THE CHARLES ELIOT NORTON LECTURES
Cover: The Romantic Generation, from Harvard University PressCover: The Romantic Generation in PAPERBACK

The Romantic Generation

Product Details

PAPERBACK

$34.00 • £29.95 • €30.95

ISBN 9780674779341

Publication Date: 09/15/1998

Academic Trade

744 pages

6-3/8 x 9-1/4 inches

728 musical examples

The Charles Eliot Norton Lectures

World

Add to Cart

Media Requests:

Related Subjects

What Charles Rosen’s celebrated book The Classical Style did for music of the Classical period, The Romantic Generation 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.

Awards & Accolades

  • Charles Rosen Is a 2011 National Humanities Medal Winner
  • 1996 Otto Kinkeldey Award, American Musicological Society
  • 1996 ASCAP Deems Taylor Award, American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers
  • 1995 Association of American Publishers Professional and Scholarly Publishing Award, Arts Category
  • A New York Times Notable Book of the Year, 1995
  • Yorkshire Post Music Book of the Year Award

Share This

The Legacy of Slavery at Harvard: Report and Recommendations of the Presidential Committee, by the Presidential Committee on the Legacy of Slavery, with a Preface by Lawrence S. Bacow, from Harvard University Press

Recent News

Black lives matter. Black voices matter. A statement from HUP »

From Our Blog

Jacket: Iron and Blood: A Military History of the German-Speaking Peoples since 1500, by Peter Wilson, from Harvard University Press

A Lesson in German Military History with Peter Wilson

In his landmark book Iron and Blood: A Military History of the German-Speaking Peoples since 1500, acclaimed historian Peter H. Wilson offers a masterful reappraisal of German militarism and warfighting over the last five centuries, leading to the rise of Prussia and the world wars. Below, Wilson answers our questions about this complex history,