Romanticism--a concept more easily recognized than defined--dominated the artistic landscape of music from 1830-1890. Like the other volumes in the New Oxford History of Music series, this final volume to be published provides a detailed, scholarly critical survey of the music and composers of its period. Divided among different forms of music, the chapters, written by eminent scholars under the editorship of one of the most respected experts on nineteenth-century music, detail the work of Chopin, Schumann, Mendelssohn, Liszt, Brahms, Berlioz, Donizetti, Verdi, Wagner, Gounod, Bizet, Borodin, Mussorgsky, Tchaikovsky, Rimsky-Korsakov, Dvorak, Smetana, Faure, Wolf, Puccini, Bruckner, Mahler, Strauss, Cesar Franck, and Debussy.
The years 1830-90 were the 'Romantic period' in music par excelence. It was in March 1830 that Goethe complained that 'everybody talks now about Classicism and Romanticism--which no one thought of fifty years ago', and the ensuing decade saw the coming to maturity of the first generation of Romantic composers--Berlioz, Chopin, Schumann, Mendelssohn, Liszt, Wagner, and Verdi. As for the end of the period, in 1890 Wagner, Liszt, and Cesar Franck had recently died, while the next few years were to witness the deaths of Brahms and Bruckner and the final masterpieces of Verdi and Tchaikovsky.
