Nineteenth-Century Piano Music

by R. Larry Todd

Book Overview

First Published in 2004. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company. This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0028725514
• ISBN13: 9780028725512
• Release Date: January 1990
• Publisher: Schirmer G Books
• Length: 426 Pages
• Weight: 2.01 lbs.

Customer Reviews

Nineteenth Century Piano Music

This superb volume is part of a series entitled Routledge Studies in Musical Genres, under the general editorship of R. Larry Todd, the eminent Mendelssohn authority and biographer. Other titles in the series cover keyboard music of the 18th century and before 1700 as well as chamber music of the 19th and 20th centuries. Published in 2004, Nineteenth-Century Piano Music is the second, revised and updated edition of a work originally published by Schirmer Books in 1990. In addition to editing this volume, Professor Todd contributes the article on Mendelssohn. The usefulness of this sort of compendium is dependent on the ability of its editor to identify and engage the strongest scholarship available to elucidate what is, in this case, a bewildering mass of material (witness, for example, the widely varying quality of Cambridge University Press's "Companion" series.) Here Professor Todd's choices leave little to be desired. Trenchant introductory essays by Leon Plantinga and Robert S. Winter, dealing with the piano from socio-cultural and organological perspectives, frame the argument. These are followed by individual chapters devoted to the pivotal composers of the era, including William Kinderman on Beethoven, Eva Badura-Skoda on Schubert, and Walter Frisch on Brahms. It is worth noting that, though each article provides an overview of a composer's solo piano music, the individual contributors bring a unique focus to the task. Jeffrey Kallberg, for instance, places Chopin's music in the context of contemporary Polish nationalism, while Anthony Newcomb views Schumann's piano works against the backdrop of nineteenth century music publishing. Michael C. Tusa makes an eloquent case for a revival of Weber's once potently influential piano music. In what is probably the best overview of the topic to date, Dolores Pesce elucidates Liszt's vast contribution to piano literature through examination of its formal structures and influences, both musical and extra-musical. By treating Clara Wieck Schumann and Fanny Mendelssohn Hensel in a single chapter, Marian Wilson Kimber delineates some of the challenges faced by gifted women as professionals during the nineteenth century. In breadth of scope and depth of scholarship, this volume is indispensable for pianists and pianophiles. It is also warmly recommended to more general readers interested in music.