Author Description

This anthology is designed to accompany Romantic Music, the second offering in the Norton Introduction to Music History series. It will serve as a score resource for all the works discussed in depth in that volume, and will also be valuable independently as a well-balanced collection for students of nineteenth-century music. To that end, the editor has ranged widely throughout the gamut of forms and genres typical of the Romantic period. The symphony is reprenseted by one early and one late work; literature of the piano includes several sonatas and short lyric pieces; the virtuoso performer is acknowledged in a Liszt paraphrase and a Brahms concerto. Examples of chamber music, the tone poem, and the oratorio are all included. The lied is introduced through works by Schubert, Schumann, and Hugo Wolf. The opera is lavishly represented by excerpts from Rossini, Wagner, Verdi, and Musorgsky masterpieces.<br/><br/>For each of the thirty-eight selections in this anthology, the very best edition currently available has been reproduced. Wherever possible, Professor Plantinga has included complete pieces; given the mammoth proportions of many nineteenth-century works this has not always been practical. All texts have been given in the original language and in English translation.