80 of 85 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A real page-turner!, August 26, 1998
By A Customer
While I was studying at the Cleveland Institute of Music, it sometimes seemed that the professors chose only the most abstruse works of scholarship as their classroom texts. The worst example was a required text for a 20th Century analysis course, in which the author clearly had nothing to say, and merely strung along interminable chapters of the most irritating technical jargon. To add insult to injury, the campus bookstore stuck me for fifty or sixty dollars for this piece of academic trash. This text, and hordes of others like it, represents the poorest sort of scholarship. I often wonder what these writers hope to accomplish. I imagine their work must have some snob appeal, but education is too important, and life is far too short to waste time on this sort of foolishness. Imagine my elation than, upon discovering the work of Charles Rosen. I first read "Sonata Forms" in preparation for an analysis class I was teaching, and a little while later I read "The Classical Style," one of the very finest books ever written about music. Mr. Rosen has a lot to say, and his style has an engaging quality that would be the despair of many a young novelist. In fact he writes so well, that I frequently had difficulty in putting these books down. His points are well presented and amply supported with musical examples (a great challenge for the "inner ear" although I sometimes cheat and take them to the keyboard). I also enjoy Mr. Rosen's humor, which emerges at all the right moments. On the strength of these works, I devoured "The Romantic Generation" as soon as I could get a copy of it. This is a remarkable book. It maintains and even surpasses the depth of understanding achieved in "The Classical Style." Particularly with the inclusion of a breathtaking study of Romantic literature and painting, which does a very good job of showing the music in its context without going overboard into historical trivia. Mr. Rosen is (as always) very thorough. A special highlight of the book is its study of Chopin. Indeed, the Chopin section is so extensive that the other chapters seem a little cursory at first glance- especially the discussion of Mendelssohn. However, I'm sure this is just a reflection of my personal bias. So many great things are said, with such grace and wit about Liszt, Berlioz and Schumann, that I am reluctant to reiterate it in my own clumsy style, and can only commend to you the original. The only real criticism I have is that the enclosed CD is far too short. Mr. Rosen's performances have a clarity reminiscent of his prose, which is a real joy to hear. For all the penetrating analysis of the Chopin Ballades and the comprehensive study of the Mazurkas, it was odd to find him represented by only two Nocturnes. I was also sorry not to find more examples of the Schumann works: particularly the "Davidsbundlertanze." The Liszt examples though, were very well chosen. There was a time in my life when I felt as though there might be a book in me, I saw myself in the somewhat grandiose armor of a Crusader for Clarity in academic writing. It is a great relief for me, and fortunate for future generations, that Mr. Rosen has already accomplished this and henceforth I'll stick with playing the cello.
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28 of 30 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Some essential Chopin criticism in here, June 13, 2000
This review is from: The Romantic Generation (Charles Eliot Norton Lectures) (Paperback)
Rosen's "The Romantic Generation" is really written for people with a thorough grounding in music theory, but even with a limited understanding of harmony, counterpoint, and structure, I was able to derive much enjoyment from these essays.
Rosen's first love is obviously Chopin, and his three chapters on the Polish master are essential reading, I think, for anyone trying to master the subject. Rosen effectively explodes any lingering remnants of the charge that Chopin was incapable of handling large forms, or was an "untrained genius." He makes a convincing case for Chopin as the most assiduously trained and capable musician of his generation -- and it was not a generation of lightweights. The structural analyses of the Ballades (particularly the 4th) are excellent, but where Rosen really shines is in his examination of the Etudes and Mazurkas. In the former, he elucidates the Etudes' pivotal place in the history of concert music, and the interplay of theoretical composition and physical execution that they embody. In the latter, Rosen explores the Mazurkas as the receptacles of Chopin's most subtle, and personal, artistic accomplishments.
Other chapters are not always as convincing, but Rosen's examinations of Liszt, Mendellsohn, Berlioz, and Schumann all have their merits. After Chopin, Schumann is probably closest to Rosen's heart, and is given the most compelling treatment.
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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Charles Rosen's Romantic Generation, July 1, 2011
This review is from: The Romantic Generation (Charles Eliot Norton Lectures) (Paperback)
Published in 1998, Charles Rosen's "The Romantic Generation" is an extraordinary erudite study of music, its performance, and its cultural history. The study was an outgrowth of lectures Rosen gave at Harvard in 1980-1981 and is a companion volume to Rosen's earlier book, "The Classical Style".
