Yes. This documentary makes a case for just that. But their calling Mozart 'The First Romantic' is questionable because some see Haydn's earlier Sturm und Drang symphonies as forbearers of romanticism (the term proto-romantic is used for these types of works). Others make the case that some of C.P.E. Bach's piano sonatas are, too.

 

But their calling Mozart 'The First Romantic' is questionable because some see Haydn's earlier Sturm und Drang symphonies as forbearers of romanticism (the term proto-romantic is used for these types of works).

Beck's (from the late 1750s to the early 1760s) predate them. www.youtube.com/watch?v=wXqx4MWlOz8&t=3m58s

The Angularities of "L’Isle Déserte" (1779), an Opéra Comique
This is wild; listen to the recitative (0:01) and especially the aria (3:36):

Spoiler: Le temps partvient à tout détruire - Vivre ainsi c'est mourir sans cesse

Le temps parvient à tout détruire, ce rocher cede à son Empire, et la douleur qui me déchire seule résiste à son pouvoir. Hélas! De voir finir mon rigoureux martire ai je donc perdu tout espoire Dépit jaloux, haine crudèle Etouffez dans mon âme un malheureux amour! Inutiles efforts je sens qu‘a l’infidele mon coeur est soumis pour toujours.	Time can destroy everything, this rock yields to its empire, but the pain that racks me alone resists its might. Alas! I’ve lost all hope, is it true, of seeing the end of my severe affliction. Bitter jealousy, cruel hate, smother this luckless love in my soul! Futile efforts, I feel how my heart even now belongs to my faithless husband.
Vivre ainsi c’est mourir sans cesse, ah que plutôt ma faiblesse succombe à mon désespoir Mes malheurs et ma tendresse de la mort me font un devoir. Vivre ainsi c’est mourir sans cesse, ah que plutôt ma faiblesse succombe à mon désespoir	Life like this means constant death: ah, instead my weakness should succumb to my despair. My misfortunes and my tenderness in death obliges me to do this duty. Life like this means constant death: ah, instead my weakness should succumb to my despair.

 

In my view the symphony that the OP cited is much wider in it's emotional scope and also much more original and influential than the Requiem by Mozart and Süssmayr, and I don't really like this comparison. But I agree that in some pieces by composers of the 18th century such as Gluck, J. Haydn, C.P.E. Bach and, of course, Mozart, there's enough drama for one to argue that these works may have been precursors of the Romantic era. In the case of the genius of Salzburg, I'm thinking not only in the Requiem but also in pieces such as the piano concertos Nos. 20 and 24, the middle movement of the piano concerto No. 23, in some parts of Don Giovanni, in symphonies Nos. 25 and 40 and slow movements of Nos. 38, 39 and 41, in string quintet No. 4, in the two last piano fantasias, in the piano sonatas Nos. 8 and 14, et alia.

"Scholars note that Sturm und Drang, like Empfindsamkeit, foreshadows Romanticism in its philosophical values. According to Lilian Furst, 'Sturm und Drang foreshadowed very many of the basic concepts of Romanticism: the belief in the autonomy of the divinely inspired genius, the release of the imagination from the bondage of ‘good taste,’ the primacy of spontaneous and intuitive feeling, the complete freedom of artistic expression, and finally, the notion of organic growth and development, from which arose both an interest in the past, particularly the Middle Ages, and a new pantheistic vision of nature as part of a unified cosmos.'" Source here.

 

Listen to Handel's funeral ode (The ways of Zion do mourn), Pergolesi's and J. Haydn's Stabat Mater, M. Haydn's Requiem. Mozart's Requiem sounds at least as much baroque as romantic!

 

I more see it as a lot of Broque music is romantic in nature. The classical ideal, coming out of Plato, Aristotle and the Stoic, is to temper the emotions, to avoid extremes and drama. Classicists generally avoid tragedy and other worldliness. Calm, rational thinking is the aim. Optimism pervades much of classical art.

