Topic: Florestan´s Romantic Salon

[Jo498]

And Goethe was mostly critical of the younger generation of romantics... in German cultural history we are taught Lessing, Goethe and Schiller as "Klassiker". This stuff is always far more overlapping and complicated than the textbook clichés.
Beethoven seems clearly on the "enlightenment" side with Fidelio, 9th symphony and his staunch stance against Metternich's restauration. (There is an interpretation of the 9th symphony that takes Beethoven's remark about a "state of despair" (verzweiflungsvoller Zustand), depicted in the first movement as his take on the post-1815 restauration and apparently he was sometimes so outspoken in the pub that friends feared he might get into trouble with Metternich's secret police.)
And Hoffmann called composers we don't think of as "romantic" at all romantic, basically what we call Viennese classicism, namely Haydn, Mozart (and Gluck for his late operas).

[Cato]

And Goethe was mostly critical of the younger generation of romantics... in German cultural history we are taught Lessing, Goethe and Schiller as "Klassiker". This stuff is always far more overlapping and complicated than the textbook clichés.

And Hoffmann called composers we don't think of as "romantic" at all romantic, basically what we call Viennese classicism, namely Haydn, Mozart (and Gluck for his late operas).

Very interesting, for my professors taught us that Goethe's Die Leiden des Jungen Werthers, along with things like Schiller's Die Räuber were some of the first shots to announce the arrival of Romanticism.

And I think Hoffmann was not wrong in his judgment: and he would know of what he speaks, (one would think): Hoffmann himself is seen as The Ultimate Romantic!

[Jo498]

You are not wrong, but these early "Sturm und Drang" pieces ("Goetz von Berlichingen" (about a nobleman supporting the peasant uprisings in 16th century Germany) is another early Goethe play often classified thus) are exceptions to some extent.
At least Goethe and Schiller wrote rather different stuff later on, especially Schiller is also often closely connected to Kantian philosophy and aesthetics, all still parts of "Aufklärung". For this younger generation (like Schiller *1759) the terreur in the aftermath of the French Revolution apparently had a similar function to the Lisbon desastre for the older enlightenment thinkers, but of course more concerning the political philosophy and it tempered their attitudes. The fight for liberty in William Tell is considerably more level-headed than the enthusiasm of "Die Räuber" and mostly against wilful tyrrany.

Goethe is really hard to classify. In the famous encounter with Beethoven at Teplitz he almost seems like representing the Ancién régime; after all he was secretary/minister at the Weimar court. He really disliked some of the younger romantics (like Kleist, I think) but admired others (like Lord Byron). In his natural philosophy (plants, anatomy and colors) he was more of a romantic, arguing against reductionist mechanistic philosophy. He probably also held some sort of spinozist pantheism (which would place him closer to the Romantics than to the atheist/skeptic (Hobbes, Hume, LaMettrie etc.) or deist (Locke, Kant) enlightenment philosophers. A truly universal mind but very hard to pin down.

You are certainly right about Hoffmann being an archromantic himself (and a somewhat tragic figure who had to keep working as law clerk because he could not establish himself permanently as music director somewhere and apparently drank himself to death).

[Florestan]

My theory is that "romanticism" (small r intentionally) is first and foremost a state of mind and a penchant of the heart, a psychological predisposition, a forma mentis, a Weltanschauung if you will which is rather inborn and little, if at all, dependent on external factors. One does not become a romantic, one is born as such; the place, the time, the general stage of civilization and the milieu one is born into can surely stiffle or encourage the latent romanticism but they can neither produce nor extinguish it altogether. One does not even have to be an artist or philosopher in order to be a romantic.

I submit to your consideration the following quotes, which imho are as good a romantic / Romantic ars poetica as anything coming from the pen of Victor Hugo or Berlioz

Et quod nunc ratio est impetus ante fuit. - Ovid, Remedia amoris, 10.

Si vis me flere, dolendum est primum ipsi tibi. - Horace, Ars poetica, 102.

[Ken B]

Et quod nunc ratio est impetus ante fuit. - Ovid, Remedia amoris, 10.

Lot of fuiting in Ovid. At it like rabbits in most of his stuff.

[Florestan]

Lot of fuiting in Ovid. At it like rabbits in most of his stuff.

Huh?

[Cato]

Huh?

A Latin pun on "fuit" (has been) with the obscene verb "futuo" which I will not translate.  (The verb does appear in certain poets.)