The Classical Style: Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven (Expanded Edition) Rosen combines deep scholarship and love for music with his gifts as a concert pianist. He is Professor Emeritus of Music and Social Thought at the University of Chicago.
The focus of the book is on the great composers born roughly around 1810, including Schumann, Chopin, Liszt, Mendelssohn, Bellini, and Meyerbeer. The book considers for the most part music written between 1827, when Beethoven died and the composers Rosen studies were reaching adulthood, and 1850. This focus excludes Brahms who, as Rosen points out, attempted to join the romanticism of his predecessors with a more traditional classicism.
Romanticism, as Rosen develops it, resists easy definition. But the following statement, in the Preface, suggests the scope of Rosen's analysis:
"The claim of artistic autonomy that was made for music, rightly or wrongly, by the late eighteenth century, was neither really upheld nor abandoned by the following generations: rather, an attempt was made to incorporate some of the artist's own life and experience into the claim of autonomy, to transform part of the artist's world into an independent aesthetic object."
The following is another short summation of Rosen's approach, taken from his concluding chapter on Schumann (p. 702):
"The malaise experience with large, unified Classical forms by the generation of composers born around 1810 testifies to a loss of faith and even of interest in the calculated balances and clear articulations that these old structures implied. It corresponds to a general loss of faith in purely rational systems, a mistrust of the eighteenth-century Enlightenment and the Kantian certainties. Perhaps it also accounts for the fascination with insanity and the irrational."
This is a long, difficult book with many threads and byways. Rosen describes romanticism broadly by comparing and contrasting it with earlier classical and baroque styles. The reader thus gets a broad musical education in this work. that goes substantially beyond romanticism. Rosen also spends several early chapters developing the literary and artistic background that he finds necessary for the understanding of the Romantic Generation of composers. There are two chapters of the book dealing with musical theory in which Rosen explains how the Romantic Generation's musical language differed from its predecessors in terms of harmony and musical phrasing. Besides these broad approaches, Rosen's study is also extraordinarily detailed in places. He offers painstaking and thorough musical analyses of many works, including Beethoven's song-cycle "To the Distant Beloved" which he finds in many ways emblematic of the coming romanticism, and the song-cycles of Schubert and Schumann. Schumann's piano music, including the Fantasiestucke, Carnaval, and Davidsbundlertanze receive detailed treatment with many illustrations from the scores. Chopin's Ballades, Mazurkas and Etudes, and Preludes, also receive lengthy and insightful textual analysis. Besides treatment of culture and music, broad and narrow, the book includes much about performance, especially on the piano. Readers who play music will learn a great deal.
Rosen sees lieder and piano pieces as at the center of the Romantic Generation. Of the composers he treats, Schumann and Chopin receive the most detailed attention. Chopin receives three lengthy chapters in the middle of the book in which Rosen is at pains to rebut the claim that Chopin did not handle large musical structures well. But the first and the last word in the book go to Robert Schumann who, for Rosen, remains the prototypical romantic composer. Rosen describes Schumann as "the most representative musical figure of central European Romanticism as much because of his limitations as because of his genius: in his finest works indeed he exploited these limitations in such a way that they gave a force to his genius that no other contemporary could attain. The limitations may be summed up simply: a difficulty in dealing with the Classical forms of the previous generation". (p. 699) Only in the last chapter of the book do Schumann's symphonies, sonatas, chamber music and other works in classical form receive discussion, as Rosen tries to show how these works represent a falling-away from the romantic project in all its uniqueness and idiosyncracy. Berlioz and Liszt receive sympathetic chapters as does Mendelssohn, in a discussion I thought could have been developed further.
As an initial approach to the book, there is much to be learned from reading it straight through. In a basic reading, the many pages of musical quotation and analysis can be read relatively quickly. It was a temptation to pause and hear or rehear many of the works Rosen discusses; but if that were done, the cover-to-cover reading of the book would never be completed. The book can be revisited in detail rather than being put aside when it is completed. Thus, if the reader wants to rehear Schubert's Winterreise or Chopin's third ballade, for example, this book will offer guidance for deepening one's understanding. The more the reader knows about and loves music, the more will he or she benefit from this book.
Rosen writes clearly and thoughtfully with many observations and asides about music, history, and culture. This book is a scholarly study in the service of a passion for music. Serious lovers of music will be rewarded by reading this book and by returning to it during the course of listening or performing.
Robin Friedman
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