Late Romantic Era

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interviews and conversations with John C. Tibbetts

Schumann: A Chorus of Voices is a significant contribution to Schumann's 200th-birthday year, 2010. In these hitherto unpublished interviews and conversations, more than thirty biographers, musicians, critics, and commentators offer their own unique perspectives on Schumann's life, work, controversies, and place in the history of Romantic music. Gathered by Schumann scholar John C. Tibbetts during more than thirty years of travel and research, these intimate and informal talks take the reader "backstage" to the rehearsal hall, scholar's study, archive, and music festival. Included are musicians Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, Erich Leinsdorf, Jörg Demus, Emanuel Ax, Elly Ameling, Thomas Hampson, Steven Isserlis, Marin Alsop; scholars and biographers Jacques Barzun, Nancy B. Reich, Peter Ostwald, Leon Plantinga, and Larry Todd; critics and commentators Martin Bookspan, Eugenia Zuckerman, and Maurice Sendak; and archivists Gerd Nauhaus, Ute Baer, and Joachim Draheim. The accompanying disc features Van Cliburn Gold Medalist Jose Feghali performing and discussing Schumann's Carnaval, Opus 9, and pianist Ronald Brautigam performing the complete Noveletten, Opus 21 [Publisher description].

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Jason Mellard

During the early 1970s, the nation's turbulence was keenly reflected in Austin's kaleidoscopic cultural movements, particularly in the city's progressive country music scene. Capturing a pivotal chapter in American social history, Progressive Country maps the conflicted iconography of "the Texan" during the '70s and its impact on the cultural politics of subsequent decades. This richly textured tour spans the notion of the "cosmic cowboy," the intellectual history of University of Texas folklore and historiography programs, and the complicated political history of late-twentieth-century Texas. Jason Mellard analyzes the complex relationship between Anglo-Texan masculinity and regional and national identities, drawing on cultural studies, American studies, and political science to trace the implications and representations of the multi-faceted personas that shaped the face of powerful social justice movements. From the death of Lyndon Johnson to Willie Nelson's picnics, from the United Farm Workers' marches on Austin to the spectacle of Texas Chic on the streets of New York City, Texas mattered in these years not simply as a place, but as a repository of longstanding American myths and symbols at a historic moment in which that mythology was being deeply contested. Delivering a fresh take on the meaning and power of "the Texan" and its repercussions for American history, this detail-rich exploration reframes the implications of a populist moment that continues to inspire progressive change.

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Gesa Stedman

"In this new study, Gesa Stedman mines the vein of emotion in Victorian writing to unearth new insights into the ways literature responded to the dramatic social and political changes then taking place." "Through an examination of the history of key Victorian emotion words, the major topics that dominate the discourses on emotions in this era, and the central fictional and non-fictional 'paradigm scenarios' which constitute these discourses, Stedman shows how slowly written representatives of the 'passions' change in the 19th century. She argues that in texts about feelings, Victorian authors seem to attempt to delay or halt on a discursive level what can no longer be stopped on any other level of their culture and society." "Reading fictional texts alongside non-fictional works, this study highlights the tensions between the need of 19th-century writers to control 'storms of passion' and their effects, and their need to express feelings. Contemporary research from various disciplines such as sociology, ethnology and history inform this study, which juxtaposes canonical material such as Dicken's Hard Times, Charlotte Bronte's Shirley and Germaine de Stael's Corinne with popular novels and non-fictional texts such as The Education of the Heart, by Sarah Ellis, and Darwin's The Expression of Emotion in Man and Animals. The analysis deals with emotions applying to both genders, but includes a special section examining the representation of emotion in relation to women." "Stemming the Torrent provides new insights into the literature of the period, and brings to light important new material for the scholars interested in the philosophy and psychology of emotions."--Jacket.

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Peter Mack

In this deeply learned contribution to the cultural and educational history of Elizabethan England, Peter Mack examines the impact of humanist training in the use of language on English prose writing. He shows how this training was deployed in both literary genres and in more practical legal and political settings.