Customer Reviews

The Classical Style: Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven (The Norton library, N653)

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Charles Rosen by now has attained a place among musical analysts on a par with the likes of Tovey and Grout, though his style is very different from either of these luminaries. Taking the music of Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven as the pinnacle of the musical style that developed in the late eighteenth-century, Rosen explains how around 1775 there was a decisive shift away from the High Baroque style of Bach and Handel, and why this new music was different. After his general introduction to the style most of the book explores different genres, symphony, opera, concerto and string quartet among them, to create a lucid and multi-faceted picture of how these three great composers approached and solved common musical and formal problems. The new edition adds a preface that addresses criticisms of the original book and an additional late chapter on Beethoven.

Rosen's writing, though it can be dense and repetitive, at its best is unmatched in its ability to relate analysis to what actually is heard by a listener. To this end, an ability to read and understand the copious and detailed musical examples is essential to fully grasping his points--this book is not for the casual amateur. But to those willing to do the work, The Classical Style remains as richly rewarding after three-plus decades as when it first appeared. As another reviewer has mentioned, it is a book one returns to again and again simply for the sheer pleasure of reading it.

This much quoted (and somewhat overrated) book aims at a thorough exposition of the Viennese Classical era, mainly for the lay fan. The goal is obviously laudable, and there are no other similar volumes around, which perhaps partially explains the book's fame. (Rosen's framework does owe a major debt to Tovey's writing, now hard to find.) The book discusses the elements of classical forms and their partial history, and the prevailing cultural climate, but downplays the influence of other composers, and oversimplifies in its distillation of the essence of the style.

Due to the ambitious breadth of material, the book's contents - with a few notable exceptions - remain shallow, at least in the view of someone fairly familiar with both the music and the basic theory as presented in this book. Rosen does sprinkle perceptive remarks throughout, but also too often engages in the typical ramblings of a fan (okay, of an exceptionally well educated fan): Rosen makes pronouncements rather than substantiates his points. Many are pretty much unsubtantiable or bafflingly meaningless anyway - e.g. "Mozart's music is the most sinful music ever composed." (An objective quantitative measure for tuneful sinfulness will hopefully never become anyone's thesis topic.) Since Rosen hardly ever offers serious evidence for his rather sweeping generalizations, a newcomer to the music may not be able to distinguish between more universally accepted assessments and those strongly based on the author's individual taste. (Hint: all the many superlatives in the book are in the latter category!) In addition, there are some dubious technical points, and Rosen engages in a certain amount of standard mythologizing about the composers. So actually, on closer inspection, there's a surprising amount of sloppy thinking in this book.

The basic point of view is that of a unifying classicist's. Rosen ends up more or less equating classical style with 'music with a certain dramatic logic', a huge generalization. Rosen sounds perhaps superficially quite impressive, for instance in discussing the tension created by structural key changes in sonata form. But the book never progresses beyond these basics, readily obtainable from any decent course on the subject. So the reader is left with only a vague understanding of the real techniques used by these composers to produce their effects - whether dramatic in aim or not. (A plain tonic-dominant change in itself doesn't make for a particularly interesting composition.) Rosen also dismisses music not convenient for his definitions, thus somewhat shortchanging Haydn and Beethoven, compulsive innovators both. For example, Beethoven's early period, which contains a wide variety of original, characteristic, often humorous works, and includes some true masterpieces, is ignored as "classicizing" or purely imitative - a strangely tin-eared (and hackneyed) viewpoint.

To me by far the finest sections are the relatively few pages devoted to extended analyses, notably late Beethoven piano sonatas. Here, Rosen avoids generalizations and gets deeper into the music, and these analyses can be quite valuable. (For example, Rosen discusses the true culmination point of the first movement of Op. 106, noticeably missed even by some great pianists.)

This book can be read as an introduction to an era, though the limitations of its presentation make it an iffy choice for those who want a more complete picture. (I would also supplement the initial basic concepts sections.) A better version of this book, with fewer vague statements and opinions, and a steadier concentration on truly explaining the music, would be a great achievement.

