Is Mahler considered a "late Romantic" composer?
Phil Caron
- Phil Caron
record...@gmail.com
Phil Caron wrote:
> Please help settle a disagreement.
>
> - Phil Caron
He is the fifth-to-last composer listed under "Romantic Age" in "The
Essential Canon of Classical Music" by David Dubal.
Hugo Wolf is listed before Mahler; Delius, Debussy, Strauss, and
Sibelius come after Mahler.
record...@gmail.com
Phil Caron wrote:
> Please help settle a disagreement.
>
> - Phil Caron
He is the fifth-to-last composer listed under "Romantic Age" in "The
Essential Canon of Classical Music" by David Dubal.
Hugo Wolf and 31 other composers are listed chronolgically before
Mahler. Delius, Debussy, Strauss, and Sibelius come after Mahler.
Gerard
> Please help settle a disagreement.
>
The way you've put the question, three answers are possible.
"Yes", "No" and "maybe / depends".
Everybody is free to consider him a late romantic composer or not.
A definition of "late romantic" would help.
What is the alternative? If Mahler is *not* a late romantic composer: what
then was he?
Everywhere where one tries to fit artists (or other people) in boxes, there
are some of them who don't fit in one box only. Or in no box at all.
Matthew Silverstein
> Please help settle a disagreement.
I would say 'yes', but I'm hardly an expert.
Matty
William Sommerwerck
as Chopin), and the advent 0of the Second Viennese School.
Gerard
But wasn't Chopin considered an early romantic composer?
Bob Lombard
"Phil Caron" <vlad...@vermontel.net> wrote in message
news:11349163...@r2d2.vermontel.net...
> Please help settle a disagreement.
>
> - Phil Caron
Stravinsky (before he went neo-classical), that category being Striving
Toward A New Music. So... he is not 'Late Romantic', he's 'Early
Modern'.
STANM also applies, of course, to CPE Bach > FJ Haydn in their time, and
to the 'proto-Romantics' in their time.
Phil, your concept of 'Late Romantic' is dialectically incorrect.
bl
Gerard
> "Phil Caron" <vlad...@vermontel.net> wrote in message
> news:11349163...@r2d2.vermontel.net...
> > Please help settle a disagreement.
> >
> > - Phil Caron
> Mahler fits easily into the same category as Reger , Schoenberg and
> Stravinsky (before he went neo-classical), that category being
> Striving Toward A New Music. So... he is not 'Late Romantic', he's
> 'Early Modern'.
>
Is this the category where Mozart or Vivaldi fit in too?
sechumlib
> Please help settle a disagreement.
That's sort of like having a disagreement about whether Van Gogh was
Dutch or French.
Bob Lombard
Paul Ilechko
That depends on whether you pronounce it "van go" or "fun koch" ;-)
david...@aol.com
I've always considered him an antidisestablishmentarian.
-david gable
Paul Ilechko
> "Phil Caron" <vlad...@vermontel.net> wrote in message
> news:11349163...@r2d2.vermontel.net...
>
>>Please help settle a disagreement.
>>
>>- Phil Caron
>
> Mahler fits easily into the same category as Reger , Schoenberg and
> Stravinsky (before he went neo-classical), that category being Striving
> Toward A New Music. So... he is not 'Late Romantic', he's 'Early
> Modern'.
I think Mahler was both late Romantic and early Modern, rather like
Sibelius and Debussey.
david...@aol.com
>I think Mahler was both late Romantic and early Modern, rather like Sibelius and Debussy.
Of course. Similarly, the expressionist period pieces of Schoenberg,
Webern, and Berg could fairly be described as even later Romantic.
(Schoenberg went farther than any composer in depending on
"inspiration" unguided by theory or convention than any composer in
history, especially in Erwartung, and his letters and notes are filled
with expressions of a Lisztian Romanticism up until World War I.)
I must confess that I would never apply the label "Romantic" to
Debussy. If there was ever a reaction against Romanticism both French
and German before the 1920's, it took place in France in the later 19th
century. The impressionist painters and symbolist poets all reacted
against what they perceived to be the characteristically Romantic.
Debussy, an habitue at Mallarme's salons, was younger than they were
and deeply influenced by their new aesthetics. The freshness of
Debussy's language and his rejection of the mode of personal
self-expression (the confessional mode), could not be more un-Romantic.
