BY DANIEL GREGORY MASON AUTHOR OF "FROM GRIEG TO BRAHMS," "BEETHOVEN AND HIS FORERUNNERS," ETC. "Consciously or unconsciously a new school is being founded on the basis of the Beethoven-Schubert romanticism, a school which we may venture to expect will mark a special epoch in the history of art." S CHUMANN NEW YORK THE MACMILLAN COMPANY LONDON: MACMILLAN & CO., LTD. 1940 I INTRODUCTION ROMANTICISM IN MUSIC...

Historians of music are accustomed to speak of the first half or three-quarters of the nineteenth century as the Romantic Period in music, and of those composers who immediately follow Beethoven, including Schubert, Schumann, Mendelssohn, Berlioz, Chopin, Liszt, and some others, as the Romantic Composers. The word "romantic," as thus used, forms no doubt a convenient label; but if we attempt to explain its meaning, we find ourselves involved in several difficulties. Were there then no romanticis

If, with a view to getting a more precise notion of the new tendencies, we ask ourselves now what are the salient differences between a classical and a romantic or modern piece of music, we shall be likely to notice at once certain traits of the latter, striking enough, which are nevertheless incidental rather than essential to romanticism, and must be discounted before we can come at its inmost nature. These changes have come chiefly as a result of the general evolution of musical resources, an

Difficult to make, and dangerous when made, as are sweeping generalizations about so many-sided a matter as the expressive character of whole schools or eras of art, there seem to be generic differences between classical and romantic expression which we can hardly avoid remarking, and of which it is worth while to attempt a tentative definition, especially if we premise that it is to be suggestive rather than absolute. The constant generality of classical expression, and the objectivity of attit

All things human, however, have their price, and romanticism is no exception to the rule. The composers of the romantic period, in becoming more particular, grew in the same proportion less universal; in bowing to the inexorable evolutionary force that makes each modern man a specialist, they inevitably sacrificed something of the breadth, the catholicity, the magnanimity, of the old time. It is doubtless a sense of some such loss as this, dogging like a shadow all our gains, that takes us back

A slightly different angle of approach to this whole problem of musical expression is afforded by psychological analysis. Here, again, as we might expect, modern theory, the learned as well as the popular, is somewhat biassed by the prominence in modern practice of certain special features of effect. The psychologists dwell with a pardonable partiality of vision on the means of special expression; to complete their theories the reader has often to add for himself a consideration of the psycholog

Perhaps it is not too much to hope that the foregoing analysis, incomplete and tentative as it is, affords us something like a rational basis for our instinctive attitudes toward the various types of music. Though its intention is to suggest rather than to dogmatize, it may by this time have fixed clearly in our minds certain fundamental principles of artistic effect; and by constant reference to these it may have established in us a measure of judicial impartiality and poise. Especially, it may

II FRANZ SCHUBERT As the earliest full-fledged representative of the romantic school of composers which succeeded Beethoven, Schubert occupies a peculiar position in the history of music. His work forms the link between the classical music of Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven and the romantic music of Schumann, Mendelssohn, and Chopin, having certain qualities in common with each. Traditions, training, and environment allied him with the older order; but instinct led him into new paths. Scattered ple

III ROBERT SCHUMANN In the year 1830, in the old German university town of Heidelberg, Robert Schumann, then a youth of twenty, a reluctant student of law, and a devoted lover of music, was making the most momentous decision of his life. For us, to whom his music is a fait accompli , it is easy enough to see the way his genius pointed; for him it was a time of self-searching, of beckoning hopes and haunting fears, of long hesitation before the final courageous adventure into an unknown land. "My

IV FELIX MENDELSSOHN In studying the relations of a number of contemporary artists to the general tendency of their age it is interesting to note how, in spite of the influence exerted upon them all by prevailing conditions and available opportunities, each responds to the occasion in his own way, always maintaining, in the common enterprise, his own particular ideals, tastes, and methods. Despite all the schools and movements in the history of art, each artist remains himself. So it was in the

V FRÉDÉRIC CHOPIN Critics of literature and painting have succeeded in disseminating pretty widely the idea that the style of each artistic species is determined largely by the technical conditions under which it develops. We all know that one style is appropriate to engraving, another to oil-painting, and still another to pastel work; we recognize that the prose-writer and the versifier must use different vocabularies. Musical critics, however, whether from ignorance or from a disposition to in

VI HECTOR BERLIOZ Not many years ago three Americans, coming, late one afternoon, in the course of a walking tour in northern France, to the little cathedral town of Beauvais, found its ordinarily quiet air filled with tumult, bustle, and confusion. The streets, gay with colored bunting and venders' booths, were thronged with crowds of merrymakers; the hum of insatiable conversation was everywhere; no rooms were to be had at the hotels, and their dining rooms were preëmpted by crowds of men in u