The romantics cover a fuller spectrum of the emotional range. For example, the opening piece of Bach's St. John Passion is highly romantic in my view. I'm not talking about musical structures in any way, just the conveyance of emotion. It is a scary piece of music, full of turbulence and dissonance. Classicists aren't much into scaring people.

There are other periods of classicism and romanticism in art. Gothic in the late middle ages is romantic, the Renaissance is classical. Then, around 1600, art turns darker, with more pessimism and foreboading. A lot of the paintings from that era are very similar to 19th century romantic paintings; dark skies and a focus on tragedy and human frailties.

There was a decided calming down of the arts with Rococco and Galant music even before Bach died and classical values reasserted themselves. But drama reasserted itself in a small number of Haydn's and Mozart's works, Beethoven increased the drama and by 1830 romanticism had fully reasserted itself. It seems to me that there were full-blown romantic painters and writers by 1800 (starting with William Blake?) but it took several decades for music to catch up.

 

Rosner disagrees: [albeit critical in tone; link to the full article: sequenza21.com/2006/03/bicycle-pump.html]
"... they told me: “Listen to the pieces, usually also in minor, where you can hear a contained smoldering prefiguring the romantic era”. Those excerpts do indeed exist, but they actually are the most convincing passages of the fact that the emperor has no clothes ..."
"... The aria “Tuba Mirum” presents (loudly, but that doesn’t help) the solo voice in a melody that would be better a lullaby. ..."

 

Rosner's text might be the most sophomoric drivel ever written by a 60 year old. Gould was at least a good pianist.

 

I really enjoy all of your responses. Wonderful suggestions in many very interesting answers. Some of it truly eye-opening.

 

I was listening to Mozart´s requiem and I realized it sounded more romantic than strictly classical. It was definitely not neat and balanced and tidy. It was just about as dramatic as Beethoven´s ninth symphony, overflowing with emotions.

Beethovens 9th is classical imo, not romantic.

But Mozarts Requiem comes close to romantic.

 

'Romantic' is a slippery word, like 'Classical'. If you mean music of great emotional expressiveness, it can be applied to a great deal of pre-19th century music, none more so than Bach. But the Romantic Movement was a cultural phenomenon which came into existence in the second half of the 18th century and really took off as a result of the political developments of 1789.
But I am not convinced that Sturm und Drang should be seen as a precursor. The movement was largely confined to German culture and did not last beyond the 1770s. Haydn. a notable exponent for a time, put it behind him and there is little trace of it in his later works. Mozart also caught the zeitgeist at the time of his 'little ' G minor Symphony. But then, after he had gone on to achieve supreme command of the classical style, many of his key works became tinged or coloured with the sort of 'feeling' which we now find characteristic of 19th century Romanticism. ( I am not just referring to the chromaticism.) Don Giovanni is Mozart's great romantic achievement, but I always sense the romantic flavour in the Requiem, a strange work in more ways than one and developing very different facets of Romanticism to that found in Don G.
On the other hand, I have no difficulty in regarding the 'Choral' as a romantic work. By the time it was written the Romantic movement was ablaze across the whole cultural spectrum and the 19th century saw it for what it was, a revolutionary call-to-arms.

 

'Romantic' is a slippery word, like 'Classical'. If you mean music of great emotional expressiveness, it can be applied to a great deal of pre-19th century music, none more so than Bach. But the Romantic Movement was a cultural phenomenon which came into existence in the second half of the 18th century and really took off as a result of the political developments of 1789.
But I am not convinced that Sturm und Drang should be seen as a precursor. The movement was largely confined to German culture and did not last beyond the 1770s. Haydn. a notable exponent for a time, put it behind him and there is little trace of it in his later works. Mozart also caught the zeitgeist at the time of his 'little ' G minor Symphony. But then, after he had gone on to achieve supreme command of the classical style, many of his key works became tinged or coloured with the sort of 'feeling' which we now find characteristic of 19th century Romanticism.

