The Romantic Generation (The Charles Eliot Norton Lectures) (Paperback)

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Key Phrases: romantic fragment, minor ballade, minor sonata, The Romantic Generation, Well-Tempered Keyboard, New York (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

This is not a book for musical wimps. It is thick, densely written and profusely illustrated with musical examples of the things Rosen, a well-known concert pianist as well as author and lecturer, writes about: the music of the Romantic period, particularly as exemplified by Mendelssohn, Schumann, Chopin, Liszt, Bellini, and Schubert, in the light of their times. It is also highly rewarding if you can make it all the way through. Because it can be difficult to write adequately about music, it is especially felicitous that Rosen has chosen to append a 74-minute CD that demonstrates some of his points. This is a companion volume to his 1970 work, The Classical Style. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Library Journal

This logical and long-awaited sequel to Rosen's award-winning The Classical Style: Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven (LJ 5/15/71) once again demonstrates the author's extraordinary insights. Rosen explains and describes the first half of the 19th century in conjunction with literature, art, and social changes; for example, he compares the content and format of early 19th-century poetry with the smaller contemporary musical forms. Rosen also examines the lives of the composers and pursues some detailed analysis of numerous compositions to make his points. The result if a fresh, challenging, and stimulating view of the society in which Chopin, Liszt, Berlioz, and Schumann flourished. Highly recommended.
Timothy J. McGee, Univ. of Toronto
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 744 pages
• Publisher: Harvard University Press (September 15, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0674779347
• ISBN-13: 978-0674779341
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.2 x 1.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.3 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #197,370 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

69 of 74 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A real page-turner!, August 26, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: The Romantic Generation (The Charles Eliot Norton Lectures) (Hardcover)

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.

27 of 29 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Some essential Chopin criticism in here, June 13, 2000

By	Gordon R Cameron (Los Angeles, CA United States) - See all my reviews

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.

1 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Rebellious Generation, April 16, 2009

By	Roochak - See all my reviews

"I think it is probable that Beethoven's death hastened the rapid development of new stylistic tendencies which had already made themselves felt and which, indeed, even influenced his own music," states Charles Rosen in his preface to one of the most detailed and enjoyable musical essays I've ever read. The leaders of the 1830s musical avant-garde -- Chopin, Liszt, and Schumann -- heard those "new stylistic tendencies" in Schubert and late Beethoven, and made them the basis of a revolutionary musical style, one offering rhythmic, harmonic, and structural freedom from Classical tradition.

Rosen's focus on the piano is understandable. Apart from being a master pianist, his emphasis in this book isn't on late Romantic decadence, but on early Romantic experimentation, made possible in part by technological innovations in piano making, as well as by the new emphasis on the subjective experience of time, landscape, and memory in poetry and painting (as opposed to the Classical emphasis on the epic subjects of history and religion) -- major influences on an intensely self-reflexive generation of young musical artists.

How would musically conservative audiences have received the new music of the 1830s? Chopin ironically intensifies the sentimental rhetoric of the salon style, embraces the rhythmic and harmonic freedom of dance music, and reinvents Classical counterpoint in terms of Romantic tone color; Schumann dislocates Classical rhythm and subverts the relation of consonance and dissonance, exploiting its expressive potential; Liszt elevates dynamics and tone color to a position of supremacy over pitch and rhythm, exploiting the dramatic and emotional intensity of crowd-pleasing music.

These three musicians are the focus of Rosen's essay; chapters on Berlioz's rhythmic innovations, Mendelssohn's Classical revivalism, and the carefully bland republicanism of the new, middle-class grand opera of Meyerbeer and Bellini are less passionate, but no less interesting.