The 19th century

[chickenfeet]

I really don't like the 19th century. This is an aesthetic not a political statement. There are very, very few writers, artists or composers from the period, say, 1815-1900 that I enjoy and many of high repute that I actively dislike. The only writers of the period that I really enjoy are Manley-Hopkins, Zola and Tolstoy and composers and painters are even scarcer. I can stand Wagner in certain moods but that's about it.

Comments

[frankie-ecap.livejournal.com]

Architecture?

[chickenfeet2003.livejournal.com]

Dear God! George Gilbert Scott and Ye Olde Gothick Revival. Get me to the vomitorium fast.

[aparecida.livejournal.com]

Hmm. Ravel? Mahler? Dostoyevsky? Seurat? I like Berthe Morisot, though I'm not big on the other Impressionists.

[chickenfeet2003.livejournal.com]

OK I'll concede a few painters. I don't dislike the Impressionists and I like Turner rather a lot. Mahler I can tolerate, Ravel I could live without. Dostoevsky doesn't work for me. I'm not sure why.

[dyddgu.livejournal.com]

I completely agree with you, at least literature-wise. I am quite fond of Mahler, though, and indeed Seurat, having seen Sondheim's musical about him.

[rhythmaning.livejournal.com]

Is this a recent discovery, or a long held view? I am curious about what prompted your post.

That said, there is a lot of 19C art and design which I really don't like - particularly the rise of industrialist, mock-Gothic, instituional architecture.

I love the Impressionists (though probably later than earlier - nearly 20C!), dislike pre-Raphaelites.

(Mine is a largely if not wholly UK-oriented view!)

[chickenfeet2003.livejournal.com]

It's a long held view, though one that was many years in the making. The post was at least in part prompted by the Thirty Books list which was heavy on the Dickens.

[rhythmaning.livejournal.com]

It is an interesting thought: the 19C was a period of great change (again, my UK centric view; plus I have limited knowledge of history) - the increase rate of transfer of employment from agricultural to industrial sturctures, the political and social changes, the establishment of educational structures, and so on.

I am not sure that the whole century is that coherent - perhaps it is more "bitty"; although it is interesting that in the UK a single monarch held sway for nearly two thirds of it.

[chickenfeet2003.livejournal.com]

It's an interesting century in many ways but not, IMHO, aesthetically. Enormous social and economic changes set against (in Europe at least) unprecedented peace after 1815. THis seems to have led to a kind of ossification of aesthetic values. Then around 1900 it explodes, first in the arts and then with that cataclysm that brought a whole world to an end. I'd highly recommend Modris Eckstein's Rites of Spring for a look at modernism and the end of the old order.

[shezan.livejournal.com]

To have modernism you need to have something to rebel against. Plus, Ruskin! The Vienna Ring! Viollet-le-Duc! Haussmann's Paris!

[chickenfeet2003.livejournal.com]

To have modernism you need to have something to rebel against.

Well that's like saying that to have socialism one has to have capitalism. True, but it doesn't mean one has to like capitalism.

[shezan.livejournal.com]

Well, at the end of the day, what do you prefer: this



or this

[chickenfeet2003.livejournal.com]

To be nonest, I'm not enthusiastic about any of them.

[jez-e-bel.livejournal.com]

I must agree with this... while there are a few (sparse) exceptions - I generally find writers/painters and the ilk from that period to be overly burdened and plodding... they lack a certain whimsy that I find compelling in art...

[lemur-catta.livejournal.com]

I'd definitely leave Wagner way off my music list but I very definitely add Chopin plus maybe a bit of Fauré, Debussy,Schubert and Schumann.
I'd rather have Dostoevsky than Tolstoy (but Tolstoy can stay).I think Emily Dickinson and George Elliot are good too.
I could do with out the Impressionists but compared to the Salon-approved stuff they're a definite improvement.
Architecturally I'm with you though I kind of like Queen Anne-style Victorian houses (at least in their San Francisco incarnation and I'd prefer a lot of Victorian domestic exteriors to Georgian ones (way too symetrical, not enough towers :) As for the interior I'd definitely swap the Victorian one for Georgian again(preferably Adams).

That being said I'd rather not go with Western domestic architecture at all given the choice.

[theomaniac.livejournal.com]

You're just a 19th century bigot, that's what you are.

[shezan.livejournal.com]

Bloody hell! You don't like Balzac? Trollope? Thackeray? Chekhov? Dumas? Turner? The Impressionists? Turgeniev? Ingres? Géricault? Eiffel? Mommsen? Egon Schiele? Klimt? Verdi? Wagner? Beethoven? Faraday? Jules Verne? Pasteur? I love the 19th century. It's peopled by towering giants who built the world we inhabit today.

[chickenfeet2003.livejournal.com]

I was a bit careful to start my period in 1815 to make sure Beethoven and Austen slipped in under the wire. And as I have said elsewhere in the thread I am very fond of Turner and to a lesser extent the Impressionists. OK and I'll concede Thackeray too. Verdi is like G&S without being funny. Trollope and Balzac I just can't read. Dumas I'm a bit ambivalent about but wouldn't much miss. The scientists don't count as I was very specifically referring to aesthetics. I mean I have as much admiration for Cauchy and Weierstrauss as the next analyst!

[unblinkered.livejournal.com]

Verdi is like G&S without being funny

Thank you!!!! I seriously don't understand why people fall over themselves to hear Verdi...it's just so blergh. Boring.

Needless to say, this opinion was not very popular when I worked for Scottish Opera, heh.

[chickenfeet2003.livejournal.com]

Have you ever heard Verdi sung in English?

[unblinkered.livejournal.com]

Thankfully, no. But I haven't heard much Verdi at all recently, since I can't bear to listen to opera on the stereo and generally avoid Verdi at the theatre. And I haven't worked for ScotOp since 2002...

[rhythmaning.livejournal.com]

I am not an opera fan, but I have been to a few operas in translation and a few in the original language.

The ones in translation seem to lose what little magic they had - suddenly the words seem boring.

But my general opinion about opera is that I wish they would stop singing so I could listen to the music in peace...

[shezan.livejournal.com]

I seriously don't understand why people fall over themselves to hear Verdi

Fantastic harmonies? Dramatic tension?

(Just thinking of the beginning of Otello right now.)

[chickenfeet2003.livejournal.com]

It's peopled by towering giants

Or, in the case of Eiffel, giant towers

*giggle*

[shezan.livejournal.com]

Eiffel also built this...

[sollersuk.livejournal.com]

You don't like the Impressionists???

[chickenfeet2003.livejournal.com]

I'm OK with the Impressionists but thay are not top of my list by any means

[lisajulie.livejournal.com]

I confess to a fondess for Anthony Trollope. Musically, I am _so_ in agreement with you. As for painting, I can do Impressionism and/or Pointillism by removing my glasses. No big deal.

But aesthetically, I'm also enamoured of Art Nouveau and William Morris and the Arts and Crafts movement. Not to say that they didn't turn out some awful dreck, but more was good than bad.