HIST 301: The Historians Craft (Sheriff, Spring 2024)

This comprehensive overview of music in the nineteenth century draws on the most recent scholarship in the field. It avoids mere repertory surveys, focusing instead on issues which illuminate the subject in novel and interesting ways. The book is divided into two parts (1800-1850 and 1850-1900), each of which approaches the major repertory of the period by way of essays investigating the intellectual and socio-political history of the time. The music itself is discussed in five central chapters within each part, amplified by essays on topics such as popular culture, nationalism, genius, and the emergent concept of an avant-garde. The book concludes with an examination of musical styles and languages around the turn of the century. The addition of a detailed chronology and extensive glossaries makes this the most informed reference book on nineteenth-century music currently available.

The universally acclaimed and award-winning Oxford History of Western Music is a magisterial five-volume survey of the traditions of Western music by one of the most prominent and provocative musicologists of our time, Richard Taruskin.Now this renowned work is available in paperback - both as a set and (for the first time) individually. This volume examines the music of the nineteenth century, ranging from Schubert and Berlioz to Wagner, Verdi, and Brahms. Taking a critical perspective, Taruskin sets the details of music, thechronological sweep of figures, works, and musical ideas, within the larger context of world affairs and cultural history. He combines an emphasis on structure and form with a discussion of relevant theoretical concepts in each age, to illustrate how the music itself works, and how contemporariesheard and understood it. He also describes how the context of each stylistic period - key cultural, historical, social, economic, and scientific events - influenced and directed compositional choices.Attractively illustrated and laced with brilliant observations, memorable musical analysis, and a panoramic sense of the interactions between history, culture, politics, art, literature, religion, and music, this volume is essential reading for anyone who wishes to understand nineteenth-centurymusic.