Foreword
Brahms Leaves Home, April - May
Berlioz and Spohr in London, May - July
Brahms and Liszt in Weimar, June
Wagner and Liszt in Zurich, May - July
Berlioz in Baden-Baden and Frankfurt, July - August
Joachim and Brahms in Göttingen and Bonn, July - September
Liszt in Frankfurt, Weimar and Carlsbad, July - September
Wagner in St Moritz and La Spezia, July - September
Liszt in Karlsruhe, September - October
Schumann and Brahms in Düsseldorf, September - October
Liszt, Wagner and Berlioz in Paris, October
Berlioz, Joachim and Brahms in Hanover, October - November
Brahms, Berlioz and Liszt in Leipzig, November - December
The Schumanns in Holland and Hanover, November - February
Afterword
HUGH MACDONALD was the Avis Blewett Professor of Music, Washington University, St Louis from 1987 to 2011. He is the author of many important books, including Beethoven's Century: Essays on Composers and Themes (URP, 2008), Music in 1853: the Biography of a Year (Boydell Press, 2012), and Saint-Saëns and the Stage (CUP, 2019).
The very choice of the year 1853 proves to be immediately
insightful [because of events in the lives of each of the six great
musicians here portrayed]...The skillful way that [the anecdotes ]
are gathered and juxtaposed frequently conveys...surprising
correspondences that can help correct accepted images [of these
great musicians ].
*DIE MUSIKFORSCHUNG*
The resulting volume is a fascinating close-up look both at a brief
but particularly rich span of time in the lives of major composers
of the century and at the ways in which their individual stories
intertwined ... inspires readers to think in new ways about
familiar subjects.
*JOURNAL OF MUSICOLOGICAL RESEARCH*
[This] narrative is refreshingly efficient, and connections that
have eluded single-subject biographers come to light. Music-lovers
of all persuasions are likely to gain something from this
well-written, thoroughly researched work.
*OPERA NEWS*
Hugh Macdonald's 'biography of a year' is positively postmodern in
the way it dissolves its documentary sources into a smoothly
running narrative that relishes and thereby transcends the archaic
clichés of a genre in which hindsight brings multiple ironies and
insights to bear.
*MUSICAL TIMES*
Macdonald writes with great fluency and grace. [...] This is a
splendid effort.
*AMERICAN RECORD GUIDE*
This is a book to read and re-read, beautifully bound and printed
[...] and if there were such a thing as Gramophone Book of the
Year, this would be my first recommendation.
*GRAMOPHONE*
[Macdonald] is the author of books that palpably enrich and
illuminate. ... [he] brings to skill that rarest skill of any
serious writer on music: the ability to talk about it not as a some
arcane technical discipline, but as a direct articulation of
thought and feeling, and the defining activity of those who
practise it.
*LONDON REVIEW OF BOOKS*
[A] highly readable biography.
*SPECTATOR*
In Hugh Macdonald's highly readable Music in 1853, musical colossi
are bumping into each other on almost every page.
*FINANCIAL TIMES*
[Macdonald's] detailed interweaving of the daily lives of these
characters leaves an abiding impression, not just of the endless
travel involved in being a working musician, but also of the
importance of the railroads: the new arteries of central Europe's
increasingly vigorous cultural life.
*SUNDAY TIMES*
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