Publisher's Synopsis
Winner of the Yorkshire Post Music Award, The Romantic Generation was rapturously reviewed on hardback publication and now, for the first time, is published in an affordable trade paperback.
'One can say with confidence that The Romantic Generation is the music book not only of 1995 but also of many years to come. The author's ability to communicate his musical insights and immense learning has developed even beyond the capacities displayed in his earlier volume. Musicians of every kind should partake of both its wisdom and its practical lessons. Among non-musicans anyone interested in the cultural and literary history of the period can feast on Rosen's introductory and incidental essays about the Romantic Movement as a whole…William Empson distinguished two kinds of critic, the analytical and the appreciative. In Charles Rosen they are perfectly united.' Robert Craft, Chicago Tribune
The subject of this book is the generation of musicians who came to maturity between the death of Beethoven and that of Chopin in 1849 - Chopin, Liszt, Berlioz, Mendelssohn and Schumann, with shorter discussions of Bellini and Meyerbeer, and a prolonged glance back to Schubert. Rosen discusses how they changed the musical language of their era and how their music achieved and achieves the effects it does.
'The fact that this is a book about music has done nothing to deter its author from examining literature and the arts, and these are brought to bear on Schumann, Schubert and Chopin to brilliant effect… miraculous. [Chopin's complexity] unfurls like a flower… A majestic book.' Michael Church, TES
'A remarkable amalgam of precise, brilliantly illuminating analysis, audacious generalisation, and always interesting synthesis… stunningly effective. No other writer on music has his gift for walking and playing through the pieces, pointing out how memory, quotation, observation are given concrete musical realisation that extends from the printed score, to the hand on the keyboard, to the pedal and then is received by the listener's ear. No one has been as disciplined, as well-informed, as discerning as Rosen.' Edward Said, London Review of Books