Still, no composer is born in a vacuum, and Debussy's keyboard textures
are rooted in Schumann's and Chopin's while his debt to Wagner was
enormous: it is perfectly possible to be heavily influenced by what
you react against. (There's a fascinating book on Wagner and Debussy
by Robin Holloway in which he quotes passages from Wagner and Debussy
side by side. Holloway was the first to notice many previously
unremarked correspondences that only someone deeply immersed in the
music of both composers could have noticed. Particularly striking are
the instances in which Debussy suddenly sounds completely French and
completely Debussyan after altering Wagner's harmonies very slightly.
These aren't plagiarisms or examples that Debussy took and deliberately
altered. When a composer writes music, the music he's heard, still in
his head, is the source of what he writes. [Mussorgsky is another
important source, but I wouldn't describe Mussorgsky as a Romantic
either.])
-david gable
William Sommerwerck
>> Viennese School.
> But wasn't Chopin considered an early romantic composer?
I wouldn't say so. Beethoven and Schubert (and arguably Schumann) are early
Romantic. Chopin was a full-blooded Romantic. In my book, at least.
marce...@cpu-net.net
Phil Caron wrote:
> Please help settle a disagreement.
>
> - Phil Caron
I would classify Mahler more as an impressionist, kind of like Debussy,
Ravel, de Falla, Respighi and early Stravinsky.
Dvorak/ Tchaikovsky, Rimsky are more national romantics. I'd give 'late
Romantic' to Rachmaninov, though with hesitation.
It really depends on what you mean by Romanticism. I like
dictionary.com's definition: 'An artistic and intellectual movement
originating in Europe in the late 18th century and characterized by a
heightened interest in nature, emphasis on the individual's expression
of emotion and imagination, departure from the attitudes and forms of
classicism, and rebellion against established social rules and
conventions.' In this sense, 'Beethoven, Schuman, Berlioz are
'Romantics' for me.
Marcello
Stephen Worth
<ghend...@hotmail.com> wrote:
> Everybody is free to consider him a late romantic composer or not.
> A definition of "late romantic" would help.
I've always considered the definition of "Late Romantic" to be
post-Wagner, just like Romantic is post-Beethoven. To me, Mahler is the
quintessential post-romantic composer.
See ya
Steve
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Praetorius
> Please help settle a disagreement.
>
His first symphony (originally called "Symphonic Poem in Two Parts")
was completed the same year as the Tchaikovsky 5 and César Franck
D Minor (1888; it premiered in 1889), and even that Mahler work went
through various metamorphoses (several revisions through 1896 and
beyond, losing its program, "Titan" title, and "Blumine" movement,
among changes in names of movements/sections and orchestration);
and his ninth the same year as the Elgar 2 and Ralph Vaughan Williams
Sea Symphony (1910). Chronologically, "late Romantic." Musically?
Even in the first symphony, the "funeral march" movement, with the
minor-key variant of "Frčre Jacques" and following motifs, rhythms
and colors was probably outside of the "late Romantic" mold. I'll let
others better versed in Mahler elaborate with respect to later works.
It reminds me of the argument as to whether Beethoven is "late Classical"
or "early Romantic" - I side with those who say Classical, but some
histories are refining/punting by referring to "The Age of Beethoven"
(which includes, e.g., Carl Maria Von Weber). For Mahler, maybe
"Post-Romantic."
Frank Decolvenaere
To reply by e-mail, replace NMBR with 1612.
"You are no bigger than
the things that annoy you."
Jerry Bundsen
Raymond Hall
>
> - Phil Caron
No. Put simply, he was one of the the first *major expressionists* in music,
and by inference, music of intense emotional power. Richard Strauss was a
late Romantic, but certainly not Mahler.
Expressionism was vogue at the turn of the century, and Mahler was its
spokesperson in music.
Ray H
Taree
jrs...@aol.com
This is exactly the answer: Mahler was a late Romantic, but became a
post-Romantic, or, in the parlance, a "Modern".
Beethoven is a similar case of a composer who was one thing when he
started and another when he finished.
--Jeff
Thomas Wood
I have at hand the 1970 edition of Percy Scholes' Oxford Companion to Music,
which states that Mahler, like Brucker, is a "classic-romantic," writing in
the symphonic form with "typical German romantic feeling."
Personally, I think "late romantic" fits the bill better.
Tom Wood
SG
Depends. Are we talking chronology or language? If the former, yes.
