The Romantic Generation

Charles Rosen

• Publisher: Belknap Press
• Year: 1998
• Print ISBN: 9780674779341, 9780674779334
• eBook ISBN: 9780674255906
• Topic: Media & Performing Arts
• Subtopic: 19th Century History

"A magnum opus."—George Steiner, New Yorker

"Grippingly, even excitingly, readable."—Edward Said, London Review of Books

What Charles Rosen's National Book Award–winning The Classical Style did for the music of the Classical period, this 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.

Index of Names and Works

Numbers in italics refer to musical examples.

Abraham, Gerald, 316n, 326n, 412–413, 425n, 445n

Adama, Maria Rosaria, 610n

Addison, Joseph, 153

Anderson, Maxwell, 604

Arlen, Harold, 604

Arnim, Achim von: Des Knaben Wunderhorn, 411

Arnold, Matthew, 162

Arrivabene, Opprandino, 542n

Ascham, Roger, 150

Ashbrook, William, 602n

Auber, Daniel-François-Esprit, 540, 602, 607, 641, 645; La Muette de Portici, 602

Bach, Carl Philipp Emanuel, 3, 4, 362

Bach, Johann Christian, 570

Bach, Johann Sebastian, 5, 6–7, 10, 11, 27–28, 39, 71, 83, 84, 87, 124, 194, 219, 220, 237, 285, 291, 300, 301, 302, 303, 341, 344, 354–356, 359, 360, 361–363, 364, 471, 510, 553, 554–555, 570, 573, 587, 590, 592, 593, 597, 598, 664, 666, 668, 672, 679, 690, 700

Album for Anna Magdalena Bach, 363

Art of Fugue, 6, 362

Mozart’s arrangement of, 6

Chorale Preludes, 362

Chromatic Fantasy and Fugue, 573

Concerto for Harpsichord in D Minor, 39

Four Duets, 362

Fugue for Organ in A Minor (BWV 543), 290; 290

Goldberg Variations, 71, 362

Inventions, 362, 363

Italian Concerto, 362

Klavierübung, 363; Part 3, 83

Mass in B Minor, 384

Musical Offering, 3–5, 6; 4, 5

Partitas, 362

Passacaglia and Fugue in C Minor, 83

Prelude and Fugue for Organ in A Minor, 510

Sonata for Solo Violin in C Major, 39

Sonatas for Solo Flute, 290

Well-Tempered Keyboard, 6–7, 83, 222, 285, 354, 355, 359, ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Preface
• ONE Music and Sound
• TWO Fragments
• THREE Mountains and Song Cycles
• FOUR Formal Interlude
• FIVE Chopin: Counterpoint and the Narrative Forms
• SIX Chopin: Virtuosity Transformed
• SEVEN Chopin: From the Miniature Genre to the Sublime Style
• EIGHT Liszt: On Creation as Performance
• NINE Berlioz: Liberation from the Central European Tradition
• TEN Mendelssohn and the Invention of Religious Kitsch
• ELEVEN Romantic Opera: Politics, Trash, and High Art
• TWELVE Schumann: Triumph and Failure of the Romantic Ideal
• Index of Names and Works