(02-12-2014, 09:44 AM)cheetowarrior Wrote: You guys are crazy, and TOOOTALLY missing what really ruined music: 19th century Romanticism.
I mean, come ON. There's a reason no musician in history has approached Beethoven... the Classical Era is where it's at! Even before that, Baroque was full of gems too! Mozart! Handel - you still hear his "Messiah" all the time to this day!
Now Baroque and Classical composers knew what was up. They had the organization, the complexity, the theory, with just a enough flexibility for the emotions, through the Classical Era. Then the Romantic composers came through and it was all downhill from there...
I mean, it led straight into the likes of John Cage! Romanticism to Classical music did what Protestantism did to Christianity: threw every foundation out the window! And now look where we are now: Rebecca Black and Bieber. Yeah, you can thank Brahms for that.
(there is one exception though: Rachmaninoff, as a Romantic composer, still had all the makings of a musical genius present in his works, he just happened to live in the wrong era!)
Did you just compare Brahms to JB? Poor guy! Whichever way you take it, Romanticism expanded music beyond. Just the fact, that Romanticism by itself contained many different styles should say something. Classicism was... boring to be honest. Until Beethoven rushed in and completely destroyed what Haydn was teaching. Actually saying Classicism was great due to Beethoven is wrong. Beethoven was the one who prepared Romantism, it was his own style that made Romantism possible. Do your homework before comparing...
During Romanticism, many countries could find their own identity and not be scared of their own traditional music (Remember, Germany, France and Italy were the biggest influences and almost wiped out traditional music in other countries. Russia was VERY influenced by France). Just from our country, we have AntonÃn Dvořák, BedÅ™ich Smetana. Also, what about Edvard Hagerup Grieg? I doubt anyone wouldn't know his famous pieces. What about Sergei Prokofiev? Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov? Their pieces too are magnificent and helped music to expand!
And if you want to compare something to the pop music that we can hear today. You should really look more into Classicism and harmony in Classicism. You will find out, that the infamous "4 chords songs" are actually really similar to the way composers wrote in early Classicism.
4 basic harmonic functions and simple, yet catchy melody. That is what Classicism is, simplicity. Baroque music is complicated, people were tired of those difficult chords and chromatic melodies used by Bach. They wanted something simple. Yay Classicism is here...