Romanticism and late-romanticism, its meaning and psychology

[some guy]

I submit to you that the era post Beethoven & Schubert is precisely the same thing.

OK, you've submitted it. How about some support for your submission now?

In what way is creating music like playing sports? What are the musical analogues of passing and play-making and goal-tending? What is the musical equivalent of fighting? In what way is the skill of a composer equivalent to the skill of an athlete?

When you list the 'benefits' of 19th century culture, for me I see that it is change, but I say to myself "is all change improvement?". Clearly I don't think it is.

One: even if we accept the premise that not all change is improvement, you still need to demonstrate that the change you identify is bad. You do not. You simply state a generalization about change. How does your conclusion that not all change is good correlate with your other conclusion that the changes in nineteenth century composition were bad?

Two: I don't get the idea that the change you've identified as bad is any more than you liking the music before the change better than you like the music after the change. Fine. But why the attempt to bolster simple taste with philosophical heft?

Finally, the momentum is doubtless too great, but I'm gonna throw another pebble into the flood anyway: the music that we are calling classical was not so designated at the time. If it was called anything except "music," it was called "romantic." Once its characteristic shapes were familiar enough to be seen as characteristic, it was time to move on. That movement was called, by its practitioners, "Romantic."

So you have two types of music, one called romantic in its time but classical after its time, the other called romantic in its time and then early romantic by people looking back through the late nineteenth century, now also called "romantic," and seeing something different from that.

The terms "romanticism and late-romanticism" do not refer to an "it," as the subject heading of this thread would have it, but to several things and applied to different things (like "classical" music being called "romantic" at first) at different times.

Divorced from history, Classic and Romantic designate different ways of perceiving the world, but different people at different times IN history have used these terms to designate bits and pieces of whole shifting, fluid, dynamic realities.

[Ten thumbs]

Another way of looking at this is to say that in the Romantic era, composers wrote poetry using the language of music. I take it that Henk regards poetry as worldly. So be it. however, the language of Romantic music includes all the element of counterpoint, harmony and thematic development that can be found in Classical music. As for form, the thematic integration of multi-part opuses is taken much more seriously. Form, from Beethoven onwards became much more flexible but it was still form. 

[Henk]

Another way of looking at this is to say that in the Romantic era, composers wrote poetry using the language of music. I take it that Henk regards poetry as worldly. So be it. however, the language of Romantic music includes all the element of counterpoint, harmony and thematic development that can be found in Classical music. As for form, the thematic integration of multi-part opuses is taken much more seriously. Form, from Beethoven onwards became much more flexible but it was still form.

I like how you see this! I'm not against late-romantic music. However it´s worldy I think, and I don´t like that very much, but it also can be seen as something attractive.

Some modern romantic music from finnish composers I like (Heininen, Hakola, Kokkonen). That´s more like early romantic music, but more thrilling.

[flyingdutchman]

Do you mean me?
The only problem is that I've never said that, never wrote that, and never even thought that.

I find that hard to believe if you are the same Joshua Lilly that was on ClassicalInsites and it's too coincidental that someone name Joshua Lilly associated with classical music and the one here are two different people.

[Sammy]

Play this — if you can! ; )

http://www.youtube.com/v/6-oHYYaw9jA

That was a horrible song when it first came out; it's still horrible.

[Karl Henning]

That was a horrible song when it first came out; it's still horrible.

I do not, cannot deny the truth of what you say.

[milk]

That was a horrible song when it first came out; it's still horrible.

http://www.youtube.com/v/VmO_0tIGo-4

But Nina Simone makes lemons into lemonade!