This Companion is an accessible introduction to Schumann: his time, his temperament, his style and his œuvre. An international team of scholars explores the cultural context, musical and poetic fabric, sources of inspiration and interpretative reach of key works from the Schumann repertoire ranging from his famous lieder and piano pieces to chamber, orchestral and dramatic works. Additional chapters address Schumann's presence in nineteenth- and twentieth-century composition and the fascinating reception history of his late works. Tables, illustrations, a detailed chronology and advice on further reading make it an ideally informative handbook for both the Schumann connoisseur and the music lover. An excellent textbook for the university student of courses on key composers of nineteenth-century Western Classical music, it is an invaluable guide for all who are interested in the thought, aesthetics and affective power of one of the most intriguing figures of a culturally rich and formative period.

Few genres of the last 250 years have proved so crucial to the course of music history, or so vital to public musical experience, as the symphony. This Companion offers an accessible guide to the historical, analytical and interpretative issues surrounding this major genre of Western music, discussing an extensive variety of works from the eighteenth century to the present day. The book complements a detailed review of the symphony's history with focused analytical essays from leading scholars on the symphonic music of both mainstream composers, including Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven and lesser-known figures, including Carter, Berio and Maxwell Davies. With chapters on a comprehensive range of topics, from the symphony's origins to the politics of its reception in the twentieth century, this is an invaluable resource for anyone with an interest in the history, analysis and performance of the symphonic repertoire.

Beginning several generations before Schubert, the Lied first appears as domestic entertainment. In the century that follows it becomes one of the primary modes of music-making. By the time German song comes to its presumed conclusion with Richard Strauss's 1948 Vier letzte Lieder, this rich repertoire has moved beyond the home and keyboard accompaniment to the symphony hall. This is a 2004 introductory chronicle of this fascinating genre. In essays by eminent scholars, this Companion places the Lied in its full context - at once musical, literary, and cultural - with chapters devoted to focal composers as well as important issues, such as the way in which the Lied influenced other musical genres, its use as a musical commodity, and issues of performance. The volume is framed by a detailed chronology of German music and poetry from the late 1730s to the present and also contains a comprehensive bibliography.

This book surveys the life, work, and posthumous reception of nineteenth-century German-Jewish composer Felix Mendelssohn.

A rare volume dedicated entirely to scholarship on the genre of the concerto.

This collection of essays aims to broaden and update scholarly approaches to Schumann, by considering his works and their reception in the context of various cultural and socio-institutional frameworks, from mid-nineteenth-century politics, through Nazi Germany, to late-twentieth-century popular culture.

Exploring a diverse, distinguished repertoire, and transcending the rhetoric of neglect, this book transforms understanding of women composers.

John MacAuslan interprets four great Schumann works in the context of their literary connections and Romantic aesthetic concepts.

This book explores the multi-movement Leipzig chamber works composed by Robert Schumann (1810-56). It adopts a two-pronged approach. On the one hand, it shows how this repertory illuminates Schumann's response to certain past and contemporary composers; to his own youthful, experimental past; and to various literary and cultural influences. At the same time, the book explores how different people have heard this music: listeners in Schumann's own day and beyond, in both Germanic and non-Germanic regions, and comprising the voices of critics, performers, audiences, even figures in disciplines outside of music.

SCHUMANN: THE FACES & THE MASKS is a groundbreaking account of a major composer whose life and works have been the subject of intense controversy ever since his attempted suicide and early death in an insane asylum. Schumann was a key figure in the Romantic movement which enraptured poets, musicians, painters and their audiences in the early 19th century and beyond, right up to the present time. He embodied all the contrasting themes of Romanticism - he was intensely original and imaginative, but also worshipped the past; he believed in political, personal and artistic freedom but insisted on the need for artistic form. He turned his tumultuous life into music that speaks directly to the heart. Drawing on hitherto unpublished archive material, Chernaik provides new insight into Schumann's life and his music, his sexual escapades, his fathering of an illegitimate child, the true facts behind his courtship of Clara and the opposition of her monstrous father, and the ways in which the crises of his life fed into the dreams and fantasies of his greatest music.