Cambridge Companion to Music and Romanticism

This Companion presents a new understanding of the relationship between music and culture in and around the nineteenth century, and encourages readers to explore what Romanticism in music might mean today. Challenging the view that musical 'romanticism' is confined to a particular style or period, it reveals instead the multiple intersections between the phenomenon of Romanticism and music. Drawing on a variety of disciplinary approaches, and reflecting current scholarly debates across the humanities, it places music at the heart of a nexus of Romantic themes and concerns. Written by a dynamic team of leading younger scholars and established authorities, it gives a state-of-the-art yet accessible overview of current thinking on this popular topic.

"Unlike many earlier books on the topic, Romanticism is not taken here primarily to refer to a distinct period in music history, though there is nevertheless a clear historical focus on the long nineteenth century, resulting from the overlapping between the Romantic period as generally understood in literature and art (c. 1797-1848) and as commonly received as a musical epoch (from c. 1815 to c. 1914). Nor, on the other hand, is Romanticism understood simply as a musical style, even one characteristic of a group of figures we might choose to term 'Romantics'"--