Freedom and the Arts: Essays on Music and Literature

Charles Rosen

Published by Harvard University Press 2012

Freedom and the Arts

Essays on Music and Literature

Charles Rosen

https://doi.org/10.4159/harvard.9780674065499

Overview
Contents

About this book

Is there a moment in history when a work receives its ideal interpretation? Or is negotiation always required to preserve the past and accommodate the present? The freedom of interpretation, Charles Rosen suggests in these sparkling explorations of music and literature, exists in a delicate balance with fidelity to the identity of the original work.

Rosen cautions us to avoid doctrinaire extremes when approaching art of the past. To understand Shakespeare only as an Elizabethan or Jacobean theatergoer would understand him, or to modernize his plays with no sense of what they bring from his age, deforms the work, making it less ambiguous and inherently less interesting. For a work to remain alive, it must change character over time while preserving a valid witness to its earliest state. When twentieth-century scholars transformed Mozart’s bland, idealized nineteenth-century image into that of a modern revolutionary expressionist, they paradoxically restored the reputation he had among his eighteenth-century contemporaries. Mozart became once again a complex innovator, challenging to perform and to understand.

Drawing on a variety of critical methods, Rosen maintains that listening or reading with intensity—for pleasure—is the one activity indispensable for full appreciation. It allows us to experience multiple possibilities in literature and music, and to avoid recognizing only the revolutionary elements of artistic production. By reviving the sense that works of art have intrinsic merits that bring pleasure, we justify their continuing existence.

Author / Editor information

Rosen Charles :

Charles Rosen is a pianist and Professor Emeritus of Music and Social Thought at the University of Chicago.

Topics

Frontmatter Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	i
Contents Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	vii
Acknowledgments Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	ix
Introduction Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	1
Part One. The Weight of Society
Chapter 1. Freedom and Art Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	7
Chapter 2. Culture on the Market Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	15
Chapter 3. The Future of Music Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	24
Chapter 4. The Canon Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	39
Part Two. Mostly Mozart
Chapter 5. Dramatic and Tonal Logic in Mozart’s Operas Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	51
Chapter 6. Mozart’s Entry into the Twentieth Century Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	64
Chapter 7. The Triumph of Mozart Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	73
Chapter 8. Drama and Figured Bass in Mozart’s Concertos Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	79
Chapter 9. Mozart and Posterity Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	114
Chapter 10. Structural Dissonance and the Classical Sonata Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	121
Chapter 11. Tradition without Convention Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	135
Part Three. Centenaries
Chapter 12. Felix Mendelssohn at 200: Prodigy without Peer Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	171
Chapter 13. Happy Birthday, Elliott Carter! Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	178
Chapter 14. Frédéric Chopin, Reactionary and Revolutionary Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	187
Chapter 15. Robert Schumann, a Vision of the Future Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	193
Part Four. Long Perspectives
Chapter 16. The New Grove’s Dictionary Returns Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	203
Chapter 17. Western Music: The View from California Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	210
Postscript: Modernism and the Cold War Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	240
Chapter 18. Theodor Adorno: Criticism as Cultural Nostalgia Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	248
Chapter 19. Resuscitating Opera: Alessandro Scarlatti Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	264
Chapter 20. Operatic Paradoxes: The Ridiculous and Sublime Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	278
Chapter 21. Lost Chords and the Golden Age of Pianism Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	290
Part Five. Classical Modernism: Past and Present
Chapter 22. Montaigne: Philosophy as Process Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	303
Chapter 23. La Fontaine: The Ethical Power of Style Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	319
Chapter 24. The Anatomy Lesson: Melancholy and the Invention of Boredom Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	339
Chapter 25. Mallarmé and the Transfiguration of Poetry Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	353
Chapter 26. Hofmannsthal and Radical Modernism Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	368
Chapter 27. The Private Obsessions of Wystan Auden Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	383
Part Six. Final Cadence, Unresolved
Chapter 28. Old Wisdom and Newfangled Theory: Two One-Way Streets to Disaster Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	397
Credits. Index
Credits Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	423
Index of Names and Works Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	425

Language: English
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Audience: General/trade;
Pages
- Main content: 410
Illustrations
- Other: 51 music examples

eBook

Published: April 4, 2012
ISBN: 9780674065499