The Classical Style

A marvellous book for all those who have a love of the first Viennese School. The addition of the enlarged final section on Beethoven makes the earlier volume, which dealt principally with Haydn and Mozart, largely redundant. The insight which Rosen brings to his subject is of the highest order and one can only marvel at his erudition and immense knowledge of all the works that he discusses.

Very well known book among music critics. Comes with no damage. The sheets within are very friendly to eye even under very bright light. Definitely gonna start reading it in days.

Book is what I expected

Fantastic quality book with all you need to know about these magnificent composers.

The first thing I read in this book was an adamant assertion by the author that: "All of Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven is written with the system of equal temperament in mind, even music for string quartet."All these composers in fact used irregular temperaments, not equal temperament. In Attwood's studies, Mozart advocates a meantone tuning with equivalent sharps and flats differing by a comma (i.e. so that flats are slightly higher in pitch than equivalent sharps).In the cases of Ebb, Fb, and Bbb, Mozart wrote: "...these tones the harpsichord has not, but all other instruments have...".Keyboards were tuned to various fixed meantone temperaments, although some ('split-key') keyboards, like those favoured by J.C. Bach in London, were able to produce both sharp and flat variants. That such keyboards were constructed shows the importance of meantone during this period.Not even J.S. Bach intended equal temperament; his other son C.P.E Bach described the intended tuning, where "most of the 5ths were tempered", thus not all (as in equal temperament).

I was delighted to receive this book so promptly!.

Beautiful prose

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