Neoromanticism

[Lethevich]

What kind of composer would you define as "neoromantic", and how would you describe the style? I've seen this term used a lot, but often for very different things:

1. Any composer from the early 20th century writing in the Romantic style (I view this as "Romantic overflow" or Late, Late Romantic )
2. A mid-century composer writing symphonies with a strong tonal basis (such as Shotakovich, Vaughan Williams)
3. A composer writing in reaction to the avant-garde symphonies lacking in extended techniques, but often still largely non-standardly tonal (such as Penderecki, Rochberg)
4. A composer changing their style from a more rigorous early one, into a more accessable later one (Adams)
5. A contemporary composer writing often tonal music influenced by the less dense aspects of the avant garde, or in reaction to it, sometimes with minimalist influences. This tonality can be quite different from the conventions of the Romantic period and would surely be considered unlistenable to ears from back then, but very much fits easily within modern standards of "listenability" (Vasks, David Matthews).

1 and 2 were often a natural growth of what came before. 4 I feel coincides too much with an artist maturing to be considered an abandonment of what came before. 3 and 5 cannot help but be influenced by styles very different from the music being written by the composer, which is perhaps why the genre name can be used as a jibe towards them from enthusiasts of the styles they abandoned.

A composer like Penderecki, for example, I find difficult to consider a part of this genre because it lacks any sentiment in common with the name. His non-vocal works are quite absolute, rigorous and frankly lacking in the colour or changes in mood that I would associate with the term 'Romantic'. His style seems to fit more with "new simplicity", a genre I have little experience with so cannot comment further on. The only composer I can think of whose entire style would blatantly fit within such a genre name would be George Lloyd. His compositional style doesn't crib from the Romantics in terms of "I will copy Tchaikovsky here", but it has a very distinct tonal basis, but recognisably not from that period due to the occasional rather aggressive, filmic effects that the music can have.

[Cato]

I suspect that Penderecki probably thinks his music from the Second Symphony onward qualify him for the Neo-Romantic label.

I recall reading an interview with (maybe) Anne-Sophie Mutter saying that Penderecki had reached a third stage in the later 1990's, fusing the 50's avant-garde style with Neo-Romanticism.

[snyprrr]

Haha, I thought you said Necroromantic!! Eewww!!!

[Lethevich]

Haha, I thought you said Necroromantic!! Eewww!!!

The forum's spell-checker wanted me to as well.

[not edward]

The term doesn't seem much use to me in describing cases (1) and (2), where it's more very-late-Romantic, with no break from the tradition in its ancestry. The others all have their points (though I don't know I'd think of David Matthews in that regard, unless his more recent work has changed his style greatly).

Two cases that I always think of as neo-Romantic that I think normally are not: certain works of Schnittke (eg: Peer Gynt and the first cello concerto) and a lot of what Rihm was doing around the turn of the century (eg: the Vers une symphonie fleuve series); in both examples the influence of Mahler is glaring, though filtered somewhat differently. Perhaps one could make a case for post-1980 Denisov too; while the formal procedures are not Romantic, the rhetoric and the harmonic effects at key structural points often are.

And then--what to make of, say, the late works of Bo Nilsson; is a work such as Arctic Air pure pastiche, or does it reflect a conscious return to Romanticism? (I'd argue that it is pastiche, but that this was also true of his modernist period.)

[Lethevich]

I didn't consider asking it at the time, but I would also love to hear peoples opinions on whether the term is useful at all, or if it is useful to apply more broadly than in my attempt at a break-down of styles.

Two cases that I always think of as neo-Romantic that I think normally are not: certain works of Schnittke (eg: Peer Gynt and the first cello concerto) and a lot of what Rihm was doing around the turn of the century (eg: the Vers une symphonie fleuve series); in both examples the influence of Mahler is glaring, though filtered somewhat differently. Perhaps one could make a case for post-1980 Denisov too; while the formal procedures are not Romantic, the rhetoric and the harmonic effects at key structural points often are.

