The lasting popularity of Chopin's music has reached "from salon to slum." He captured and expressed the spirit of the age of Romanticism, its ardour and idealism, its longing and restlessness, its love of spontaneity, with an authority his contemporaries immediately recognized and which successive generations have admired and loved. Much of the Chopin literature in English is biographical, but this book is a critical study of the music itself and of the creative process which is central to the life of any composer. Samson provides a detailed analysis of the style and structure of the music...

The decades from 1900 to 1920 saw important changes in the very language of music. Traditional tonal organization gave way to new forms of musical expression and many of the foundations of modern music were laid. Samson first explores tonal expansion in the music of such nineteenth-century composers as Liszt and Wagner and its reinterpretation in the music of Debussy, Busoni, Bartok, and Stravinsky. He then traces the atonal revolution, revealing the various paths taken by Schoenberg and his followers and describing their very different stylistic development.
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It has been our intention in commissioning this book to complement the documentary and analytical focus of Cambridge University Press's first volume of Chopin studies, published in 1988. This new collection targets three main areas of research--reception history, aesthetics and criticism, and performance studies--although the boundaries between these are by no means tightly drawn.

This book is about three sets of etudes by Liszt: the Etude en douze exercices (1826); its reworking as Douzes grandes etudes (1837); and their reworking as Douzes etudes d'execution transcendante (1851). It is also a book about nineteenth-century instrumental music in general because the three works invite the exploration of features characteristic of the early Romantic era in music. These include a composer-performer culture; the concept of virtuosity; the significance of recomposition; music and the poetic; and the consolidation of a musical work-concept.

Chopin's four ballades are widely regarded as being among the most significant extended works for solo piano of the nineteenth century. In an illuminating discussion, Jim Samson combines history and analysis to provide a comprehensive picture of these popular piano works, investigating the social and musical background to Chopin's music, evaluating the many printed editions of the ballads before considering their critical reception and the differing interpretations of well-known nineteenth- and twentieth-century pianists.

Following the success of Chopin Studies, this second volume of essays contains the most recent Chopin research of twelve leading scholars. Three main themes are addressed: reception history, aesthetics and criticism, and performance studies. The essays explore Chopin as classical composer, as salon composer, as modernist, as "otherworldly," as androgyne, and define aspects of his musical language, including narrative structures, progressive tendencies and functional ambiguity.

This Companion is designed to provide the enquiring music lover with helpful insights into a musical style that recognizes no contradictions between the accessible and the sophisticated, between the popular and the significant.

The most informed reference book on nineteenth-century music currently available, this comprehensive overview of music in the nineteenth century draws on the most recent scholarship in the field. Essays investigate the intellectual and socio-political history of the time, and examine topics such as nations and nationalism, the emergent concept of an avant garde, and musical styles and languages at the turn of the century. It contains a detailed chronology, and extensive glossaries.

This selection of essays represents a wide cross-section of the papers given at the Tenth International Conference on Nineteenth-Century Music held at the University of Bristol in 1998. Sections include thematic groupings of work on musical meaning, Wagner, Liszt, musical culture in France, music and nation, and women and music.