Many books have been written about Beethoven. But it is rare to find one that seeks an alternative between the fragmentation found in most specialized studies and the superficial overview typical of popular biography. In this volume, Carl Dahlhaus, one of the century's leading musicologists, combines interpretations of individual works that focus on issues of composition and musical history, with excursions into the musical aesthetics of the period around 1800; an age that was not only a "classical" period in the history of the arts but also one in that aesthetics carved itself a place in the center of philosophical attention. The theme of the book is the reconstruction of Beethoven's "musical thinking" from the evidence in the works themselves and their context in the history of ideas.

Ludwig van Beethoven: Approaches to His Music

Arts & Photography

Dahlhaus, Carl

Whittall, Mary

Music

Oxford University Press

Although there are many accounts of Mozart's life, and countless descriptions and analyses of his music, this is the first attempt to portray Mozart's creative life as a composer. Küster selects forty works or groups of works covering virtually every important stage in Mozart's career, from the first keyboard works of the young Wunderkind to Mozart's final days and the composition of the Requiem. Each chapter deals with the developments and events in the lives of the Mozarts as associated with or highlighted by a particular work or constellation of works. The bulk of the book--the is concerned with Mozart's life and compositions from his arrival in Vienna in 1781 to his death there some ten years later. Drawing on the tremendous advances in Mozart research over the last thirty years, and the publication of the New Mozart Edition, Küster's book makes a major contribution to our understanding of the creative development of the composer who represents for most musicians and music lovers the highest pinnacle of musical achievement.

Mozart: A Musical Biography

Biographies & Memoirs

Küster, Konrad

Arts & Literature

Clarendon Press

Carl Dahlhaus here treats Nietzsche's youthful analysis of the contradictions in Wagner's doctrine (and, more generally, in romantic musical aesthetics); the question of periodicization in romantic and neo-romantic music; the underlying kinship between Brahms's and Wagner's responses to the central musical problems of their time; and the true significance of musical nationalism. Included in this volume is Walter Kauffman's translation of the previously unpublished fragment, "On Music and Words," by the young Nietzsche.

Between Romanticism and Modernism: Four Studies in the Music of the Later Nineteenth Century (California Studies in 19th-Century Music) (Volume 1)

Humor & Entertainment

University of California Press

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