The Romantic Overture and Musical Form from Rossini to Wagner

Description

In this book Steven Vande Moortele offers a comprehensive account of operatic and concert overtures in continental Europe between 1815 and 1850. Discussing a broad range of works by German, French, and Italian composers, it is at once an investigation of the Romantic overture within the context of mid-nineteenth century musical culture and an analytical study that focuses on aspects of large-scale formal organization in the overture genre. While the book draws extensively upon the recent achievements of the 'new Formenlehre', it does not use the overture merely as a vehicle for a theory of romantic form, but rather takes an analytical approach that engages with individual works in their generic context.

Steven Vande Moortele is Assistant Professor of Music Theory at the University of Toronto. His research interests include theories of musical form, the analysis of large-scale instrumental music from the late-eighteenth to the early-twentieth century, and the works of Richard Wagner and Arnold Schoenberg. He is the author of Two-Dimensional Sonata Form: Form and Cycle in Single-Movement Instrumental Works by Liszt, Strauss, Schoenberg, and Zemlinsky (2009) and co-editor of Formal Functions in Perspective: Essays on Musical Form from Haydn to Adorno (with Julie Pedneault-Deslauriers and Nathan John Martin, 2015). From 2013 to 2016, he was also co-editor of the journal Music Theory and Analysis (MTA).

'This book is an important contribution to scholarship in its field. It combines an enviable command of the relevant musical sources and of developing social settings for overtures in the nineteenth century, painting a very broad picture of influence across musical Europe throughout an extended time period that is convincingly drawn and firmly located in up-to-date scholarship that has been perused with rigour. Balanced with this is an eye for analytical minutiae and an ability to establish musical procedures carefully and accurately. That the author manages this balancing act in English prose that is actually enjoyable to read is a testimony to his powers of communication.' John Irving, Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music and Dance