The Beloved Vision

When one thinks of "great" classical music, we harken back to the nineteenth century and the Romantic tradition. The emotional resonance of nineteenth century has moved generations musicians and resonated with countless listeners. It has inspired artists and writers. But no writer until how has adopted such an insightful narrative approach as Stephen Walsh and he shows how there is more to Romantic music that meets the eye--and the ear. The Beloved Vision links the music history of this singular epoch to the ideas that lay behind Romanticism in all its manifestations. In this account, we come to understand the phase in music history that has become the mainstay of the twentieth and twenty-first century concert and operatic repertoire. The narrative begins in the eighteenth century, with C.P.E. Bach, Haydn and the literary movement known as Sturm und Drang. The windows are flung open, and everything to do with style, form, even technique, is exposed to the emotional and intellectual weather, the impulses and preferences of the individual composer. It's a colorful story, told with passion but also with the precision and clarity of detail for which Stephen Walsh is so widely admired.

Stephen Walsh is Emeritus Professor of music at Cardiff University and the author of a number of books on music including Debussy: A Painter in Sound, Musorgsky and His Circle, and the prizewinning, two-volume biography of Igor Stravinsky. He served for many years as deputy music critic for the Observer and writes reviews for a variety of publications.