[Florestan]

I was pretty sure. 

A Latin pun on "fuit" (has been) with the obscene verb "futuo" which I will not translate.  (The verb does appear in certain poets.)

You don't have to translate it. The Romanian verb "a fute" comes directly from "futuo". 

[Cato]

I was pretty sure. 

You don't have to translate it. The Romanian verb "a fute" comes directly from "futuo". 

My first Romanian verb...and look what it is! 

Ken B. has created a rather "eroteric" pun for us! 

[Ken B]

I was pretty sure. 

You don't have to translate it. The Romanian verb "a fute" comes directly from "futuo". 

Live and learn. I had just assumed you were just misspelling flute in those PMs ...

 

[Florestan]

Some thoughts I've been ruminating on over the the weekend.


One of the most interesting topics in cultural history --- well, at least for me --- is twofold:
(1) what music did Wackenroder, Tieck and Novalis listen to,

and

(2) how did they listen to it.

The literary and philosophical writings of these early German Romantics were seminal for forging an unprecedently exalted appraisal of, role for, and significance of, purely instrumental music. Prior to their 's simultaneously (and in the case of Wackenroder and Tieck, cooperatively) formulating strikingly new and bold / wild ideas on that kind of music, its reception was oscillating between downright incomprehension (cf. Fontenelle: Sonate, que me veux tu?) and downright dismissal (cf. Kant: more entertainment than culture). Both these attitudes stemmed from the fact that purely instrumental music lacks any connection with words, ie with the conceptual world of ideas, and as such it is fundamentally ambiguous and indeterminate --- as the selfsame Kant put it, the moment the music stops there is nothing left to be considered by the mind, as opposed to books or paintings. (more on this later).

Now, Wackenroder, Tieck and Novalis built their musical philosophy exactly on this ambiguity and indetermination, turning it upside down. It is precisely because of these characteristics, precisely of its lack of any grounding in, and dependence on, the physical world (I'm oversymplifying here for the sake of argument --- in fact, at least Wackenroder & Tieck were explicitly aware that music is grounded in, and dependent on, (1) metal, wood and catguts, and (2) the imagination of a human being) that music is the perfect expression of the human condition, the supreme art towards whose condition all other arts could and should only aspire.

Drat --- I mean, Himmelherrgott! I can't find right now the online pdf article which I've been reading last Saturday, where Carl Dahlhaus iirc was quoted to the effect of writing that [Wackenroder / Tieck thoght of] musical techniques not as rational means of construction and expression but as occult mysteries. This is probably true, and begging the question: what music were they listening to, and how?

Problem is, there are preciously few and far between references to any specifical musical works in their writings, though. The Wackenroder / Tieck cooperatively work Outpourings of an Art-Loving Friar (of which the most pedantic scholarship has had difficulty in establishing who wrote what section) nominally mentions only Johann Friedrich Reichardt's Macbeth Overture, while Novalis is reported to have died shortly after hearing (unspecified) Mozart's music being played to him.
 
Now, I would like to draw your attention to the fact that in the 1790s in the German States one had very few options when it came to listening to music. There were actually only 3 options:

(1) one could play the music oneself --- in this respect we know that Wackenroder was as accomplished a keyboard player as to have being asked for, and himself considering, performing publicly a Haydn concerto (never came to being, though), while Tieck's attempt at performing music were disastrous.

(2) one was member of a close circle of friends who gathered weekly and performed music --- to my knowledge there is no credible source documenting this.

(3) one was attending public concerts --- I have been able to read no credible online sources documenting public concert life in Berlin ca. 1795, that is, the time and place of Wackenroder and Tieck.

(to be continued -- any thoughts and comments warmly welcome!)

[Jo498]

I cannot quite help with Tieck/Wackenroder, only that I also recall that at least some of the music that inspired them supposedly was by Reichardt and others who are almost forgotten (except as mere names) today.
We do have lots of material from E.T.A. Hoffmann who is in the same generation but writing somewhat later in the 1800s and 1810s. Unlike the others mentioned he was an accomplished musician (although he had to work in law because he never secured a musical position for a sufficient time to make a living). The central text is the the famous extended review of Beethoven's 5th (Beethovens Instrumentalmusik).
Hoffmann definitely helped to establish the "classical triad" (or tetrad if Gluck is included) and his points of reference are usually late Mozart and Haydn as well as early and middle Beethoven (and he also knew music by Palestrina, Bach and Handel). (So unlike maybe Wackenroder he *does* refer to music we still consider of the highest quality.) The interesting point in Hoffmann is also that he basically inverses Kant's dismissal while making use of some Kantian categories. He agrees with Tieck etc. that music is not about anything in particular (he makes fun of battle and storm symphonies and the like) but that it somehow expresses "infinity" which is linked to the aesthetic category of the "sublime" for Kant and which cannot be given in words or in common experience. In that review he also uses words that remind one of "occult mysteries" (italics added by me):

