In New Paths, five renowned scholars discuss a variety of topics related to Romanticism, focusing especially on the years 1800 1840. In a much-needed historical and critical overview of the concept of organicism, John Neubauer ranges from its origins in Enlightenment biology to its aftermath in postmodernism. Janet Schmalfeldt shows that not only Beethoven's op.47 should be called the Bridgetower rather than the Kreutzer Sonata but also that this makes a difference as to its meaning. Scott Burnham explains extreme contrasts between emotional and mechanical types...

Questions concerning music and its inextricably intertwined and complex interface with time continue to fascinate musicians and scholars. For performers, the primary perception of music is arguably the way in which it unfolds in "real time." For composers a work appears "whole and entire," with the presence of the score having the potential to compress, and even eliminate, the perception of time as "passing."

The paradoxical relationship between these two perspectives, and the subtle mediations at the interface between them with which both performers and composers engage, form the...