How does a work of music stir the senses, creating feelings of joy, sadness, elation, or nostalgia? Though sentiment and emotion play a vital role in the composition, performance, and appreciation of music, rarely have these elements been fully observed. In this succinct and penetrating book, Charles Rosen draws upon more than a half century as a performer and critic to reveal how composers from Bach to Berg have used sound to represent and communicate emotion in mystifyingly beautiful ways.

Through a range of musical examples, Rosen details the array of stylistic devices and techniques used to represent or convey sentiment. This is not, however, a listener’s guide to any correct” response to a particular piece. Instead, Rosen provides the tools and terms with which to appreciate this central aspect of musical aesthetics, and indeed explores the phenomenon of contradictory sentiments embodied in a single motif or melody. Taking examples from Chopin, Schumann, Wagner, and Liszt, he traces the use of radically changing intensities in the Romantic works of the nineteenth century and devotes an entire chapter to the key of C minor. He identifies a unity of sentiment” in Baroque music and goes on to contrast it with the obsessive sentiments” of later composers including Puccini, Strauss, and Stravinsky. A profound and moving work, Music and Sentiment is an invitation to a greater appreciation of the crafts of composition and performance.

查尔斯·罗森（Charles Rosen，1927—2012）：美国钢琴家、音乐著述家和批评家。罗森出生于纽约的一个建筑师之家，自幼习琴，少年时拜著名钢琴家、李斯特的弟子莫里茨·罗森塔尔为师，师承李斯特谱系。在音乐家、钢琴家的身份之外，罗森出版有《古典风格》《自由与艺术 》《音乐与情感》《钢琴笔记》《浪漫派》等诸多作品。

【译者简介】罗逍然：古典学及音乐学青年学者，华盛顿大学古典学博士。通晓古希腊文、拉丁文，并掌握英、德、法、意文。音乐学方面译有《音乐与情感》与《意义的边界》。古典学方面，在我国首次将古希腊叙事诗《阿尔戈英雄纪》与叙事诗残篇《赫拉克勒斯之盾》翻译成中文并且进行了详尽的注疏，另译有古典学论集《柏拉图与赫西俄德》。此外还有多部古典学以及音乐学方面的著译、笺释待出。