Berlioz - The Ultimate Romantic?

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Clearly a romantic - how many classical composers wrote no chamber and piano music?
QED

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[NatBalance]

Gosh, thanks for all the replies folks. I can't keep up. Do it a bit at a time.

Berlioz is widely regarded as having initiated the Romantic genre of 'classical' music. A quick Internet search for "Berlioz" and "romanticism" will offer confirmation of this view.

Well, that may be the case, but the ultimate of something usually comes after the initigation of something, such as the ultimate flying machine would not be one built by the Wright Brothers. On the other hand this is art and you could possibly say that Jane Austen is both the instigator and the ultimate in romantic novels.

I would be interested to know why you don't consider Berlioz's Music to be "Romantic" (the capital "r" is important). Would a Classical composer have imagined writing a Symphony depicting opium-induced hallucinations and ending with a witches' orgy in Hell?

Crumbs, doesn't sound very romantic. Ah, so the captial 'r' is important. What's the difference, other than one being a proper name and the other an adjective?

I haven't really listened to a lot of Berlioz or studied him, I will do so. I like his music, it's just that romance is not the first thing that comes to mind when I hear it. I just have not heard the right pieces perhaps. I have not read all the other replies yet but I wouldn't mind betting someone has used the words 'chocolate box' and 'Rachmaninov' in the same sentence.

Richard Tarlton - I am listening to Harold in Italy now and I could hear romance in certain parts. There is a lot of emotion in his music, as there is in musicians before the Romantic period, but I cannot hear romance as being the predominant one, unlike Rachmaninov, who's music overflows with it and spills out all over the carpet and you're treading it and everything :)

Rich

[Darkbloom]

There's 'romantic' in the heaving bosom, Barbara Cartland sense, and then there's 'Romantic' in the sense of Ariosto, Malory and the Roman de la Rose. 'Romance' meaning a fanciful tale with lots of adventure. In that sense, Berlioz fits the bill better than anyone. Later Romantics are all about feeling but Berlioz added a fantastical element which sets him apart. That's a rough go at explaining the difference anyway and I'm sure others will have their own perspectives.

[BBMmk2]

There's 'romantic' in the heaving bosom, Barbara Cartland sense, and then there's 'Romantic' in the sense of Ariosto, Malory and the Roman de la Rose. 'Romance' meaning a fanciful tale with lots of adventure. In that sense, Berlioz fits the bill better than anyone. Later Romantics are all about feeling but Berlioz added a fantastical element which sets him apart. That's a rough go at explaining the difference anyway and I'm sure others will have their own perspectives.

I can quite well see where you are coming from here. I agree.

[Richard Tarleton]

Gosh, thanks for all the replies folks. I can't keep up. Do it a bit at a time.

Well, that may be the case, but the ultimate of something usually comes after the initigation of something, such as the ultimate flying machine would not be one built by the Wright Brothers. On the other hand this is art and you could possibly say that Jane Austen is both the instigator and the ultimate in romantic novels.


Crumbs, doesn't sound very romantic. Ah, so the captial 'r' is important. What's the difference, other than one being a proper name and the other an adjective?

I haven't really listened to a lot of Berlioz or studied him, I will do so. I like his music, it's just that romance is not the first thing that comes to mind when I hear it. I just have not heard the right pieces perhaps. I have not read all the other replies yet but I wouldn't mind betting someone has used the words 'chocolate box' and 'Rachmaninov' in the same sentence.

Richard Tarlton - I am listening to Harold in Italy now and I could hear romance in certain parts. There is a lot of emotion in his music, as there is in musicians before the Romantic period, but I cannot hear romance as being the predominant one, unlike Rachmaninov, who's music overflows with it and spills out all over the carpet and you're treading it and everything :)

Rich

Nat - I wonder if your definition of Romanticism is a rather narrow one, and that you're focusing on - er - romance? The chapter headings in my friend Hans Schenk's now rather outdated book on the European Romantics give an idea of the things we should be thinking about - things like The Reaction Against Rationalism [and the 18thC], Forebodings and Nostalgia for the Past, The Romantic Malady of the Soul [Berlioz to a T ], The Lure of Nothingness, The Cult of the Ego [Berlioz], Romantic Love and Friendship [Berlioz], Nature Mysticism, Metaphysical Intoxication [Berlioz], etc. etc., things like that....

