Beethoven - Classical or Romantic?

[Florestan]

I would not read too much into that statement because the manner in which Mozart or any composer of that time "follow[ed his] feelings" was very different that how Liszt, or Chopin, or Berlioz, e.g., did.

Oh, I agree. No composer operates in a vacuum and the general mentality of the period he lives in certainly influences him.

What I object to --- not that you specifically proposed such a theory, but it could be read into your posts, and others', and please correct me if I made unwarranted inferences --- is the notion that Romanticism somehow "liberated" music, which until its coming to prominence lingered under the weighty double yoke of rules / forms and patronage system. This is simply not true: (1) granted, the most hardcore Romantics, such as Berlioz and Liszt, rejected the traditional instrumental forms --- but only to replace them with others: their music is not meaningless, formless and cohesionless wandering; they simply replaced the former rules and structures with others; (2) triumphant Romanticism simply replaced the old, aristocratic / ecclesiastical & elitist patronage with the new, bourgeois & democratic one --- although, interestingly enough, the most ardent supporters and patrons of Liszt and Wagner were aristocrats of the highest rank. 

OTOH, I do agree with you that, even when they kept the Classical forms, the "Romantics" sound very different than the "Classics": Tchaikovsky and Haydn are galaxies apart, and I challenge our dear Gurn to find one, just one, Haydn symphony which is as heart-on-sleeve as Tchaik's 5th. 

I keep feeling that context is not being considered by many contributors to this thread.

Well, AFAIC, "Classical" and "Romantic" are heavily context-dependent --- that's exactly what my riddle about Mozart purported to show. 

[Gurn Blanston]

You didn't ask me, but I can't help answering, though. 

Brahms' music (or Mendelssohn's, Dvorak's, even Tchaikovsky's) is more like Brahms' (or Mendelssohn's, Dvorak's, even Tchaikovsky's) than either Haydn's or Liszt's. 

My own theory is that, besides the categories used by historians, "Classical" and "Romantic" are first and foremost psychological traits of the human personality. One can find "Romantic" and "Classical" temperaments and biographies in every art and historical period. Take, for instance, Gesualdo, Caravaggio and Torquato Tasso: Romantics to the core, both personally and artistically, long, long before "Romanticism" was invented. 

I wish that was helpful, Florestan.

IMO, Romanticism has become a catchall for the various indefinables of 200 years. First and foremost it was a literary movement. That it had traits that reflected actual human feelings and behaviors is inevitable, but if one were writing a spreadsheet and trying to work out a mathematical formula for this, then most of the input so far would come back with an error message about self-referential loops...

[Gurn Blanston]

Oh, I agree. No composer operates in a vacuum and the general mentality of the period he lives in certainly influences him.

What I object to --- not that you specifically proposed such a theory, but it could be read into your posts, and others', and please correct me if I made unwarranted inferences --- is the notion that Romanticism somehow "liberated" music, which until its coming to prominence lingered under the weighty double yoke of rules / forms and patronage system. This is simply not true: (1) granted, the most hardcore Romantics, such as Berlioz and Liszt, rejected the traditional instrumental forms --- but only to replace them with others: their music is not meaningless, formless and cohesionless wandering; they simply replaced the former rules and structures with others; (2) triumphant Romanticism simply replaced the old, aristocratic / ecclesiastical & elitist patronage with the new, bourgeois & democratic one --- although, interestingly enough, the most ardent supporters and patrons of Liszt and Wagner were aristocrats of the highest rank. 

OTOH, I do agree with you that, even when they kept the Classical forms, the "Romantics" sound very different than the "Classics": Tchaikovsky and Haydn are galaxies apart, and I challenge our dear Gurn to find one, just one, Haydn symphony which is as heart-on-sleeve as Tchaik's 5th. 

Well, AFAIC, "Classical" and "Romantic" are heavily context-dependent --- that's exactly what my riddle about Mozart purported to show. 

I couldn't. That's why my definition of classical blocked out emotion like that, and why my definition of Romantic 1 put it in.

[Gurn Blanston]

Gotta go to work now, guys. Y'all keep hacking away at this and I'll happily rejoin you later. Thanks for your support, Karl. YOU are a classic! 

[Florestan]

I wish that was helpful, Florestan.

