A01=Hugh Macdonald
Alkan
analysis
audience
Author_Hugh Macdonald
Beethoven
Berlioz
Category=AVLA
comic opera
composer
conductor
development
early twentieth century
early twentieth-century music
eccentric personalities
eq_art-fashion-photography
eq_bestseller
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_music
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
French opera
friendship
Hugo Wolf
Janácek
libretti
Liszt
music
musical personality
Paganini
play
Schubert
Schumann
Scriabin
Skryabin
trends
Viennese views
Wagner
Product details
- ISBN 9781580462754
- Weight: 562g
- Dimensions: 152 x 229mm
- Publication Date: 01 Jun 2008
- Publisher: Boydell & Brewer Ltd
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Hardback
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Essays by the noted authority on nineteenth-century music, the topics ranging from Beethoven and Schubert to comic opera to Scriabin and Janácek.
In Beethoven's Century: Essays on Composers and Themes, world-renowned musicologist Hugh Macdonald draws together many of his richest essays on music from Beethoven's time into the early twentieth century. The essays are here revised and updated, and some are printed in English for the first time.
Beethoven's Century addresses perennial questions of what music meant to the composer and his audiences, how it was intended to be played, andhow today's audiences can usefully approach it.
Opening with a revealing analysis of Beethoven's not always generous regard for his listeners, the essays probe aspects of Schubert's musical personality, the brief friendshipbetween Berlioz and Schumann, Liszt's abilities as a conductor, and Viennese views of Wagner as expressed by Hugo Wolf.
Essays on comic opera and trends in French opera libretti in the late nineteenth century reflect the author's long-standing sympathy for French music, and strikingly eccentric personalities in the world of music, such as Paganini, Alkan, Skryabin, and Janácek, are brought to life.
Beethoven's Century concludes with a wrylook at some startling developments in early twentieth-century music that have often been overlooked.
Hugh Macdonald has taught music at the Universities of Cambridge, Oxford, and Glasgow, and since 1987 has been Avis H. Blewett Distinguished Professor of Music at Washington University, St. Louis. He has written books on Skryabin and Berlioz, and is a regular pre-concert speaker for the Boston and St. Louis Symphony Orchestras.
HUGH MACDONALD was the Avis Blewett Professor of Music, Washington University, St Louis from 1987 to 2011. He is the author of many important books, including Beethoven's Century: Essays on Composers and Themes (URP, 2008), Music in 1853: the Biography of a Year (Boydell Press, 2012), and Saint-Saëns and the Stage (CUP, 2019).
