lie in its relation to internal life and emotion, specifically, that of its composers and subjects. Music’s exalted position in the pantheon of the arts (many considered it the highest of the fine arts, as compared to the Classical Era in which music was considered the lowest) was due to its ability to capture internal life in a direct and palpable way unmediated by words or images. As a consequence …

— … the coherence of musical structures became ever more closely linked with the coherence of their expressive content. Forms metaphorically suggesting simple expressive narratives were widely favored, which is likely why ternary form (ABA or ABA') became the most prevalent pattern for short character pieces, and why such short pieces, either standing alone or collected in piano cycles like those of Schumann, became the most characteristic form of Romantic piano music. Such works embody an initial state, a contrary one, and then either a return to the original state or an altered form of the original state upon which the intervening one has left its mark — simple and emotionally meaningful. This is also why it became standard to integrate multi-movement cycles thematically such that the whole structure becomes a unified dramatic arc where a climactic finale resolves any issues left open by the early movements. In creating these dramatic arcs and resolutions a majority of sonatas and symphonies starting in the minor mode ended in the major mode because this pattern suggests a progression from an unsatisfactory or problematic state to one more perfect.

— In the Romantic Era the templates for the standard musical forms began to be expressed as thematic schemas rather than as harmonic structures. For example, so-called textbook sonata form, defined by a pair (or trio) of contrasting themes that are developed and then recapitulated, was an invention of the Romantic Era which was then foisted anachronistically on the music of the Classical Era. 

— Whereas themes built from short, easily extractable motives were characteristic of Classical sonata structures, the Romantics tended to favor longer, more lyrical themes capturing a distinct mood that were less conducive to fragmentation and recombination.

— The Romantics exploited forms like programmatic symphonic poems, art songs, and character pieces linked to extramusical phenomena and especially literature, whereas Classical composers predominantly used abstract musical forms. 

— The Romantics used the major and minor modes almost equally whereas Classical composers favored the major mode over the minor by a ratio of between 6:1 and 8:1.


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## hammeredklavier (Feb 18, 2018)

hpowders said:


> OP: I believe that the "Brahms is Beethoven's successor" argument was an old-fashioned Romantic Period notion. They were also boasting that Brahms First Symphony was Beethoven's Tenth. Those Romanticists could be quite full of themselves.


I also wonder, to what extent this is true:
"Johannes Brahms spent much of his early career under the shadow of his hero Beethoven. As a result, Brahms' 1st Symphony took over 20 years".

I think Brahms took over 20 years to write his first symphony simply because he was a "perfectionist". Why would he be so conscious of Beethoven only in symphonies, but not in other areas? Why don't people also say, for example:
"Johannes Brahms spent much of his early career under the shadow of his hero Beethoven. As a result, he destroyed a lot of his early works."

Brahms' immediate predecessors, Mendelssohn and Schumann, also felt "the weight of Beethoven on their shoulders", but they finished their own symphonies without "hesitation" (unlike Brahms), didn't they?


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## EdwardBast (Nov 25, 2013)

hammeredklavier said:


> I also wonder, to what extent this is true:
> "Johannes Brahms spent much of his early career under the shadow of his hero Beethoven. As a result, Brahms' 1st Symphony took over 20 years".
> 
> I think Brahms took over 20 years to write his first symphony simply because he was a "perfectionist". Why would he be so conscious of Beethoven only in symphonies, but not in other areas? Why don't people also say, for example:
> ...


Brahms wasn't actually writing the symphony for 20 years.

Schumann was in Beethoven's shadow too. His 4th, whose first version was completed the same year as his 1st, blatantly imitates Beethoven's Fifth in its cyclic structure and especially the crescendo and attacca transition between the third movement and finale. Since the revised version wasn't done until 1851, it would seem that the symphony in which he had Beethoven most in mind took him 11 years. Sounds like hesitation to me.

Mendelssohn might have finished a couple of his symphonies without hesitation, but he hesitated about publishing any of them. The history is pretty convoluted.

Berlioz now, that was a bold one. Guess the shadow didn't stretch that far.


