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This is a fascinating look into the more abstract aspects of 19th-century musical attitudes and how it has fueled long standing conversations on the value of poetic interiority over overt technical virtuosity.
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~American Music Teacher
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Among the most distinguished results of Stefaniak's study is to have reminded us of...the challenges of scholarly engagement with complex, often contradictory manifestations of lived experience.
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~Die Musikforschung
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Schumann's Virtuosity is thoughtfully organized and loosely chronological, with in-depth, elegant analyses of relevant examples.
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~Nineteenth-Century Music Review
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Stefaniak's book remains a valuable resource for musicologists, theorists, pianists, and aestheticians interested in reading about Schumann's views on virtuosity.
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~Notes
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It is refreshing to read a contemporary scholarly book that embraces aesthetics so forcefully.
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~Choice
"Stefaniak's book is commendable as a rational, appealing introduction to an important aspect of nineteenth-century music praxis as explored and articulated by a major composer and leader of the early Romantic movement."
~Journal of the American Musicological Society
