Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

How does a work of music stir the senses, creating feelings of joy, sadness, elation, or nostalgia? Though sentiment and emotion play a vital role in the composition, performance, and appreciation of music, rarely have these elements been fully observed. In this succinct and penetrating book, Charles Rosen draws upon more than a half century as a performer and critic to reveal how composers from Bach to Berg have used sound to represent and communicate emotion in mystifyingly beautiful ways.

Through a range of musical examples, Rosen details the array of stylistic devices and techniques used to represent or convey sentiment. This is not, however, a listener's guide to any "correct" response to a particular piece. Instead, Rosen provides the tools and terms with which to appreciate this central aspect of musical aesthetics, and indeed explores the phenomenon of contradictory sentiments embodied in a single motif or melody. Taking examples from Chopin, Schumann, Wagner, and Liszt, he traces the use of radically changing intensities in the Romantic works of the nineteenth century and devotes an entire chapter to the key of C minor. He identifies a "unity of sentiment" in Baroque music and goes on to contrast it with the "obsessive sentiments" of later composers including Puccini, Strauss, and Stravinsky. A profound and moving work, Music and Sentiment is an invitation to a greater appreciation of the crafts of composition and performance.

Table of contents provided by Syndetics

• Preface (p. ix)
• Prologue (p. 1)
• I Fixing the meaning of complex signs (p. 5)
• II Pre-classical sentiment (p. 37)
• III Contradictory sentiments (p. 49)
• IV The C minor style (p. 72)
• V Beethoven's expansion (p. 87)
• VI Romantic intensity (p. 100)
• VII Obsessions (p. 116)
• Index (p. 143)

Reviews provided by Syndetics

CHOICE Review

The essays in this book originated as lectures at a series at Indiana University. The few vestiges of the lecture format are the slightly informal tone (and concomitant lack of notes and bibliography) and a bias for the piano in the numerous musical examples. One presumes that the author, also a distinguished pianist, performed the examples live. Rosen's other books, particularly The Classical Style (CH, May'73; expanded ed., CH, Jul'97, 31-6494) and Sonata Forms (CH, Dec'80), are among the most influential music books of the last half century. The current volume is narrower in scope but no less trenchant or convincing. It asks a single question: By what means have composers represented emotion in music? The author is most interested in the change in musical expression from the late 18th century to the early 20th, and that is the book's time frame. Though the title might lead one to recall Leonard Meyer's classic Emotion and Meaning in Music (1956), a comparison would be false; Rosen is concerned with the music, not with psychology. Anything new from Rosen is must reading for students and musicians. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Lower-division undergraduates, graduate students, faculty, professionals, general readers. B. J. Murray Brevard College

Author notes provided by Syndetics

Charles Rosen is an internationally respected pianist. A pupil of Moriz Rosenthal, he has performed and recorded a wide repertoire from Bach to Pierre Boulez.

(Bowker Author Biography)