From 1840-57, Heinrich Ernst was one of the most famous and significant European musicians, often performing with Berlioz, Mendelssohn, Chopin, Liszt, Wagner, Alkan, Clara Schumann, and Joachim. He was not only a great virtuoso violinist but also an accomplished composer, writing two of the most popular pieces of the nineteenth century - the Elegy and the Carnival of Venice. He is best known today for two solo pieces which represent the ne plus ultra of technical difficulty: the transcription of Schubert's Erlking, and the sixth of his Polyphonic Studies, the variations on The Last Rose of Summer. In this book, Mark Rowe illuminates the life of this most elusive figure, explores his cultural background, analyses his personality, assesses his importance as a violinist and composer, and provides a full discography and list of his works.

"From 1840-57, Heinrich Ernst was one of the most famous and significant European musicians, and performed on stage, often many times, with Berlioz, Mendelssohn, Chopin, Liszt, Wagner, Alkan, Clara Schumann, and Joachim. It is a sign of his importance that, in 1863, Brahms gave two public performances in Vienna of his own and Ernst's music to raise money for the now mortally ill violinist. Berlioz described Ernst as 'one of the artists whom I love the most, and with whose talent I am most sympathetique', while Joachim was in no doubt that Ernst was 'the greatest violinist I ever heard; he towered above the others'. Many felt that he surpassed the expressive and technical achievements of Paganini, but Ernst, unlike his great predecessor, was also a tireless champion of public chamber music, and did more than any other early nineteenth-century violinist to make Beethoven's late quartets widely known and appreciated. Ernst was not only a great virtuoso but also an accomplished composer. He wrote two of the most popular pieces of the nineteenth century - the Elegy and the Carnival of Venice - and he is best known today for two solo pieces which represent the ne plus ultra of technical difficulty: the transcription of Schubert's Erlking, and the sixth of his Polyphonic Studies, the variations on The Last Rose of Summer. Perhaps he made his greatest contribution to music through his influence on Liszt's outstanding masterpiece, the B minor piano sonata. In 1849, Liszt conducted Ernst playing his own Concerto Path?que, a substantial single-movement work, in altered sonata form, using thematic transformation. Soon after this performance, Liszt wrote his Grosses Konzertsolo (1849-50), his first extended single-movement work, using altered sonata form, and thematic transformation. This is now universally acknowledged to be the immediate forerunner of the sonata, which refines and develops all these techniques. Liszt made his debt clear when, three years after completi"--Provided by publisher.

From 1840-57, Heinrich Ernst was one of the most famous and significant European musicians, and performed on stage, often many times, with Berlioz, Mendelssohn, Chopin, Liszt, Wagner, Alkan, Clara Schumann, and Joachim. It is a sign of his importance that, in 1863, Brahms gave two public performances in Vienna of his own and Ernst's music to raise money for the now mortally ill violinist. Berlioz described Ernst as 'one of the artists whom I love the most, and with whose talent I am most sympathetique', while Joachim was in no doubt that Ernst was 'the greatest violinist I ever heard; he towered above the others'. Many felt that he surpassed the expressive and technical achievements of Paganini, but Ernst, unlike his great predecessor, was also a tireless champion of public chamber music, and did more than any other early nineteenth-century violinist to make Beethoven's late quartets widely known and appreciated. Ernst was not only a great virtuoso but also an accomplished composer. He wrote two of the most popular pieces of the nineteenth century - the Elegy and the Carnival of Venice - and he is best known today for two solo pieces which represent the ne plus ultra of technical difficulty: the transcription of Schubert's Erlking, and the sixth of his Polyphonic Studies, the variations on The Last Rose of Summer. Perhaps he made his greatest contribution to music through his influence on Liszt's outstanding masterpiece, the B minor piano sonata. In 1849, Liszt conducted Ernst playing his own Concerto Path?que, a substantial single-movement work, in altered sonata form, using thematic transformation. Soon after this performance, Liszt wrote his Grosses Konzertsolo (1849-50), his first extended single-movement work, using altered sonata form, and thematic transformation. This is now universally acknowledged to be the immediate forerunner of the sonata, which refines and develops all these techniques. Liszt made his debt clear when, three years after completi

Over the last decade, musicological interest in both the composing virtuoso of the nineteenth century and the phenomenon of virtuosity has increased. Moving beyond approaches to music solely in terms of works allowed for a range of perspectives on concepts of virtuosity to emerge. Such cultural theory-based approaches crucially put the traditional musicological image of the virtuoso into a broader context. Recent advances in performance studies, furthermore, emphasise the need to include factors such as staging, the audience, sound and space, and musical practices, in our understanding of the complex phenomenon of virtuosity. The present volume tries to meet the challenges raised by these multi-layered perspectives by varying the foci on virtuosity – from specific attention to individual virtuosi and considerations of virtuosity’s historical and social context to broader questions regarding innovations in the current landscape and future virtuoso phenomena. The broad range of topics centres on the composer and virtuoso Heinrich Wilhelm Ernst and his immediate sphere of influence. The contributions in the present volume not only reveal the complexity of the research field of virtuosity but also liberate Heinrich Wilhelm Ernst from the shadow of fixed, mainly non-musical, discourses on virtuosity around Paganini. The enclosed CD with recordings by Guillaume Tardif, Philippe Borer, Clive Brown and Friederike Spangenberg enriches these texts by including the dimension of sound.

"Our inherited image of Nicolo Paganini as a 'demonic violinist' has never been analysed in depth. What really made him 'demonic'? In fact, the many perceptions of Paganini as demonic - Faust, magician, devil, rake/libertine, Napoleon - were inter-related but not equivalent. This book investigates the legend of Paganini: separating fact from fiction, it explains how the legendary violinist challenged the very notion of what it meant to be a musician. An understanding of his violin techniques and musical ethos goes some way towards meeting this aim, beyond which an exploration of the wider cultural context is also presented. This book considers Paganini's performance innovations in the light of contemporary attitudes towards music and the supernatural, gender, sexuality, violence, heroism, masculinity, as well conceptions of power. A swirl of cultural factors coalesced in the performer to create that phenomenon of Romanticism, a larger-than- life Gothic villain. Because the mythology surrounding the violinist outlived and outgrew the man to monstrous proportions, so too did the idea of virtuosity inflate out of control, acquiring a potent, overwhelmingly negative aura in the process. An appendix brings together late nineteenth-century British press and literature coverage of Paganini that contributed to the developing myth surrounding the now famous composer and performer."--Publisher's description.

Despite several recent monographs, editions and recordings devoted to the reassessment of British music in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, some negative perceptions still remain--particularly a sense that British composers in this period somehow lacked literary credentials. British Music and Literary Context counters this perception by showing that these composers displayed a real confidence and assurance in refiguring literary texts in their music. The book explores how a literary context might offer modern audiences and listeners a 'way in' to appreciate specific works that have traditionally been viewed as problematic. Each chapter of this interdisciplinary study juxtaposes a British composer with a particular literary counterpart or genre. Issues highlighted in the book include the vexed relationship between words and music, the refiguring of literary narratives as musical structures, and the ways in which musical settings or representations of literary texts might be seen as critical 'readings' of those texts. Anyone interested in nineteenth-century British music, literature and Victorian studies will enjoy this thought-provoking and perceptive book.