Between Text and Context: Schumann, Liszt, and the Reception of Dedications

Abstract

Although marginalized in modern editions, dedications printed before the twentieth century dominated title pages with their size and elaborate ornamentation. Examining specifically the reciprocal dedications between Robert Schumann and Franz Liszt, this study argues that such prominent paratexts functioned in the mid-nineteenth-century marketplace simultaneously as advertisements for the works involved, as allusions to composer biography, and as public gifts. Contemporary reviews, letters, biographies, and similar dedications provide the evidence for this consideration of the ways in which a peripheral element of the published score can affect the reception and dissemination of the music itself.