Music: Romantic

In this comprehensive life-and-works study, Hugh Macdonald draws on Berlioz's numerous writings - his Memoires, his critical articles, and his extensive correspondence, including many unpublished documents. Berlioz's provincial upbringing, his enthusiasm for Parisian opera and theatre, hismarriage to the actress Harriet Smithson, his activities as composer, critic, and conductor, are covered in a biographical section which concludes with a chapter on his character. Discussion of the music is chronological, from the time when Berlioz arrived in Paris in 1821 to study medicine, throughthe peak of French Romanticism in the 1830's, to the compositions of his later years. In a final chapter Hugh Macdonald traces influences on Berlioz's style and examines his treatment of melody, harmony, and rhythm, and his distinctive orchestral technique.

Platt (music, Ball State U.) updates her 2003 bibliography for researchers into the life and music of German composer Brahms (1833-97), incorporating the many online sources of information now available. She covers basic resources, letters and recollections, life and works, orchestral and chamber works, keyboard music, vocal music, analysis and interpretations, Brahms and the music of other composers, performance issues, and critical reception of his compositions in different countries.

Important books, articles, reviews, and theses on Frederic Chopin (1810-1849) in Western European languages and in Polish are cited; selected references in languages such as Russian, Czech, and Japanese are included as well. The Chopin legend is considered through studies of the performance tradition and a discography of recent and reissued recordings. Short essays outline the historiography of Chopin research and the current direction of scholarship.

Summary
Often considered the father of twentieth-century music, Debussy was a visionary whose influence is still felt. This Companion offers new insights into Debussy's character, his environment and his music, including challenging views of the roles of nature and eroticism in his life and music. While works in all genres are discussed, they are considered through the themes of sonority, rhythm, tonality and form, with closing chapters considering the performance and reception of his music in the first years of the new century.

Innovating American composer, virtuoso pianist, and swashbuckling Romantic hero, Louis Moreau Gottschalk produced immensely popular works combining the French, Hispanic, and African influences of his native New Orleans. Many of his syncopated compositions anticipated ragtime by half a century. S. Frederick Starr's biography, originally published as Bamboula!, is the most extensive chronicle available of Gottschalk's eventful life. Starr examines Gottshalk's music, his frenetic life on the road, his virtuosity as a performer, his effect on his audiences, and the scandals surrounding his romantic dalliances. He also reveals a generous and compassionate man who sponsored a host of young musicians and provided financial support for his many siblings.

This Companion provides an up-to-date view of the music of Franz Liszt, its contemporary context and performance practice, written by some of the leading specialists in the field of nineteenth-century music studies. Although a core of Liszt's piano music has always maintained a firm hold on the repertoire, his output was so vast, influential and multi-faceted that scholarship too has taken some time to assimilate his achievement. This book offers students and music lovers some of the latest views in an accessible form. Katharine Ellis, Alexander Rehding and James Deaville present the biographical and intellectual aspects of Liszt's legacy, Kenneth Hamilton, James Baker and Anna Celenza give a detailed account of Liszt's piano music - including approaches to performance - Monika Hennemann discusses Liszt's Lieder, and Reeves Shulstad and Dolores Pesce survey his orchestral and choral music.

A best seller when first published in Germany in 2003, Jens Malte Fischer's Gustav Mahler has been lauded by scholars as a landmark work. He draws on important primary resources--some unavailable to previous biographers--and sets in narrative context the extensive correspondence between Mahler and his wife, Alma; Alma Mahler's diaries; and the memoirs of Natalie Bauer-Lechner, a viola player and close friend of Mahler, whose private journals provide insight into the composer's personal and professional lives and his creative process. Fischer explores Mahler's early life, his relationship to literature, his achievements as a conductor in Vienna and New York, his unhappy marriage, and his work with the Metropolitan Opera and the New York Philharmonic in his later years. He also illustrates why Mahler is a prime example of artistic idealism worn down by Austrian anti-Semitism and American commercialism. Gustav Mahler is the best-sourced and most balanced biography available about the composer, a nuanced and intriguing portrait of his dramatic life set against the backdrop of early 20th century America and fin de siècle Europe.

