Focusing on the reception of Palestrina, this bold interdisciplinary study explains how and why the works of a sixteenth-century composer came to be viewed as a paradigm for modern church music. It explores the diverse ways in which later composers responded to his works and style, and expounds a provocative model for interpreting compositional historicism. In addition to presenting insights into the works of Bruckner, Mendelssohn and Liszt, the book offers fresh perspectives on the institutional, aesthetic and ideological frameworks sustaining the cultivation of choral music in this period. This publication provides an overview and analysis of the relation between the Palestrina revival and nineteenth-century composition and it demonstrates that the Palestrina revival was just as significant for nineteenth-century culture as parallel movements in the other arts, such as the Gothic revival.

Review of the hardback:'Palestrina and the German Romantic Imagination offers a comprehensive and in-depth analysis of a crucial phenomenon of Romantic musical life with which English-speaking readers may be only partially familiar. The book is to be recommended for its narrative breadth, its perceptive analytical insights, and its rich counterpoint of aesthetic theories and compositional practice of the Romantic era. It is a must-read for those music and cultural historians with an interest not only in nineteenth-century German intellectual life, but also in issues such as the creation of the modern musical canon and music historiography.'

Source: Nineteenth-Century Music Review