As a music lover with a superficial knowledge of the technical aspects of music-making, I found this book to be a real challenge. It took me several attempts over the course of a couple of years to get through it. But having expended that effort, I can say that every minute was worth it. I now have a good understanding of what "classical" music (in the stricter definition of "classical") is about, and why its three great Viennese exponents were such masters. I now can listen classical music -- indeed, to any common-practice period music -- with much more insight, understanding, and enjoyment than I could heretofore.

I am not a Classical Music Expert but I am slowly learning it (most of my book reviews are in mathematics and physics). One of the reviewers criticizes Rosen for some technical reasons that I cannot evaluate. However, I do know that many universities recommend Rosen's book, so the critic is not entirely without his own critics. I find this book endlessly engrossing, as some of the reviewers have. You cannnot come away from this book without understanding many of the main differences between and among Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven, and between Classical, Baroque, and Romance music. I was especially interested to find that Beethoven, widely touted as an immoral person in some of the popular media, was in fact a person of great moral character (and the popular impression of Mozart seems to be wrong too, although there is less information on this). Those who believe that creative genius is stimulated by severe suffering (Beethoven, Van Gogh in art, Godel in mathematical logic, Galileo in physics and astronomy, etc.) will find much material in this book that seems to indicate the accuracy of this theory more or less. This is also a book that tells you what Haydn learned from Mozart and Mozart from Haydn, what Beethoven thought of Mozart and Schubert, what classical music learned from Baroque music and so on.

This book stimulated my interest in trying to figure out how music works more than anything else I have ever read. Sure, it is not the latest word, the most comprehensive or closely argued, but to get the interested amatuer started down the path of analysis of musical forms, why it sounds good, and what the big three Classical Era composers did to create a large chunk of our western musical heritage, this is the place to start. Rosen steered me toward many, many other books, cited in his bibliography and notes, on related topics, such as sonata form, how it works and does not. Sure, scholars can quibble and somebody else could and should write a followup to answer the complaints, but until then, Rosen is the place to start. His other books are just as good, but not as enjoyable. Dense, you bet, but worth it.

Rosen's The Classical Style is my favorite book all-time on classical music in general, and Mozart and Haydn in detail. There are other books about Haydn and Mozart that I love and cherish, but this one is the most intellectually stimulating. It is full of those rare insights that have total impact on my thinking. There are gems in its pages that will enrich your understanding profoundly.

The book is laid out in topics that either address a certain type of piece, a certain period of time and a particular composer. For example, a chapter would be "Haydn before the death of Mozart." Or "Piano concerto". Or "Haydn after the death of Mozart". Or "Piano Trio". Each chapter shows who was best at a certain type of work, why they were the best and then he gives specific musical examples to bolster his arguments. Of course in the process of doing this, Rosen greatly expands your understanding of every topic he covers.

While there are many printed musical examples, it is really better if you are familiar with the pieces in the examples. If you are a proficient music reader, especially on piano, you can probably do pretty well without knowing the music but chances are those two skills aren't mutually exclusive and if you do one, you've probably done the other. In any case, this is a serious book that requires serious work by the reader. You will get out of the book a direct proportion to how much listening and thinking you are willing to do. If you want to seriously learn about the classical period and the elements of music that grew out of that period, this book help you do that.

If you think that by buying and reading this book you will learn everything there is to know about the classical period, you might be disappointed. How? Well, if you don't know the music from that period and you can't read music, this will leave you seriously lost. In other words, you need some background or you will need to do some serious listening to really get the jewels out of this book. If this sounds elitist to you, you are right. Yet it is done with the purpose of keeping you from wasting your money. So make sure you have some background or are willing to do some work if you expect to get the best this book has to offer.