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## Kreisler jr (Apr 21, 2021)

The French conservatives like fétis had already been shocked by beethoven. So Berlioz didn't mind shocking them more. But schumann who did churn out both the spring and the original dminor in a fairly short time and mendelssohn and brahms were of a different temperament. If brahms 1st piano concerto had met with more approval he might hAve been bolder and faster with the 1st symphony.


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## tdc (Jan 17, 2011)

lehnert said:


> It is often said that Beethoven was the first romantic composer. At the same time, Brahms is considered to be his successor and the last of the classicists.


Both of these statements are outdated, I think. Beethoven is now widely considered a classicist. Brahms is romantic and his compositional personality is to my ears about as far removed from Beethoven as one could be. Brahms was more 'old school' by nature, and more reserved. It is not surprising that as he matured as a composer he was interested more in the music of Mozart and Bach and less in Beethoven.

The comment that Brahms 1st is Beethoven's 10th is pretty daft. That symphony in character is not remotely like anything Beethoven composed, yes it contains a quote from Beethoven's 9th, so what? How often do composers do this sort of thing? Should we refer to Bartok's Concerto for Orchestra as another Shostakovich symphony because it quotes the 7th?


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## Highwayman (Jul 16, 2018)

I feel the "classicist" attribution to Brahms is somewhat derogatory and as the others stated before not quite the whole story. I think his ability to create Romantic expressions within the margins of the Classical idiom should only be praiseworthy. Brahms probably looked up to Beethoven as almost everybody else did but I don`t hear any apparent connections between the two. I agree that some of the late SQs do sometimes sound like something Brahms could have composed but Brahms did not compose anything significantly similar to them at the end. Perhaps their temperaments were similar but not their music, no.


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## mparta (Sep 29, 2020)

Well, there's not exactly a very appropriate place to post this, but just notice that there's an interesting review of a book of poems that purport to make for a biography of Beethoven by an English writer/poet, reviewed in the NY Times the last couple of days. I had seen this before and wondered if it would be worth a purchase, favorably reviewed.


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## Kreisler jr (Apr 21, 2021)

I never understood the description of brahms as classicist in a derogatory way. To call his 1st the 10th was a bit silly but also meant as praise. If anything this belittles symphonies by schumann etc as clearly lesser


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## EdwardBast (Nov 25, 2013)

Kreisler jr said:


> I never understood the description of brahms as classicist in a derogatory way. *To call his 1st the 10th was a bit silly but also meant as praise.* If anything this belittles symphonies by schumann etc as clearly lesser


Are you sure? Possibly, I guess, in that someone thought he was worthy of being mentioned in the same sentence with Beethoven. But I always thought it was just a dig at the fact that a theme in the finale is, apparently for some people at least, a little too similar to the Ode to Joy theme. That's what everyone I've ever heard say it meant when they called it Beethoven's 10th. Just wry and gentle humor at Brahms' expense.


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## Kreisler jr (Apr 21, 2021)

You probably have not heard von bülow saying it, so the context 1876 was probably a bit different. I cannot give exact citations but I am quite certain that it did not only refer to the tune in the finale and that some meant it as praise, that the giant footsteps had not been too big for brahms. Others later might have meant it in a different way, that it was too close an derivative. But Bülow or others apparently also likened brahms 2nd to the Pastoral and even the 3rd to the eroica.


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## EdwardBast (Nov 25, 2013)

Kreisler jr said:


> You probably have not heard von bülow saying it, so the context 1876 was probably a bit different. I cannot give exact citations but I am quite certain that it did not only refer to the tune in the finale and that some meant it as praise, that the giant footsteps had not been too big for brahms. Others later might have meant it in a different way, that it was too close an derivative. But Bülow or others apparently also likened brahms 2nd to the Pastoral and even the 3rd to the eroica.


Sounds like you could be right. But if so, the phrase was ripe for parody and has been parodied ever since. The Third and its relationship to the Eroica is likewise obvious: the duple-triple meter conflict in the principal theme and its role in the development. Bülow was clearly trying to help, but I'm not sure he did in the end with these too spot-on comparisons.