"When music is discussed as an independent art, should it not be solely instrumental
music that is intended, music that scorns every aid from and mixing with any other
art (poetry), music that only expresses the distinctive and unique essence of this art?
It is the most romantic of all arts, and we could almost say the only truly romantic one
because its only subject is the infinite. Just as Orpheus’ lyre opened the gates of the
underworld, music unlocks for mankind an unknown realm—a world with nothing
in common with the surrounding outer world of the senses. Here we abandon definite
feelings and surrender to an inexpressible longing."

"Thus Beethoven’s instrumental music opens to us the realm of the monstrous and
immeasurable. Glowing rays shoot through the deep night of this realm, and we sense
giant shadows surging to and fro, closing in on us until they destroy us, but not the pain
of unending longing in which every desire that has risen quickly in joyful tones sinks
and expires. Only with this pain of love, hope, joy—which consumes but does not
destroy, which would burst asunder our breasts with a mightily impassioned chord—we
live on, enchanted seers of the ghostly world! ["entzückte Geisterseher" could also better be translated as "ecstatic visionaries", Hoffmann certainly does not mean anything spooky but seems to compare he experience of music to spiritual, visionary ecstasy]

"Thus he [Beethoven] is a purely romantic composer, and if he has had less success with vocal music, is this because vocal music excludes the character of indefinite longing and represents the emotions, which come
from the realm of the infinite, only by the definite affects of words?"

http://www.cengage.com/music/book_content/049557273X_wrightSimms_DEMO/assets/ITOW/7273X_INT_07_ITOW_Hoffmann.pdf
http://gutenberg.spiegel.de/buch/beethovens-instrumentalmusik-3078/1 [German]

[Florestan]

Thanks for reading and replying, Jo.

Yes, you're of course right: Hoffmann's article on Beethoven is probably the most influential piece of musical criticism ever. I will consider him, and the article, later.

For the time being, let us return to the duo Tieck / Wackenroder.
 
Imagine: you are in Berlin in the 1790s. You are neither a professional musician, nor an aristocrat (Tieck was the son of a rope-maker who was actually the spokesman for his guild and who endeavoured to offer his offsprings the best education he could afford, which wasn't little: Ludwig's siblings Christian Friedrich and Sophie eventually became a sculptor and a poet, respectively --- while Wackenroder's father was a civil servant, if I'm not mistaken). What music are you able to listen to, how often, and in what way? I am not at all familiar with the public concert life in Berlin at the time but I suppose what one could hear was Haydn (although he was never in favor with the Berlin musical critics), Mozart, the young Beethoven and their contemporaries; from an older generation, probably Frederick The Great's favorites Quantz and Graun, and possibly CPE Bach as well. Tieck mentions nominally only this Johann Friedrich Reichardt and his Macbeth Overture (apart from a lullaby on a disc featuring Montserrat Figueras, I've never heard anything by him --- and that's actually a transcription of a Scottish tune).

But, and this is the most interesting question, at least for me: does the music of these composers warrant one waxing poetic about it with such lofty, exalted, mystical overtones? For our modern ears, the answer is probably negative. Reading Tieck and Wackenroder on music, I have the impression that they point forwards, to Schubert and Schumann and even beyond them to Brahms, Wagner, Bruckner and Mahler, rather than backwards to any composer contemporary with them or earlier.

This leaves two possibilities: either they were indeed working as prophets, describing a type of music and a way of listening to it which were yet to come --- or they heard in, and felt about, the music of their contemporaries things we are not able to hear and feel anymore, because of the cultural, social and ideological abyss that separates us from them.

It is the second hypothesis that I've been ruminating upon for many years, in various guises, and which I am convinced that it is true: these people listened to the music of their time and wrote of it as if writing about Mahler or Wagner precisely because their ears hadn't heard a note of these latter's music; for us lving in AD 2017 it is quite easy to dismiss their language as mere wild fantasizing with no background in any actual piece of music known to them, but if we try to put ourselves in their places (granted, not an easy undertaking even as a thought experiment) I think we'll be able to change, or at least challenge, some (many?) of the notions we take for granted when it comes about music and music listening.

