Robert Clements:

>... but even in the most prentious branches of 19th century romanticism
>there was seldom a sense that popularisation was something which needed
>to be inherently avoided - hardly surprisingly, since romanticism derived
>from a form of democratic nationalism; even if romanticism itself wasn't
>always democratic or nationalist.

That's not so simple.  Many romantics exhibed contradictory feelings and
attitudes towards the "popularisation" of their music.  (Beethoven was
just one of the first).  Being a state of general dissatisfaction with
the symbolic frame of its own social class (bourgeoisie), romanticism
was fascinated alternatively (or even simultaneously) with different
ideological positions, despite of its pretended democratic or nationalist
roots.  I mean: one could ask whether a "romantic" French 1830's
revolutionary hated more the bourgeosie allied to the new regime that
the King itself, but what is sure is that he didn't consider himself as
a part of the bunch of proletarians that were at the streets with him.
The concept of "aristocracy by merits" (held more or less consciously by
almost all romantic artists under the variant "spiritual elite") implied
a pretension of superiority over the old blood aristocracy, but also over
the uncultivated (read poor) people.  In fact "The People" is quite a
problematic notion for the romantic.  It's the mob monster that represents
the lowest part of the human being, and on the other hand, it is (under
an idealised, conflict-free form) the protagonist of the romantic's own
utopies, those utopies that they builded up on order to differentiate
themselves of their own social class (the rich, "egoist", non-intellectual
bourgeoisie).  So, a romantic composer could oscillate in the same
afternoon from "I don't compose for the mob" to "I feel happy when people
sings my melodies at the streets".

>That said, this division is more a branch of one approach to 20th century
>art-music than its aesthetic core; & frankly, not generally representative
>of the good stuff.  When a serialist like Skallkottas, a romantic like
>Vaughan Williams & a neoprimitif like XIAN can all find ways of integrating
>contemporary venacular & personal aesthetic, the rejectionist museum men
>were hardly likely to produce much art worth considering.

All this is a bit demagogic.  I know many composers of this century who
didn't integrate any of vernacular music into their works, and none of
them was what we could call fairly a "rejectionist museum man".  In fact,
I don't know a single major XX century composer that declared himself to be
a "rejectionist" towards inegrating vernacular and classical music.  There
are guys who did and guys who didn't: that's so simple.  I don't se why
the "guys who didn't" were less likely to produce art worth considering (I
don't think neccesary to quote examples to hold the contrary).  It's just
like saying that you are less likely to have good sex if you don't date
with a specific kind of people.

Pablo Massa
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