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Charles Rosen, Music and Sentiment (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2010). xix+141 pp. $24.00.

Sentiment and Style: Charles Rosen's Pursuit of Musical Meaning

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Charles Rosen, Music and Sentiment (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2010). xix+141 pp. $24.00.

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 November 2011

Robert S. Hatten
Robert S. Hatten*
Affiliation:
University of Texas, Austin
*
[email protected]
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Type
Book Reviews
Information
Nineteenth-Century Music Review , Volume 8 , Issue 2: Mahler: Centenary Commentaries on Musical Meaning , 24 November 2011 , pp. 273 - 284
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2011

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References

1 A brief sampling of music aestheticians with important ideas about expression would include Kivy, Peter, The Corded Shell: Reflections on Musical Expression (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1980)Google Scholar; Davies, Stephen, Musical Meaning and Expression (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1994)Google Scholar; Scruton, Roger, The Aesthetics of Music (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999)Google Scholar; and Robinson, Jenefer, Deeper than Reason: Emotion and Its Role in Literature, Music, and Art (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005)Google Scholar. Music semiotic approaches with special relevance for expression include Márta Grabócz, Morphologie des Oeuvres pour Piano de Liszt (Paris: Éditions Kimé, 1996) [1st edition in Hungarian, 1986)]; Eero Tarasti, A Theory of Musical Semiotics (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1994); Hatten, Robert S., Musical Meaning in Beethoven: Markedness, Correlation, and Interpretation (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1994)Google Scholar, and Cumming, Naomi, The Sonic Self: Musical Subjectivity and Signification (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2000)Google Scholar.

2 Cooke, Deryck, The Language of Music (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1959)Google Scholar.

3 Taruskin, Richard, The Oxford History of Western Music, 6 vols. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005)Google Scholar. Charles Rosen, ‘From the Troubadours to Frank Sinatra’ and ‘From the Troubadours to Sinatra: Part II’ (review of The Oxford History of Western Music by Richard Taruskin), The New York Review of Books, 23 February and 9 March 2006.

4 For a virtuoso demonstration of this aspect of Rosen's literary style, see Burnham, Scott, ‘The Music of a Classical Style’, in Variations on the Canon: Essays on Music from Bach to Boulez in Honor of Charles Rosen on His Eightieth Birthday, ed. Robert Curry, David Gable, and Robert L. Marshall (Rochester: University of Rochester Press, 2008): 303–310Google Scholar. Interested readers will be grateful for the comprehensive discography and bibliography of Rosen's recordings and publications in the two appendices of this book.

5 Rosen, Charles, The Classical Style: Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven (London: Faber; New York: Viking Press, 1971)Google Scholar; corrected edition with expanded chapters on opera seria and Beethoven (New York: Norton Library Edition, 1972); 2nd ed. (rev. and expanded) (New York: W.W. Norton, 1997).

6 Rosen, , The Classical Style, 22Google Scholar.

7 Chomsky, Noam, Syntactic Structures (The Hague: Mouton, 1957)Google Scholar; Ruwet, Nicolas, ‘Théorie et méthodes dans les études musicales’, Musique en jeu 17 (1975): 11–35Google Scholar.

8 Croce, Benedetto, Estetica come scienza dell'espressione e linguistic generale (Palermo, 1902)Google Scholar; Aesthetic as Science of Expression and General Linguistic, trans. Douglas Ainslie (New York: Noonday 1922 [1909]). For Wittgenstein's transitive/intransitive distinction, see Wollheim, Richard, Art and Its Objects (New York: Harper & Row, 1968)Google Scholar: 82ff. Scruton, The Aesthetics of Music, 140ff. effectively explains Croce's distinction between artistic representation and expression, but comprehending the uniqueness of expression leads Scruton to dismiss early semiotic approaches, including Deryck Cooke's (see Scruton's The Aesthetic Understanding [London: Methuen, 1983], 35 for a harsh critique), and he struggles to find the right application of the type–token distinction that would accommodate both conventional and unique aspects of musical expression.

9 Tracing the critical response to the book would require another essay, but for insight into historiographical issues arising from Rosen's normative approach to style, I would recommend a penetrating review of the 2nd ed. (1997) by Dean, W. Sutcliffe in Music & Letters 79 (1998): 601–604CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

10 Rosen, Charles, Sonata Forms (New York: W.W. Norton, 1980)Google Scholar; 2nd ed., rev. and expanded (Norton, 1988).

11 Rosen, , Classical Style, 460Google Scholar.

12 Rosen, Charles, The Romantic Generation (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1995)Google Scholar.

13 Rosen, , Classical Style, 460Google Scholar.

14 Rosen, Charles, Arnold Schoenberg (New York: Viking Press, 1975; rev. ed. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1985)Google Scholar; Rosen, Charles, The Musical Languages of Elliott Carter. Guide to the Elliott Carter Research Materials at the Library of Congress, Music Division. (Washington, DC: Library of Congress, 1985)Google Scholar; Rosen, Charles, Program notes for The Last Keyboard Works of Bach (Columbia, Odyssey 32 36 0020, 1969)Google Scholar.

