Romantic music: A history of musical style in nineteenth-century Europe

Abstract

Abstract Leon Plantinga’s Romantic Music: A History of Musical Style in Nineteenth–Century Europe will certainly be a boon to music students and lecturers alike in tertiary institutions throughout the English-speaking world. It also purports to be a book for the non–specialist. In this latter guise, it is rather more demanding than perhaps it should be, since few non–specialists would have the requisite knowledge of the intricacies of harmonic analysis (including the Schenkerian variety) or be equipped to fred their way around the numerous quotations from orchestral scores. The accompanying volume Anthology of Romantic Music edited by the same author (Norton, 1984) is a useful compendium of selected works by 24 composers for those who do not have ready access to a music library. For those who do, an index to these works in the main volume would have been useful and saved the reader an unnecessary expense.