Sentimental - Beautiful - Kitsch

[Serial_Apologist]

Here is a (translated) passage from a quintessentially Romantic poem, "Heimkehr" by Heinrich Heine.

By the old grey tower
a sentry-box stands;
a lad dressed in red
is pacing there, back and forth.

He is toying with his musket
that gleams in the sunset's rays,
presenting and then shouldering it;
I wish he would shoot me dead.

Yes but that's the depressive side of romanic.

[Judith Robbyns]

NatBalance

"Judith - sorry, I can't get my head around your point that my choice of those words is puzzling. I agree the word 'sentimental' does sometimes get used to mean over sentimental. "

You seemed to be querying what was "wrong" with music that was "sentimental". I was simply saying that the word, as now used, meant over sentimental so that was what was "wrong". If you had defined the word, as you meant it to be understood, your rather general comment would have been easier to reply to. I have never heard the word "kitsch" used to describe music. Just rather quirky, not very valuable, collectibles which are characteristic of objects which appeal to a taste for the individual and perhaps rather amusing. Toby jugs, for instance. Or garden gnomes. De gustibus.

[Richard Barrett]

Yes but that's the depressive side of romanic.

Indeed. I was just making the point that calling the Romantic period the "Happiness period" is to miss at least half of the character of it.

[ahinton]

I agree, but what is bad taste and vulgarity? I think to call the Warsaw Concerto vulgar and bad taste is in itself vulgar and bad taste.

Given its commercial success, perhaps its "composer"'s name, Add 'n' sell, was also in bad taste (although much of the work seems actually to have been done by Roy Douglas (1907-2015) - see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roy_Douglas .

That said, Elliott Carter once testified to the great programmes, often including a good deal of contemporary and near-contemporary music, that he attended in his youth during the 1920s and early 1930s and which were given by the Boston Symphony Orchestra. Almost three quarters of a century later - perhaps in the spirit of payback time - he responded to a commission by writing a piece entitled Boston Concerto. It did momentarily occur to me that it was perhaps a good thing that it was not a commission from the Warsaw Philharmonic...

[doversoul1]

Yes but that's the depressive side of romanic.

But isn’t that the ultimate or inevitable end of happiness in the world of Romantic which distinguishes it from the world of Arcadia?

[Joseph K]

Indeed. I was just making the point that calling the Romantic period the "Happiness period" is to miss at least half of the character of it.

I'd go further and say that the Romantics rediscovered musical melancholy which I don't really associate with 18th century music. This, for example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zGhEJ7vhBwA

[Serial_Apologist]

Indeed. I was just making the point that calling the Romantic period the "Happiness period" is to miss at least half of the character of it.

Yes - and in emphasising the subjective over objectivity, the Romantic movement was saying that people's feelings were at least as important as the objectifiable truths science was in the process of revealing; that we, along with all nature from the microscipic to the "cosmic", being more complex than what can be either penned into categories or defined by religion, are capable of fulfilling our potential once freed in mind and body from constraints, whether these be inwardly or externally imposed. Hence the resort by artists in the various fields to heightened language to express this, our supposed condition, and a disdain for limitation, be that in language's descriptive powers or even language itself. And also to inner states of mind which, by definition, must for Truth's sake embrace the terrible on equal terms with the wondrous. In contrast with received ideas from religion which concentrated on fallenness, at base Romanticism was a movement of optimism about human nature that believed in a different self-image for humankind, one that given propitious circumstances and in pursuance of evidence to back this was capable of self-realisation to the betterment of this world. The "struggle" was not with some "original sin" but with handed down ideas, and those who handed them down whose authority and legitimacy was invested in power and control believed to be divinely pre-ordained.

Possibly where the sentimental falls short, from the perspective of this thread subject at any rate, consists partly in magnifying one kind of response to the revelations unleashed by Romanticism, the desire to luxuriate or use beauty at the expense of others; partly in seeing the pitiable as an inescapable facet of living in an imperfectable world, given that the benefits afforded by an enlarged understanding of the causes of much suffering can lead beyond abstract conceptions of freedom.

[vinteuil]

... a movement of optimism about human nature that believed in a different self-image for humankind, one that given propitious circumstances and in pursuance of evidence to back this was capable of self-realisation to the betterment of this world. The "struggle" was not with some "original sin" but with handed down ideas, and those who handed them down whose authority and legitimacy was invested in power and control believed to be divinely pre-ordained.

... that, to me, describes the Enlightenment, a life-affirming period.

Romanticism on the other hand is half in love with death...

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/44479/ode-to-a-nightingale

.

[Serial_Apologist]

But isn’t that the ultimate or inevitable end of happiness in the world of Romantic which distinguishes it from the world of Arcadia?

