In the last decade, musicologists have definitively put to rest the lingering concern that Robert Schumann misunderstood poetic irony in his settings of Heinrich Heine's poetry. My contribution to this project begins with Robert's written correspondence with his fiancée Clara Wieck in the years leading up to their marriage in 1840. Relying on passages in the letters that have previously received little or no critical attention, I closely observe the lovers’ views about the workings of ironic language in their relationship, especially concerning the technique that scholars of Heine's poetry have called the Stimmungsbruch (‘breaking of mood’): a sudden reversal of tone that punctures a poem's lyric beauty and maliciously invalidates its apparent sincerity. Clara detested this gesture when it came from Robert in everyday life or in his letters; she insisted that Robert share his negative feelings openly, even though Robert knew that this would distress her. The letters thus provide a helpful context in which to understand Schumann's idiosyncratic compositional treatment of the Stimmungsbruch in ‘Dein Angesicht’ (1840). Using the evidence of the letters, I argue that Heine's poem would likely have had strong personal associations for Robert and Clara. In his setting, Robert thus transformed the poem's dual Stimmungsbruch to reflect pain honestly without inflicting it at the same time. Focusing primarily on the torturous dialectic between major and minor in the song, I show how Robert has the protagonist absorb the thrust of Heine's damaging Stimmungsbruch into himself, keeping the beloved out of harm's way while still allowing the dark, throbbing energy of the wound to radiate from beneath the surface.

Liszt composed the symphonic poem Hamlet towards the end of his tenure as Kapellmeister of the Weimar Court Theatre, a time when he regularly conducted operas, concerts, incidental music and variety performances. It was also a time when he frequently came into contact with artists, writers, musicians and actors. One actor in particular left a memorable impression: Bogumil Dawison. Dawison's style was unusual at the time; his performances were noted for their aggression, expressiveness and energy, and many praised the flexibility of his voice and face. Dawison aimed for a realistic approach in response to Goethe's Classicism, but the result was closer to the melodramatic style that was gaining in popularity at the time. His portrayal of Hamlet was particularly innovative, and it captured Liszt's imagination shortly before he composed the symphonic poem inspired by Shakespeare's tragedy.

The relationship between the world of the theatre (particularly spoken theatre) and the symphonic poems has never before been explored in Liszt scholarship, yet, as this article reveals, spoken theatre had a significant influence on Hamlet. Indeed, this article will draw new stylistic and conceptual parallels between this symphonic poem and both melodrama as a genre and its related ‘melodramatic’ style of acting. The article argues that Dawison's influence can be traced in Liszt's approach to this work and that a ‘melodramatic reading’ can enable us to interpret some of its more puzzling aspects.

It has been often observed that Georgian Britain was alive with musical activity, and that London was one of the most important musical hubs in Europe. Most of Britain's important provincial centres were well connected to the capital by road or sea, and this helped facilitate the spread of the latest musical ideas around the country. The west Cumberland town of Whitehaven is situated over three hundred miles from London by road and, at the time, was isolated from the rest mainland Britain by the surrounding fells of the Lake District. Nevertheless, by the end of the eighteenth century Whitehaven had grown into one of Britain's most important ports and had a musical life that rivalled that at any other major town in the country.

Musical life in Whitehaven was dominated by the Howgill family. William Howgill senior was appointed organist of St Nicholas’ Church in 1756 and set himself up there as music teacher and concert promoter. Here he raised a family and was succeeded in his musical duties by his son, William Howgill junior. This article examines the Howgill family's musical activities in depth and explores their London connections. This research is based on the detailed study of primary sources including newspapers, but there has also been an effort to examine all of William Howgill junior's compositions. This study reveals that, despite Whitehaven's remote location, Howgill junior was well aware of the latest musical developments in the capital.

Schoenberg's ideas about ‘Brahms the progressive’ involve the close study of the composer's use of ‘developing variation’ technique, yet Brahms's music also contains a high incidence of repetition. In 1843, the Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard published a book called Repetition under the pseudonym, ‘Constantin Constantius’. As an encryption of his underlying philosophy, this pseudonym encapsulates both the constant nature of repetition – and its more subtle element of change. Thus stasis and dynamism, similarity and difference, are equally (and visibly) represented here. Kierkegaard's ideas find resonance within the late Brahms piano miniatures (for instance in the Drei Intermezzi, op. 117) where highly compressed formal structures exhibit differing kinds of repetitive processes. The temporal quality of repetition – the fact that experiencing the ‘same’ thing can only occur later on in time – makes this device more dynamic than it may at first appear. Such a view of repetition sits alongside Schoenberg's notion of ‘developing variation’ – the endless reshaping of a basic shape – but although they may have underlying connections, each is articulated in a different way. Studies of developing variation in Brahms are confined to pitch structures, interval patterns and rhythmic shapes, whereas considerations of repetition need to embrace issues of temporality, narrative and motion. Drawing upon Kierkegaard's philosophical distinction between re-experiencing something, rather than experiencing it again, allows repetition to become a catalyst for change. It may help to explain the expressive expansiveness of Brahms's structurally controlled late piano works.

This article reassesses Berlioz's complex relationship to the French romance. Berlioz is often regarded as a musical revolutionary who made his mark writing massive, path-breaking symphonies – a far cry from the popular songs that became a staple of the bourgeois woman's salon. Yet he wrote romances throughout his life. How are we to understand these songs in the context of his overall output? What did the genre mean to him? How do his romances relate to the larger works on which his reputation rests? I explore these questions in relation to the romances he composed or revised between 1842 and 1850, a period often regarded as a fallow one for Berlioz but one that nonetheless saw a surge of songwriting activity. Drawing upon recent theories about the autobiographical construction of Berlioz's music, and considering when these songs were written or revised, to whom they were dedicated, what images were associated with them and how their texts relate to the events of Berlioz's biography, I argue that their conventionality belies a deeply personal resonance and a musical ingenuity uncommon to the romance genre. As a whole, these songs show Berlioz returning to an intimate and direct style during an especially introspective and nostalgic period of his life. Even more, they suggest that his urge toward self-reflection was not confined to the programmatic and the large-scale, and that his miniatures and monuments have more in common than one might think.

Ernest Newman (1868–1959) first proposed a biography of Berlioz in the 1890s. A schedule for its research and writing was hatched, an agreement was made with a publisher for its manufacture, and Newman promptly set to work on the project. Alas, like so many other book projects Newman commenced in the 1890s, the Berlioz biography was never completed. Even though sketches or drafts of the book do not survive, there is plenty of evidence of the methodology and structure that Newman proposed for the book, for a work-in-progress article, ‘The prose of Berlioz,’ was published in the Chord in June 1899. It is a remarkable essay for its engagement with Berlioz's prose works and for its theorizing on musical biography. I illustrate that Newman's biographical method was partly inspired by the work of Emile Hennequin (1858–93), and was an approach that Newman had previously used in some of his literary criticism. However, I argue that despite Newman's claim of Hennequin's influence, the article's wider influence came from a larger pool of writers working on style theory, including Walter Pater, Walter Raleigh and J.A. Symonds.