Charles Rosen

Charles Rosen

Charles Rosen (born May 5, 1927 in New York City , † December 9, 2012 in New York City ) was an American pianist and music theorist .

Rosen had a two-fold career. As a piano virtuoso he has appeared in many solo and orchestral concerts all over the world; at the invitation of the composers, he has recorded a number of compositions from the 20th century , including works by Igor Stravinsky , Elliott Carter and Pierre Boulez . His most important recordings also include the recording of the Goldberg Variations from 1967 by Sony and recordings of Ludwig van Beethoven's late piano sonatas .

Rosen was also the author of a number of highly regarded books on music. His most famous book is The Classical Style (2nd edition, 1997, New York: Norton; 6th edition: Bärenreiter Verlag, Kassel 2012), in which the nature and development of the classical style by Joseph Haydn , Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Ludwig van Beethoven is analyzed. Sonata Forms (2nd edition, 1988, New York: Norton) is a follow-up to The Classical Style , an intensive analysis of the primary musical form of the classical era. The Romantic Generation (1998, Cambridge: Harvard University Press) covers the works of the early generation of Romantic composers, including Frédéric Chopin , Franz Liszt , Robert Schumann , Hector Berlioz and Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy .

Other books are:

• The Musical Languages ​​of Elliott Carter (1984. Washington, DC: Music Division, Research Services, Library of Congress)
• The Frontiers of Meaning: Three Informal Lectures on Music (1994. New York: Hill and Wang)
• Arnold Schönberg (1996. Chicago: University of Chicago Press)
• Beethoven's Piano Sonatas: A Short Companion (2001, New Haven: Yale University Press)
• Critical Entertainments: Music Old and New (2001. Cambridge: Harvard University Press)
• Piano Notes: The World of the Pianist (2002: Free Press)
• Romanticism and Realism: The Mythology of Nineteenth-Century Art (with Henri Zerner; 1985. New York: Norton)
• Romantic Poets, Critics, and Other Madmen (2000. Cambridge: Harvard University Press)

From time to time Rosen taught at various universities: Princeton , Harvard , Oxford and Chicago . In 1974 he was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences . Since 2002 he has been a corresponding member of the British Academy .

literature

• Margalit Fox: Charles Rosen, Scholar-Musician Who Untangled Classical Works, Dies at 85 . In: The New York Times . December 10, 2012.
• Ivan Hewett: Charles Rosen obituary . In: The Guardian . December 10, 2012.
• Julia Spinola: The Art of Contradiction . In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung . December 12, 2012.

Web links

• Literature by and about Charles Rosen in the catalog of the German National Library