Kirjahaku

The past ten years have seen a rapidly growing interest in performing and recording Classical and Romantic music with period instruments; yet the relationship of composers' notation to performing practices during that period has received only sporadic attention from scholars, and many aspects of composers' intentions have remained uncertain. Brown here identifies areas in which musical notation conveyed rather different messages to the musicians for whom it was written than it does to modern performers, and seeks to look beyond the notation to understand how composers might have expected to hear their music realized in performance. There is ample evidence to demonstrate that, in many respects, the sound worlds in which Mozart, Beethoven, Wagner, and Brahms created their music were more radically different from ours than is generally assumed.

The past ten years have seen a rapidly growing interest in performing and recording Classical and Romantic music with period instruments; yet the relationship of composers' notation to performing practices during that period has received only sporadic attention from scholars, and many aspects of composers' intentions have remained uncertain. Clive Brown here identifies areas in which musical notation conveyed rather different messages to the musicians for whom it was written than it does to modern performers, and seeks to look beyond the notation to understand how composers might have expected to hear their music realized in performance. There is ample evidence to demonstrate that, in many respects, the sound worlds in which Mozart, Beethoven, Wagner, and Brahms created their music was more radically different from ours than is generally assumed. This is an essential book for all performers and students of Classical and Romantic music.

Published in Spohr's 200th anniversary year, this book is the first to deal at length with both the life and the works of a composer who exerted a strong influence on the development of nineteenth-century music. Spohr was hailed in his own day as a worthy successor to Mozart and Beethoven, yet in the present century his former renown has gone largely unrecognised. Clive Brown gives an account of Spohr's life and character, and examines the areas in which his impact was most profound. He discusses Spohr's compositions critically and provides a stylistic and aesthetic assessment of his work. The chronological account of Spohr's life unfolds in parallel with the description of his musical output; a final chapter considers the decline of his reputation after his death. This volume will be of interest not only to scholars and students but also to general musical readers. And, since so little of Spohr's very substantial output is available in modern editions and is seldom performed, the book will also prove useful to practical musicians in search of worthwhile music for performance.