The Companion to Mendelssohn, is written by leading scholars in the field. In fourteen chapters they explore the life, work, and reception of a composer-performer once thought uniquely untroubled in life and art alike, but who is now broadly understood as one of the nineteenth century's most deeply problematic musical figures. The first section of the volume considers issues of biography, with chapters dedicated to Mendelssohn's role in the emergence of Europe's modern musical institutions, to the persistent tensions of his German-Jewish identity, and to his close but enigmatic relationship with his gifted older sister, Fanny. The following nine essays survey Mendelssohn's expansive and multi-faceted musical output, marked as it was by successes in almost every contemporary musical genre outside of opera. The volume's two closing essays confront, in turn, the turbulent course of Mendelssohn's posthumous reception and some of the challenges his music continues to pose for modern performers.

This is not only the first life-and-works on Musorgsky in English for over half a century but also the largest such study of the composer ever to have appeared outside Russia. Mussorgsky was one of the towering figures of nineteenth century Russian music - but also one of the most tragic.Largely an amateur with no systematic training in composition, he nevertheless emerged in his first opera, Boris Godunov, as a supreme musical dramatist, presenting here (and in certain of his piano pieces in Pictures at an Exhibition) some of the most startlingly original of all song composers,with a prodigious gift for uncovering the emotional content of a text. His failure to complete his two remaining operas, Khovanshchina and Sorochintsy Fair, before his premature death from alcohol poisoning is one of music's greatest tragedies.

As Gerald Abraham notes in the foreword, Yastrebtsev was no Boswell and Rimsky-Korsakov no Johnson, yet Yastrebtsev has left in his Reminiscences a rich account of the last 16 years of his teacher and idol's life. Yastrebtsev's chronicle is unique in the literature about composers, especially for its insights about late 19th-century Russian musical life. Compiler Jonas has done it full justice. Her selection of items seems judicious (in the original, the Reminiscences fill about 1000 pages), and her translation is clear and even elegant. Her explanatory notes are indispensable. Highly recommended for established collections.

Remarkable new study...Its central submission, that we have hitherto disregarded or misinterpreted the most profound intuitions of a unique composer, certainly carries conviction. And even after one reading there are already musical passages that this Schubert enthusiast finds himself hearing in quite a new way. Bayan Northcott, BBC MUSIC MAGAZINE The old stereotypes of Schubert as Bohemian artist and unselfconscious creator have been replaced over the past half-century with a picture of a difficult man in difficult times. The author aims to redress the balance, concentrating firstly on works where Schubert's beliefs are clearly expressed (masses, other religious music, songs amounting to Geistliche Lieder). This also prompts an examination of instrumental masterpieces (Unfinished and Great C Major Symphonies, and the Wanderer Fantasy), which show that Schubert's religious side encompasses awe and terror as well as wonder. Schubert's 'complete voice' is thus clearly heard, rather than the sombre one currently emphasised in both literature and concert. LEO BLACK is a former BBC chief producer for music.

This Companion is an accessible introduction to Schumann: his time, his temperament, his style and his œuvre. An international team of scholars explores the cultural context, musical and poetic fabric, sources of inspiration and interpretative reach of key works from the Schumann repertoire ranging from his famous lieder and piano pieces to chamber, orchestral and dramatic works. Additional chapters address Schumann's presence in nineteenth- and twentieth-century composition and the fascinating reception history of his late works. Tables, illustrations, a detailed chronology and advice on further reading make it an ideally informative handbook for both the Schumann connoisseur and the music lover. An excellent textbook for the university student of courses on key composers of nineteenth-century Western Classical music, it is an invaluable guide for all who are interested in the thought, aesthetics and affective power of one of the most intriguing figures of a culturally rich and formative period.

Winner of the ASCAP-Deems Taylor Award, Clara Schumann has become a classic since its publication in 1985. For this new edition Nancy B. Reich has added several photographs and updated the text to include recent discoveries. She has also prepared a Catalogue of Works that includes all of Clara Schumann's known published and unpublished compositions and works she edited, as well as descriptions of the autographs, the first editions, the modern editions, and recent literature on each piece. The Catalogue also notes Schumann's performances of her own music and provides pertinent quotations from letters, diaries, and contemporary reviews.

Continuing the admirable Yale series of analytic studies of 20th-century composers, Baker applies the principles of both Schenkerian and set-complex theory to trace Scriabin's evolution from composing tonal to atonal music. Baker analyzes 23 works ranging from the Fourth Sonata for piano and ``Two Poems,'' op. 32 of 1903, to the Tenth Sonata of 1913. The pieces are all for the piano except for the orchestral Poem of Ecstasy and Prometheus. Seven of his nine chapters are devoted to detailed analyses, complete with voice-leading sketches of partial or complete compositions-14 of the latter-and formal outlines of many of them. These illustrations are explicated in great detail in the text. Baker devotes two additional chapters to discussion of relations among sets in the transitional and atonal music, respectively. Here he takes an essentially statistical overview to show the consistencies and changes in the musical language as the composer's music evolved. All the examples presented are very clear in format and are impeccably reproduced. Addenda include a brief glossary of terms related to set-complex theory, endnotes, and a very complete index. The volume continues a high standard of scholarship that sets an example for and should be appreciated by advanced undergraduate and graduate students and their teachers.

