Overview

Illuminates how Romantic aesthetic principles manifest themselves through musical sound and structure. In Romantic Voices Douglass Seaton explores the underlying subjectivism whereby nineteenth-century musical works depend on and manifest the ideology and epistemology of Romanticism. Listeners and students have often imagined in a too-casual way that Romantic music reveals the inner biographies of composers. That easy assumption, however, leads to misunderstandings of both the biographical composers and the actual but fictive personas who do express themselves in the music. In a dozen studies of works by major Romantic composers, in genres ranging from instrumental solos to symphonies and from songs to opera, Seaton presents new ways to understand these works within the context of the Romantic movement. The book demonstrates how a discerning approach to this music can unveil the fictive personalities who express themselves in each piece. Seaton embraces transmethodological approaches that harmonize close attention to the sound and structure of individual pieces, their cultural and social history, and what composers, critics, and listeners have said about them. Among the works included are Beethoven's ""Tempest"" Sonata, Schubert's Heine Songs, Berlioz's Harold in Italy, Schumann's Eichendorff Liederkreis, Liszt's ""Vallée d'Obermann,"" Verdi's Otello, and MacDowell's ""Keltic"" Sonata.

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Reviews

""Romantic Voices is a wide-ranging yet focused, accessible, and incisive study of some of the central composers and works of modern musical life. Anyone interested in the composers it studies, the music with which it engages, or the myriad perspectives that have informed performers', listeners', and scholars' understandings of those composers and works will find this book essential reading—and many will find their own perspectives altered in ways that may be surprising."" — John Michael Cooper, Southwestern University ""Douglass Seaton offers a new, innovative approach to the study of music and narrative. Through a wide range of case studies and an impressive array of methodologies, in which he engages with the music itself, with texts connected in various ways to the work, and with a variety of contexts, he demonstrates many possible ways that this voice can be heard in musical works."" — Andrew Weaver, Professor of Musicology, Catholic University of America

Author Information

Douglass Seaton is Warren D. Allen Professor of Music Emeritus at Florida State University. He is the author of Ideas and Styles in the Western Musical Tradition.

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