About This Guide
This guide presents basic and specialized resources for researching the most significant aspects of 19th-century music in Europe and the Americas. Recent musicology has adopted the concept of the "long 19th century" developed by historians and literary critics to describe the progression of ideas between 1789 and 1914. For the ease of division, the PUL guides group Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827) with the Classical Period, linked below.
19th-Century Music vs. Romantic Era:
Researchers of this period should note that current scholarship generally replaces the terms "Romantic Era," "Age of Romanticism," "Romantic Music," etc. with the century designation for the period: "19th-Century Music." Current catalogs and article databases generally use the latter term as a descriptor—but "Romanticism" and various derivatives are still common, especially in titles of books, journal articles, and encyclopedia entries, as this guide reveals.
Selected Surveys
- "Romanticism" in Oxford Bibliographies byPublication Date: July 2013Peer-reviewed annotated bibliographies on a variety of subject areas relating to the Romantic Music Period.
- "Romanticism" in Grove Music Online byPublication Date: 2001A detailed if slightly old overview of the term. Contains bibliography through 199_.
The Cambridge History of Nineteenth-Century Music (Online) by
Call Number: ML196 .C36 2002 (print version)Publication Date: 2001; March 2008 (e-version)Contains 29 essays by leading experts plus a chronology, dictionary of institutions, and list of personalities.
Music in the Nineteenth Century by Call Number: Reference (SV) ML196 .F75 2013Publication Date: 2013Examines the period from the Congress of Vienna in 1815 to the advent of Modernism in the 1890s. The book's central themes include middle-class involvement in music, the rich but elusive concept of Romanticism, the cult of virtuosity, and the ever-changing balance between musical and commercial interests.
