Toward a Stylistic Chronology of Johan Helmich Roman's Symphonies

Abstract

T he determination of a chronological order in the works of a composer is a central issue in any understanding of the music since stylistic development over time can show how one's musical language is formed and progresses. Moreover, it can demonstrate how the influences of the various styles with which a composer comes into contact shape the music. In the case of Johan Helmich Roman (1694-1758), the creation of an individual style over time is particularly important, for the span of his creative life was spread over the transition from the High Baroque style of well-known composers, such as George Frederick Handel and Georg Philipp Telemann, to the more forward-looking triadic music of the galant or early Empfindsamkeit composers of the middle of the century. The latter include flautist Johann Joachim Quantz, Johann Gottlieb and Carl Heinrich Graun, all of whom were resident in Berlin, the home of Sweden's new crown princess, Lovisa Ulrika. Indeed, the variety of musical development during his lifetime can be summarized in a chronological comparison: Roman, who predeceased his spiritual mentor Handel by one year, outlived that harbinger of the so-called Classical style, Johann Stamitz of Mannheim, likewise by a single year. Thus it was theoretically possible for him to have been cognizant of a wide range of musical styles, from the contrapuntal Fortspinnung of the early Baroque that he learned as a youth in Britain to the short, emotional, Italianate music of the Empfindsamkeit to the lyrical, instrumentally-powerful, yet often cliche-ridden central European style of the Mannheim composers. In short, by the time of his death,