Richard Strauss is a composer much loved among audiences throughout the world, both in the opera house and the concert hall. Despite this popularity, Strauss was for many years ignored by scholars, who considered his commercial success and his continued reliance on the tonal system to be liabilities. However, the past two decades have seen a resurgence of scholarly interest in the composer. This Companion surveys the results, focusing on the principal genres, the social and historical context, and topics perennially controversial over the last century. Chapters cover Strauss's immense operatic output, the electrifying modernism of his tone poems, and his ever-popular Lieder. Controversial topics are explored, including Strauss's relationship to the Third Reich and the sexual dimension of his works. Reintroducing the composer and his music in light of recent research, the volume shows Strauss's artistic personality to be richer and much more complicated than has been previously acknowledged.

Revised and expanded, this book considers recent work on the life and music of this leading English composer. Day presents Vaughan Williams as a part of the great post-Romantic reactionary movement in the company of composers such as Debussy and Stravinsky. The author also demonstrates that the circumstances of Vaughan Williams' life are reflected in his wide-ranging, powerful, and intense music.

In this third edition of the classic Verdi , renowned authority Julian Budden offers a comprehensive overview of Verdi the man and the artist, tracing his ascent from humble beginnings to the status of a cultural patriarch of the new Italy, whose cause he had done much to promote, and demonstrating the gradual enlargement over the years of his artistic vision. This concise study is an accessible, insightful, and engaging summation of Verdi scholarship, acquainting the non-specialist with the personal details Verdi's life, with the operatic world in which he worked, and with his political ideas, his intellectual vision, and his powerful means of communicating them through his music. In his survey of the music itself, Budden emphasizes the unique character of each work as well as the developing sophistication of Verdi's style. He covers all of the operas, the late religious works, the songs, and the string quartet. A glossary explains even the most obscure operatic terms current in Verdi's time.

Richard Wagner is remembered as one of the most influential figures in music and theatre, but his place in history has been marked by a considerable amount of controversy. His attitudes towards the Jews and the appropriation of his operas by the Nazis, for example, have helped to construct a historical persona that sits uncomfortably with modern sensibilities. Yet Wagner's absolutely central position in the operatic canon continues. This volume serves as a timely reminder of his ongoing musical, cultural, and political impact. Contributions by specialists from such varied fields as musical history, German literature and cultural studies, opera production, and political science consider a range of topics, from trends and problems in the history of stage production to the representations of gender and sexuality. With the inclusion of invaluable and reliably up-to-date biographical data, this collection will be of great interest to scholars, students, and enthusiasts.

John Warrack's study gives a detailed account of the life in which the music is discussed (with analysis and music examples) in chronological order.

Founded in 1983 on the occasion of the sesquicentenary of the birth of Johannes Brahms, the American Brahms Society is a non-profit, learned organization that actively seeks to foster and disseminate research on the life, music, and historical position of Brahms. The Society publishes a biannual Newsletter, issues a series of Brahms Studies, awards the Karl Geiringer Scholarship in Brahms Studies, and maintains a Brahms Archive and Research Center.

The American Institute for Verdi Studies at New York University is America's leading research center for the life and works of Giuseppe Verdi. The AIVS was inaugurated at New York University in 1976. Currently the Institute's archive, located at New York University, Bobst Library, houses one of the largest collections of Verdi materials in the world.

Founded by David Kushner, Fernando Laires, and Charles Lee, the American Liszt Society was incorporated in 1964. The purpose of the Society is to promote scholarship and general understanding of the full creative and historical significance of Franz Liszt on the education and development of both the composition and performance of music throughout the Western World. Each year ALS festivals have presented member talent and outstanding guests celebrating Liszt, his influence, and his ideals.

The Donizetti Society aims to promote interest, understanding and learning in the works of Gaetano Donizetti and his teacher, Giovanni Simone Mayr and in the operatic life of their times, 1800-1850.

