Stephen: > >The lack of 'improvisation' runs inline with the omnipotence of the >composer and bigger orchestras in Romantic period. Hard to improvise >in this context!
True. > >But is this really decline, or the 'rot set(ting) in'??? > Well it was the loss of a skill. Whether it was the "rot setting in" is of course a matter of taste, but to my mind the hypertrophy of the Romantic and 20th orchestra was an illustration of "more is less". Getting a bit off-topic: I can very much enjoy massive orchestral stuff, but I think it's interesting that - to my mind at least - Schoenberg summed up and excelled everything the 19th century composers had been striving for in a mere half hour for string sextet (Verklärte Nacht in the original version. I don't think the string orchestra version adds much apart from volume, bulk and stodge, while reducing clarity. This is purely a personal opinion - I don't want to get into pointless arguments.) c To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
