num_pages: 400
description: **A New Yorker Best Book of the Year**An excellent work of history. The Wall Street JournalA rich and luminous biography of nineteenth century music.When one thinks of great classical musicmusic with the most emotional resonance and timelessnesswe harken back to the nineteenth century and the Romantic tradition. We recall the sweet melody of a Schubert song the heroine dying for love in an Italian opera the swooning orchestration of a Tchaikovsky symphony.The emotional resonance of nineteenth century has moved generations muscians and resonated with countless listeners. It has inspired artists and writers. But no writer until how has adopted such a vividly insightful narrative approach as Stephen Walsh and he shows how there is more to Romantic music that meets the eyeand the ear.With authority insight and passion The Beloved Vision  links the music history of this singular epoch to the ideas that lay behind Romanticism in all its manifestations. In this complete entertaining and singularly readable account we come to understand the entire phase in music history that has become the mainstay of the twentieth and twenty-first century concert and operatic repertoire. We also come to understand Beethoven Mahler Schubert Chopin and Wagner anew.The narrative begins in the eighteenth century with C.P.E. Bach Haydn and the literary movement known as Sturm und Drang  seen as a reaction of the individual artist to the confident certainties of the Enlightenment. The windows are flung open and everything to do with style form even technique is exposed to the emotional and intellectual weather the impulses and preferences of the individual composer. Risk takingthe braving of the unknownwas certainly an important part of what the composers wanted to do as true of Chopin and Verdi as it is of Berlioz and Wagner. It's an exciting colorful story told with passion but also with the precision and clarity of detail for which Stephen Walsh is so widely admired.The Beloved Visi on is a cultural tour de force by turns bold challenging and immensely stimulating.
language: English
title: The Beloved Vision: A History of Nineteenth Century Music
publisher: Pegasus Books