The romantic generation / Charles Rosen.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Rosen, Charles, 1927-2012.

Contributor:

American Council of Learned Societies.

Series:

ACLS Humanities E-Book.

The Charles Eliot Norton Lectures ; v.46

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Romanticism in music.

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

Music.

Romanticism in music--History and criticism--19th century.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (xv, 723 p. ) ill. ;

Edition:

1st Harvard University Press pbk. ed.

Place of Publication:

Cambridge, Mass. : Harvard University Press, 1998, c1995.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

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.

Contents:

Music and sound

Fragments

Mountains and song cycles

Formal interlude

Chopin: counterpoint and the narrative forms

Chopin: virtuosity transformed

Chopin: from the miniature genre to the sublime style

Liszt: on creation as performance

Berlioz: liberation from the central European tradition

Mendelssohn and the invention of religious kitsch

Romantic opera: politics, trash, and high art

Schumann: triumph and failure of the romantic ideal.

Notes:

"Based on the Charles Eliot Norton Lectures"--Half-title page.

Includes index.

Description based on publisher supplied metadata and other sources.

ISBN:

9780674255906

0674255909

OCLC:

1583178128