This is one of those books that stretched me. Much of it was beyond me, but what I understood informed me and made me a better listener. Both aspects made it a slow read. In addition, I often stopped to listen to the pieces that Rosen analyzed. Some were familiar, others I can’t recall having previously heard.
My big takeaway is that what I learned about the sonata form in music appreciation and what I still hear repeated in commentaries during the breaks in concert broadcasts is wrong. The sonata was not a set of rules. Rosen writes: “There are no fixed ‘rules,’ although there are successful patterns imitated and even aped, and unconscious habits.” Or, as he also puts it, “the sonata form could not be defined until it was dead.”
Rosen lays out the origins of the classical style in the increasingly strong polarity of tonic and dominant. Other steps in the chromatic scale could increase or relax tension, depending on their similarity or difference from the two poles. Skillful employment of this could satisfy the need for dramatic events balanced by proportion. The language employed by Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven was not a definite form but a way of writing, a feeling for proportion, direction, and texture rather than pattern.
There are many good insights into performance practice. Rosen’s reaction to “authentic” performance is reticent: “A performance is not an archaeological dig.”
From start to finish, this reader felt he was in the hands of a gifted teacher who knew and understood the pieces he discussed, as well as what came before and after in music history. He also situates his discussion in the broader context of movements in the arts and literature of the time.
One thing only holds me back from awarding the fifth star: I like to reserve that for books that are so good that everyone should read them. However, because of the necessary time investment, this excellent book might not be for everyone. ( )

Un interesantísimo estudio acerca del estilo clásico y la coherencia de sus formas con la filosofía y el pensamiento de quienes lo desarrollaron. Está especialmente centrado en la música y en los tres grandes compositores citados en el título, pero los principios filosóficos en que se fundamenta pueden ser aplicados también para estudiar el resto de las artes y la literatura. El estudio es principalmente formalista: la ópera, el concierto, la sinfonía... y también se fija en las particularidades de harmonía y contrapunto, para lo cual da numerosos ejemplos de partituras.
Esta obra ganó el Premio Nacional del Libro para las Artes y las Letras de los Estados Unidos en 1972. Charles Rosen (1927 - 2012) fue un pianista, profesor de música y teórico musical estadounidense que, además de haber estudiado en la famosa Academia Juilliard, había sido alumno desde los 11 años del legendario pianista Moriz Rosenthal, último alumno directo de Franz Liszt. ( )

The issue of why Mozart is a stranger in our messed-up, impatient, overstimulated world, and why we need to approach him on different (musical) terms than the armour-plated ones we use to navigate our daily lives today if we are to appreciate what makes him so special. For me, the works which garner most unanimous appreciation have perhaps been the tougher, more dramatic ones: Beethoven 5 over Beethoven 4 or 6; Brahms 4 over Brahms 2 or 3; Verdi Requiem over Don Carlos, Othello or Falstaff; Stravinsky Rite of Spring over Petrouchka, Agon or Symphony in C; Mahler 2 over Das Lied Von Der Erde or Kindertotenlieder. This muscular power we seem as a society to tend to prioritise is not Mozart's way. All of those works, whilst supreme masterpieces, deal with extremes above all. Nothing in Mahler 2 or The Rite of Spring is moderate. We are a society of extremes, too. Pieces which operate at a more human scale can be lost in this. But Mozart always operates at this scale, even in his mightiest works. Mozart is not a composer of extremes. He is a composer of the middle. His music, like most Enlightenment music, but more so simply by dint of its extraordinary quality, traverses those subtle, intimate regions where small shades of meaning can mean so much, like furtive glances across a room. The reason we love his operas is because they are so full of complex humanity; the reason we particularly love his wind music so much, and also his piano concerti, is because they replicate this vocal dialogue in an instrumental form. The patient unfolding of, say, the Oboe Quartet - in which everything happens twice, question-answer, unfolding gracefully, calmly, every part seeming to listen to every other, to support, discuss, move forwards, but always constructively, with every small detail mattering, as do small details in civilised speech - is one example of countless others in which Mozart does this. To appreciate Mozart we need the patience to follow its logical, balanced unfolding and the concentration to follow the rhetorical inflections and subtleties of its melodic and harmonic details.

We are very fortunate that the genres the two greatest composers of the classical period - Haydn & Mozart - excel in are exactly complementary. While Haydn excels in the symphony, string quartets, piano sonatas & religious music, Mozart's greatest achievements are the operas & piano concertos.

To avoid the obvious, I'd recommend the following groups of works:

Divertimento K563, Piano Trio K564, Piano Concerto K595, String Quartet K590 - During this period Mozart wrote in a particular simplicity & transparency of style, with a distinctive directness & delicacy of expression and melodic shaping. What exactly binds these pieces together, besides the main subject in the finale of K563 & 595 being very similar, is hard to define. Sonata for 2 Pianos K448, Piano Sonata K330, Sonata for Piano Duet K521 - Likewise the first subject in the finale of K330 & K521 are very similar, but more than that these pieces show Mozart at his best using common material & the commonplace keys of C major & D major and producing some of his most memorable works. ( )

In this new edition of a work first published in 1973, the pianist Charles Rosen sets out to answer the question of what actually constitutes the manner, the way of composing, that links Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven. The text is accompanied by a CD.

I enjoyed this book, although I seem to recall it being a bit dry. ( )