What period of Romanticism do you like the most --- and why?

[RJR]

A, B & C.  Continuity is all.

[Sergeant Rock]

No, I think Sarge will respect your election of Brahms.

I do. Brahms was an early love. Karajan's recording of the Fourth was one of my first classical purchases (must have been 17) and I fell utterly in love with his chamber music after hearing a chamber recital at Ohio University in 1968.

Sarge

[Sergeant Rock]

. . . though I somehow doubt that he has half so many Deutsches Requiems as he has [/font]Rings : )

If you discount the Potted Ring (which isn't complete) I actually have eleven Requiems and eleven Rings 

From my CD data base:

BRAHMS   EIN DEUTSCHES REQUIEM   HAITINK   VIENNA PHIL   JANOWITZ/KRAUSE
BRAHMS   EIN DEUTSCHES REQUIEM   KARAJAN   BERLIN PHIL   JANOWITZ/WAECHTER
BRAHMS   EIN DEUTSCHES REQUIEM   KARAJAN   VIENNA PHIL   HENDRICKS/VAN DAM
BRAHMS   EIN DEUTSCHES REQUIEM   KARAJAN   VIENNA PHIL   SCHWARZKOPF/HOTTER
BRAHMS   EIN DEUTSCHES REQUIEM   KARAJAN   BERLIN PHIL   TOMOWA-SINTOW/VAN DAM
BRAHMS   EIN DEUTSCHES REQUIEM   SHAW   ATLANTA         AUGER/STILWELL
BRAHMS   EIN DEUTSCHES REQUIEM   NORRINGTON   LCP          DAWSON/BÄR
BRAHMS   EIN DEUTSCHES REQUIEM   KLEMPERER PHILHARM   SCHWARZKOPF/FISCHER-DIESKAU
BRAHMS   EIN DEUTSCHES REQUIEM   CELIBIDACHE MUNICH     AUGER/GERIHSEN
BRAHMS   EIN DEUTSCHES REQUIEM   GIULINI   VIENNA PHIL    BONNEY/SCHMIDT
BRAHMS   EIN DEUTSCHES REQUIEM   LEVINE   CHICAGO      BATTLE/HAGEGARD

Sarge

[karlhenning]

Well, I should have modified my guess, had I known that HvK had recorded the Opus 45 so many times : )

[Sergeant Rock]

Well, I should have modified my guess, had I known that HvK had recorded the Opus 45 so many times : )

 

I only bought two on purpose. The others came in the huge Karajan opera/vocal box.

Sarge

[DavidW]

That is a nice lineup there Sarge! Look at all those requiems... I really like the Klemperer.

[J.Z. Herrenberg]

Though it pains me (Schubert, Berlioz, Schumann, Chopin!), I'll have to choose late as my favorite segment of this continuum.

[jowcol]

I guess I'd tend to go by Nationality-- my first choice would be the Mighty Five  in Russia. (Okay, make that the Mighty Three- Mussorgsky, Rimsky Korsakov, and Borodin.) Time period would be mid to late (have to work in Scriabin as well...)

[eyeresist]

Late. The chops of the earlies, plus expanded orchestral and structural possibilities. For me, Late Romantic really lasted until Shostakovich died.

[Wanderer]

Despite my love for all three periods and their respective greats, for the sake of the pollmaker I'd rather lean towards the late period with its multitude of favourites; Brahms, Wagner, Mahler (minus the über-adulation his name seems to elicit nowadays), Scriabin, R.Strauss etc., but also Medtner, Schreker, Zemlinsky, Schoeck, Korngold... (etc.)

[starrynight]

I'll have to go with the majority.  The first period is really at most a transition time anyway.  The second period perhaps doesn't have as many good composers, or composers at their height, as the final one.  It may have started fading away after the turn of the century though with the deaths of some of the biggest composers, though obviously remnamts of romanticism could live on in some modern composers.

If you did the same for classical and baroque people would also probably pick the late period, maybe with renaissance too.  For modern music I'm not so sure though, many people would probably have a preference towards the earlier period because more of it is still romantic influenced.

[Sid]

I don't care, I like all of them. I'm sitting on the fence on this. I basically think that the labelling of the different eras matter little to me. They're all useless stereotypes, at least to an "all-rounder" like myself and many others I know who are into classical (at all levels of listener and practicing musican spectrum). I mean Beethoven has just as much in common with Palestrina as with J.S. Bach, Handel, Haydn, Mozart, Cherubini to name a few, all of whom he respected to some degree, some of who definitely influenced him (Handel and Mozart were his idols) for others it's a matter of expert/educated guesses/opinions. Since Palestrina was using similar harmonies in his choral music to, say, the "Hymn of Thanksgiving" slow movement of Beethoven's String Quartet Op. 132, do we call the Italian who lived in the 16th century a "late Classical" or "early Romantic" composer? (this Palestrina-Beethoven link isn't based on my inexpert "gut" instincts, this is based on a program note I read written by Australian scholar/musicologist Roger Covell for a local performance here in Sydney of that Beethoven work). I can go on with many many examples, but I think you all get the drift. The only distinctions between different types of musics down through the ages are not drawn by a thick permanent marker, they are more like lines in the sand, completely random, arbitary, ephemeral. I think that our musical appreciation and understanding would benefit from this kind of flexibility, too. Beethoven thought of himself not in terms of useless stylistic boxes but as a composer doing like his own things in his own time. Same with Palestrina. They were both "contemporary composers" in their own times, they probably would have laughed, balked or both at these useless distinctions...

[Florestan]

for the sake of the pollmaker

Much appreciated, Tasos, thanks! 

[Jaakko Keskinen]

Late period. Wagner's most mature works, Brahms's journey to greatness, Tchaikovsky's heartbreaking melodies, Dvorak's overlooked symphonic poems, Grieg, Norway's pride and joy, Bizet's fierce Carmen and Bruckner's large scale symphonies. However, middle and early come pretty close. Early period had Beethoven (I consider him both romantic and classical era composer) and Schubert, middle period had Chopin, Schumann, Mendelssohn, Wagner's earlier operas, Liszt, etc.

Be on your guard, Wagner vs Brahms flame war may be even more difficult issue than church vs state.

[karlhenning]

I'm still the only vote for my "period." Très cool!