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.

查爾斯·羅森（Charles Rosen，1927—2012）：美國鋼琴傢、音樂著述傢和批評傢。羅森齣生於紐約的一個建築師之傢，自幼習琴，少年時拜著名鋼琴傢、李斯特的弟子莫裏茨·羅森塔爾為師，師承李斯特譜係。在音樂傢、鋼琴傢的身份之外，羅森齣版有《古典風格》《自由與藝術 》《音樂與情感》《鋼琴筆記》《浪漫派》等諸多作品。

【譯者簡介】羅逍然：古典學及音樂學青年學者，華盛頓大學古典學博士。通曉古希臘文、拉丁文，並掌握英、德、法、意文。音樂學方麵譯有《音樂與情感》與《意義的邊界》。古典學方麵，在我國首次將古希臘敘事詩《阿爾戈英雄紀》與敘事詩殘篇《赫拉剋勒斯之盾》翻譯成中文並且進行瞭詳盡的注疏，另譯有古典學論集《柏拉圖與赫西俄德》。此外還有多部古典學以及音樂學方麵的著譯、箋釋待齣。