Do you feel that in Rihm the channeling of Mahler is as distanced as the Romantics "re-discovering" Bach, or do you feel that there has been a continual channel of inspiration going through, say, Shostakovich all the way up to present? I suppose it's a case of neoromanticism often being used to describe a break or swerve in style, but Mahler's influence on the 20th century has always loomed large.

Re. hommage/genuine expression, Henze might almost fall in this awkward spot as well. His style is very internalised, but also very indebted to long-dead composers.

[not edward]

Do you feel that in Rihm the channeling of Mahler is as distanced as the Romantics "re-discovering" Bach, or do you feel that there has been a continual channel of inspiration going through, say, Shostakovich all the way up to present? I suppose it's a case of neoromanticism often being used to describe a break or swerve in style, but Mahler's influence on the 20th century has always loomed large.

With Rihm it's rather difficult to say, I think, given his constant stream of stylistic changes. I think it'd be reasonable to regard many of the early work as simply late-Romantic (even though they could be seen as a reaction against the modernist mainstream, they do follow fairly clearly onto the end of the Mahler-Berg-Hartmann symphonic style). But returning to a style of this nature after 15-or-so years of very different musical considerations seems to me something of a conscious break in his development.

[eyeresist]

I suspect that Penderecki probably thinks his music from the Second Symphony onward qualify him for the Neo-Romantic label.

This.

I'm not really interested in labelling music anymore, just whether I like the stuff or not.

[Mirror Image]

I'm not really interested in labelling music anymore, just whether I like the stuff or not.

Labels are for record companies, music stores, and people who just have to try and put something into a category. I either respond favorably to the music or I don't. It's as simple as that.

[Scion7]

Romanticism in classical music lasted for a long time into the 20th century.  Rachmaninov, for example.

[some guy]

The term "neoromantic" has always seemed troublesome to me.

It's neither new (since it works explicitly with patterns and sounds from the past) nor Romantic (as it's neither original nor inclusive nor exploratory--basic Romantic with a large R values).

The music of the twentieth century that continues the core values of the Romanic era would be the experimental tradition (Cage and Tudor and Bussotti and early Cardew, for instance), as opposed to the Classical values of Schoenberg and Boulez and Stockhausen and Ferneyhough and so forth.

What "neoromantic" usually refers to is music by people who are mimicking the sounds as we hear them from the nineteenth century. Smooth, rich, voluptuous sounds (which are not uniformly how contemporaries heard that music, at first!).

[Lethevich]

What "neoromantic" usually refers to is music by people who are mimicking the sounds as we hear them from the nineteenth century. Smooth, rich, voluptuous sounds (which are not uniformly how contemporaries heard that music, at first!).

I think that this desire for "smoothness" (both in sound, and accessibility) is a recurring trait. Perhaps what distinguishes the pastiche (where a film composer such as James Horner can simply select a composer to write in the style of) from an attempt to find a soundworld to write in that happens to sound conservative could be an avoidance of copying, and distinctive characteristics that only that composer has - a kind of fingerprint that makes you recognise it as being their own music. As to outright emulation of a 19th century soundworld, I feel that composers others would put under this designation (Penderecki) or that I might consider (Vasks) tend to always sound quite "modern" to me - not in terms of new techniques used, but in that their musical style, while conservative, could not have been written prior to the 1960s and frequently include elements that conflict with how the Romantics wrote that an early 20th century audience would possibly find unlistenably atypical.

It feels a bit like why people still use the rock band three/four person grouping. It's been done to death, but it's still a really powerful tool for people to get their ideas across.

[snyprrr]

What about George Rochberg's SQ 3, a serial work that has a 'Romantic' slow movement? Didn't it send shock waves through academia in the mid '70s?

[Archaic Torso of Apollo]

What about George Rochberg's SQ 3, a serial work that has a 'Romantic' slow movement? Didn't it send shock waves through academia in the mid '70s?

Yeah, it did. It's generally considered one of the "founding statements" of Neo-Romanticism, insofar as such a vague trend can have a founding statement. But it's really "polystylistic" in much the same sense as Schnittke - i.e. various styles of music mixed together in one piece.