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The Cambridge Companion to Schumann.

Article Excerpt
The Cambridge Companion to Schumann. Edited by Beate Perrey. (Cambridge Companions to Music.) Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007. [xx, 302 p. ISBN-10: 0521783410; ISBN-13: 978-0521783415. $90.] Bibliographic references, index, illustrations, music examples.

What did it mean in the mid-nineteenth century for a composer to be "intensely aware of his own and his contemporaries' historical moment," and how (if at all) was that different from what it means when one makes the same statement today? How did that, awareness differentiate Schumann from his contemporaries who were less historically aware, and how did it simply identify him as a child of his own time? Most crucially, how should our own cognizance of Schumann's historical awareness enrich our understanding of his music, his writings, and his life, as well as our interpretations of them?

The quoted phrase is from Nicolas Marston's contribution to the present volume ("Schumann's Heroes: Schubert, Beethoven, Bach," p. 48), but in many ways it articulates a central concern of the topically and thematically diverse essays that populate The Cambridge Companion to Schumann. This latest contribution to the series of Cambridge University Press composer companions is a collection of thoughtful, elegantly written, and well-organized essays that cover most major aspects of the titular composer's work, assembling insights of leading scholars into an organizational framework specifically suited to the needs and issues presented by the subject of the individual volume. The...

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