Notes Toward a New Romanticism - by Ted Gioia

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Notes Toward a New Romanticism<br>Or why it's 1800 all over again

Ted Gioia<br>Nov 17, 2023

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I made a flippant remark a few months ago. It was almost a joke.<br>But then I started taking it seriously.<br>I said that technocracy had grown so oppressive and manipulative it would spur a backlash. And that our rebellion might resemble the Romanticist movement of the early 1800s.<br>We need a new Romanticism, I quipped. And we will probably get one.

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A new Romanticism? Could that really happen? That seems so unlikely.<br>Even I didn’t take this seriously (at first). I was just joking. But during the subsequent weeks and months, I kept thinking about my half-serious claim.<br>I realized that, the more I looked at what happened circa 1800, the more it reminded me of our current malaise.<br>Rationalist and algorithmic models were dominating every sphere of life at that midpoint in the Industrial Revolution—and people started resisting the forces of progress.

Companies grew more powerful, promising productivity and prosperity. But Blake called them “dark Satanic mills” and Luddites started burning down factories—a drastic and futile step, almost the equivalent of throwing away your smartphone.

Even as science and technology produced amazing results, dysfunctional behaviors sprang up everywhere. The pathbreaking literary works from the late 1700s reveal the dark side of the pervasive techno-optimism—Goethe’s novel about Werther’s suicide, the Marquis de Sade’s nasty stories, and all those gloomy Gothic novels. What happened to the Enlightenment?

As the new century dawned, the creative class (as we would call it today) increasingly attacked rationalist currents that had somehow morphed into violent, intrusive forces in their lives—an 180 degree shift in the culture. For Blake and others, the name Newton became a term of abuse.

Artists, especially poets and musicians, took the lead in this revolt. They celebrated human feeling and emotional attachments—embracing them as more trustworthy, more flexible, more desirable than technology, profits, and cold calculation.

That’s the world, circa 1800.<br>The new paradigm shocked Europe when it started to spread. Cultural elites had just assumed that science and reason would control everything in the future. But that wasn’t how it played out.<br>Resemblances with the current moment are not hard to see.<br>“Imagine a growing sense that algorithmic and mechanistic thinking has become too oppressive. Imagine if people started resisting technology. Imagine a revolt against STEM’s dominance. Imagine people deciding that the good life starts with NOT learning how to code.”

These considerations led me, about nine months ago, to conduct a deep dive into the history of the Romanticist movement. I wanted to see what the historical evidence told me.<br>I’ve devoted hours every day to this—reading stacks of books, both primary and secondary sources, on the subject. I’ve supplemented it with a music listening program and a study of visual art from the era.<br>What’s my goal? I’m still not entirely sure.

Luddites destroying a factory<br>I might write an essay on this in the future. Frankly, the subject deserves a book. But I doubt that I’m ready to take on that workload. Right now, I’m just trying to clarify my own thinking on this matter—because I believe it’s highly relevant to our current situation.<br>Today I will take a baby step, and share some of my random notes on the early days of Romanticism.

I’m now structuring my research in chronological order—that’s a method I often use in addressing big topics.<br>I make no great promises for what I share below. These are just notes on what happened in Western culture from 1800 to 1804—listed year-by-year.<br>Sharing these is part of my process. I expect this will generate useful feedback, and guide me on the next phase of this project.<br>As I’ve written elsewhere, I put a lot of energy into note-taking—so this may also be of interest to readers who have asked about my research methods. Consider the notes below as typical of the material I write for my own benefit, but rarely publish.<br>Because music is always my entry point into cultural changes, it plays a key role here in how I analyze past (and present) events. I firmly believe that music is an early indicator of social change. The notes below are offered as evidence in support of that view.<br>Notes on Romanticism: 1800 through 1804

1800

Napoleon attends a performance of Haydn’s The Creation in Paris on Christmas Eve 1800—but narrowly avoids a bomb (200 pounds of gun powder and stone fragments hidden in a wine barrel) on his way to the concert.<br>Romanticism is dangerous stuff.

Haydn publishes The Creation in...