If the latter, probably I'd call him the greatest all-absorbing
*eclectic* since J S Bach. Mahler was nationalist, universalist,
structuralist, anarchist, pre-Romantic, early Romantic, Romantic, very
Romantic, post-Romantic, expressionist, impressionist, obsessionist and
illusionist. Depending on the work we're talking about. Sometimes even
in the same work.
The only major thing I cannot think of Mahler having ever been is a
Mozartean. Or can I?
regards,
SG
david...@aol.com
>But wasn't Chopin considered an early romantic composer?
The following group of composers is sometimes referred to as the
generation of 1830:
Donizetti (b. 1797)
Bellini (b. 1801)
Berlioz (b. 1803)
Mendelssohn (b. 1809)
Chopin (b. 1810)
Schumann (b. 1810)
Liszt (b. 1811)
All of these composers wrote either a first fully mature work or an
entirely characteristic work in a new and personal style and/or had a
first substantial commercial "hit" right around 1830. For example,
Berlioz's Symphonie fantastique was premiered in 1829 and Donizetti had
his first international hit with Anna Bolena in 1830. Schumann wrote
all of his most novel, original, and substantial piano music in the
1830's, and so forth. There are also numerous personal connections
among this group. With these composers, not so much a new style as a
family of new styles, was in the ascendancy. Charles Rosen refers to
them as "The Romantic Generation."
Nevertheless, there is a generation of composers sandwiched in between
them and Beethoven that includes Rossini, Schubert, and Weber. Call
them early Romantics. For that matter, with "An die ferne Geliebte,"
the Op. 102 cello sonatas, and the Op. 90 and Op. 101 piano sonatas,
for a brief moment Beethoven himself was moving in the same lyrical
direction as Schubert: these are the works of Beethoven that most
clearly anticipate fundamental aspects of the styles of Schubert,
Mendelssohn, and Schumann.
Here's another group:
Wagner (b. 1813)
Verdi (b. 1813)
Bruckner (b. 1824)
Brahms (b. 1833)
Born in 1813, two or three years after Mendelssohn, Chopin, Schumann,
and Liszt, Verdi and Wagner might seem to belong to the same group.
They really don't. Their styles evolved very slowly from very coarse
beginnings, and the music they wrote in the 1830's is not
characteristic of their mature work. Verdi and Wagner attained
something like full maturity only a few years earlier than Brahms, who
was twenty years their junior, around the same time as Bruckner. These
guys might be called the generation of the 1850's.
Tchaikovsky was born in 1840 and came to maturity in the 1860's..
Mahler belongs to the great generation of composers born around 1860
whose first substantial works date from the 1890's:
Puccini (b. 1858)
Mahler (b. 1860)
Debussy (b. 1862)
Strauss (b. 1864)
Call them the generation of the 1890's.
Here's one last group all born between the mid-70's and mid-80's:
Ives (b. 1874)
Schoenberg (b. 1874)
Ravel (b. 1875)
Bartok (b. 1881)
Stravinsky (b. 1882)
Webern (b. 1883)
Berg (b. 1885)
-david gable
david...@aol.com
>I wouldn't say so. Beethoven and Schubert (and arguably Schumann) are early Romantic. Chopin was a full-blooded Romantic. In my book, at least.
Schumann and Chopin were both born in the same year, 1810. They're
both full blooded Romantics in my book.
-david gable
david...@aol.com
>I would classify Mahler more as an impressionist, kind of like Debussy, Ravel, de Falla, Respighi and early Stravinsky
I wouldn't. I think Debussy and Mahler were diametrically opposed in
their aims, impatient to move away from Romantic aesthetics. Mahler
was passionately attached to the German Romanticism that nurtured every
aspect of his outlook. This is in part French versus Germanic of
course..
-david gable
Paul Ilechko
> Schumann and Chopin were both born in the same year, 1810. They're
> both full blooded Romantics in my book.
Chopin is brilliant and original; Schumann is watered down,
semi-competent Beethoven, other than some of the piano music.
YMMV.
david...@aol.com
>Chopin is brilliant and original; Schumann is watered down,
semi-competent Beethoven, other than some of the piano music
Only the greatest works matter, and Schumann was at his most original
in the beginning, with the series of piano works he wrote in the 30's
including above all Carnaval, the Fantasy, and the
Davidsbuendlertaenze. There is nothing remotely Beethovenian about any
of these pieces, and they are sensationally successful aesthetically:
in the new aesthetic that these works almost single handedly created.
Then there are the Lieder and above all the great cycle, Dichterliebe.
