New-York tribune., 1910-09-04
THE PI4NOFORTE IND ITS MUSIC
Rise of the Romantic the lnhess OF ns1s"
-4Hemm at <fnal4as and Definition -Beethouens
Couem poraies-.John Field and Carl
Maria Webe
Copyrisht. 1910. by ii. E. krehbiel.

Thus Beethoven ended the old dispensatloh
,d ,,sbered in the new He was the last great
c,acsicist and the first great romantclst Inc
words are out and are at once cohIfohteo
nv the need Of further definition we cannot so
On without it. yet 1 despair OF 1hVeh'ihs ohe
which shall be accepted as OF senefal 'aiiui's'
The best that / do is to set one GOWN "iiioh
shall be applicable to this study. and urge scfne
arguments in its defence; let it be discarded py
all who can find a better
From, every nont of view the term Classic is
more definite in its suggestion than Romantic
which in musical criticism is chiefly used lof
the purpose of conveying an idea OF ahutheSis
10 Classic In literary criticism this is not
ALWAYS -he case Classical poets and prose
Writers are those of all times whose works nave
been set down as cf such excellence that all the
world that knows them has accorded thein d
place apart, has put them in GLASS; out ol
which, so far as judge from the history
Of centuries. they will never be taken here
the term as Archbishop Trench pointed out,
retains a relic Of a significance derived from
the political economy of ancient Rome, in which
citizens were rated according to their income as
cassici or as being mira cldssehi. (See, lioW to
listen to Music page CO.
When the term Romantic got into literary
criticism it meant something different from,
though not necessarily antithetic to. Classic, and
this difference enters also into the term as USED
in musical criticism. Romantic writings in
poetry and prose were those whose subject mat
ter was drawn from the imaginative literature
of the Middle Ages-the fantastica1 stories CT
chiyalry and adventure which first made their
appearance in the Romance languages. The
principal elements in these tales were the mar
vellous and the supernatural. When these sub
jects were revived by some poets OF Germany
and France in the early part of the nineteenth
century, they were clothed in style Of thought
and expression different from that cultivated
BY the authors who hitherto had been looked
upon models. So not only subject matter
but manner Of expression also entered into the
conception Of the term Romantic which these
writer's affected.
We see Romanticsm of the first kind in the
subjects Of the operas Of Weber and Marschner;
but this element cannot be said to enter sig
nilicantly into purely instrumental music, least
Of all into music for the pianoforte, to which
trying to confne myself. In a way it is in
fuential, it is true in music which relies more
Or less upon suggestions derived from external
sources-"prosramine music as it is called 1t
would be incorrect, however, to classify all pro-
ETamnc music as Romantic. Frobergers at
tempt to describe the incidents OF an adventur-
GUS journey, Buxtchude's musical delineation
IF the celestial spheres kuhnau's Biblical
conatas, Bachs "Capriccio the Departure 9:
Z Beloved Brother Dittersdorfs descriptive
symphonies, were all cast in classical forms; the
titles in nowise affected the character value
Of the music such No did the titles
which the virtuoso composers of a later date
gave their sonatas and fantasies. They did no
than invite pleasing play Of fancy and
Al accompanying intellectual operation-thc
ISOLATION of naturally musical ideas. By this 1
1n,an a correlation of certain attributes and
properties Of things with certain musical idioms
which lad come to have conventional signif-
canoe such position in space and acuteness
and gravity of tone; speed lightness and pom
deYosit. OF movement and tempo suffering or
Death ar. the minor mode; fiux and re1lux and
alternating ascent and descent Of musical fig
ures etc Music of this kind may be only one
deyrcc higher in the aesthetic scale than that
which is crudely initiative of natural sounds,
like the whistling of the wind, the rolling crash
of thunder. the roar of artillery, the rhythmical
cIatter OF horses hCofs. etc.