Classical and Romantic Performing Practice 1750-1900

by Clive Brown

The past ten years have seen a rapidly growing interest in performing and recording Classical and Romantic music with period instruments; yet the relationship of composers' notation to performing practices during that period has received only sporadic attention from scholars, and many aspects of composers' intentions have remained uncertain. Brown here identifies areas in which musical notation conveyed rather different messages to the musicians for whom it was written than it does to modern performers, and seeks to look beyond the notation to understand how composers might have expected to hear their music realized in performance. There is ample evidence to demonstrate that, in many respects, the sound worlds in which Mozart, Beethoven, Wagner, and Brahms created their music were more radically different from ours than is generally assumed.

Genres: Music

684 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1999

Reviews

[Richard Pohl]

Indispensable addition to my collection, in many ways clarifying few unresolved issues I had about the performance at the break of the 18th and 19th century. It focus mainly on scholarly topics, so dont expect much of the romantic mysticism and symbolism, on the other hand, it is very helpful in the area of accentuation, phrasing and tempo. In case of ornamentation, it tends to dispute with Neumann a bit, so you might look on it, if you were relying solely on his researches before.