Charles Rosen

• 1. The French Graduate Who Played Piano

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  Charles Rosen was born in New York City on the 5th of May 1927. His father Irwin Rosen worked as an architect while his mother Anita Rosen acted and played piano at a semiprofessional level. The family struggled financially during the Great Depression after his father lost his job. They moved from Washington Heights to a less fashionable home on the Upper West Side where Charles still lived decades later. Money was so short that his parents arranged a unique contract with his teachers Moriz Rosenthal and Hedwig Kanner. Instead of paying tuition fees they agreed to take fifteen percent of his earnings until he turned twenty-one years old. He did not make his debut in New York until age twenty-three which made the deal unsatisfactory for him. Yet when he finally recorded some music he gave money to Mrs. Kanner who had taught him for over thirteen years.

• 2. From Literature To Concert Halls

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  At seventeen Rosen enrolled at Princeton University to study French literature instead of music. He graduated in 1947 and received a fellowship worth two thousand dollars to continue his graduate work. By 1951 he completed his PhD dissertation on Jean de La Fontaine poetry under E.B.O. Borgerhoff. That same year he gave his first piano recital and made recordings of works by Martinu and Haydn. He traveled to Paris on a Fulbright scholarship to examine sixteenth-century French poetry and music relationships. In 1953 he moved to Massachusetts Institute of Technology to teach French while playing piano four days each week. The only time he taught was when his playing could support him for half a year but full-time jobs were hard to find. An offer from Columbia Artists Management arrived in 1955 after two years at MIT so he resigned from teaching to focus entirely on performance.

• 3. The Sleeve Note That Started A Career

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  Rosen released his first Chopin recording in 1960 which included nocturne opus 62 number one. He felt unhappy with the recording itself but even more disappointed with the printed sleeve note describing the piece as staggering drunken with the odor of flowers. Those words did not match his thoughts about the composition so he began writing the notes himself. People liked his new approach and eventually a publisher took him to lunch before offering any drinks. The publisher stated he would print whatever Rosen wished to write without restriction. This simple act led to many books and articles though initially he wrote just to keep nonsense off record sleeves. By 1970 he contributed his first column to The New York Review of Books containing a scathing review of the Harvard Dictionary of Music edition current at that time. His association with that magazine continued until his death.

• 4. Books That Redefined Classical Analysis

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  In 1971 Rosen published The Classical Style which analyzed Haydn Mozart and Beethoven development of classical period style. The work won a National Book Award for Arts and Letters and initiated a long series of publications. Sonata Forms appeared in 1980 as an intensive analysis of primary musical forms used during the classical era. He wrote this book after editors rejected his intended contribution to the New Grove dictionary on sonata form. He enlarged the article into full book length instead. The Romantic Generation arrived in 1995 focusing on early romantic composers including Chopin Liszt Schumann Mendelssohn and Berlioz. A Short Companion to Beethoven's Piano Sonatas followed in 2001 providing background information plus sonata-by-sonata advice for performers. Critical Entertainments collected essays originally published in magazines and scholarly journals mostly from The New York Review of Books covering topics like Oliver Strunk contemporary music status and the New Musicology movement.

• 5. Technical Precision Meets Historical Context

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  Rosen stated his main goal was increasing listener engagement with music through technical description and historical context. He often appealed to harmony theories and musical form concepts to fix and intensify attention rather than letting listeners drift outside their personal worlds. In Sonata Forms he claimed the first section of a sonata exposition always has increasingly animated texture. He argued Mozart openings are solidly based in tonic keys while Haydn quartet measures are far more unstable immediately charged with dynamic movement away from that key. Rosen frequently pointed out aspects present invariably or almost invariably across compositions. He described Chopin as one of the least pianistic composers because changes in harmony made original figuration exceedingly awkward yet he refused to adapt musical thought to hand convenience. His writing sometimes felt like a page-turner thriller showing how three geniuses built on each other's discoveries creating unprecedented inventions invoking a golden era where form met content.

• 6. Honors And A Final Lecture

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  The Classical Style earned Rosen the U.S. National Book Award in category Arts and Letters. He was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1974 and to the American Philosophical Society in 1995. The Romantic Generation received the Otto Kinkeldey award from the American Musicological Society in 1996. Honorary doctorates came from University of Cambridge and Durham University. His recording of complete piano works by Boulez won the Edison Prize from the Netherlands. Grammy nominations followed for his recordings of late Beethoven piano sonatas and Diabelli Variations. President Obama awarded him a National Humanities Medal on the 13th of February 2012 during a ceremony held in the East Room of the White House. An opera titled The Classical Style premiered at Ojai Music Festival on the 13th of June 2014 created by librettist Jeremy Denk and composer Steven Stucky as tribute to Rosen. He gave his last lecture on the 18th of April 2012 within the series Music in 21st-Century Society at Barry S. Brook Center for Music Research and Documentation of CUNY Graduate Center.