So, if you have some background in classical music and you want to sharpen your understanding of the period, I think this is easily one of the best books out there for that purpose. The more listening you do, the more you will get out of this great book. Rosen isn't the easiest read but he is brillant and writes like a very brilliant person talks. The sentences are compound and require you to hold more than one thought for as long as many paragraphs. If you stay with Rosen's prose and read with care though, you will have many "aha" moments and increase your understanding of the elements of the classical period manyfold.

I found this book not only an absorbing read and a top flight textbook, it is a reference book as well. I refer to it from time to time and it solidifies my understanding everytime I visit its pages. It helped me understand Haydn's wit and genius as well as his growth as an artist. It turned me on to his wonderful Piano Trios to go with his great String Quartets and Symphonies. It helped me understand Mozart's gifts in opera and his astonishing String Quintets. It also gave me a much greater understanding and appreciation of his great Piano Concerti, which I already loved to a great degree. Somehow he refreshed my joy in those works and that alone made the book greatly worthwhile. He opened my eyes to Beethoven's originality and rekindled my enjoyment of his music.

Rosen is a rare intellect who has written many cogent and highly valuable books on classical music. This particular book is his pinnacle and belongs in the library of any serious student of the classical period, or anyone who appreciates classical music and would like to sharpen their understanding of the basic elements of the great classical period in Western music.

In The Classical Style Charles Rosen does a marvelous job characterizing the music epitomized by Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven.

Of all the formal principles that have defined any period, the elements of classical style are perhaps most amenable to formal analysis. The classical period is principally characterized by sonata form and tonality. We can agree with Sir Donald Tovey that we do violence to compositions by interpreting them as if sonata form constitutes a set of binding rules rather than a post-facto abstraction of what the masters of the classical period actually did. Nonetheless, the principles of tonality may be expressed with an intellectual clarity which is more elusive when characterizing, say, a canon or polyphonic mass.

This is a reflection of the ideals of the classical period, whose audiences delighted in elegance and structural economy. Classical composers highlighted the structural contours defining works by emphasizing modulation and calling attention sectional boundaries with an intensified emphasis cadence. Elegance of structure was taken by the classical masters as an end in itself, and their harmonies glide on a framework they trace and enact. That is in itself a large part of the game of classical composition.

An understanding of the classical period is not only relatively easy to acquire, but of central importance to understanding nearly all subsequent composition. With the arguable exceptions of minimalism and some wings of the avant garde, nearly every important composition in the Occident since Haydn is either tonal or a reaction against tonality. Tonal harmony is the very foundation of our music theory to this day, and understanding its history and development can open up a deeper understanding of everything from Verdi to Schoenberg to Robert Johnson to Kylie Minogue.

Rosen makes all of this remarkably evident and comprehensible in dazzling prose that astonishes the reader with his insight on every page. I'm not a musicologist and browsed through a lot of the close passage analysis that comprises a big chunk of the book, but I still got my money's worth many times over.

This is not a book to be read casually -- it's that rare type of book that is worthy of studying and rereading. The author does a great job of conveying the depth of his knowledge.

This is one of the greatest books ever written. It was my introduction to the structure of classical music, and without it that whole world would have remained opaque to me. I read it first without any music theory at all, but it explains how musical structure works, so I was driven to learn some music theory to keep up. But you need so little that it is hardly a big challenge. Who knew that the basics of music theory were so simple? Then I read it again, and it was twice as good. Then I decided to learn to play an instrument so I could make more sense of it. Then I read it again, and it was twice as good once more. As one other reviewer said, it is a book to read and reread; and it is so clearly written.

His other book "The Romantic Generation" has some very beautiful chapters (the first few especially), but I got bogged down in it -- it gets too technical for mere mortals. But someday I might have another go at it. "The Classical Style" is not like that, a masterpiece of exposition from beginning to end.

This was one of my main texts for Advanced Music History in graduate school. It just blew me away. The commentary is exquisite, the writing is first-rate, and the examples are wonderfully thorough!

I even pick it up and read it just for pleasure from time to time!