This comprehensive overview of music in the nineteenth century draws on the most recent scholarship in the field. It avoids mere repertory surveys, focusing instead on issues which illuminate the subject in novel and interesting ways. The book is divided into two parts (1800-1850 and 1850-1900), each of which approaches the major repertory of the period by way of essays investigating the intellectual and socio-political history of the time. The music itself - including popular repertories - is discussed in five central chapters within each part, amplified by essays on topics such as nationalism, genius, and the emergent concept of an avant garde. The book concludes with an examination of musical styles and languages around the turn of the century. The addition of a detailed chronology and extensive glossaries makes this the most informed reference book on nineteenth-century music currently available.

This pathbreaking work reveals the pivotal role of music--musical works and musical culture--in debates about society, self, and culture that forged European modernity through the "long nineteenth century." Michael Steinberg argues that, from the late 1700s to the early 1900s, music not only reflected but also embodied modern subjectivity as it increasingly engaged and criticized old regimes of power, belief, and representation. His purview ranges from Mozart to Mahler, and from the sacred to the secular, including opera as well as symphonic and solo instrumental music.

Defining subjectivity as the experience rather than the position of the "I," Steinberg argues that music's embodiment of subjectivity involved its apparent capacity to "listen" to itself, its past, its desires. Nineteenth-century music, in particular music from a north German Protestant sphere, inspired introspection in a way that the music and art of previous periods, notably the Catholic baroque with its emphasis on the visual, did not.

The book analyzes musical subjectivity initially from Mozart through Mendelssohn, then seeks it, in its central chapter, in those aspects of Wagner that contradict his own ideological imperialism, before finally uncovering its survival in the post-Wagnerian recovery from musical and other ideologies.

Engagingly written yet theoretically sophisticated, Listening to Reason represents a startlingly original corrective to cultural history's long-standing inhibition to engage with music while presenting a powerful alternative vision of the modern.

What Charles Rosen's celebrated book The Classical Style did for music of the Classical period, this new, much-awaited volume brilliantly does for the Romantic era. An exhilarating exploration of the musical language, forms, and styles of the Romantic period, it captures the spirit that enlivened a generation of composers and musicians, and in doing so it conveys the very sense of Romantic music. In readings uniquely informed by his performing experience, Rosen offers consistently acute and thoroughly engaging analyses of works by Schubert, Schumann, Mendelssohn, Bellini, Liszt, and Berlioz, and he presents a new view of Chopin as a master of polyphony and large-scale form. He adeptly integrates his observations on the music with reflections on the art, literature, drama, and philosophy of the time, and thus shows us the major figures of Romantic music within their intellectual and cultural context. Rosen covers a remarkably broad range of music history and considers the importance to nineteenth-century music of other cultural developments: the art of landscape, a changed approach to the sacred, the literary fragment as a Romantic art form. He sheds new light on the musical sensibilities of each composer, studies the important genres from nocturnes and songs to symphonies and operas, explains musical principles such as the relation between a musical idea and its realization in sound and the interplay between music and text, and traces the origins of musical ideas prevalent in the Romantic period. Rich with striking descriptions and telling analogies, Rosen's overview of Romantic music is an accomplishment without parallel in the literature, a consummate performance by a master pianist and music historian.

Beginning with Beethoven's middle years, the author weaves a narrative in which major composers such as Schubert, Rossini, Liszt, Chopin, Berlioz, Schumann, Wagner, Verdi, Tchaikovsky, and Musorgsky are discussed in historical context. Professor Plantinga also places into clear focus slightly lesser figures such as Mendelssohn, Smetana, Dvorak, and others. In a final section that embraces Brahms, Mahler, Bruckner, Strauss, and Wolf, Plantinga rounds out this fascinating survey of the diverging movements and styles that constitute the Romantic century's legacy to the musical arts.

Ratner looks at familiar 19th-century pieces from a new perspective. He explores the nature of the 19th-century sound palette, how composers use it as a distinctive compositional element, and how these aspects of sound contrast with classical usage. He includes quotes from relevant contemporary theorists and composers to support his points. Part 1 studies 19th-century orchestration. The perspective is fresh and engaging, although Ratner does not break new ground here. In Part 2 he describes his system of "rhetorical reduction" designed to capture the important elements of the music. Parts 3 and 4 apply these principles of reduction to 19th-century period structures and forms. Ratner compares pieces of Schubert, Chopin, Schumann, Liszt, Brahms, Mahler, and others with their rhetorical reductions. These comparisons highlight how the composers obscure, distort, and interrupt the syntax with elements of sound. Yet, the composers never entirely lose traditional, 18th-century syntax. The analyses are wide-ranging, penetrating, and convincing. Easily readable, with basic introductions to each section and many accessible examples, this book should be a welcome addition to all libraries.