Romanticism and late-romanticism, its meaning and psychology

[Henk]

Well, what you need to add really is a lucid English version of Nietzsche's remark.  The fact that the source quote is from Nietzsche, does not improve a wretchedly unintelligible translation.

But, of course, if your purpose is just to name-drop, and prove how "clever" one is because he cites Nietzsche . . . .

Karl, you made your point.

The thing is that I'm very critical to what I listen to. Listening to music is not a form of enjoyment for me. It's always searching for the best music has to offer, in esthetical terms. To make something active in me, instead of enjoying it passively. And I expect this from others as well, I hope I'm not exclusively in this.

[DieNacht]

How about Bruckner then ? His music strikes me as mostly rather fresh, vital and yet abstract, in spite of his many struggles with it.

[Karl Henning]

Listening to music is not a form of enjoyment for me.

Speaking as someone who makes music, both as composer and performer: you are missing the actual point of the music, then.

[Gurn Blanston]

Karl, you made your point.

The thing is that I'm very critical to what I listen to. Listening to music is not a form of enjoyment for me. It's always searching for the best music has to offer, in esthetical terms. To make something active in me, instead of enjoying it passively. And I expect this from others as well, I hope I'm not exclusively in this.

Whether active or passive, if it isn't a form of enjoyment, and you don't make your living at it, then you need to find something else to do. It is agreat source of enjoyment for me, so in that sense, we are not at all on the same page.

[Leon]

For me, music (actually all art) is a form of entertainment.  Granted of a more sophisticated kind than pop entertainment.  Still, I don't eat it for nutrition, I don't use it around the house like furniture, I don't put it in my car to go - I use art for entertainment, enjoyment, a extremely pleasant departure from the daily grind. 

It can be a sublime experience of joy that puts a smile on my face with the sheer pleasure of music, or a good book, or the theater - it is entertainment of a very valuable kind.

Don't short change entertainment - life without it is all work and no play, and we all know what that can lead to.

[Karl Henning]

Don't short change entertainment - life without it is all work and no play, and we all know what that can lead to.

Stockhausen?

(* shudder *)

[Sammy]

Karl, you made your point.

The thing is that I'm very critical to what I listen to. Listening to music is not a form of enjoyment for me. It's always searching for the best music has to offer, in esthetical terms. To make something active in me, instead of enjoying it passively. And I expect this from others as well, I hope I'm not exclusively in this.

You have very high standards that I couldn't possibly meet.

[Leon]

 

Hah!

[Leon]

In a larger context ..  in entertainment culture, everything's role seems to be a cure for boredom. This is why TV, popular music, etc. are so "accessible" (euphemism for "doesn't require any effort on the part of the consumer"). Art is not always there to be easy on us. Its purpose in many cases is to challenge us and it seems that the prevailing (and easiest) response to this challenge is dismissal. This is not specific to music, but also to the worlds of literature, film, visual media, etc.

Well, I enjoy and find a mental challenge posed by a work of art to be entertaining.  This is not the same kind of entertainment that I get from listening to bossa nova.  But both are a form of entertainment.  At least for me.

[Gold Knight]

@ Henk, Your description of why you choose to listen to music almost sounds as if it's a kind of forced work or punishment for you {and I sure don't mean a "labor of love"}. If that's the case, then why listen at all? Are you sure you know what you mean when using the word "aesthetics?" You say at one point in your post that you are "passively enjoying" the process of listening. However, I get the distinct impression from your post that listening enjoyment on your part--either passive or active {whatever that means}--is never part of the equation here.

[Florestan]

The thing is that I'm very critical to what I listen to. Listening to music is not a form of enjoyment for me. It's always searching for the best music has to offer, in esthetical terms. To make something active in me, instead of enjoying it passively.

Funny! You dislike Romanticism yet you seem to subscribe to the specifically Romantic notion of music as philosophy or religion...

Besides, here is a Romantic reply to your expostulation:

"The eye--it cannot choose but see;
We cannot bid the ear be still;
Our bodies feel, where'er they be,
Against or with our will.

"Nor less I deem that there are Powers
Which of themselves our minds impress;
That we can feed this mind of ours
In a wise passiveness.

"Think you, 'mid all this mighty sum
Of things for ever speaking,
That nothing of itself will come,
But we must still be seeking?

[Henk]

Of course listening to music is to a certain extent enjoyment. But not in the sense of a pleasure, like eating or sex. Yet, there's a strong sense of satisfaction.

Real enjoyment is when you dance to music or when you party on music.

Of course I listen to music in spare time, but i don't see it as "entertainment". I can't listen to music all the time, only when I like to listen to it (otherwise indeed it can be seen as a kind of punishment even), when it makes sense to me. Music and art has to do something with me. It's almost a bodily experience. Sometimes my body wants music, but not every time, not as a way of spending time.

And while listening to the music I want to hear the beauty, you get shivered by the beauty, and for me this is more a bodily experience. When there's nothing happening in a bodily sense, then the experience is useless to me. For me, the perception is in the mind, but the experience is in the body.

