[pervycreeper]

By "The Romantic Generation", I was thinking more of Schumann, Chopin, Liszt, and Mendelssohn, all of whom were nearly exact contemporaries (b.1809-1811), and who consciously broke with with the past (including Beethoven), by largely eschewing Sonata Form. Interesting that a century after Reicha, Busoni picked up on some of the same approaches to composition that Reicha had taken once Romanticism had reached an impasse, becoming the de rigueur approach for the succeeding century.

Loved the documentaries. How about Episode 5 'Paris'?

[ivancdg]

To what extent the composers you mentioned broke completely with Beethoven (and/or the past) is arguable. All of them wrote works in sonata form, all of them wrote fugues, all of them studied counterpoint carefully. Liszt idolized Beethoven, and many of the key works of all four are unthinkable without Beethoven's example. Not to diminish the originality of their respective contributions. But the Beethoven myth was already in place when they were growing up and the legacy can be traced in all of their works.

Received wisdom dictates that every century or so, composers break with the past and do something completely new. The reality is a lot messier.

Beethoven himself is a good example. He is held up as the paragon of artistic fearlessness, not catering to audience's whims, pursuing a vision of the future, etc. In fact he was very well versed in the music of the past, including JS Bach, Handel, Mozart, Haydn, and others whose names have been forgotten. He also did everything he could to ingratiate himself with the aristocracy who commissioned his works: i.e. his market. He followed the Y-Combinator motto: "Make things people want" in the sense that he made things his customers wanted. He forged an idiosyncratic personal style but many of its constituent elements are stolen from older styles (counterpoint, abrupt changes of texture, the unification of movements over a larger form).

I like your analogy about Romanticism reaching an impasse and Busoni picking things up from there. The path I drew above leading from Beethoven directly to the 4 Romantic composers is meant to illustrate that the historical line, now that we are reestablishing Reicha's place in history, might be drawn from him straight to the 20th century (Bartok, Stravinsky, Martinu) in his treatment of meter and the way he is comfortable with abstraction.

As for "Episode 5 Paris", believe me, it's very much on my mind. The current idea is to do a whole second series of videos, only in Paris, or perhaps one in Prague (where he was born) and the other three in Paris. After all, Reich spent 30 years of his life in Paris (1799-1802, 1808-1836) and there is tons of material, including his teaching work (his students included Liszt, Franck, Berlioz, Gounod, and many other big names). I'm hoping we can film in the vaults of the French National Library (BnF) where the manuscripts are, to show people what it's like to dig up old forgotten scores.

For the moment, it's just a daydream, until we secure funding (unlikely).