15 Rosen, Charles, The Frontiers of Meaning: Three Informal Lectures on Music (New York: Hill and Wang, 1994)Google Scholar.

16 Rosen's residency at Indiana University was 15–20 January 2006 (not 2002, as stated in the Preface). As a member of the Patten Lecture Committee, I wrote the letter of nomination and organized his visit, a five-day residency which included not only two lectures to a University-wide audience, but also several more impromptu lectures to classes, and an impressive piano recital comprising signature performances of Bach's Contrapunctus X, the six-voice Ricercar, and Beethoven's last three piano sonatas.

17 Gombrich, Ernst, Art and Illusion: A Study in the Psychology of Pictorial Representation (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1960)Google Scholar.

18 Cooke, Language of Music.

19 For more on troping, see Hatten, Musical Meaning in Beethoven, 161–96Google Scholar.

20 William Kinderman elaborates on the significance of Beethoven's citation of the popular song ‘Ich bin lüderlich, du bist lüderlich’, as well as another, citing both Cooper, Martin, Beethoven: The Last Decade, 1817–1827 (London: and New York: Oxford University Press, 1970)Google Scholar: 190–91) and Marx, A.B., Ludwig van Beethoven: Leben und Schaffen, vol. 2 (Berlin, 1859; rep. Hildesheim and New York: Georg Olms, 1979)Google Scholar: 416 as sources. See Kinderman, , Beethoven, 2nd ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009): 246–247Google Scholar.

21 Heartz's lecture title, date, and place are not provided.

22 For the concept of a style correlation, see Hatten, Musical Meaning, 30. For more on this specific case, see Rosand, Ellen, ‘The Descending Tetrachord: An Emblem of Lament’, The Musical Quarterly 65 (1979): 346–359CrossRefGoogle Scholar, cited by Rosen (p. 27).

23 For more on type–token relationships, see Hatten, Musical Meaning, 44–56.

24 Here he approvingly mentions the work of Tarasti, Grabócz, and myself, but without citing any particular publications; see footnote 1, above, for some basic references.

25 Although Rosen does not use the term gesture, the concept is implicit in his analysis. For more on the concept of musical gesture, see Hatten, Interpreting Musical Gestures, Topics, and Tropes: Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2004).

26 For more on agency, see Hatten, , ‘Musical Agency as Implied by Gesture and Emotion: Its Consequences for Listeners’ Experiencing of Musical Emotion’, in Semiotics 2009: Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Semiotic Society of America, ed. Karen Haworth and Leonard Sbrocchi (New York: Legas Publishing, 2010): 162–169Google Scholar.

27 For more on rhetorical gestures, see Hatten, Interpreting Musical Gestures, 136–7 and 164–76Google Scholar.

28 Monelle, Raymond, The Sense of Music: Semiotic Essays (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000): 197–206Google Scholar.

29 Hatten, , Musical Meaning, 162 ffGoogle Scholar.

30 Rosen actually uses the helpful term ‘integration’ when interpreting a later example on p. 65.

31 Smith, Peter H., Expressive Forms in Brahms's Instrumental Music: Structure and Meaning in His Werther Quartet (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2005)Google Scholar.

32 For more on the concept of intertextuality, see Hatten, Robert, ‘The Place of Intertextuality in Music Studies’, American Journal of Semiotics 3 no. 4 (1985): 69–82Google Scholar, and Klein, Michael L., Intertextuality in Western Art Music (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2005)Google Scholar.

33 For more on expressive meaning in this sonata, see Hatten, Robert, ‘Interpreting Beethoven's Tempest Sonata through Topics, Gestures, and Agency’, in Beethoven's Tempest Sonata: Perspectives of Analysis and Performance, ed. Pieter Bergé (Leuven, Belgium, and Walpole, MA: Peeters, 2009): 163–180Google Scholar.

34 A more detailed interpretation of the opening theme with its off-tonic opening is found in Hatten, Interpreting Musical Gestures, 168–9. Example 2 appears as Example 7.20 in my book.

35 See Longyear, Rey, ‘Beethoven and Romantic Irony’, in The Creative World of Beethoven, ed. Paul Henry Lang (New York: Norton, 1970): 145–162)Google Scholar, and Hatten, Musical Meaning, 186–8.