p16 CHAPTER TWO
Shadow and stimulus:
the move away from Classicism

It is a good deal easier to proclaim that the [i]galant[/i] and Classical masters were not primarily Romantics than it is to distinguish what is Romantin in their music from what is not. There are nevertheless certain unmistakable signs of features too disruptive, or too imprecise, to be suitable for full exploitation within Classicism itself. Reference has already been made to the [i]empfindsamer Stil[/i] of C.P.E. Bach's fantasias and sonatas for keyboard, and to Haydn't symphonic [i]Sturm und Drang[/i]. There is also an undeniable continuity between the often remarkably progressive and powerfully expressive dramatic manner of late Baroque and early Classical accompanied recitative and the tendency towards more continuous lyric melody of much Romantic opera. Perhaps the most striking feeling of proto-Romantic upheaval comes in the stormier passages of Gluck - like the finale of the ballet [i]Don Juan[/i] (1761) - and, later, in the more overtly melancholy or turbulent movements by Mozart. There is of course abundant turbulence in Mozart's 'Don Juan' - the opera [i]Don Giovanni[/i] - although his symphonic works in minor keys are models of an inextricable fusion of deep feeling and Classically controlled poise.

Beethoven's description of his piano sonatas op. 27 as 'Quasi una fantasia' may, with hindsight, be interpreted as the most transparent Classical declaration of anti-Classical intent, a conscious challenge to the aesthetic priorities of the Age of Reason. Beethoven's evident desire to try out new formal schemes and modes of expression in these two sonatas, composed in 1800-01, was an important step on the road to his visionary later masterpieces - especially teh Diabelli Variations and the last five string quartets - which struck such awe into his successors, not least because they embody so enigmatic an interaction between two opposing tendencies: powerfully integrated, large-scale symphonic structures, and intense, self-contained miniatures in which the desire for authentic, individual expression seems to override the need to contribute obediently to a larger whole. Such vital foreshadowings of Romanticism were not the exclusive preserver of Germany and Austria, of course. Paris was an important musical centre, and, as will soon become apparent, French music of the revolutionary period had a direct and fundamental role in the generation and development of Romantiticism in Europe as a whole. Nevertheless, this narrative will begin with the Austro-German composers closest in time and place to the Classical masters, and in whom the evidence of movement away from the purest Classical principles is most apparent - Carl Maria von Weber (1786-1826) and Franz Schubert (1797-1828).

In both composers there is a fundamental change of emphasis, however strongly they may in some respects continue to reflect a commitment to the 'traditions' of the immediate past. For example, a song from Schubert's [i]Die scho:ne Mu:llerin[/i] (1823) - [i]Die liebe Farbe[/i] - is a fine instance of that restrained yet profound melancholy, introspective yet universal, which is an archetypal early Romantic quality. Classical melancholy has a stronger 'specific gravity': for example, in Pamina's aria 'Ach, ich fuhl's' from [i]Die Zauberflo:te[/i] there is certainly more gravity, even a touch of Gluckian formality which, as in Gluck himself at his best, focuses the intensity of the expression rather than draining it away. With Schubert's greater musical simplicity goes greater potential instability - in the alternation of major and minor harmony, in the alternation of four- and five-bar phrases. Yet mood and method alike are precise and clearly outlined. While in all senses less 'substantial' than the Mozart aria, [i]Die liebe Farbe[/i] is no less compelling a representation of a living mood.

For the complementary state of mind, we might instance the serenity of Agathe's area 'Leise, leise' from Weber's [i]Der Freischu:tz[/i]. Compared with the finest examples of Classical serenity - the slow movements of Mozart's concerto and quintet for clarinet, for example - there is again a sense of lesser substance, a relative lightness, touching and completely satisfying in its own terms, but something indicating the early stages of an artistic movement rather than the highest achievements of its richest phase. Weber's greatness is to make us forget such sober historical calculations so frequently. Yet it is perhaps when both Weber and Schubert explore more turbulent, disturbed emotions - the Wolf's Glen scene from [i]Freischu:tz[/i], the Heine setting [i]Der Atlas[/i] that the strengths of the new forms of expression are most obviously apparent. Of course, the game of (p18) comparison can still place them at a disadvantage, as calling to mind any of the more titanic episodes from Beethoven's works will suggest. The fact remains that these and other examples of emotions in turmoil in early Romantic music offer the clearest indications of where the most exciting and far-reaching developments would take place in the later, wholly Romantic masters, while remaining supremely powerful and absorbing musical experiences in their own right.

In December 1824 Weber's [i]Der Freischu:tz[/i] was performed (as [i]Robin des Bois[/i]) in Paris: 'Not the real thing, but a gross travesty, hacked and mutilated in the most wanton fashion by an arranger.' The comment is that of Berlioz, who declared that 'even in this raveged form there was a wild sweetness in the music that I found intoxicating'. This tribute from one Romantic to another is expressed in appropriately Romantic terms, down to inclusion of one of Dr. Johnson's adjectives - 'wild'. And it ties in neatly with the memory of another great Romantic. Wagner recalled his mother introducing him to Weber at the age on nine in 1822 with the memorable diagnosis that 'while I was wild about [i]Der Freischu:tz[/i], she had nevertheless noticed nothing in me that might suggest a talent for music'. Wagner's belief in his own talent also led him to write at length elsewhere about Weber's 'serious error', that 'pious faith in the omnipotence of pure melody', which prevented him from furthering the development of true music drama as determinedly as Wagner himself was eventually able to do.

It is often the case that composers who are regarded by critics of their own time as dangerously radical will be viewed by those of later generations as insufficiently adventurous. In Weber's case, even his fellow composers seem to have conformed to critical convention. Schubert preferred [i]Der Freischu:tz[/i] (1821) to the later, more advanced [i]Euryanthe[/i] (1823), complaining of the latter that whenever a scrap of tune appears, it is crushed like a mouse in a trap by the weighty orchestration'. For Wagner, thirty years after Schubert, the problem with  [i]Euryanthe[/i] was too much tune rather than too little, and the work is a 'true and beautiful success only where, for love of truth, he quite renounces absolute melody, and - as in the opening scene of the first act - gives the noblest, most faithful musical expression to the emotional dramatic declamation as such'.
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