Steve asks:

>What makes a Romantic composer Romantic -- the broader question.

My favorite definition is from Jean Clay's book: "Romanticism."

Loosely defined as a preoccupation, in painting, with one or more of the
following:

Melancholy, eroticism, fear of death, anxiety, contemplations of infinity,
occult, revivalism, idealism, (including idealism of the past or idealism
through Nature), superhuman virtuosity, Artist as Savior....

This is as much as I can remember.  Supposedly all sprung from the loss
of God as the father figure during the abrupt rise of Materialism and
Newtonian physics.

There you go.:)

John Smyth
Sac, CA