This is a fascinating look into the more abstract aspects of 19th-century musical attitudes and how it has fueled long standing conversations on the value of poetic interiority over overt technical virtuosity.
American Music Teacher
Among the most distinguished results of Stefaniak's study is to have reminded us of...the challenges of scholarly engagement with complex, often contradictory manifestations ... Read moreof lived experience.
Die Musikforschung
Schumann's Virtuosity is thoughtfully organized and loosely chronological, with in-depth, elegant analyses of relevant examples.
Nineteenth-Century Music Review
Stefaniak's book remains a valuable resource for musicologists, theorists, pianists, and aestheticians interested in reading about Schumann's views on virtuosity.
Notes
It is refreshing to read a contemporary scholarly book that embraces aesthetics so forcefully.
Choice
Stefaniak's book is commendable as a rational, appealing introduction to an important aspect of nineteenth-century music praxis as explored and articulated by a major composer and leader of the early Romantic movement.
Journal of the American Musicological Society
Show Less