Reassessing Romantic Music Aesthetics: book launch and panel discussion

Matthew Pritchard’s new book provides a new take on Romantic thought about music and its contemporary significance.

Location: School of Music, Lecture Theatre 1

Marking the publication of Romantic Music Aesthetics: Creating a Politics of Emotion (Matthew Pritchard, School of Music), the panel explores the legacy of Romanticism for musical aesthetics and culture. While debate may have swung away from celebrations of Beethoven as 'the man who freed music' toward critiques of the ‘iron rule of Romanticism’ (Richard Taruskin) cloaked in the ideological 'mysteries of an elite art' (Stephen Rumph), Romantic aesthetics is still largely seen by music historians as a stage in the history of classical instrumental music.

This book and the panel discussion attempt to go beyond such interpretations. Romantic focus embraced opera, incidental music, melodrama, song and church music as well as symphonies. Far from being uniformly elitist in outlook, they considered ‘the people’ as an active force in aesthetics – whether from a left- or right-wing political perspective – and their poetic language frequently concealed a deep engagement with contemporary philosophy, its bold re-evaluations of religion and myth, and its theorisation of knowledge, emotions and rhythm in relation to music.

Contributors

Matthew Pritchard is Lecturer in Musical Aesthetics at the University of Leeds’ School of Music. His first monograph Romantic Music Aesthetics: Creating a Politics of Emotion appeared with Cambridge University Press in November 2024. 

Katherine Hambridge is Associate Professor in Musicology at Durham University, specializing in French and German musical life 1800-50. Following The Melodramatic Moment: Music and Theatrical Culture 1790-1820 (Chicago, 2018) co-edited with Jonathan Hicks, her monograph Performing Politics: Music and the Berlin Stage c. 1800 is forthcoming in 2026.

Tomás McAuley is Assistant Professor and Head of School at the University College Dublin School of Music. He co-edited The Oxford Handbook of Western Music and Philosophy (2021) and his monograph The Music of Philosophy: German Idealism and Musical Thought, from Kant to Schelling, is forthcoming with Oxford University Press later in 2025.

The event will be chaired by James Garratt, Professor of Music History and Aesthetics at the University of Manchester and author of Music, Culture and Social Reform in the Age of Wagner (Cambridge University Press, 2010) and Palestrina and the German Romantic Imagination (2002). It is co-organised with the Royal Musical Association’s Music and Philosophy Study Group’s online Conversations series, convened by Sam Wilson (Guildhall). 

Register here:

https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/book-launch-dr-matthew-pritchard-romantic-music-aesthetics-tickets-1227849192989