Full Description
An extraordinarily gifted musician and writer, Charles Rosen is a peerless commentator on the history and performance of music. Critical Entertainments brings together many of the essays that have established him as one of the most influential and eloquent voices in the field of music in our time.
These essays cover a broad range of musical forms, historical periods, and issues—from Bach through Brahms to Carter and Schoenberg, from contrapuntal keyboard music to opera, from performance practices to music history as a discipline. They revisit Rosen's favorite subjects and pursue some less familiar paths. They court controversy (with strong opinions about performance on historical instruments, the so-called New Musicology, and the alleged "death" of classical music) and offer enlightenment on subjects as diverse as music dictionaries and the aesthetics of stage fright. All are unified by Rosen's abiding concerns and incomparable style. In sum, Critical Entertainments is a treasury of the vast learning, wit, and insight that we have come to expect from this remarkable writer. It will delight all music lovers.
Contents
Introduction I Performance and Musicology 1. The Aesthetics of Stage Fright 2. The Discipline of Philology: Oliver Strunk II The Eighteenth Century 3. Keyboard Music of Bach and Handel 4. The Rediscovering of Haydn 5. Describing Mozart 6. Beaumarchais: Inventor of Modern Opera 7. Radical, Conventional Mozart 8. Beethoven's Career III Brahms 9. Brahms: Influence, Plagiarism, and Inspiration 10. Brahms the Subversive 11. Brahms: Classicism and the Inspiration of Awkwardness IV Musical Studies: Contrasting Views 12. The Benefits of Authenticity 13. Dictionaries: the Old Harvard 14. Dictionaries: the New Grove's 15. The New Musicology V The Crisis of the Modern 16. Schoenberg: The Possibilities of Disquiet 17. The Performance of Contemporary Music: Carter's Double Concerto 18. The Irrelevance of Serious Music Credits Index
