The Pelican History of Music Vol. 3
Last updated: 26.02.22
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Printed: 1980 Author: Alec Robertson, Denis Stevens
Publisher: Penguin Books Limited ISBN: 0140204946
Copyright: Penguin 1968    
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Publisher's blurb: "Classical and Romantic".
This third volume in the Pelican History of Music is mainly concerned with the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, but works by Mahler, Bloch, Bax and others are discussed in coda.
Even in the age of enlightenment a patron's "good taste" was something that composers had to contend with and the so-called style galant forms the background to the achievement of C.P.E Bach, Mozart and Haydn. But Beethoven scorned conventional taste, and the great classical works of the later eighteenth composers owe their boldness to the style bourgeois.
Nineteenth-century romatic composers, such as wagner and Verdi, were aware of the enormous material expansion and adventure of their age. And unlike previous composers they were conscious of their kinship with writers and painters; some of their greatest musical triumphs are to be found in the opera."
Personal remarks:
Please refer to The Pelican History of Music Vol. 1.