The Classical Style

[DavidW]

op.76, #5 second movement.

Thanks for the specific example Haffner.  I will listen very closely to that movement tonight.

I have a question that I want to ask, but it will wait because I want to give it some more thought first.

In the meantime--

1. Gurn said that Dittersdorf (among others) used regular rhythm, so it sounded flat in comparison to Haydn etc  So Rosen said that Dittersdorf was harmonically very simple, especially in relation to the three greats, and so I was wondering if you consider those two factors together-- is Dittersdorf simply too musically simple for most music connoisseurs to be engaged by?  Is that why most people find his music boring?

And if you consider that true, what other composers from the Classical Era do you think sound too simple, thus boring, and what qualities of their music make you say that?

2.   On another thread, John Shade I think, said that late Beethoven was harmonically very different from the rest of classicism.  What would you describe this as?  Is this chromaticism?  Is this a more extended use of polyphony?  It's not as simple as that is it?  I might simply wait to read it, but I would enjoy hearing what my fellow posters have to say about harmony and late Beethoven.

[71 dB]

1. Gurn said that Dittersdorf (among others) used regular rhythm, so it sounded flat in comparison to Haydn etc  So Rosen said that Dittersdorf was harmonically very simple, especially in relation to the three greats, and so I was wondering if you consider those two factors together-- is Dittersdorf simply too musically simple for most music connoisseurs to be engaged by?  Is that why most people find his music boring?

Dittersdorf is interesting music. I don't find his music harmonically very simple or rhythmically flat. People just need to believe he was a very good composer. Boccherini is a classical composer I find simple.

[Gurn Blanston]

Dittersdorf is interesting music. I don't find his music harmonically very simple or rhythmically flat. People just need to believe he was a very good composer. Boccherini is a classical composer I find simple.

Don't misunderstand what I said: I said that rhythmically he was very regular. That isn't a synonym of "flat".   And I don't find him uninteresting in the least. But given that the majority of people, excluding you, me, Harry and probably Sonic and a couple of others, DO find his music uninteresting, I am proposing that the regularity of it is one of the factors.

Personally I find it interesting that you find Boccherini simple. He is, in fact unique in some ways: he uses themes like they were tissues, introducing them, playing a little, and moving on to another. He even makes Mozart look rather monothematic!   All of his contemporaries and many of his successors remarked on it. In all likelihood, his location away from the mainstream of composition (which was Austria at the time, while he was in Spain), led him to develop a different style of sonata form. In any case, he isn't "simple", maybe easy to listen to if you aren't trying to analyze what he's doing...

[George]

Personally I find it interesting that you find Boccherini simple. He is, in fact unique in some ways: he uses themes like they were tissues, introducing them, playing a little, and moving on to another.

I fully enjoyed this metaphor. Thanks! 

[Mozart]

I would have said bubble gum, flavors gone...flavors gone...flavors gone

[FideLeo]

I would have said bubble gum, flavors gone...flavors gone...flavors gone

Maybe the real Boccherini constituency is somewhere between tissue and bubble gum.   
i.e. Not as flavourful as bubble gum but certainly stickier than tissue.

[Haffner]

Thanks for the clarification, my bad.

I was confused for a long while, David! Nothing "bad"! "All good"!

[Haffner]

Thanks for the specific example Haffner.  I will listen very closely to that movement tonight.

I have a question that I want to ask, but it will wait because I want to give it some more thought first.

In the meantime--

1. Gurn said that Dittersdorf (among others) used regular rhythm, so it sounded flat in comparison to Haydn etc  So Rosen said that Dittersdorf was harmonically very simple, especially in relation to the three greats, and so I was wondering if you consider those two factors together-- is Dittersdorf simply too musically simple for most music connoisseurs to be engaged by?  Is that why most people find his music boring?

And if you consider that true, what other composers from the Classical Era do you think sound too simple, thus boring, and what qualities of their music make you say that?