As I suggested above, music was if anything late to the Romantic party, after philosophy, poetry and literature, painting.... Hans Schenk (whom I knew well) made the mistake of asking his arch-rationalist friend Isaiah Berlin to write a preface, and Berlin proceeded to write a 6-page paean to rationalism, which rather made Hans wish he hadn't asked. But the following (from Berlin) is worth quoting:

Perhaps it should not be described as a movement - which implies some degree of organisation - so much as a set of attitudes, a way of thinking and acting that is loosely described as Romantic. This topic is usually left to the history of literature and the arts. Yet it is a wider force which for two hundred years has deeply, and indeed decisively, affected European life. The word Romanticism is vague, and like most terms of its kind is too general to be of use.....

Whilst being useful to describe general attitudes of mind, it's also sometimes hard to pin down when looking at particular (musical) works.....

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

RT has summed it up very well - for "romantic", intimate candle-lit dinners, bouquets of red roses, boxes of chocolates etc But the Romantic Movement/Period/Attitude was rather a Late 18th-Early 19th Century reaction against what was considered to be the too-restricting emphasis on the intellect and rational thought of the Enlightenment.

The Romantics balanced this cult of the rational with investigations and expressions of the irrational; dreams and nightmares, uncontrolled passions (not just erotic ones), a sense of the sublime, the wonders and terrors of Nature against which human thought is helpless - and the importance of the individual Artist's ego and personal experiences as central and heroic. So, whilst a (wealthy) traveller in the mid-18th Century would pull down the blinds in their carriage to avoid seeing the "ugly" mountains and other aspects of the uncivilised Natural world (waiting to get to the designed gardens and houses to have something worth looking at) their 19th Century equivalents would gaze in wonder and awe at the same vistas, enraptured by the frisson of their own smallness. For the Enlightenment, a volcanic eruption was something to be scientifically investigated with Apollonian detachment, with a view to controlling future eruptions - for the Romantics, it was a terrifying and sublime Dionysian phenomenon to be exulted in (from a safe distance).

This is, of course, a simplification (fr which I apologise) - there are intense emotions expressed in the Arts of the Enlightenment; but these are always timed impeccably, and "justified" by context and never allowed to overwhelm the structural balance and wit of the whole work. (For some of us, it's this restraint that makes it much more "moving" than an "outpouring" of uncontrolled passion.) And the Arts of the Romantics - well, the best of them - have a very keen sense of structure and timing; an underlying "intellectual" control. (This is why I suggested earlier that Romanticism is more usefully thought of as an "attitude" than as a "Period".)

But as a generalisation, these contrasts between the "rational, detached" Enlightenment Arts and the "passionate, abandoned" Arts of the Romantics is handy (in the "rule-of-thumb" connotation).

[Maclintick]

Can I interrupt the discussion to ask a different but related question. Berlioz is one of my very favourite composers. But I was away for the whole weekend, and so have not yet listened to any of these broadcasts. Can anyone direct me towards any of the Berlioz programmes over the weekend which they regard as particularly fine, and which I ought to catch up with the iplayer?

Wot ? No recommendations from soi-disant Berlioz fanatics on these boards ? I caught a concert last Sun morning by the Ulster Orchestra of which the second half was Harold en Italie -- a piece which I'm afraid to confess has in the past made me reach for the off-button -- with Lise Berthaud as soloist, Dalia Stasevska conducting, and I was captivated. First half was the love scene from R & J, which didn't exactly come off in this performance, but it must be a tall order for a band to get off the blocks & instantly generate the requisite warmth & finesse with no preamble, as it were -- not sensible planning really..

[Richard Tarleton]

The Romantics balanced this cult of the rational with investigations and expressions of the irrational; dreams and nightmares, uncontrolled passions (not just erotic ones), a sense of the sublime, the wonders and terrors of Nature against which human thought is helpless - and the importance of the individual Artist's ego and personal experiences as central and heroic.

