Details

Subject(s)

• Music—19th century—History and criticism [Browse]
• Music—Performance—History [Browse]

Summary note

Romantic Anatomies of Performance is concerned with the very matter of musical expression: the hands and voices of virtuosic musicians. Rubini, Chopin, Nourrit, Liszt, Donzelli, Thalberg, Velluti, Sontag, and Malibran were prominent celebrity pianists and singers who plied their trade between London and Paris, the most dynamic musical centers of nineteenth-century Europe. In their day, performers such as these provoked an avalanche of commentary and analysis, inspiring debates over the nature of mind and body, emotion and materiality, spirituality and mechanism, artistry and skill. J. Q. Davies revisits these debates, examining how key musicians and their contemporaries made sense of extraordinary musical and physical abilities. This is a history told as much from scientific and medical writings as traditionally musicological ones. Davies describes competing notions of vocal and pianistic health, contrasts techniques of training, and explores the ways in which music acts in the cultivation of bodies.

Notes

Description based upon print version of record.

Bibliographic references

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Source of description

Description based on print version record.

Language note

English

Contents

• Veluti in speculum : the twilight of the castrato
• Reflecting on reflex : a touching fact about Chopin
• The Sontag-Malibran stereotype
• Boneless hands/Thalberg's ready-made soul/velvet fingers
• In search of voice : Nourrit's voix mixte, Donzelli's bari-tenor
• Liszt's metapianism and the cultural history of the hand.

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ISBN

0-520-95800-4

OCLC

873805867

Doi

• 10.1525/9780520958005

Statement on language in description

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