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## mark07 (May 26, 2021)

Every composer have their own style and generally known for their unique style.


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## hammeredklavier (Feb 18, 2018)

EdwardBast said:


> Music's exalted position in the pantheon of the arts (many considered it the highest of the fine arts, as compared to the Classical Era in which music was considered the lowest) was due to its ability to capture internal life in a direct and palpable way unmediated by words or images.


I've seen you claiming this in various threads, but composers such as Berlioz, Tchaikovsky thought the opposite (they thought the Classical period was an "improvement" on the previous periods, even in liturgical music, in terms of expression).

https://books.google.ca/books?id=MlNY2QgZ3OwC&pg=PA156
"There are, moreover, people who sincerely believe that Palestrina deliberately wrote in this way in order that his music might be perfectly adapted to his own pious ideal of the words of the text. They would soon see their mistake if they were to hear his madrigals, in which the most frivolous or gallant words are set to exactly the same music as those of the Bible. ... The truth is that he could not write any other kind of music ... How, then, do such works as these, clever though they may be as regards their conquest of contrapuntal difficulties, contribute to the expression of religious feeling?". -Berlioz on Palestrina

https://books.google.ca/books?id=GTorDwAAQBAJ&pg=PA24
"Ave verum corpus (K. 618). The intimate and fervent religiosity of this short masterpiece seems to conform precisely to Berlioz's ideal of religious music.
'This is not just religious music, it is really divine and worthy of the dwellers of Heaven. It is the ideal manifestation of pious serenity, of mystical love, of ecstasy. God dictated it; an angel wrote it.'"

"Tchaikovsky did not show the slightest interest in the early music movement which emerged in the 1850s and has been gaining in strength ever since, leading to a revival of the works of Bach and Handel. For although (as he told me himself) he would every now and then play piano fugues by Bach when he was alone, he always felt that the latter's cantatas and major vocal works were "real classical bores." http://en.tchaikovsky-research.net/pages/Johann_Sebastian_Bach 
(and we know Tchaikovsky famously transcribed Mozart's K.618 in his 4th suite, "Mozartiana")

https://www.bartleby.com/library/prose/692.html
"Every one follows the words on the book with his eyes; not a movement among the audience, not a murmur of praise or blame, not a sound of applause; they are listening to a solemn discourse, they are hearing the gospel sung, they are attending divine service rather than a concert. And really such music ought to be thus listened to. They adore Bach, and believe in him, without supposing for a moment that his divinity could ever be called into question. A heretic would horrify them, he is forbidden even to speak of him. God is God and Bach is Bach." -Berlioz on Bach


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## Kreisler jr (Apr 21, 2021)

Sure, the comparisons with beethoven did backfire sometimes and the Neudeutschen and Wagner clique used it as mockery.
There can be no doubt that there were few composers as historically conscious as brahms, both in his knowledge of and respect for older music and in reflection of his own position as "heir".


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## EdwardBast (Nov 25, 2013)

hammeredklavier said:


> I've seen you claiming this in various threads, but composers such as Berlioz, Tchaikovsky thought the opposite (they thought the Classical period was an "improvement" on the previous periods, even in liturgical music, in terms of expression).
> 
> https://books.google.ca/books?id=MlNY2QgZ3OwC&pg=PA156
> "There are, moreover, people who sincerely believe that Palestrina deliberately wrote in this way in order that his music might be perfectly adapted to his own pious ideal of the words of the text. They would soon see their mistake if they were to hear his madrigals, in which the most frivolous or gallant words are set to exactly the same music as those of the Bible. ... The truth is that he could not write any other kind of music ... How, then, do such works as these, clever though they may be as regards their conquest of contrapuntal difficulties, contribute to the expression of religious feeling?". -Berlioz on Palestrina
> ...


Read Edward Lippmann's History of _Western Musical Aesthetics_. I've quoted it extensively before when arguing this point over many pages with someone no longer with us on the forum. I'm not interested in rehashing it.