On the art front, Turner painted the extremes of weather, storms etc. - to the point of abstraction. Goya, the terrors and nightmares of the unconscious, and the worst excesses that man is capable of. Two facets of Romanticism.....

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

On the art front, Turner painted the extremes of weather, storms etc. - to the point of abstraction. Goya, the terrors and nightmares of the unconscious, and the worst excesses that man is capable of. Two facets of Romanticism.....

... and Jane Austen couldn't have written Wuthering Heights let alone Frankenstein - or possibly even considered such subjects interesting or useful for literary treatment (except as fit for parody, perhaps, as with the Northanger Abbey/Castle of Udolpho connection).

[vinteuil]

... and Jane Austen couldn't have written Wuthering Heights let alone Frankenstein - or possibly even considered such subjects interesting or useful for literary treatment (except as fit for parody, perhaps, as with the Northanger Abbey/Castle of Udolpho connection).

... the 'Gothick' is an interesting precursor of yer Romantic. Walpole's Castle of Otranto is from 1764, Ann Radcliffe's Mysteries of Udolpho 1794 ; Strawberry Hill was built in stages, starting in 1749, 1760, 1772 and 1776. All within a period otherwise formally 'classic' : the early Romantics Beethoven and Wordsworth both born in 1770 ( and that 'ultimate Romantic' Napoleon, 1769; Turner a bit later in 1775).

.

[Richard Tarleton]

... the 'Gothick' is an interesting precursor of yer Romantic. Walpole's Castle of Otranto is from 1764, Ann Radcliffe's Mysteries of Udolpho 1794 ; Strawberry Hill was built in stages, starting in 1749, 1760, 1772 and 1776. All within a period otherwise formally 'classic' : the early Romantics Beethoven and Wordsworth both born in 1770 ( and that 'ultimate Romantic' Napoleon, 1769; Turner a bit later in 1775).

.

Walter Scott (b. 1771) - Romantic nostalgia for the past, retrospective patriotism and the glamour of a lost cause....and Abbotsford set a fashion which led to the likes of Balmoral, Neuschwanstein.... When Scott and Manzoni met in Milan in 1828, Manzoni allegedly remarked that Scott had been responsible for I Promessi Sposi, to which Scott replied that in that case he would have to regard the Italian novel as his greatest achievement.....

(I'm currently reading Waverley, to be followed by Redgauntlet - on a Jacobite kick meself just at the moment, see my contribution to the other day's Today's the Day).

[Serial_Apologist]

Subjective expression given primacy over ideals of objectively truthful, balanced forms? Capability Brown's and Humphrey Repton's respective quests to imitate the non-regular in nature's designs - a reaction to the preceding Dutch and French garden and landscape designs, with their emphasis on controlling nature's waywardness (as they saw it) geometry and symmetry.

Expressionism - in music and painting - is arguably an extension of the Romantic, with its taking of subjectivity to the ultimate.

[Richard Tarleton]

Subjective expression given primacy over ideals of objectively truthful, balanced forms? Capability Brown's and Humphrey Repton's respective quests to imitate the non-regular in nature's designs - a reaction to the preceding Dutch and French garden and landscape designs, with their emphasis on controlling nature's waywardness (as they saw it) geometry and symmetry.

Brown very much a figure of the 18thC, the age of reason, the very antithesis of what the Romantics were after - nature tamed, re-ordered and designed as a backdrop to some classical edifice. You didn't go out into a Brown landscape to get soaked to the skin in a thunderstorm, rage against your misfortune, lose yourself in the wilderness like Berlioz in the Abruzzi.....

[Serial_Apologist]

Brown very much a figure of the 18thC, the age of reason, the very antithesis of what the Romantics were after - nature tamed, re-ordered and designed as a backdrop to some classical edifice. You didn't go out into a Brown landscape to get soaked to the skin in a thunderstorm, rage against your misfortune, lose yourself in the wilderness like Berlioz in the Abruzzi.....

After a re-think, I have to agree, Richard.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Expressionism - in music and painting - is arguably an extension of the Romantic, with its taking of subjectivity to the ultimate.

- I'd certainly argue in favour of this.