Late Beethoven-Schubert

[mikey6]

The gap between these two composers has always irritated me when it comes to picking a program.  They say Beethoven opened the floodgates to Romanticism with op.101 so when a program asks for a classical sonata can Beethoven's late works fall into this period? Judgind by that fact no, but I think generally it's allowed
With Schubert, he's stuck right in the middle of Classical/Romantic - he's not completely a romantic in the sence of the others (Chopin, Schumann etc.), but he's not a classical composer either although his music does show classical elements.  So he is labeled as a insert period here composer?

[presto agitato]

Whats your point?

BTW I think Beethoven opened the floodgates to Romanticism with his Op. 13 and his Piano Trio Op 1-3

[emmdoubleew]

Bring up this subject with my piano teacher and she will ramble for 20min about how stupid all these classifications of composers are. I quote: "They put all these composers in boxes but they should just concentrate on getting the students to play good music!" As a matter of fact, she has quite a reputation amongst the Certificate of Merit piano testing board .

Basically, the program should have a booklet in which it classifies all the composers and pieces, or at least have such information available. You need to get in contact with them and ask them directly, because quite frankly, none of us can give you the right and sure answer. My sister had to learn a whole new piece three weeks before the exams for such reasons. Thankfully she is a lower level and her pieces are two or three pages max.

[mikey6]

It's not in regards to any specific program.  I guess I'm just not sure how to classify them - it's just a era-assigning question coz both composers are stuck in the middle of the classical/romantic.

[presto agitato]

Beethoven was the first romantic and the last classical.

Schubert was a true romantic...you just neet to reed his biographies and listen to his music

[pianistimo]

here's a little blurb:

www.iclassics.com/periodArticle?contentId=3100
and www.iclassics.com/periodArticle?contentId=3110

[iumonito]

When drawing arbitrary boundaries Beethoven is classical and Schubert romantic.  If you try to make sense of it, the floodgates of romanticism were open much earlier, with Zumsteg and Mozart's magic flute.  If you want to get cute about it, just say that the classical and romatic periods are one.  After all, there is much classisism in Hummel, Chopin and Brahms.

[pianistimo]

i see classicism in hummel and brahms, but can you explain the classical elements in chopin?

[iumonito]

i see classicism in hummel and brahms, but can you explain the classical elements in chopin?

Really?  Sure.  The super-vast majority of Chopin's music is entirely abstract and non-programatic.  This is a classical characteristic that could not be attributted to romantic music.  Same can't be said of die hard romantics like Schumann and Liszt.

The super-vast majority of Chopin's works do not indulge in the extreme emotionalism that is more typical of the romantic period, and instead focuses on understated emotions, always articulated with more taste than fury.  You will never find in Chopin the expressionism of Isolde's liebestod, the extreme languidity of Eusebius or the surrealism of many Grieg's lyric pieces.  Instead what you do find is a rich sturm und drang world closely tied to well proportioned forms that are in the foreground, like in the highly emotional, but not expressionist, first or fourth ballades or the second sonata (which is as emotional as Chopin gets).

Shall I go on?

[pianistimo]

i do see formal (classical ABA) form and elements in chopin, and yet the ballades seem no different than the some of the etudes in fury.  sturm und drang was just as programmatic in the classical era as the overthrow of poland in the era that chopin lived.  maybe as you say - there was some romaticism in classicism, and visa-versa.  they cross lines.  even the idea of nationalism vs internationalism was somewhat crossed in both eras.  good to think for yourself!  i suppose when i hear chopin played really well - the form does seem classical.  it makes perfect sense and there isn't the wild wagnerian chase into the unknown.  you start from a point that you know - you wander - and then you come back.  that IS distinctly classical.  to sort of feel that you have returned.

[contrapunctus]

Beethoven, IMO, was a romantic-classicist-- he was a classical composer with great romantic flair. But, Schubert and Brahms, IMO, were classical-romanticists--they were romantics at heart but wrote in a classically restrained style.