Historical Dictionary Of Romantic Music

The Historical Dictionary of Romantic Music covers the history of this period through a chronology, an introductory essay, and an extensive bibliography. The dictionary section has over 500 cross-referenced entries on the most important traditions, famous pieces, persons, places, technical terms, and institutions of Romantic music.

This book is a vital reference tool for students and teachers of music history, students and teachers and above all for lovers of Romantic music. Review: This volume offers hundreds of entries for Romantic period composers, performers, styles, and other subjects and terms. Many appear in other reference works, most notably New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, but many are unique to this one.

The major difference is that the authors here present entries in context with regard to specific styles, customs, and thinking of the Romantic period-the so called long nineteenth century. For example, entries such as String quartets are discussed in terms of their nineteenth-century form, and eighteenth-century composer Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's entry delves into how he and his music were viewed throughout the 100 years after his death.

Recommended for most public and academic libraries. Booklist Cooper offers a handy one-volume work covering composers, genres, styles, and sociopolitical activities associated with the late 18th, 19th, and early 20th centuries. One of some 70 titles in the 'Historical Dictionaries of Literature and the Arts' series, it features more than 500 alphabetically arranged entries.

This hefty volume includes illustrative material where pertinent, a useful list of acronyms and abbreviations, and cross-referencing in each individual entry (via terms printed in boldface the first time they appear). Prior to the introduction, readers will find a useful year-by-year chronology covering major events from the beginning of the French Revolution to the start of WW I.

Entries contain brief descriptions of landmark events ranging in scope from political affairs (e.g., Washington's election as the first US president, Napoleon becoming president of the Italian Republic, and the Mexican War of Independence) to the publication and performance of major musical works (e.g., Rossini's Guillaume Tell; Haydn's Symphony no. 92; and Mozart's Clarinet Quintet, K. 581).

Selected source-critical series of editions are included near the back. Primary sources (e.g., collections, anthologies, and treatises) and surveys of 19th-century music are provided, as are works on aesthetics, genre, harmony and counterpoint, and performance practice. Also included is a section pertaining to studies on individual composers.

Summing Up: Recommended. Lower-level undergraduates and above; general readers. CHOICE