The Music of the Nineteenth Century, and Its Culture

by Marx, Adolf Bernhard

• ISBN13: 9781108001021
• ISBN10: 1108001025
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2009-07-20
• Publisher: Cambridge Univ Pr

Summary

A. B. Marx (1795-1866) was a scholar, teacher and critic of music, for many years Professor of Music at the University of Berlin, and a close friend - before a falling-out over the libretto of an oratorio - of Mendelssohn. This influential book, published in German in 1855 and translated into English in the same year, consists of two parts: a survey of the significance of music to western culture, and an impassioned and thought-provoking guide to the necessary moral qualities, skills and understanding required to teach - and to be taught - music. Marx's appreciation of such composers as Mozart, Beethoven, Berlioz and Wagner is placed in a context in which music is seen as a crucial moral influence on the future development of mankind, and musicians therefore as playing a vital role in that development.