First off, please forgive me,I gave the example of op.76, no.5 only because I goofed and didn't properly read the context of your question. For me, op. 76, no.5 is jaw-dropping due to it's seminally romantic (in the pre-Schumann "lyrical way") expression of sad, yet fulfilled resignation.  Not necessarily for its complexity (although one wonders how "simple" something can be when it can portray a complex emotion like that).

I actually get bored by some movements in both Haydn and Mozart's Symphonies. When I write that, I mean mostly Mozart's early-to-mid period Symphs. And several of the movements in even the latter-era Haydn Symphonies are often pretty much interchangeable with the other, partiuclarly i menuetti. And this is coming from a man whom adores Haydn's music.


It's just not my place to attempt assert what was "simple, lesser"...etc. in the Classical Style., I just know that I don't listen to much of it beyond Mozart, Haydn...and a little Salieri and Mike Haydn on the side.

2.   On another thread, John Shade I think, said that late Beethoven was harmonically very different from the rest of classicism.  What would you describe this as?  Is this chromaticism?  Is this a more extended use of polyphony?  It's not as simple as that is it?  I might simply wait to read it, but I would enjoy hearing what my fellow posters have to say about harmony and late Beethoven.

The Grosse Fuge always seemed like the work of a man whom had such a thorough, aged/"mature" comprehension of traditional harmonic structures that he rejected them in favor of beginning his own language. I honestly can't see where Stravinsky would have gone without it. That's just my opinion of course.

In a beautifully ironic way, Beethoven seemed to alternate between conceding the influence of Haydn (Symphony no.8, op. 135) and going completely against the general pronciples that composers like Haydn pretty much adhered to. It would be a further sign of his genius if that was his intention; to alternatingly prove the massive influence Haydn (and to a roughly equal degree Mozart) had on him, and then emphasize/diminish it by putting out works which were mostly refutative of their style.

If the latter was his intention, it is a perfect reperesentation of the time, given that Georg Hegel's "aufgeheben" philosophical theory was in great favor. Beethoven both cancelled out and maintained the tradition/influence of Haydn and Mozart through his later compositions in particular.

This is all just semi-educated conjecture on my part, and I probably made a mess of the whole thing so forgive me in advance for any blundering on my part.

[71 dB]

Don't misunderstand what I said: I said that rhythmically he was very regular. That isn't a synonym of "flat".   And I don't find him uninteresting in the least. But given that the majority of people, excluding you, me, Harry and probably Sonic and a couple of others, DO find his music uninteresting, I am proposing that the regularity of it is one of the factors.

Personally I find it interesting that you find Boccherini simple. He is, in fact unique in some ways: he uses themes like they were tissues, introducing them, playing a little, and moving on to another. He even makes Mozart look rather monothematic!   All of his contemporaries and many of his successors remarked on it. In all likelihood, his location away from the mainstream of composition (which was Austria at the time, while he was in Spain), led him to develop a different style of sonata form. In any case, he isn't "simple", maybe easy to listen to if you aren't trying to analyze what he's doing...

The majority is narrow-minded. I find Boccherini simple but I nevertheless like his music.

[johnQpublic]

"Regular" rhythm means predictable patterns with little syncpation and four-squared phrasing. Combine that with little chromaticism and you have the reason why Dittersdorf isn't played much in the concert halls.

An engaged listener demands more than exterior pleasantries.

[71 dB]

"Regular" rhythm means predictable patterns with little syncpation and four-squared phrasing. Combine that with little chromaticism and you have the reason why Dittersdorf isn't played much in the concert halls.

An engaged listener demands more than exterior pleasantries.

Dittersdorf has different strenghts than Haydn and that's why open-minded people can enjoy it too. Engaged listeners should understand that.

Most played music is not always the best music (popular music is a good example of that). Think again why some works are played in concert halls more often. 

[DavidW]

Most played music is not always the best music (popular music is a good example of that). Think again why some works are played in concert halls more often. 

I think that is a fallacy, because that train of thought leads to the conclusion that greatness is inversely proportional to popularity.  That is certainly not true.  People tend to point towards our favorite whipping boy girl, Britney at this point in relation to Beethoven, but this is not a dichotomy.  It's just as wrong to say that popularity ~ greatness as it is to say that popularity ~ 1/greatness.