Unprecedented in form and unique in the history of German Lieder. (I'm
talking about the open and other ambiguous effects fundamental to the
piece and the odd kinds of relationships linking one song to the next:
some of the songs can't stand along outside the cycle.)
At a certain point in the early 1840's Schumann began to think that
respectable German composers really ought to be writing symphonies and
sonatas rather than characteristic pieces for the piano and songs. His
symphonies are neither as original as his greatest piano music nor as
substantial as Beethoven's, but they are far more than semi-competent.
I can live without them, but it's no surprise that many far from
undiscriminating listeners find them nourishing.
Chopin was indeed brilliant and original and a far less erratic
composer than Schumann. He was probably the most gifted composer from
the generation of 1830. But that doesn't take anything away from
Schumann's more rare and eccentric successes. In one sense, Schumann
took greater risks: not in the later classicizing symphonies and
chamber music, but in the cycles of piano pieces and the song cycle
Dichterliebe. The eccentricities of voice leading (voices that
suddenly appear or disappear), the abrupt effects, the E.T.A.
Hoffmanesque sense of fantasy, the wild use of "cross cutting," the
strange shifts in perspective, the schizophrenia: these are essential
aspects of Romanticism that Schumann and Schumann alone realized in
music.
-david gable
sechumlib
> I've always considered the definition of "Late Romantic" to be
> post-Wagner, just like Romantic is post-Beethoven. To me, Mahler is the
> quintessential post-romantic composer.
Oh. Then Stockhausen is late Romantic?
david...@aol.com
>Then Stockhausen is late Romantic?
Yes. The Romantic movement is the result of the ascendancy of the
lyric mode in poetry, and the ultimate triumph of the lyric mode in
music is Stockhausen's Carre and Punkte. I can explain what I mean in
a post a lot shorter than some of my posts, but I've been leaning over
this laptop all day long and I'm about to be dragged off to eat.
Everything since Romanticism is a continuing development of
Romanticism. Or at least was until certain of the most dubious aspects
of Po Mo. (Post-modernism.)
-david gable
Ian Pace
<david...@aol.com> wrote in message
news:1134946110.5...@g49g2000cwa.googlegroups.com...
after something else is a continuation of it. If post-modernism isn't a
continuation of romanticism, then neither is Stravinsky. Cage isn't a
continuing development of romanticism particularly (if you see him coming
out of Ives, then there's a certain sense in that, but this neglects much of
what makes Cage individual), Feldman just possibly, Christian Wolff
certainly not.
Re Stockhausen, I would say that works as different as Kreuzspiel or Gesang
der Juenglinge or Hymnen or Mantra are 'romantic' in a certain sense of the
word, but not in the sense necessarily of being a continuation of Wagner
(though that element exists). But there are so many other individual
elements to Stockhausen that such discussions ultimately become rather
esoteric.
Ian
Paul Ilechko
> <david...@aol.com> wrote in message
> news:1134946110.5...@g49g2000cwa.googlegroups.com...
>
>>
>>>Then Stockhausen is late Romantic?
>>
>>Yes. The Romantic movement is the result of the ascendancy of the
>>lyric mode in poetry, and the ultimate triumph of the lyric mode in
>>music is Stockhausen's Carre and Punkte. I can explain what I mean in
>>a post a lot shorter than some of my posts, but I've been leaning over
>>this laptop all day long and I'm about to be dragged off to eat.
>>
>>Everything since Romanticism is a continuing development of
>>Romanticism. Or at least was until certain of the most dubious aspects
>>of Po Mo. (Post-modernism.)
>>
>
> You can make this argument mean that everything that comes chronologically
> after something else is a continuation of it.
But that is clearly not what he said. Not that I necessarily agree with
what he said, either, but it depends on how you define "Romanticism".
You can define fairly narrowly to mean a musical period that begin with
late Beethoven and petered out in the early 20th century, usurped by
Modernism, or you can define it more broadly, as Dave appears to be
doing, as the Dionysian vein in art. I think the OP was really referring
to the former.
Stephen Worth
<sech...@liberal.net> wrote:
> Oh. Then Stockhausen is late Romantic?
The Rite of Spring marks the beginning of modernism.
Gerard
>
> But that is clearly not what he said. Not that I necessarily agree
> with what he said, either, but it depends on how you define
> "Romanticism".
I think this is what I said.
You can define "romanticism" in a way that every composer you consider to be
"romantic" fits in.
