The age of Mozart and Beethoven / Giorgio Pestelli ; translated by Eric Cross.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Pestelli, Giorgio.

Standardized Title:

Età di Mozart e di Beethoven. English

Language:

English

Italian

Subjects (All):

Music--18th century--History and criticism.

Music.

Music--19th century--History and criticism.

Classicism in music.

Mozart, Wolfgang Amadeus, 1756-1791.

Mozart, Wolfgang Amadeus.

Beethoven, Ludwig van, 1770-1827.

Beethoven, Ludwig van.

Physical Description:

x, 323 pages ; 23 cm

Place of Publication:

Cambridge [Cambridgeshire] ; New York : Cambridge University Press, 1984, c1979.

Summary:

Giorgio Pestelli examines one of the crucial periods of musical history, the transition from the middle of the eighteenth century to the era of Beethoven. This was a time of great cultural, technical and social changes. The free professional composer, in direct contact with the wide musical public, replaced the dependent court musician. Instrumental music became the centre of new developments, and sonata form, the cornerstone of nineteenth-century musical architecture, dominated its language. With the decrease in private patronage came the birth of the public concert; there was a vast increase in music publishing, and important developments were made in instrumental techniques, the dominant feature being the rise of the piano. Standing out from this common background are three major figures: Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven, whose specific characteristics are discussed in detail, along with their links with many other musicians. Dr Pestelli also emphasizes general lines of development: the galant style, the passion for antiquity and the curiosity for the exotic, the debate over 'literary' opera, the Sturm and Drang movement, the influence of the French Revolution and the Restoration, and the origins of romanticism. The importance of the book is that the music is viewed against the background of social, political, philosophical and cultural trends of the time, rather than relying on detailed analyses of specific works.

The series Storia della Musica is published in twelve volumes under the auspices of the Societa Italiana di Musicologia. The original Italian edition is designed to remedy the dearth of a satisfactory comprehensive history of music in Italian, but the many fresh insights itcontains make it of interest and significance to a far wider readership. The four volumes to be published in translation by Cambridge University Press are made available for the first time to the English-speaking student. Each discusses the music and musicians of a separate historical period in the context of the historical, political, social and artistic conditions of the time. Notes have been added and each volume concludes with a bibliography adapted for the English-speaking reader and a selection of extracts from contemporary writings about music.

Contents:

I. Instrumental Music

1 The geography of music in the middle of the eighteenth century 1

2 The galant style and the new sensibility 6

3 Sonata form as a basic form 12

4 The Italian harpsichordists 18

5 C. P. E. Bach and the German harpsichordists 22

6 Schobert in Paris 27

7 Sammartini, Stamitz and the origins of the modern symphony 29

8 Johann Christian Bach: London and his meeting with Mozart 37

II. Vocal Music

9 Opera seria and opera buffa 41

10 The European success of Italian comic opera 45

11 The rediscovery of classical antiquity 49

12 The discovery of the fabulous East 52

13 The 'literary' opera 56

14 Music and language; the melodrama 59

15 Opera seria in the second half of the eighteenth century 64

16 Gluck in Vienna 71

17 Gluck in Paris 77

18 Gluck's influence 79

19 Italian comic opera in the second half of the eighteenth century 86

20 Other national forms of comic opera 93

21 Sacred music 96

III. Haydn and Mozart

22 Sturm und Drang and music 101

23 The peak of sonata form 105

24 Franz Joseph Haydn 111

A model life 112

Half a century of music 117

25 Other paths of the sonata style; Dittersdorf and Boccherini 127

26 Mozart 136

A variety of styles 136

Mozart's journeys 138

An independent profession 142

The music up to the departure from Salzburg 148

The Viennese decade 153

IV. Beethoven

27 The transformation in musical life at the end of the eighteenth century 167

28 Music and the French Revolution 175

29 The origins of romanticism 181

30 Musical theatre in Europe up to Rossini. French opera; Cherubini, Spontini and Mayr 185

31 The new instrumental schools 202

32 Beethoven 217

Beethoven's character 218

Beethoven's language 225

The music up to the French invasion of Vienna (1809) 231

Beethoven and early romanticism 240

The late works 244

33 New paths in the age of the Restoration 253

1 Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach 261

2 Jean-Jacques Rousseau 264

3 The orchestra at Mannheim 266

4 Francesco Algarotti 268

5 In praise of Metastasio 271

6 Christoph Willibald Gluck 274

7 A description of sonata form 275

8 Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart 278

9 A hymn for 14 July 281

10 Ludwig van Beethoven 282

11 Ernst Theodor Amadeus (Wilhelm) Hoffmann 287.

Notes:

English version of: L'eta di Mozart e di Beethoven.

Bibliography: pages 301-311.

Includes index.

ISBN:

0521241499

0521284791

OCLC:

9683183