Thanks for reading, to be continued.

[Gurn Blanston]

Thanks for reading and replying, Jo.

Yes, you're of course right: Hoffmann's article on Beethoven is probably the most influential piece of musical criticism ever. I will consider him, and the article, later.

For the time being, let us return to the duo Tieck / Wackenroder.
 
Imagine: you are in Berlin in the 1790s. You are neither a professional musician, nor an aristocrat (Tieck was the son of a rope-maker who was actually the spokesman for his guild and who endeavoured to offer his offsprings the best education he could afford, which wasn't little: Ludwig's siblings Christian Friedrich and Sophie eventually became a sculptor and a poet, respectively --- while Wackenroder's father was a civil servant, if I'm not mistaken). What music are you able to listen to, how often, and in what way? I am not at all familiar with the public concert life in Berlin at the time but I suppose what one could hear was Haydn (although he was never in favor with the Berlin musical critics), Mozart, the young Beethoven and their contemporaries; from an older generation, probably Frederick The Great's favorites Quantz and Graun, and possibly CPE Bach as well. Tieck mentions nominally only this Johann Friedrich Reichardt and his Macbeth Overture (apart from a lullaby on a disc featuring Montserrat Figueras, I've never heard anything by him --- and that's actually a transcription of a Scottish tune).

But, and this is the most interesting question, at least for me: does the music of these composers warrant one waxing poetic about it with such lofty, exalted, mystical overtones? For our modern ears, the answer is probably negative. Reading Tieck and Wackenroder on music, I have the impression that they point forwards, to Schubert and Schumann and even beyond them to Brahms, Wagner, Bruckner and Mahler, rather than backwards to any composer contemporary with them or earlier.

This leaves two possibilities: either they were indeed working as prophets, describing a type of music and a way of listening to it which were yet to come --- or they heard in, and felt about, the music of their contemporaries things we are not able to hear and feel anymore, because of the cultural, social and ideological abyss that separates us from them.

It is the second hypothesis that I've been ruminating upon for many years, in various guises, and which I am convinced that it is true: these people listened to the music of their time and wrote of it as if writing about Mahler or Wagner precisely because their ears hadn't heard a note of these latter's music; for us lving in AD 2017 it is quite easy to dismiss their language as mere wild fantasizing with no background in any actual piece of music known to them, but if we try to put ourselves in their places (granted, not an easy undertaking even as a thought experiment) I think we'll be able to change, or at least challenge, some (many?) of the notions we take for granted when it comes about music and music listening.

Thanks for reading, to be continued.

By being neither professional musicians nor aristocrats, Tieck and Wackenroder represented the future of music. By 1800, that lifestyle was history, only hanging on to some small extent around Beethoven and some few others. IMO, the French Revolution put the final nail in that coffin, so to speak. Even as the Wars of the Revolution raged on, the actual cultural change mandated by the overthrow of the aristo class rolled right over Prussia and the outlying parts of the Habsburg Empire.

Another major change in the perception of music is the disappearance of rhetoric as the basis for composition, and the breaking of the bond between composer, performer and listener which was the foundation of Enlightenment Era music. Now, performers played what composers wrote. And composers wrote art for art's sake. Listeners listened. They listened for the sensual enjoyment provided by the music, as one would look at a painting and enjoy whatever message it was conveying. I am not being critical here, I know you will accuse me of it, I am just pointing out that there was an essential and significant change in how music was made and perceived. Given that it was suddenly the possession of the Bourgeoisie, and performed in relatively huge concert halls nearly exclusively by professional musicians instead of being owned by the church or nobility, played in a drawing room or relatively small private venue by a mixture of amateurs and random professionals having a night off from playing at the church or opera, it is inevitable that change would be necessary.

Tieck and Wackenroder saw the shortcomings in Enlightenment thought, which were plentiful. Most importantly, they were able to see the opportunities which were around them and take advantage of the change that was in the air. Of course, Wackenroder died in 1798, so really it is Tieck who spent the next few years plowing the field of philosophy. But their work was almost entirely about art, visual art, and then literature. In looking back into an era I am more familiar with, it puts me in mind of the way music and literature followed one on another in the 1760's/'70's with Sturm und Drang. And slightly before that, an article I wrote for the Haydn Journal traced the influence of Shakespeare on music for dramas, beginning in the 1750's with Gottsched and Lessing. By 'taming' Shakespeare they made his plays usable in Germany, and the result was a surge in dramatic music.

