Reclaiming Late-Romantic Music: Singing Devils and Distant Sounds Volume 14 (Hardcover) (ISBN-13: 9780520280397)

Why are some of the most beloved and frequently performed works of the late-romantic period--Mahler, Delius, Debussy, Sibelius, Puccini--regarded by many critics as perhaps not quite of the first rank? Why has modernist discourse continued to brand these works as overly sentimental and emotionally self-indulgent? Peter Franklin takes a close and even-handed look at how and why late-romantic symphonies and operas steered a complex course between modernism and mass culture in the period leading up to the Second World War. The style's continuing popularity and its domination of the film music idiom (via work by composers such as Max Steiner, Erich Wolfgang Korngold, and their successors) bring late-romantic music to thousands of listeners who have never set foot in a concert hall. Reclaiming Late-Romantic Music sheds new light on these often unfairly disparaged works and explores the historical dimension of their continuing role in the contemporary sound world.

Author: Peter Franklin
ISBN-10: 0520280393
ISBN-13: 9780520280397
Publisher: University of California Press
Language: English
Published: 02/15/2014
Pages: 224
Format: Hardcover
Weight: 0.95lbs
Size: 9.10h x 6.20w x 0.90d

Review Citation(s):
Choice 10/01/2014 pg. 267

About the Author
Peter Franklin is Professor of Music at the University of Oxford and a Fellow of St Catherine's College. His books include Mahler: Symphony no.3 (1991), The Life of Mahler (1997), and Seeing Through Music: Gender and Modernism in Classic Hollywood Film Score (2011).