Playing with images : character and emotion in the age of romanticism / Edoardo Torbianelli -- "Inner voices' and "deep combinations" : Robert Schumann's approach to romantic polyphony / Hubert Moßburger -- Frédéric Chopin, Clara Schuman, and the singing piano school / Jeanne Roudet -- Vocal patterns in the themes of Berlioz's instrumental music / Jean-Pierre Bartoli -- Plot and narrative in Mendelssohn's chamber music for strings and piano / Douglass Seaton -- Robert Schumann's poetic paraphrases : analytical implications / Hubert Moßburger
What can music tell us - without words? Can it depict scenes, narrate stories, elucidate beliefs? And can it be an instrument through which we access the inner lives not only of musicians from the past but of ourselves, today? In this book five scholars and performers probe these and related questions to illuminate both the experience and performance of nineteenth-century music. Drawing on a rich range of sources, they reveal the musical thought and practice of canonical composers like Berlioz, Mendelssohn, and Schumann. Their work challenges us to reconsider our musical practices and the voices manifested in them, and it encourages the creation of an art that is both historical and transcendental
