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 [log in to unmask]