My purpose is not be helpful or hamful; I simply follow my own feelings. 

IMO, Romanticism has become a catchall for the various indefinables of 200 years.

Most Hollywood's "Romantic comedies" immediately come to mind: there is nothing even remotely Romantic in them (I'd bet most Romantics, be they writers, painters or composers, would recoil in horror seeing them); as for comedy, not even my a$$ laughs (Romanian idiosyncratic expression) 

First and foremost it was a literary movement.

I respectfully disagree. Or, better said, I agree if you say the same about Classicism. 

That it had traits that reflected actual human feelings and behaviors is inevitable, but if one were writing a spreadsheet and trying to work out a mathematical formula for this, then most of the input so far would come back with an error message about self-referential loops...

Absolutely. Ex post facto reasoning & all that...

[DavidW]

For a guy who claims to approach this more from a historical perspective, you describe it in non-historical and almost exclusively in theoretical ideas.

But you just asked him yesterday to define classicism, and once he does you promptly attack him for doing so?  I think you're just being argumentative.

[Gurn Blanston]

My purpose is not be helpful or hamful; I simply follow my own feelings. 

Most Hollywood's "Romantic comedies" immediately come to mind: there is nothing even remotely Romantic in them (I'd bet most Romantics, be they writers, painters or composers, would recoil in horror seeing them); as for comedy, not even my a$$ laughs (Romanian idiosyncratic expression) 

I respectfully disagree. Or, better said, I agree if you say the same about Classicism. 

Absolutely. Ex post facto reasoning & all that...

Oh, I DO say the same about Classicism. I am the last person in line when it comes to lumping all the arts into one Grand Unified Theory.

If it was me, we would have the Age of Polyphony, the Age of Homophony and the Age of Cacophony... always exceptions duly noted, of course...     (hey, it's a freakin' joke, guys, lighten up!).   0:)

[karlhenning]

The Age of Atonal Honking . . . .

[Florestan]

I couldn't. That's why my definition of classical blocked out emotion like that, and why my definition of Romantic 1 put it in.

Ok, then we have the following definitions:

Absolute music based on a tonal harmonic system underpinning (and often comprising) a long-line melody. It is based on any of a thousand variants of what we now call sonata form. It is 'classical' because the effect it produces appears to the listener as classically simple. It requires the engagement of the listener as an essential part of its existence, and if successful, it draws in the listener both intellectually and emotionally.

Absolute music based on a tonal harmonic system underpinning (and often comprising) a long-line melody. It is based on any of a thousand variants of what we now call sonata form. It is 'Romantic' because the effect it produces appears to the listener as both complex and emotional. It requires the engagement of the listener only insofar as to listen well and react to its innate statements.

Now, talking about self-referential loops: defining "Classical" music as having "classically simple" effects is rather tautologic. 

But I see what you mean --- please correct me if I'm wrong: for an effect that Mozart acomplished with 20 strings and two pairs of winds, Mahler required an orchestra of 150. 

The most problematic, though, are the fourth sentences of each definition, which I'm not sure I understood well.

Are you implying that the "Classical" audience felt music to be an essential part of its existence, one that seriously engaged them both intellectually and emotionally and to whose afterwards study and pondering they were fully committed --- as opposed to "Romantic" audiences, for which music was just an accessory, a pastime that was worth only the time needed for hearing it, with no afterwards study and pondering?

If this is so, then it strikes me as contrafactual: while the Classical-era aristocratic audience, knowledgeable as it was, had obviously many other interests besides music, which wasn't exactly a life-and-death matter, it is precisely Romanticism, with its relentless cult of creative geniuses, of artistic heroes, of arts as philosophy and religion that elevated music to an intellectual status unheard of before. I'm willing to bet that, had Haydn told his good prince Eszterhazy that "Music is a higher revelation than all wisdom and philosophy ", or that the composer is on an even, nay, higher level than a prince, the latter would have thought his kapellmeister was in dire need of medical attendance. 

[karlhenning]

. . . But I see what you mean --- please correct me if I'm wrong: for an effect that Mozart acomplished with 20 strings and two pairs of winds, Mahler required an orchestra of 150. 

Hah! To your earlier gauntlet:

. . . I challenge our dear Gurn to find one, just one, Haydn symphony which is as heart-on-sleeve as Tchaik's 5th. 
show. 

