| Contents |
Paris. Chabanon and Chastellux on music and language, 1764-73 -- Lacepede, critical contemporary of Chabanon: divergent perspectives in the music treatises of 1785 -- French revolutionary perspectives on Chabanon's De la musique of 1785 -- Classic and romantic: Berlioz's "Apercu" (1830) and musical modernity in Paris during the 1820s -- Chretien Urhan and Beethoven's Ninth symphony in Paris, 1838 -- Literary and musical aspects of the hero's Romance in Berlioz's Benvenuto Cellini, 1838 -- "The harmony of opposites": characterizing Cellini's apprentice -- Boston and New York. Margaret Fuller on musical life in Boston and in New York, 1841-46 -- American writers on Beethoven, 1838-49: Dwight, Fuller, Cranch, Story -- Fink, Hach, and Dwight's Beethoven in 1843-44 -- Dwight, transatlantic connections, and the American premiere of Beethoven's Ninth symphony in New York, 1846 -- Presenting Berlioz's music in New York, 1846-90: Carl Bergmann, Theodore Thomas, Leopold Damrosch. |
| Abstract |
The twelve essays in this book illuminate aesthetic, educative, and evaluative strategies utilized by writers in Paris, Boston, and New York to guide listeners in confronting the challenges of musical modernity between 1764 and 1890. They interpret criticism from treatises, journals, amd newspapers for its importance in cultural history and consider the reception of major works by Beethoven and by Berlioz. The essays explore contrasting responses to new operas and symphonies by composers, librettists, authors, critics, and conductors as well as by writers including Chabanon, Lacepede, Berlioz, Urhan, D'Ortigue, Dwight, Fuller, Watson, and Hassard. Readers interested in perceptions of Classicism and Romanticism in music as they relate to French, German, and American literature and criticism will discover how audiences on both sides of the Atlantic were encouraged to listen attentively to the new and controversial in music of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. |
| Bibliography note | Includes bibliographical references (pages 221-240) and index. |
| LCCN | 2008049447 |
| ISBN | 9781433103575 (hardcover : alk. paper) |
| ISBN | 1433103575 (hardcover : alk. paper) |
