In The Late Eighteenth Century, Wye Jamison Allanbrook presents twenty-six readings that reveal how the music establishment of 1750-1800 saw itself.
The era of Haydn, Mozart, and early Beethoven not only produced music of enduring appeal, it also gave us significant writings that explain how music should be composed, performed, listened to, and understood. Included are selections from the great German pedagogical treaties of Quantz (on playing the flute), C. P. E. Bach (keyboard), Leopold Mozart (violin), and Kirnberger and Koch (on composition); opinions about opera by Rousseau, Diderot, and Gluck; ideas on expression by W. A. Mozart and G. de Staël; and historical/descriptive writings of Forkel, Charles Burney, and Susannah Burney.
