Many books have been written about Beethoven. But it is rare to find one that seeks an alternative between the fragmentation found in most specialized studies and the superficial overview typical of popular biography. In this volume, Carl Dahlhaus, one of the century's leading musicologists, combines interpretations of individual works that focus on issues of composition and musical history, with excursions into the musical aesthetics of the period around 1800; an age that was not only a "classical" period in the history of the arts but also one in that aesthetics carved itself a place in the...

With a characteristically broad and provocative treatment, Dahlhaus examines a single music-aesthetical idea from various historical and philosophical viewpoints.
"Essential reading for anyone interested in the larger intellectual framework in which Romantic music found its place, a framework that to a remarkable degree has continued to shape our image of music." Robert P. Morgan, Yale University
Carl Dahlhaus (1928-1989) is the author of a highly influential body of works on the foundations of music history and aesthetics."

Carl Dahlhaus here treats Nietzsche's youthful analysis of the contradictions in Wagner's doctrine (and, more generally, in romantic musical aesthetics); the question of periodicization in romantic and neo-romantic music; the underlying kinship between Brahms's and Wagner's responses to the central musical problems of their time; and the true significance of musical nationalism. Included in this volume is Walter Kauffman's translation of the previously unpublished fragment, "On Music and Words," by the young Nietzsche.

This book is all introduction to the esthetics of music. Esthetics, which were of prime importance in thinking about music in the nineteenth century, are today sometimes suspected of being idle speculation. Yet judgments about music and every sort of musical activity are based on esthetic presuppositions.

Carl Dahlhaus gives an account of developments in the esthetics of music from the mid eighteenth century onwards. He combines a historical and systematic approach. Central themes in music are grouped together to illustrate both the historical course of events and a systematic unity of the...

This book is the first thoroughgoing study in any language of the philosophy of music history. Drawing on competing philosophies of history throughout the ages, from the Enlightenment to the French structuralists, from the German idealist tradition to Russian formalism, the late Carl Dahlhaus applies the thoughts of these various schools to the specialist requirements of music history and assesses their advantages and shortcomings. Special attention is given to an appraisal of whether Marxist critiques are still viable and where they stand in need of rethinking. For this English edition, the...

This collection of essays examines the works of composer Arnold Schoenberg, one of the most influential and controversial composers of the twentieth century, in the context of the "New Music" that was the historical and cultural movement of his time. In these essays, Schoenberg's work is subjected to historical, technical and theoretical analysis. Studies of other "New Music" composers such as Webern, Schreker and Scriabin are also provided. The collection includes essays of broader cultural-historical and sociological import that should interest those involved with twentieth-century music...

The book will be of interest to students and scholars of music history, theory, opera and philosophy.

The notes are revised here for the English-speaking reader.

Streifzug durch die Geschichte der Musik. Carl Dahlhaus und Norbert Miller erlautern, wie sich die traditionelle Opernform und der neue sinfonische Stil seit 1770 gegenseitig befruchten. Die Geschichte dieser Symbiose ist die Geschichte der klassisch-romantischen Musik als eine einheitliche Epoche. An ausgewahlten Ereignissen werden die Umbruche ebenso wie die kaum merkbaren Veranderungen sichtbar gemacht. Der erste Band setzt ein bei Glucks Musikdramen und belegt die Entwicklung anhand von: Cherubinis Dialogopern, Haydns Buhnenstucke fur Eszterhaza, Mozart und Da Ponte, die italienische Oper...