I'm not very convinced by this that the Sturm und Drang movement is not a precursor to the Romantic movement. That it was localized in Germany isn't a good argument because everything has to begin somewhere. And considering Sturm und Drang was literary as well as musical, the French author Jean-Jacque Rousseau was challenging neoclassical norms several years before Haydn wrote his minor key symphonies. So proto-romanticism didn't really start in Germany. But Goethe's The Sorrows of Young Werther (1774) and Friedrich Schiller's The Robbers (1781) challenged neoclassicism in a similar way to Rousseau. And those literary works were cultural. That Haydn himself didn't continue in that vain doesn't mean those symphonies were not a precursor for what was to come later. But I've never read what inspired Haydn to write those several minor key symphonies over a several year period or why he stopped.

And while Bach and other Baroque composers wrote some very passionate music, Galant music was a reaction against that and and other Baroque aesthetics, and Galant developed into the high neo-classical style. Proto-romanticism was a reaction against the neoclassical arts, so it was very much the bringing back of some musical aspects that neoclassicism had suppressed from the Baroque era, more emphasis on darker emotions being a significant one.

But I do agree that 1789 is a good marker for starting a more influential and widespread movement.

 

In my case, I separate classicism from romanticism around 1790. French Revolution 1789. Death of Mozart 1791. But, this change is gradual and the end of the gallant style coexists with the seeds that begin to germinate of romanticism. (Yet another indication of the radical change in musical aesthetics that was already coming is the end of the opera seria, the top genre of the gallant style during almost all its existence. The galant style itself was born of Italian opera seria - and buffa!!! - ).
Romantic Mozart is not my favourite. I find him boring, out of place. It's not my style, not my taste. Symphony 40 or Concerto 24 are not my favourites (Symphony 25 is not romantic but sturm un drang). Concerto 20, one of my favourites, I do not consider it romantic but the climax of the European piano style, it contains motivic elements with decades of history.
Don Giovanni is not romantic for me, it simply fulfils the tradition of opera buffa-seria of decades. That said, in its most beautiful expression.
Is Johann Schobert romantic? No. But, how much emotionality in his pieces, personalism, "too many notes" that it's something I relate to romantics, etc, he died in 1767!!!!!!
Another interesting question: how would Mozart have reacted to romanticism? As with all music and musicians he interacted with, no doubt, he would have been able to imitate PERFECTLY any romantic style, creating SUPERIOR works in the style.

 

1768 is the same year Joseph Haydn wrote his 39th symphony Tempesta di Mare, consider his first Sturm und Drang symphony. So I don't see how this contradicts anything I said.

I mean the expressively dissonant use of harmony and counterpoint; quite a number of composers were incorporating them in their music throughout the second half of the 18th century. (Have a look at thread I cited above if you would like to know what I mean. It's not necessarily "Sturm-und-drang" in general.)

eg. Alceste (1773) by Schweitzer (1735-1782), who was acquainted with Mozart as he told in a letter.

Act V, Scene 1: "Ihr heil'gen unnennbaren Mächte"

Act I, Scene 1: "Zwischen Angst und zwischen Hoffen"

But I am not convinced that Sturm und Drang should be seen as a precursor. The movement was largely confined to German culture and did not last beyond the 1770s. Haydn. a notable exponent for a time, put it behind him and there is little trace of it in his later works.

I think the difference between his symphonies that are generally called 'Sturm-und-drang' (the 44th, 45th, 49th, etc) and those that are not are exaggerated in terms of 'Sturm-und-drang-ness'. For example, the development of the 1st movement of the 85th is reminiscent of the 1st movement of the Farewell, but the Farewell towards the end musically portrays a 'light-hearted' situation of all the players leaving the stage one by one.

and the same goes for the 60th, and the C minor presto movement (starts @16:51 in the video embbed below), reminscent of the 44th. I suppose this is a part of his "Classical" aesthetics in having different affects varied and contrasted in a work.

Plus, there are moments in the later oratorios and operas that express real Haydnesque storm and stress. eg. the "Ach, das Ungewitter" chorus.