CHAPTER 12 The First Romantics

Late Eighteenth-century Music Esthetics; Beethoven’s Career and His Posthumous Legend

Chapter:

CHAPTER 12 The First Romantics

Source:

MUSIC IN THE SEVENTEENTH AND EIGHTEENTH CENTURIES

Author(s):

Richard Taruskin

Richard Taruskin

The earliest public critics were motivated by a concept or ideal called romanticism—an easy thing to spot in a writer or an artist, but notoriously difficult to define. And that is because romanticism was (and is) no single idea but a whole heap of ideas, some of them quite irreconcilable. Yet if it has a kernel, that kernel can be found in the opening paragraphs of a remarkable book that appeared in Paris in 1782 under the title Confessions—the last and (he thought) crowning work of Jean-Jacques Rousseau. “I am commencing an undertaking,” he wrote,

hitherto without precedent, and which will never find an imitator. I desire to set before my fellows the likeness of a man in all the truth of nature, and that man myself.

Myself alone! I know the feelings of my heart, and I know men. I am not made like any of those I have seen; I venture to believe that I am not made like any of those who are in existence. If I am not better, at least I am different. Whether Nature has acted rightly or wrongly in destroying the mould in which she cast me, can only be decided after I have been read.¹

Citation (MLA):

Richard Taruskin. "Chapter 12 The First Romantics." The Oxford History of Western Music. Oxford University Press. New York, USA. n.d. Web. 6 Dec. 2023. <https://www.oxfordwesternmusic.com/view/Volume2/actrade-9780195384826-chapter-12.xml>.

Citation (APA):

Taruskin, R. (n.d.). Chapter 12 The First Romantics. In Oxford University Press, Music In The Seventeenth And Eighteenth Centuries. New York, USA. Retrieved 6 Dec. 2023, from https://www.oxfordwesternmusic.com/view/Volume2/actrade-9780195384826-chapter-12.xml

Citation (Chicago):

Richard Taruskin. "Chapter 12 The First Romantics." In Music In The Seventeenth And Eighteenth Centuries, Oxford University Press. (New York, USA, n.d.). Retrieved 6 Dec. 2023, from https://www.oxfordwesternmusic.com/view/Volume2/actrade-9780195384826-chapter-12.xml