Music Theory in the Age of Romanticism

Twelve authors probe the mind of the Romantic era in its thinking about music. They provide a searching examination of writings by music theorists, critics, aestheticians, philosophers, and commentators from 1800 to 1875. In doing so, they wield new critical tools as well as old, casting fresh light, for example, on familiar problems of musical form by inspecting eighteenth-century rhetoric and nineteenth-century gendered discourse; exploring Schubertian modulation and Wagnerian motif with the insights of cognitive science; reinterpreting pianistic finger exercise by way of Michel Foucault and Frankenstein and so on. The impact of Hegel and Schelling on music theory occupies an important place, as does Schleiermacher's hermeneutics on analysis and criticism. The brilliant group of young historians of theory, represented here, provides an array of approaches, from detailed music analysis, through close reading of texts, through critical discourse, to philosophical enquiry.

Reviews & endorsements

'The project Bent has undertaken here is a large and admirable one, namely to demonstrate how musicians in the 19th century thought about and described music, and there are few people in this field who are better qualified to do this. Bent surveys the fascinating diversity of approaches to analysis of that century (ranging from the verbal, diagrammatic, tabular and notational to the graphic) and relates these to the equally manifold purposes for which analysis was then pursued …' Brio

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Product details

• Date Published: September 2005
• format: Paperback
• isbn: 9780521020084
• length: 256 pages

• dimensions: 244 x 170 x 14 mm
• weight: 0.41kg
• contains: 1 table 24 music examples
• availability: Available