Fantasies of Improvisation: Free Playing in Nineteenth-Century Music

ISBN-13: 9780190633585 / Angielski / Twarda / 2018 / 314 str.

Dana A. Gooley

Opis

The first history of keyboard improvisation in European music from the time of Beethoven through the later nineteenth century, Dana Gooley's Free Play: Fantasies of Improvisation in Nineteenth-Century Music describes the motives, intentions, and musical styles of the nineteenth century's leading improvisers, and traces the evolution of the performance practice into a glorified ideal.

Recenzje

Gooley's fascinating book sheds new light on the musical nineteenth century, illuminating unwritten histories of improvisation at the keyboard. By focusing on the contemporaneous renown of currently neglected figures such as Vogler, Hummel, Moscheles, and Loewe, Fantasies of Improvisation provides a richly textured account of how extemporization flourished and withered. Beyond that, Gooley elucidates the complex conversion of improvisation into discursive, rhetorical, pedagogical, and ethical terms. As a result, the book not only restores an element of the unexpected to over-determined historical narratives, but also suggests how the scores of Schumann and Liszt might be played and heard afresh.

O autorze

Dana Gooley is Associate Professor of Music at Brown University. His research centers on European music and musical culture in the nineteenth century, with an emphasis on performance, reception, and criticism. A specialist of Franz Liszt, he has published The Virtuoso Liszt (Cambridge, 2004) and co-edited two essay collections, Franz Liszt and His World (Princeton, 2006) and Franz Liszt: Musicien Européen (Editions Vrin, 2012). He has also published articles on music criticism, musical mediation, improvisation, cosmopolitanism, and jazz. Gooley studied classical piano at New England Conservatory and is a self-taught jazz pianist. With his quintet he hosts the Sunday night jam session at Boston's historic jazz club Wally's Café.