The Musician in Literature in the Age of Bach

Stephen Rose is Lecturer in Music at Royal Holloway, University of London. His research explores German music of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries in its social, material and performing contexts. He has contributed to The Cambridge History of Seventeenth-Century Music (2005), The Cambridge History of Eighteenth-Century Music (2009) and An Introduction to Music Studies (2008), all published by Cambridge University Press. His articles and reviews have appeared in many publications including Early Music, for which he is also Reviews Editor, and the Journal of the Royal Musical Association. He is active as an organist and harpsichordist.

• Introduction; 1. Literary contexts: the German Baroque novel; 2. The musician as picaresque outcast; 3. The musician as honourable craftsman; 4. Musical fools versus virtuosos; 5. From harmony to discord; 6. The first German autobiographies of musicians; Bibliography.

'The decades around 1700 saw the publication of a clutch of fictional literature by German writers about music and musicians, a body of works largely overlooked by musicologists so far. Stephen Rose's book … draws attention to this group of sources, in order to shed new light on musical life in late seventeenth- and early eighteenth-century Germany. His study investigates literary works by Johann Beer, Johann Kuhnau, Wolfgang Caspar Printz and Daniel Speer, all of which introduce musical characters as their main protagonists. Through their entertaining, scandalous or moralistic narratives, these novels reflect and engage with a number of prominent contemporary debates: about the role of musicians in society, about music's affective powers and dangers, or about its embattled position between the forces of sense and reason. Rose's detailed exposition of these highly instructive materials raises a host of intriguing questions that invite further thought, research and discussion.' Early Music