I nearly parenthesized: It's the trombones, you know . . . .

[Florestan]

I nearly parenthesized: It's the trombones, you know . . . .

Q: What do you get if you add trombones to Haydn's Symphony no. 88?

A: Mahler's Third.

[Gurn Blanston]

Q: What do you get if you add trombones to Haydn's Symphony no. 88?

A: Mahler's Third.

76 trombones, maybe...

[DavidW]

76 trombones, maybe...

And an elephant!

[Florestan]

What I mean when I contrast "restraint" and "freedom" vis a vis Classical and Romantic is not what you have written here. 

Classical restraint does not imply over reliance on rules or being devoid of emotional expression, it means that the manner in which a person of the Classical age, not just a composer, expressed himself with understatement, hints, or representative signs/gestures to deeper more emotional content.  The Romantic was not so reserved in how he expressed himself, and that kind of attitude was emblematic of the age.  It is the manner in how these same aspects are handled which constitute the difference in the styles, imo.  They are styles of music, after all  - not completely different species, and as Gurn has pointed out they populate a continuum across two centuries.

Thanks for clearing things up. Put this way, I tend to agree.

I also think what has been missing from this discussion is the observation that the Classical style is a form of dramatic writing, not melodramatic which might describe the Romantic, in instrumental garb.  Dramatic in that themes and keys perform roles in the music, and there is a distinct rhetoric at work in the compositions.

Certainly. Gurn has posted extensively about the rhetoric of Classical music  in several other threads --- I hope he'll provide the links to those very informative posts.

[jochanaan]

The Age of Atonal Honking . . . .

Honk honk honk hoooooonnnnnnnnk! (Sorry; knee-jerk reaction there. )

76 trombones, maybe...

With 110 cornets, and trumpeters who improvise (muted) a full octave higher than the score!

[Gurn Blanston]

Honk honk honk hoooooonnnnnnnnk! (Sorry; knee-jerk reaction there. )With 110 cornets, and trumpeters who improvise (muted) a full octave higher than the score!

I love it, that would make even Mahler palatable!

[(poco) Sforzando]

And an elephant!

That would be more appropriate for Koechlin's "The Song of Kala Nag. . . ."

[Ten thumbs]

Did Beethoven have Romantic contemporaries? I don't think Romanticism in music really took off until after his death.

This is about right although there were many young composers who were being brought up in the new Romantic ethos during Beethoven's lifetime. Certainly the Mendelssohn siblings were experimenting with it from 1821 onwards. The Midsummer Night's Dream Overture is one of the first major Romantic works (1826).

[jochanaan]

...The Midsummer Night's Dream Overture is one of the first major Romantic works (1826).

So is Der Freischütz of 1821.  Carl Maria von Weber composed several other Romantic operas before Freischütz, but not much remains of them.  One, Silvana from 1810, has been recorded; the others are either lost or survive only in incomplete form.  So yes, whether one includes Beethoven as a Romantic or not, one can say that musical Romanticism was very active before Beethoven's death.

[Cato]

While in the misty midst of the vast Cato Archives, I came across my copy of Ronald Taylor's The Romantic Tradition in Germany, which delineates mainly the philosophical foundations of the movement (Fichte, Herder, etc.) but also addresses the literary and musical aspects.

pp. 194-195 (Examining the ideas of E.T.A. Hoffmann and Artur Schopenhauer)
"(According to Schopenhauer) music (never) expresses 'the appearance, but rather the inner being, the essence (das Ansich) of all appearance, the Will itself...For this reason our fantasy is so easily stirred through Music.'...

"If music is the 'reflection of the Will itself' and if the cosmic Will, as Schopenhauer postulated, is wicked, then music is left in a position of dubious integrity.  The notion of 'wicked music'...would strike many as preposterous, but having used Kantian vocabulary...Schopenhauer, in whose system Will is indifferent to conventional morality, is not disturbed by this conclusion.  Hoffmann had written of Beethoven's music: 'it moves the lever of fear, of shuddering, of horror, of pain;' and in one sense Schopenhauer's implication of the sinister and the destructive is an extension of this range."

(My translation of the quotes from Schopenhauer and Hoffmann).