You mean, like, "all good things must come to an end", sort of thing? Some ancient Greek philosopher - was it Socrates? I'm not up on ancient philosophy - coined the Latin phrase "Mens sana in corpore sano": sound mind in a sound body, which has connections, intended or not, with the older idea in Hinduism of the universe as an integrated pattern of interactive forces. If the system is healthy, then so is the individual within it - and vice versa. This is not a case of cause and effect, or one before the other, but of perpetual mutuality operating in harmony. Once we understand how to operate that harmony, incorporating it into our belief systems and lifestyles, we will be living in that self- and collectively-sustaining system which the Romantics would probably have thought of as Arcadia. Buddhism had the idea that these forces were non-dependent on some singular agency or controlling centre in the god sense, but were spontaneously self-organising. The idea, while limited to conditions on Earth, was re-iterated in James Lovelock's Gaia Theory, in which organic life, uninterfered with, or at least worked in harmony with, operates in combination with the physical elements, energised by solar power, to self-balancing ends, maintained throughout evolutionary succession to the point of where we now are.

In actuality there has always been interference - Alan Watts' view, based on his widespread readings of Vedic and other tracts emanating from the pre-christianised Far East, as well as participation in some of the remaining practices - was that the Hindu term karma refers not literally to Fate, i.e. what happens was going to happen anyway - which would be a tautology - but to the reality that once one has interfered in the natural course of events one has to go on interfering. In ecology, applied to land management, this is known as plagioclimax management. A woodland, for example, left to its own devices, will progress by natural succession to the domination of certain species of flora and fauna, which will then die out, clearing the ground for re-growth. But humans, literally, can't wait, if we are to manage natural resources in such a way as to be able to feed ourselves and maintain shelter. And so, to sustain an optimal range of species propitious to maintaining a healthy soil, woodland clearance has to be undertaken according to cyclical principles understood as protecting overall balance, otherwise we will all be reverted to primitive existences, living precariously off berries, funghi and edible wildlife.

[Serial_Apologist]

... that, to me, describes the Enlightenment, a life-affirming period.

Romanticism on the other hand is half in love with death...

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/44479/ode-to-a-nightingale

.

Yes that's right - I think there was a lot of fatalism wrapped up in Romanticism - presumably a hangover from religion's idea that perfection was a worthy objective but unrealisable in "this" life. Hence Tristan & Isolde! But I've always assumed that the love of Nature, and idealised ways in which the Romantic poets portrayed love, sexual union especially, as re-connecctive with the natural, was at odds with the pessimism. Maybe insofar as the Romantics hung onto some religious belief in transcendence as inhering more in human imperfection than in the limitations of the descriptive? I don't know...

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Romanticism on the other hand is half in love with death...

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poe...-a-nightingale

A rather careless reading, vinty! "Many a time ... half in love with easeful death" - not "all the time" and not with "death" itself - just a preference for the "easeful" sort ("with no pain"), rather than a "painful" one that the former medical student was well acquainted with. Keats celebrates the "immortality" of what the nightingale represents - not Death (not even half-ly).

[vinteuil]

A rather careless reading, vinty! "Many a time ... half in love with easeful death" - not "all the time" and not with "death" itself - just a preference for the "easeful" sort ("with no pain"), rather than a "painful" one that the former medical student was well acquainted with. Keats celebrates the "immortality" of what the nightingale represents - not Death (not even half-ly).

... of course I accept your reading of the Keats.

But in a larger sense I maintain my view that the Enlightenment project was rooted in celebrating life, and the Romantics introduced a fascination with the morbid.


.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

... of course I accept your reading of the Keats.

But in a larger sense I maintain my view that the Enlightenment project was rooted in celebrating life, and the Romantics introduced a fascination with the morbid.

Yes - I wouldn't disagree too strongly with this (and it got worse as the 19th Century "progressed"). But those Early Romantics - I read/hear their explorations of the Supernatural, the Sublime, the Pathetic, the hallucinogenic, as a continuation of the Enlightenment celebration of life, expanding the territory - and, with Berlioz (the best of 'em), with a healthy dollop of ironic humour and self-deprecation that was sadly lost in the work of later figures.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

I'd go further and say that the Romantics rediscovered musical melancholy which I don't really associate with 18th century music. This, for example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zGhEJ7vhBwA

On the other hand (for example):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vne1E6VH23s

... or, the First Movement of this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oi521FxqYwU

[Richard Barrett]

But in a larger sense I maintain my view that the Enlightenment project was rooted in celebrating life, and the Romantics introduced a fascination with the morbid.

I think S_A has it precisely in his mention of individualism, bringing with it a keener sense of individual mortality (as in my Heine quotation, as in Schubert...).