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