This magnificent survey of the most popular period in music history is an extended essay embracing music, aesthetics, social history, and politics, by one of the keenest minds writing on music in the world today. Dahlhaus organizes his book around 'watershed' years - for example, 1830, the year of the July Revolution in France, and around which coalesce the 'demise of the age of art' proclaimed by Heine, the musical consequences of the deaths of Beethoven and Schubert, the simultaneous and dramatic appearance of Chopin and Liszt, Berlioz and Meyerbeer, and Schumann and Mendelssohn. But he keeps us constantly on guard against generalization and cliche. Cherished concepts like Romanticism, tradition, nationalism vs. universality, the musical culture of the bourgeoisie, are put to pointed re-evaluation. Always demonstrating the interest in socio-historical influences that is the hallmark of his work, Dahlhaus reminds us of the contradictions, interrelationships, psychological nuances, and riches of musical character and musical life. "Nineteenth-Century Music" contains 90 illustrations, the collected captions of which come close to providing a summary of the work and the author's methods. Technical language is kept to a minimum, but while remaining accessible, Dahlhaus challenges, braces, and excites. This is a landmark study that no one seriously interested in music and nineteenth-century European culture will be able to ignore.

About the Author
Carl Dahlhaus was, at the time of his death in 1989, Professor of Music at Technische Universitat Berlin.

Reviews
"No other book about the period so engages the thoughtful reader." * New York Review of Books *
"Filled with new hearings of familiar material, provocative, juxtapositions and interpretations, and of course, Dahlhaus's characteristic immense learning, historical and philosophical speculations." * College Music Symposium *
"Dahlhaus bristles with rewarding insights, and is full of fine wit." * Victorian Review *



Book Information
ISBN 9780520076440
Author Carl Dahlhaus
Format Paperback
Page Count 432
Imprint University of California Press
Publisher University of California Press
Weight(grams) 907g