Robert Schumann: Piano Concerto

Offering a concise introduction to one of the most important and influential piano concertos in the history of Western music, this handbook provides an example of the productive interaction of music history, music theory and music analysis. It combines an account of the work's genesis, Schumann's earlier, unsuccessful attempts to compose in the genre and the evolving conception of the piano concerto evident in his critical writing with a detailed yet accessible analysis of each movement, which draws on the latest research into the theory and analysis of nineteenth-century instrumental forms. This handbook also reconstructs the Concerto's critical reception, performance history in centres including London, Vienna, Leipzig and New York, and its discography, before surveying piano concertos composed under its influence in the century after its completion, including well-known concertos by Brahms, Grieg, Tchaikovsky and Rachmaninov, as well as lesser-known music by Scharwenka, Rubinstein, Beach, Macdowell and Stanford.

Julian Horton is Professor of Music at Durham University. A past President of the Society for Music Analysis, he is author of Bruckner's Symphonies: Analysis, Reception and Cultural Politics (2004) and Brahms' Piano Concerto No. 2, Op. 83: Analytical and Contextual Studies (2017), and editor of The Cambridge Companion to the Symphony (2013).