Critical Entertainments Music Old And New [Paperback]

An extraordinarily gifted musician and writer, Charles Rosen is a peerless commentator on the history and performance of music.Critical Entertainmentsbrings together many of the essays that have established him as one of the most influential and eloquent voices in the field of music in our time.

These essays cover a broad range of musical forms, historical periods, and issuesfrom Bach through Brahms to Carter and Schoenberg, from contrapuntal keyboard music to opera, from performance practices to music history as a discipline. They revisit Rosens favorite subjects and pursue some less familiar paths. They court controversy (with strong opinions about performance on historical instruments, the so-called New Musicology, and the alleged death of classical music) and offer enlightenment on subjects as diverse as music dictionaries and the aesthetics of stage fright. All are unified by Rosens abiding concerns and incomparable style. In sum,Critical Entertainmentsis a treasury of the vast learning, wit, and insight that we have come to expect from this remarkable writer. It will delight all music lovers.

[A] stimulating read...Over the course of 300 pages, Rosen addresses such disparate subjects as stage fright, the keyboard music of Bach and Handel, the libretto for Le Nozze di Figaro, Brahms as classicist and subversive, the 1980 edition of theNew Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, and the Double Concerto (1961) by the American composer Elliott Carter. Rosen casts a skeptical eye on the politicized musicology that occasionally passed for scholarship in the early 1990s, while admiring certain practitioners of this dubious trade.Just beneath the playful surface textures of Rosen's writing, another purpose is being served. He pleads on behalf of artistic pleasure, and reminds his reader of the opportunistic scattering of attention that achieving it may require, yet conducts, from one of his own scattered occasions to the nextlÓ(