[Polednice]

In literature, Romanticism actually had its roots at the end of the 18th century, most notably with the Lyrical Ballads of Wordsworth and Coleridge written in 1798. For an introduction to the tenets of Romanticism, you could read the preface to that work, as they provided a thorough argument for their style and techniques which were considered "experimental" for the time.

Of course, one of the charges levelled against them was vulgarity because of their language (not that you'd think it reading them now!). They hoped to use the vernacular language (the common language of the people) as a vehicle for poetic beauty, unlike their predecessors of the Augustan period who used an upper-class lexicon steeped in references to philosophy and classical civilisation which only a well-educated (and therefore rich) person could hope to understand. It's with the early Romantics that we see art becoming democratised and universal. Is that a bad thing?

Another facet is that it became much more interested with the human as an individual, emotional self. Melodrama abounds because this kind of subjective, quasi-mystical attribute of humanity was praised and explored to its full depths. This is no doubt another reason why it is so accessible (social conditioning isn't everything), though it can also put people off if overbearing.

I think we also have to be wary with what we mean by "nationalism". You can't equate it with the jingoism that we're so familiar with today, although there was undoubtedly some of that, especially leading up to the War in the late-Romantic period. Instead, Romantic nationalism seems more to do with identity once again, and a celebration of culture. One of the things that marks out nationalist works is a use of the country's folk-song - this is, I suppose, the musical equivalent of Wordsworth and Coleridge using the vernacular language. It's not intended as an expression of supremacy, it's a fore-grounding of cultural heritage, and of the common people.

Whenever we talk about artistic movements, however, music is the hardest to pin anything on (compared to literature and the visual arts), and it tends only to be labelled in accordance with labels on the other arts at the time. Absolute music is certainly beyond this kind of philosophical labelling, and much programme music doesn't make it easier. Although we can easily find Romantic traits in the music of many composers of this era, the fact remains that Romantic music is most obviously marked by the tonal language in use at the time and the development of the orchestra. These things can be and were employed without regard to the tenets of Romanticism as an ideal, so it makes no sense to rubbish the period as though it constituted a homogeneous outlook.

[Gold Knight]

@ Polednice, Great to see you back and posting again, buddy!

[Gold Knight]

Of course listening to music is to a certain extent enjoyment. But not in the sense of a pleasure, like eating or sex. Yet, there's a strong sense of satisfaction.

Real enjoyment is when you dance to music or when you party on music.

Of course I listen to music in spare time, but i don't see it as "entertainment". I can't listen to music all the time, only when I like to listen to it (otherwise indeed it can be seen as a kind of punishment even), when it makes sense to me. Music and art has to do something with me. It's almost a bodily experience. Sometimes my body wants music, but not every time, not as a way of spending time.

And while listening to the music I want to hear the beauty, you get shivered by the beauty, and for me this is more a bodily experience. When there's nothing happening in a bodily sense, then the experience is useless to me. For me, the perception is in the mind, but the experience is in the body.

Henk, Have you tried listening to any Sibelius lately?

[starrynight]

I need to add that (late-)romantic music gives unnatural rest and unnatural unrest, is a remark by Nietzsche.

Maybe in the hands of the right performer though some of it might not sound unnatural, as that seems a rather blanket judgement.  Of course some music does get too caught up in the style it is speaking in to sound like real individual communication to the listener, but I always think it's best to judge a style by the best things in it and not the worst (or even the merely average).  I also think the modern listener has to make some adjustments to earlier styles if it is one we are not used to listening to, so we can listen more with the ears of someone from the time the music was done.

[Scion7]

"Real enjoyment is when you dance to music or when you party on music."

[Henk]

How about Bruckner then ? His music strikes me as mostly rather fresh, vital and yet abstract, in spite of his many struggles with it.

Bruckner's music is only a confirmation of the thought "I'm large" (so psychology). His music doesn't stimulate, but degenerates. It's megalomane music.

[Henk]

Henk, Have you tried listening to any Sibelius lately?

I've tried Sibelius many times. I feel no need to try again. My taste and preferences has changed.

All this late-romantic music is worldly music and often idealistic. I hear this "worldly" character also by some Italian composers, the composers of conceto's (Albinoni) and others as well (like Sammartini).

When it get's worldy the music loses my interest. It's presented like the music represents the world, and this is false. Also Mahler's music for instance is false for this reason. I prefer a composer like Birtwistle to Mahler and Bruckner. Birtwistle's music is very heavy, but it stays real to me.

I like to listen to more individualistic music, music that's something in it self.

[Henk]

Stravinsky for one would tell you, Henk, that music represents itself.  And if you think that a piece of "descriptive music" will always, or even a majority of times, mean the same thing to people, you would be wrong.  I have all sorts of stories from my work in schools that when you play something that seems obvious as "a representation of reality," the listeners will not agree.  The opening of Smetana's Moldau , which might seem obvious to be rain drops coming together to flow into a swirling stream and then a river, or even the "storm section" of Beethoven's Sixth Symphony, are not necessarily the images occurring to people...unless they are specifically told so before listening.

Cato,  music should represent itself. To me late-romantic music doesn't fit this criterium. See my previous post.