It is a popular misconception to use the unwashed masses metaphor (many times silently) to describe general characteristics to specialized groups that are way off the mark.  The truth is that usually the smaller group are compromised of well informed tastes.  That is why classical music aficionados listen to Bach, Beethoven, Mozart, etc etc more than say Fuchs, to pick on another composer.  It's tempting to say that the group as a whole do not think about these things, and thus their opinions are invalid.  But that would not be correct at all. 

That still doesn't justify equating merit with popularity, but I think that it should be considered and questioned.  I think that when composers are not listened to either their style is too simplistic or too complex to be emotionally engaging to the majority of classical listeners.  This is merely speculation on my part.  Discussing Dittersdorf is a good way to probe it, see what others think.  Including you Elgar.

[Sergeant Rock]

The more I listen to LvB, the more I see him as an extension of the composers who came before him rather than connections to those who came after him. When I listen to Haydn, I often wish the music would push a bit harder, like Beethoven does. Haydn's music reminds me of Beethoven more than any post-Beethoven composer does. 

Exactly. Rosen's book is about the Classical style and his book concentrates on the three greatest proponents of the Classical style: Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven. By the end of his life Beethoven was already old-fashioned...respected but not copied by the young dudes, the real Romantics (Berlioz, Weber, Schumann, Chopin, etc). Rosen says:

"At the end of his life, Beethoven was most decidedly out of fashion...Not only musical fashion but musical history had turned away from Beethoven. In the music of his younger contemporaries (with the exception of Schubert) [who really was a pivotal musician between the Classical and Romantic eras--Sarge] and of the generation that followed his death, his work, while admired and loved, is hardly a vital force; not until Brahms and the later operas of Wagner will it play a significant role."

Pace Andy, the Eroica was not the first Romantic symphony but a culmination, a high point, of the Classical style.

Sarge

[Bunny]

Actually, I don't believe that's exactly accurate either.  Beethoven's place in music is very similar to Michelangelo's in art.  Both were the bridges that linked two disparate styles.  While a great deal of Michelangelo's production was in the High Renaissance style as exemplified by the Pietá, elements of what would become the Mannerist and Baroque styles started to creep into his art after 1500 until by the end of his life his works were the basis for the new Mannerist style.  More and more you see the visual equivalent to chromaticism and dissonance in the twisted figures and diagonal arrangements in space.  One can only understand how revolutionary his ceiling was by comparing it to Raphael's comtemporaneous Vatican project, the School of Athens.  Similarly, one can only understand how thoroughly Beethoven broke with his classical past when he wrote the Eroica by looking at the works of his contemporaries, most of whom are forgotten.  Beethoven, like Michelangelo represents a bridge, a transition to a new style and idiom.  Without him, romanticism would have developed in very different ways.  And if anyone thinks Beethoven is rhythmically straight, just listen to the syncopations in the Hammerklavier.  He invented a new alphabet that would be used to create a new language by those coming after him.  As connected as he was to the past, so he also was connected to the future.

[johnQpublic]

Dittersdorf has different strenghts than Haydn

Like what?

[71 dB]

Like what?

I like Dittersdorf's use of strings much more. He uses orchestra in his symphonies more naturally. he uses also string instruments to play long notes. Haydn usually uses windwoods for long notes. Dittersdorf's symphonies sound softer and more relaxed, even calming. Haydn's symphonies are uncomfortable restless. I really like Dittersdorf's melodies and harmony. They are in perfect balance with the whole consept of classism.

Do get me wrong, Haydn is greater composer to me. I adore his Piano Trios, Piano Sonatas, Church Music (Die Schöpfung!) and concertos. His String Quartets are good. With Symphonies Haydn is in trouble as he wasn't into use of orchestra. As an orchestrator, Dittersdorf was superior.

[Florestan]

With Symphonies Haydn is in trouble as he wasn't into use of orchestra.