The only musical name I can think of who would have been influential in their place and time is Zelter, a huge friend of Goethe and the man who was Schubert before Schubert came along. But I really think that it was the changing of the thought process they developed for all sorts of artists which will be their biggest influence. They may well be regarded as the 'founders of German Romanticism', but I see it as a generically philosophical attitude more than any given thing to any given art form.

BTW, and strictly for what it's worth, by the 1790's the Berliners had finally caught up with Haydn and loved him to death. Once Paris, and then London adopted him, it was OK, I guess.   

Please don't parse out this whole thing and analyze each sentence. I am perfectly willing to have you just call bullshit and then move on. It is just some thoughts I had...   I am very "Après moi, le déluge" about anything post 1800...

[Florestan]

Another major change in the perception of music is the disappearance of rhetoric as the basis for composition, and the breaking of the bond between composer, performer and listener which was the foundation of Enlightenment Era music. Now, performers played what composers wrote. And composers wrote art for art's sake. Listeners listened. They listened for the sensual enjoyment provided by the music, as one would look at a painting and enjoy whatever message it was conveying. I am not being critical here, I know you will accuse me of it, I am just pointing out that there was an essential and significant change in how music was made and perceived. Given that it was suddenly the possession of the Bourgeoisie, and performed in relatively huge concert halls nearly exclusively by professional musicians instead of being owned by the church or nobility, played in a drawing room or relatively small private venue by a mixture of amateurs and random professionals having a night off from playing at the church or opera, it is inevitable that change would be necessary.

Yes, but what you describe above belongs to a much later period than that in which Wackenroder and Tieck cooperatively developed their new musical aesthetics (the 1790s). It applies to Mahler, Bruckner and even late Brahms, but not to such Early or Middle Romantics as Schubert, Weber, Hummel, Mendelssohn, Schumann, Spohr and others, who wrote large parts of their work precisely for being "played in a drawing room or relatively small private venue by a mixture of amateurs and random professionals", and who belong themselves to later generations. It is largely a post-1850 phenomenon and as such cannot explain the way Wackenroder and Tieck viewed music prior to 1800.

Not to mention that Haydn's London Symphonies were premiered exactly  "in relatively huge concert halls [...] exclusively by professional musicians".

You're spot on about one thing, though: as time went by the gap between composers, performers and listeners widened, and what used to be a collaborative enterprise became more and more a self-absorbed affair, on both ends. From the times when involved and interactive household musicmaking, and composing for such instances, was routine to the times when passively listening to recordings is routine, a lot of changes occurred, and not all of them for the better.

Anyway, thanks for reading and posting, much appreciated.

[Gordo]

Today, I saw this conversation in another thread:

Recent arrivals:

I spotified Norrington’s Má Vlast. Probably not the best performance of the work, but it was cheap and is the only one on period instruments AFAIK.

Period instruments yes but the wrong period I am afraid. Music was composed sometime between 1874 and 1879 but the Classical Era in music ended around 1820 thus making the "period" about 50+ years off.

After reading these posts, I thought if I had to choose a date to mark the end of the Classical Era it would be, no doubt, the date of Haydn's death. So, now it's official to me: in music, the Classical Era finishes in 1809 (beginning in 1750). 

[Florestan]

now it's official to me: in music, the Classical Era finishes in 1809 (beginning in 1750). 

Great! Now we know that the Classical Era died in 1809. The next big step is to locate its tombstone. 

[North Star]

After reading these posts, I thought if I had to choose a date to mark the end of the Classical Era it would be, no doubt, the date of Haydn's death. So, now it's official to me: in music, the Classical Era finishes in 1809 (beginning in 1750). 

So half of middle-period Beethoven, among other things, is out? And what is that time, until around 1820, or the death of Beethoven, then?

[Gordo]

Great! Now we know that the Classical Era died in 1809. The next big step is to locate its tombstone. 

Oh, you again, damn argumentative Romanian!   

Of course, you carefully changed the verb ("to die" instead of "to finish"). Nice move! 

[Florestan]

Of course, you carefully changed the verb ("to die" instead of "to finish").

Know what, you're actually right: it might have finished in 1809, but it certainly lived longer than that. She was a still charming enough lady, albeit a little passé, when asiduously courted by Brahms.