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## Kreisler jr (Apr 21, 2021)

One has to distinguish between writers/theorists on aesthetics and the musicians themselves (expressing aesthetic theory bits or preferences).

But even before that, praise by *romantic* composers (i.e. in a period when music was regarded the highest art) for earlier composers is perfectly consistent with the claim that *music as an art form* was regarded more highly (in general or by aesthetic theorists) in the middle of the 19th century than in the mid-late 18th century.

The change in aesthetics predates Beethoven's mature works, I believe. Someone like Kant (1724-1804), writing his most important stuff in the 1780s is (even for his time) very hard on music, partly/mostly because it does not represent. (However with his aesthetics of the sublime he gives the next generation a tool to elevate music, especially sublime not "merely pretty" music, like Beethoven). Then there is a bunch or early German Romantic writers, Schlegel, Tieck, Wackenroder, Novalis, later Hoffmann, roughly of Beethoven's generation who already as very young men in the 1790s initiated romanticism (while the German "classicists" Goethe and Schiller were still going strong). Beethoven is square in the middle of that.

Obviously, Beethoven considered music highly, there is a (maybe inauthentic quote) that Music was a higher revelation than any wisdom or philosophy (but I'd guess that earlier musicians didn't share the philosopher's low opinions on music either). Of prominent early-mid 19th century philosophers Hegel puts (as far as I understand which is not easy with this author) music above architecture, sculpture and painting but below poetry; Schopenhauer puts music above all (because it directly expresses the "will" instead of representing anything). Interestingly, as Wackenroder and others of the 1790s were apparently strongly impressed by composers like Reichardt (who wrote rather naive songs and Singspiele), Schopenhauer's favorites were not mainly the "sublime" German composers but Bellini and other Belcanto.


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## hammeredklavier (Feb 18, 2018)

Kreisler jr said:


> Reichardt (who wrote rather naive songs and Singspiele)


Trauerkantate auf den Tod Friedrich des Grossen (1786)




Piano Concerto (1777)


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## Ethereality (Apr 6, 2019)

Beethoven sounds more Romantic to me, like Wagner, Schubert, Chopin. 

Brahms doesn't. He sounds more Neo-Classical like Schumann and Mozart.


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## Enthusiast (Mar 5, 2016)

I have long thought of Beethoven as the first Romantic (with a capital R) and Brahms as a classically (small c) disciplined Romantic. So I don't see a paradox. There are "competing" tendencies - classical and romantic - that go through music from long before Beethoven and there are eras which include the Baroque, the Classical and the Romantic eras. Some composers of the Classical era approached their music somewhat romantically (Mozart may be one) and some composers of the Romantic era were a lot more romantically inclined than others (Schumann, for example). I arrived at this way of thinking about music without much recourse to scholarship, though, so I can't expect everyone to agree with me. But it is how it feels to me.


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## SanAntone (May 10, 2020)

lehnert said:


> It is often said that Beethoven was the first romantic composer. At the same time, Brahms is considered to be his successor and the last of the classicists.


These ideas are reductive and pointless.


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## Philidor (11 mo ago)

> I have long thought of Beethoven as the first Romantic (with a capital R) and Brahms as a classically (small c) disciplined Romantic.


I find this difficult.

I try to get it more precise and maybe better understandable:

Do you mean the Beethoven of op. 1 as the first Romantic or the Beethoven of op. 57 or the Beethoven of op. 111?

Do you mean the Brahms of the first string sextet as a classic disciplined Romantic or the Brahms of the Alto Rhapsody or the Brahms of opp. 116 to 119 (not to forget op. 115)?


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## Ethereality (Apr 6, 2019)

Ethereality said:


> Beethoven sounds more Romantic to me, like Wagner, Schubert, Chopin.
> 
> Brahms doesn't. He sounds more Neo-Classical like Schumann and Mozart.


What is meant by this is, the Romantics will seem to take one extreme in music, and make it even more extreme, while the Classicists take one fairly balanced idea and balance it out even more. The only exception is Wagner, who seems to take one musical extreme, and balance it out through the duration of his opera.


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