Books like The Classical Style by Charles Rosen

Rosen examines how 19th Century composers extended the boundaries of music, and their engagement with literature, landscape and the divine.

Explore the evolution of Western music through the lives of composers from Monteverdi to the 1990s tonalists, as biographical insights reveal how each artist was shaped by predecessors and the world around them.

A concise guide to Baroque music, offering ear‑and‑eye study of key styles and genres through selected examples and period‑appropriate analysis.

"Beethoven's piano sonatas form one of the most important collections of works in the whole history of music. Spanning several decades of his life as a composer, the sonatas soon came to be seen as the first body of substantial serious works for piano suited to performance in large concert halls seating hundreds of people." "In this practical guide for both listener and performer, Charles Rosen places the sonatas in context and provides an understanding of the formal principles involved in interpreting and performing this unique repertoire, covering such aspects as sonata form, phrasing, and tempo, as well as the use of pedal and trills. In the second part of his book, he looks at the sonatas individually, from the earliest works of the 1790s through the sonatas of Beethoven's youthful popularity of the early 1800s, the subsequent years of mastery, the years of stress (1812-1817), and the last three sonatas of the 1820s."--BOOK JACKET

"This book continues to develop Hatten's theory of musical physical based on the principles of semiotic theory as introduced in Musical Meaning in Beethoven (1994). In Part One, Hatten applies his theories of markedness, topics, and tropes to individual works by Beethoven and Schubert, ending the section with a chapter that presents an overview of topics, genres, and forms as tropes in Baroque, Classical, and Romantic music.". "Part Two introduces a new approach by combining critical theory with biological and psychological theories of gesture, thereby surpassing the limits of conventional semiotic analysis. Within this section, Hatten presents analyses of Classical period works by Beethoven, Mozart, and Schubert. Part three extends these ideas into a theory of musical continuity, with several analyses of Beethoven's late works."--BOOK JACKET.