The Muse as Eros: Music, Erotic Fantasy and Male Creativity in the Romantic and Modern Imagination - Tapa dura

The Muse as Eros: Music, Erotic Fantasy and Male Creativity in the Romantic and Modern Imagination (An Ashgate Book)

Hardcover. Condición: Fine. Hardcover, xii + 300 pages, NOT ex-library. Book looks unread, minor handling wear. Fresh, clean and bright throughout with unmarked text, free of inscriptions and stamps, firmly bound. Issued without a dust jacket. -- This is an interdisciplinary musicological study that examines the relationship between male composers and their erotically charged muses. The book tracks the shift from Romantic Idealism to Modernist Anxiety through the lens of masculine creative subjectivity. It explores how the "Muse" - often figured as a divine or alluring consort - inspires the male artist while potentially leading him toward madness. Masculine Subjectivity: Downes offers perspectives on how masculine artistic identity is constructed and transformed in musical representations. Romanticism to Modernism: The text focuses on the stylistic shift from the idealised beloved of the 19th century to the anxious, fragmented fantasies of the 20th century. Case Studies: Each chapter begins with a specific artist's relationship with their Muse and moves into a deeper interpretation of their musical works. Composers analysed include Beethoven, Schumann, Chopin, Wagner, Mahler, Debussy, Berg, and Poulenc. Musical Encoding: The study addresses how musical elements - such as harmonic structure, motivic development, and orchestration - encode cultural tensions between inspiration and submission. Downes' work is regarded as a bridge between "New Musicology" and traditional analytical foundations. The book is a model for linking musical form to broader ideological frameworks, making it relevant to gender and sexuality studies, psychoanalytic musicology, and cultural theory. It is noted for its ability to "effortlessly straddle" the divide between Romantic and Modern aesthetics through richly packed and eloquent chapters. Stephen Downes is a Professor of Music, with expertise in 19th and 20th-century music history and theory. Nº de ref. del artículo: 012962

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