Masterful essays honoring the great pianist and critic Charles Rosen, on masterpieces from Bach and Beethoven to Chopin, Verdi, and Stockhausen. Charles Rosen, the pianist and man of letters, is perhaps the single most influential writer on music of the past half-century. While Rosen's vast range as a writer and performer is encyclopedic, it has focused particularly on theliving "canonical" repertory extending from Bach to Boulez. Inspired in its liveliness and variety of critical approaches by Charles Rosen's challenging work, Variations on the Canon offers original essays by some of the world's most eminent musical scholars. Contributors address such issues as style and compositional technique, genre, influence and modeling, and reception history; develop insights afforded by close examination of compositional sketches; and consider what language and metaphors might most meaningfully convey insights into music. However diverse the modes of inquiry, each essay sheds new light on the works of those composers posterity has deemed central to the modern Western musical tradition. Contributors: Pierre Boulez, Scott Burnham, Elliott Carter, Robert Curry, Walter Frisch, David Gable, Philip Gossett, Jeffrey Kallberg, Joseph Kerman, Richard Kramer, William Kinderman, Lewis Lockwood, Sir Charles Mackerras, Robert L. Marshall, Robert P. Morgan, Charles Rosen, Julian Rushton, David Schulenberg, Laszlo Somfai, Leo Treitler, James Webster, and Robert Winter. Robert Curry is principalof the Conservatorium High School and honorary senior lecturer in the Centre for Medieval Studies, University of Sydney; David Gable is Assistant Professor of Music at Clark-Atlanta University; Robert L. Marshall is Louis, Frances, and Jeffrey Sachar Professor Emeritus of Music at Brandeis University.

Interpretive and biographical essays by a major authority on Bach and Mozart probe for clues to the driving forces and experiences that shaped the character and the extraordinary artistic achievements of these iconic composers. 2020 CHOICE Outstanding Academic Title Award Winner The essays in this volume, by one of America's leading authorities on Bach and Mozart, serve a single objective: to promote a deeper understanding of those two great composers both as supremely gifted creators and as human beings. Author Robert L. Marshall draws on a diverse range of interpretive strategies including both textual and musical criticism. Life and work are treated together, just as they were intermingled for the composers. After a preliminary historiographical contemplation of the "Century of Bach and Mozart," fifteen numbered chapters follow in roughly chronological succession. Among the issues addressed: the artistic consequences of Bach's orphanhood, his relationship to Martin Luther, his attitude toward Jews, his relationship to his sons, the stages of his stylistic development, and his position in the history of music; and, moving to Mozart, the composer's portrayal in Amadeus, his wit, his indebtedness to J. S. Bach, and aspects of his compositional process. The volume concludes with a factually informed speculation about what Mozart is likely to have done and to have composed, had he lived on for another decade or more. ROBERT L. MARSHALL is Sachar Professor of Music emeritus, Brandeis University.