Transition from the Classic to the Romantic Period

The term "classic" is used in two senses. In the one sense it means-having permanent interest and value-and is thus contrasted with the evanescent and the ephemeral. In this sense any composition is a classic which succeeds in maintaining its place in the interest of mankind for ages after the death of its author. No one can certainly determine during the lifetime of any composer whether his works are classics in this sense or not, because the only sure test is that of time. We may, indeed, have reason to think that a given work of excellence possesses elements of permanent and universal interest, but in such matters it is easy to be misled, and the history of music and of literature affords innumerable instances of errors in judgment as regards this point on the part of critics and connoisseurs. We can not, therefore, safely predicate the term "classic" in the first sense of any contemporary works. Whatever has come down to us from a period sufficiently remote to show that the interest it awakens is permanent, that the world will not willingly let it die, is classic; nothing else is, though many among contemporary works may possibly become so.

In the second sense, the term "classic," or, more commonly, "classical," is used to designate music written in a particular style, aiming at the embodiment of a certain ideal, the chief element of which is Beauty of Form. In this sense it is contrasted with the term "Romantic," a term used to designate music which aims at embodying a different ideal, that of the vivid and truthful expression of varied and strongly contrasted emotional experiences, such as we are accustomed to connect with the word "romantic" in literature and in life.

In "classical" music, in this sense, Form is first and content is subordinate; in "romantic" music content is first and Form is subordinate. The classical ideal is predominantly an intellectual one. Its products are characterized by clearness of thought, by completeness and symmetry, by harmonious proportion, by simplicity and repose. Classical works, whether musical or literary, are positive, clear, finished. The following axioms from Aristotle's " Poetics " (quoted in the New American Cyclopedia, article "classics",) apply quite as well to classical music as to Greek poetry. "There is nothing beautiful in literature nor the arts which may not be clearly analyzed by the intellect." " Every poem must be contained within prescribed boundaries, so that it may be easy for the mind to embrace it at a single glance, and to form a single conception or picture of it."

These are the fundamental principles which underlie all classical compositions.

It is easy to see that, up to Beethoven's time, the classical ideal had been predominant, at least in pianoforte music. Indeed, no other had come forward with any prominence. There were sporadic cases which did not conform to the classical ideal, but there was no other style generally recognized or sought after.

The Bach fugues, in which the polyphonic mode of writing culminated, and the Mozart sonatas, concertos, quartets, and symphonies, in which the limit of development of monophonic Form was reached have all the characteristics above described. They are, indeed, often long and complex, composed of many parts, developed to an extent unknown to earlier composers, but their plan is always simple and easily grasped as a whole and in its details, it is strictly logical, it has the most perfect unity of idea, its parts are symmetrically balanced, the proportions are simple, the modulations are confined to a narrow range of nearly related keys for the sake of simplicity and clearness ; in short, the composer laid all possible stress on the necessity of producing beautiful, clearly intelligible works, satisfactory to the intellect and to the logical sense.

This being the case, it is obvious that the emotional content of them must necessarily have been simple. A composer whose mind is mainly occupied with the intellectual side of his work, who aims primarily at clearness of statement as the main condition of formal beauty, can not at the same time be agitated by violent and contending passions, or disturbed by vague yearnings or urgent desires. The emotional content of his forms must be simple and reposeful, such as simple pleasure or sadness, elevated joy in the contemplation of grandeur, or melancholy of a mild type. The simpler emotional experiences alone were adapted for expression through the strictly classical forms, and accordingly we find no other in the works of the composers above referred to, or in those of their contemporaries.

Imagination there is in their works, and that of the finest type, but it deals with its musical materials solely with reference to an Ideal of beauty, of which the expression of violent and conflicting emotions formed no part, and to which such emotions were not only foreign but antagonistic. It is characteristic, too, that not only were simple emotions, or moods, more or less indefinite or vague, the sole content admissible in their mode of writing, but that these moods in their successions and relations were, like the form of the compositions, developed in a logical way, were conceived as under rational control and subordinate to intelligence. They were, in short, the natural expressions of the emotional life of healthy, simple, natural, well-regulated minds, living in the present, engrossed mainly with present enjoyments more or less refined, and wholly free from disquieting questions, and from unrest of every sort.

With Beethoven the case was different. His mental and moral horizon was wider, his aspirations higher, his sympathies stronger and more intense, 111S joys and sorrows struck deeper root in profounder soil, and spread their branches in loftier and purer air, receiving more of sunshine and casting deeper shadow.

In all the great artists there has been prominent the conception of the Beautiful as a manifestation of the Divine, and therefore as closely connected with ideals of religion and morality. The perception of this is their greatest claim to be seers and prophets for the race. But with Beethoven this was pre-eminently the case. The " religious passion and elevation " quoted from Mr. Dannreuther in the last chapter, is the key-note of his character, and he was a musician and not something else, because he found in his chosen art the most perfect medium in which to embody his most characteristic ideals and feelings.

He was powerfully affected by the French Revolution, and gave a passionate response to the great ideas which gave rise to it. But he was also strongly influenced by his study of English literature and of the German school of Romantic Poetry, with both of which he became acquainted in his youth, in the house of Madame von Breuning. This latter school was made up of young men, his contemporaries, and aimed at nothing less than freeing German Poetry from the shackles of a blind imitation of the stiff and affected pseudo classicism of France. French literature had up to this time been predominant in German thought, and its stilted forms had served as the only accepted models for German writers.

The young writers of. the new school discarded the current rules, sought their models and subjects in the middle age romances, laid all possible stress on the vivid representation of natural feelings in their most vigorous manifestations and little or none on conventional rules or established principles of composition. They dealt in violent passions, in strongly contrasted situations, in weird and fantastic images. They put desire and yearning in the place of present enjoyment; vague mysticism in the place of definite clearness of ideas ; well-defined, powerful feelings in the place of simple, vague moods.

It is probable that Beethoven did not definitely propose to himself to attempt in music the same sort of revolution which Tieck, the Schlegels and others were accomplishing in German literature. Very likely he did little or no philosophizing on the subject; but he was strongly influenced by the intellectual movements of his time, with what result we have already seen. He proclaimed no new revolutionary gospel in the forms of composition. Outwardly, he conformed to the classical school, just as he nominally belonged to the Roman Catholic Church. But in both cases the inward spirit is too great for the form in which it is contained.

The Romantic School really began with Beethoven, and his example and character gave it its most powerful impulse, though there is, perhaps, not a word to be quoted from him in direct advocacy of the new principle.

It was left to the young men of the next generation to devote themselves with full consciousness of their own aims to the promotion of the principles which underlay his practice, to fight the battle of " David against the Philistines," and to establish the supremacy of the nobler aspirations of human nature, of the unrest of dissatisfaction with imperfection and wrong, of yearning and outreaching desire for better things, of agitated striving, of resistance, struggle and conquest as motives in art, as against simple, childlike pleasure and pain, quiet repose and harmonious beauty.

Two great contemporaries of Beethoven shared the influences which affected him, and with him prepared the way for the romantic composers proper; Carl Maria Von Weber and Franz Peter Schubert.