Historical Dictionary of Romantic Music

By (author) John Michael Cooper Assisted by Randy Kinnett

Not available to order

Publication date:

17 October 2013

Length of book:

792 pages

Publisher

Scarecrow Press

ISBN-13: 9780810874848

This Historical Dictionary of Romantic Music provides detailed and authoritative articles for the most important composers, concepts, genres, music educators, performers, theorists, writings, and works of cultivated music in Europe and the Americas during the period 1789-1914. The roster of biographical entries includes not only canonical composers such as Beethoven, Berlioz, Brahms, Chopin, Fauré, Grieg, Liszt, Mahler, Mendelssohn, Mussorgsky, Rossini, Schubert, Robert Schumann, Sibelius, Strauss, Tchaikovsky, Verdi, Wagner, and Wolf, but also less-well-known distinguished contemporaries of those composers (among them George Whitefield Chadwick, Cécile Chaminade, Ernesto Elorduy, Chiquinha Gonzaga, Fanny Hensel, C. H. Parry, and Clara Schumann, to name but a few). Significant literary and cultural topics such as Goethe’s Faust and Wagner’s theoretical writings of the 1850s, as well as entries on other cultural luminaries who significantly influenced music’s Romanticisms – among them J. S. Bach, Goethe, Haydn, Handel, Heine, Mozart, Schiller, and Shakespeare – are also included. Entries on important institutions (conservatory, orphéon, Männerchor), concepts (biographical fallacy, copyright, exoticism, feminism, nationalism, performance practice), and political caesurae and movements (First and Second French Empire, First, Second, and Third French Republic, Franco-Prussian War, Revolutions of 1848, Risorgimento) round out the dictionary section.

Like other volumes in this series, this book's more than 500 entries are preceded by an introductory essay that explains the essential concepts necessary for understanding and exploring further the vast and complex musical landscape of Romanticism, plus a detailed Chronology. Concluding the volume is an extensive bibliography that lists the most important source-critical series of editions of Romantic music, important general writings on the period and its music, and composer-by-composer bibliographies.
Cooper offers a handy one-volume work covering composers, genres, styles, and sociopolitical activities associated with the late 18th, 19th, and early 20th centuries. One of some 70 titles in the 'Historical Dictionaries of Literature and the Arts' series, it features more than 500 alphabetically arranged entries. This hefty volume includes illustrative material where pertinent, a useful list of acronyms and abbreviations, and cross-referencing in each individual entry (via terms printed in boldface the first time they appear). Prior to the introduction, readers will find a useful year-by-year chronology covering major events from the beginning of the French Revolution to the start of WW I. Entries contain brief descriptions of landmark events ranging in scope from political affairs (e.g., Washington's election as the first US president, Napoleon becoming president of the Italian Republic, and the Mexican War of Independence) to the publication and performance of major musical works (e.g., Rossini's Guillaume Tell; Haydn's Symphony no. 92; and Mozart's Clarinet Quintet, K. 581). Selected source-critical series of editions are included near the back. Primary sources (e.g., collections, anthologies, and treatises) and surveys of 19th-century music are provided, as are works on aesthetics, genre, harmony and counterpoint, and performance practice. Also included is a section pertaining to studies on individual composers. Summing Up: Recommended. Lower-level undergraduates and above; general readers.