The Symphonic Repertoire. Volume 2. The First Golden Age of the Viennese Symphony: Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, and Schubert

A Choice Outstanding Academic Book of 2003.

From the birth of the symphony to the present a milestone in musical scholarship.

Central to the repertoire of Western art music since the 18th century, the symphony has come to be regarded as one of the ultimate compositional challenges. Surprisingly, heretofore there has been no truly extensive, broad-based treatment of the genre, and the best of the existing studies are now several decades old. In this five-volume series, A. Peter Brown explores the symphony from its 18th-century beginnings to the end of the 20th century. Synthesizing the enormous scholarly literature, Brown presents up-to-date overviews of the status of research, discusses any important former or remaining problems of attribution, illuminates the style of specific works and their contexts, and samples early writings on their reception. The Symphonic Repertoire provides an unmatched compendium of knowledge for the student, teacher, performer, and sophisticated amateur. The series is being launched with two volumes on the Viennese symphony.

Volume II
The First Golden Age of the Viennese Symphony
Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, and Schubert.

Volume II considers some of the best-known and most universally admired symphonies by Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, and Schubert, who created what A. Peter Brown designates as the first golden age of the Viennese symphony during the late 18th and first three decades of the 19th century. The last two dozen symphonies by Haydn, half dozen by Mozart, and three by Schubert, together with Beethoven's nine symphonies became established in the repertoire and provided a standard against which every other symphony would be measured. Most significantly, they imparted a prestige to the genre that was only occasionally rivaled by other cyclic compositions. More than 170 symphonies from this repertoire are described and analyzed in The First Golden Age of the Viennese Symphony, the first volume of the series to appear.

Published with the kind support of Allen W. Clowes.

CONTENIDO:

Preface to the series
Preface to volume II
Abbreviations
Identification of the works

1. Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven and Schubert: Orchestras and concerts
2. The symphonies of Franz Joseph Haydn
3. The symphonies of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
4. The symphonies of Ludwig van Beethoven
5. The symphonies of Franz Peter Schubert

Notes
Bibliography of works cited
Index
Index of works