What does it mean to say that music is deeply moving? Or that music's aesthetic value derives from its deep structure? This study traces the widely employed trope of musical depth to its origins in German-language music criticism and analysis. From the Romantic aesthetics of E. T. A. Hoffmann to the modernist theories of Arnold Schoenberg, metaphors of depth attest to the cross-pollination of music with discourses ranging from theology, geology and poetics to psychology, philosophy and economics. The book demonstrates that the persistence of depth metaphors in musicology and music theory...

Political Beethoven explores Beethoven's music as an active participant in political life from the Napoleonic Wars to the present day.

A fresh perspective on the Ballets Russes, focusing on relations between music, dance and the cultural politics of belle-epoque Paris.

The centrality of fantasy to French literary culture has long been accepted by critics, but the sonorous dimensions of the mode and its wider implications for musical production have gone largely unexplored. In this book, Francesca Brittan invites us to listen to fantasy, attending both to literary descriptions of sound in otherworldly narratives, and to the wave of 'fantastique' musical works published in France through the middle decades of the nineteenth century, including Berlioz's 1830 Symphonie fantastique, and pieces by Liszt, Adam, Meyerbeer, and others. Following the musico-literary...

Rethinks and retells the history of music in sixteenth-century Ferrara, putting women, of the court and convent, at the narrative centre.

This volume reveals the role of music in nineteenth-century British liberalism, exploring the politics, culture, and ideology of Victorian elite society using archival material relating to Mary Gladstone, daughter of the reforming British prime minister. It will interest scholars working in numerous fields including music, literature, politics, history, and women's studies.

This book explores the evolution of, and interactions between, fantasy and music in Romantic France, providing new contexts for the study of Berlioz and his contemporaries. The volume will appeal to readers beyond the musicological community, drawing together musical, literary, scientific, and visual materials, and applying theoretical and historical approaches.