Variations on the Canon

"Charles Rosen, the pianist and man of letters, is perhaps the single most influential writer on music of the past half century. While Rosen's vast range as a writer and performer is encyclopedic, it has focused particularly on the living "canonical" repertory extending from Bach to Boulez. Inspired in its liveliness and variety of critical approaches by Charles Rosen's challenging work, Variations on the Canon offers original essays by some of the world's most eminent musical scholars. Contributors address such issues as style and compositional technique, genre, influence and modeling, and reception history; develop insights afforded by close examination of compositional sketches; and consider what language and metaphors might most meaningfully convey insights into music. However diverse the modes of inquiry, each essay sheds new light on the works of those composers posterity has deemed central to the modern Western musical tradition."--Jacket.