Description
Book SynopsisThe first history of keyboard improvisation in European music from the time of Beethoven through the later nineteenth century, Dana Gooley's Free Play: Fantasies of Improvisation in Nineteenth-Century Music describes the motives, intentions, and musical styles of the nineteenth century's leading improvisers, and traces the evolution of the performance practice into a glorified ideal.
Trade ReviewThis is an extremely interesting book on a topic that has not received as much attention as it deserves ... Highly recommended. * W. E. Grim, CHOICE *
Classical improvisation is making a comeback, and in timely fashion we can now read its remarkable history. Prof. Gooley has discovered lively contemporary accounts of pianists performing free fantasies on stage for the masses, in salons for elites, and in private for personal inspiration. The big names are all there - Chopin, Liszt, Schumann, Mendelssohn - as are dozens of names less well known but hailed as great improvisors in their own day. Through diaries, reviews, letters, and biographies we can gauge the thoughts of both sides of what were by all accounts emotionally powerful interactions between musicians and their audiences. * Robert O. Gjerdingen, Northwestern University *
Gooley's fascinating book sheds new light on the musical nineteenth century, illuminating unwritten histories of improvisation at the keyboard. By focusing on the contemporaneous renown of currently neglected figures such as Vogler, Hummel, Moscheles, and Loewe, Fantasies of Improvisation provides a richly textured account of how extemporization flourished and withered. Beyond that, Gooley elucidates the complex conversion of improvisation into discursive, rhetorical, pedagogical, and ethical terms. As a result, the book not only restores an element of the unexpected to over-determined historical narratives, but also suggests how the scores of Schumann and Liszt might be played and heard afresh. * Roger Moseley, author of Keys to Play: Music as a Ludic Medium from Apollo to Nintendo *
Table of ContentsPrelude: The Virtue of Improvisation Chapter 1: The School of Abbé Vogler: Weber and Meyerbeer Chapter 2: The Kapellmeister Network and the Performance of Community: Hummel, Moscheles, and Mendelssohn Chapter 3: Carl Loewe's Performative Romanticism Chapter 4: Schumann and the Economization of Musical Labor Chapter 5: Liszt and the Romantic Rhetoric of Improvisation Chapter 6: Improvisatoriness: The Regime of the Improvisation Imaginary Postlude: Improvisation and Utopia