Without a generally accepted definition every composer can fit in different
categories.
Every answer to the original question (see subject line) without a definition
is not an usable answer and will not "settle a disagreement" but enforce it.
William Sommerwerck
> far from undiscriminating listeners find them nourishing.
Nourishing? No, not for me. Fun? Yes. The Schumann symphonies are four
little blasts of H-bomb sunlight. Perhaps they were therapy for Schumann's
mental condition.
I'm still acquiring a taste for Schumann's songs (via the Hyperion disks). I
was not aware until recently that (supposedly) "Widmung" is the most-popular
German lied.
William Sommerwerck
something.
Richard Schultz
: In article <PBlpf.33876$XJ5....@twister.nyroc.rr.com>, sechumlib
: <sech...@liberal.net> wrote:
:> Oh. Then Stockhausen is late Romantic?
:
: The Rite of Spring marks the beginning of modernism.
Stravinsky: Rite of Spring - 1913
Schoenberg: Pierrot Lunaire - 1912
Berg: String Quartet Op. 3 - 1910
Debussy: Nocturnes - 1897-9
Ives: Psalm 67 - 1894/9
And so on.
-----
Richard Schultz sch...@mail.biu.ac.il
Department of Chemistry, Bar-Ilan University, Ramat-Gan, Israel
Opinions expressed are mine alone, and not those of Bar-Ilan University
-----
"Contrariwise," continued Tweedledee, "if it was so, it might be, and
if it were so, it would be; but as it isn't, it ain't. That's logic."
Paul Ilechko
> In article <PBlpf.33876$XJ5....@twister.nyroc.rr.com>, sechumlib
> <sech...@liberal.net> wrote:
>
>
>>Oh. Then Stockhausen is late Romantic?
>
>
> The Rite of Spring marks the beginning of modernism.
Thanks for the meaningless statement, Steve.
Stephen Worth
<noSPaM_pile...@patmedia.net> wrote:
> Thanks for the meaningless statement, Steve.
And thank you for the pointless reply.
Stephen Worth
<sch...@mail.biu.ack.il> wrote:
> Stravinsky: Rite of Spring - 1913
> Schoenberg: Pierrot Lunaire - 1912
> Berg: String Quartet Op. 3 - 1910
> Debussy: Nocturnes - 1897-9
> Ives: Psalm 67 - 1894/9
>
> And so on.
No matter how you define something, there are always exceptions.
You choose the clearest dividing line and use that.
Richard Schultz
: In article <do6a24$9us$1...@news.iucc.ac.il>, Richard Schultz
: <sch...@mail.biu.ack.il> wrote:
:> Stravinsky: Rite of Spring - 1913
:> Schoenberg: Pierrot Lunaire - 1912
:> Berg: String Quartet Op. 3 - 1910
:> Debussy: Nocturnes - 1897-9
:> Ives: Psalm 67 - 1894/9
: No matter how you define something, there are always exceptions.
: You choose the clearest dividing line and use that.
Or you say that your "dividing line" was incorrect, which it was. Or
that your term "modernism" is not well-defined, which as you use it, it
does not appear to be.
-----
Richard Schultz sch...@mail.biu.ac.il
Department of Chemistry, Bar-Ilan University, Ramat-Gan, Israel
Opinions expressed are mine alone, and not those of Bar-Ilan University
-----
"Logic is a wreath of pretty flowers which smell bad."
Paul Ilechko
> In article <191220050945050246%ne...@vintageip.com>, Stephen Worth <ne...@vintageip.com> wrote:
> : In article <do6a24$9us$1...@news.iucc.ac.il>, Richard Schultz
> : <sch...@mail.biu.ack.il> wrote:
>
> :> Stravinsky: Rite of Spring - 1913
> :> Schoenberg: Pierrot Lunaire - 1912
> :> Berg: String Quartet Op. 3 - 1910
> :> Debussy: Nocturnes - 1897-9
> :> Ives: Psalm 67 - 1894/9
>
> : No matter how you define something, there are always exceptions.
> : You choose the clearest dividing line and use that.
>
> Or you say that your "dividing line" was incorrect, which it was.
Or there is no dividing line, because there was no abrupt break, just
gradations of change.
Stephen Worth
<sch...@mail.biu.ack.il> wrote:
> Or you say that your "dividing line" was incorrect, which it was
Solipsism rears its ugly head!
gggg gggg
https://www.thecollector.com/german-romanticism-revolt-against-capitalism/