Description
Book SynopsisTrade ReviewThis is a fascinating look into the more abstract aspects of 19th-century musical attitudes and how it has fueled long standing conversations on the value of poetic interiority over overt technical virtuosity.
* American Music Teacher *
Among the most distinguished results of Stefaniak's study is to have reminded us of...the challenges of scholarly engagement with complex, often contradictory manifestations of lived experience.
* Die Musikforschung *
Schumann's Virtuosity is thoughtfully organized and loosely chronological, with in-depth, elegant analyses of relevant examples.
* Nineteenth-Century Music Review *
Stefaniak's book remains a valuable resource for musicologists, theorists, pianists, and aestheticians interested in reading about Schumann's views on virtuosity.
* Notes *
It is refreshing to read a contemporary scholarly book that embraces aesthetics so forcefully.
* Choice *
Stefaniak's book is commendable as a rational, appealing introduction to an important aspect of nineteenth-century music praxis as explored and articulated by a major composer and leader of the early Romantic movement.
* Journal of the American Musicological Society *
Table of ContentsAcknowledgments
Introduction: The Virtuosity Discourse
Part I: Schumann and the Piano Virtuosity of the 1830s
Part I Introduction
1. Florestan among the Revelers: Postclassical Virtuosity and Schumann's Critique of Pleasure
2. Florestan's Wine, Clara Wieck's Spirit: Postclassical Virtuosity and Poetic Interiority
3. Poetic Showpieces in the Cultivated Salon
4. Virtuosity and the Rhetoric of the Sublime
Part II: The Virtuoso on Mount Parnassus: Schumann and the Culture of the Work Concept
Part II Introduction
5. Steps to Parnassus? Schumann's Equivocal Work Concept
6. Festivals of the Virtuoso Priesthood: Collaborating with Clara Schumann and Joseph Joachim
Epilogue
List of Endnote Abbreviations
Notes
Bibliography
Index