    Post of the century!!!!!     

[lukeottevanger]

Didn't Rimsky Korsakov think Haydn was the finest orchestrator of all? (Once again, and to prove the all-encompassing nature of the book, I draw this knowledge from The Classical Style, where Rosen makes the point in a discussion of the Minuet of Haydn's Symph 97)

[lukeottevanger]

2.   On another thread, John Shade I think, said that late Beethoven was harmonically very different from the rest of classicism.  What would you describe this as?  Is this chromaticism?  Is this a more extended use of polyphony?  It's not as simple as that is it?  I might simply wait to read it, but I would enjoy hearing what my fellow posters have to say about harmony and late Beethoven.

Certainly Beethoven allows more complex harmonies into his later (and some of his earlier) music than Haydn or Mozart do, but it is of a different sort to the more complex harmonies of romanticism, and is still closer in its technical derivation and context to Mozart and Haydn. On the one hand we have things like the the advanced harmonies of the Grosse Fuge, which clearly spring from its strict polyphony, just as we ocassionally find complex cluster-like chords in Bach for the same reason. In the Grosse Fuge they rush past like the wind; we hardly register them as individual harmonies but just as four immensely strong lines clashing incidentally as they progress. The same is true for the Hammerklavier etc. The passing chords these pieces throw up are resolutely unRomantic in effect - they are as steely-strong as the structure on which they are founded. On the other hand, we find that in general, Beethoven steers clear extended spells of chromatic harmony. His chromaticism is always applied to a strong diatonic, functional base, and, on a larger scale, his more outlandish modulations (think - op 130, for example) are felt as such precisely because they take place in the context of a classical tonal dialectic. That's what makes them so different from the same modulations, with their more sensuous effect, as they take place in Romantic music.

Of course there are also those famous 'individual' chords which are sometimes used as example to prove that Beethoven was a Romantic. Indulge my going on about these for a minute....

For the high romantic composer, chromatically inflected harmony became the norm, the lingua franca; the common triad became less and less common, until to some extent its isolated usage became something of a special effect. This is, in some respects, the exact inverse of of Beethoven, I think. When I have to think of an outstanding chord in Beethoven, I instantly think of something like 'that' dissonant  chord in the Ninth. But that chord is effective because it is used on its own, in the middle of basically diatonic harmony, as a shock device. In Wagner etc. that chord could have turned up unheralded in the middle of a phrase, and we'd hardly notice. Someone like Wagner, OTOH, for all his Tristan chords (which itself turns up unheralded in Mozart, of course!) will use isolated simple triads in the middle of chromatic harmony for the same effect (think of Brunhilde's awakening, for instance).

What does this boil down to - 'it ain't what you do, it's the way that you do it'. It's not how complex an individual chord is, it is the context it is found in. We don't call Mozart a romantic because we can find the Tristan chord in his music, we know that the chord is merely an unaccented, passing event in the middle of pure diatonic harmony. We don't call Wagner a classicist because we can find triads in his music, we know that they are the foundation of chromatic harmony and will certainly occur frequently. In the same way, we don't call Wagner a classicist because we sometimes find spotlighted pure triadic harmony in his music (as in the example from Siegfried I just made); we know that this is harmony used 'topically' (referentially) rather than as part of the general flow. For the same reason, turned on its head, I refuse to see that Beethoven's fairly rare isolated shock chords make him, harmonically, a Romantic, any more than do Haydn's (or Rebel's!) in their respective representations of chaos.

[71 dB]

Didn't Rimsky Korsakov think Haydn was the finest orchestrator of all? (Once again, and to prove the all-encompassing nature of the book, I draw this knowledge from The Classical Style, where Rosen makes the point in a discussion of the Minuet of Haydn's Symph 97)

Haydn's non-symphonic orchestral works are different story and he show good craftmanship. It's just that with symphonies Haydn had weird ideas about the format. His mind doesn't seem to have realised what symphony as an artform was going to be. In other words, Haydn does not anticipate Berlioz.