Stephen Downes is Senior Lecturer in Music at the University of Surrey, UK.

'A wonderful book. Once the hermeneutic dust had settled, it was inevitable that a book would emerge which would put the New Musicology on solidly analytical foundations. This is that book. In ten richly-packed and eloquent chapters, Downes pursues his Muse from Beethoven and Rossini through to Berg and Poulenc, effortlessly straddling the divide between Romanticism and Modernism, informing his survey of the musical erotic with a seemingly enyclopaedic knowledge. A book which puts the music back into interdisciplinary music studies.' Michael Spitzer, University of Durham, UK

• Contents: Introduction; The Muse as immaculate beloved: Stendhal's 'crystallization' process and listening to Rossini and Beethoven; Schumann, Chopin, the fan of Eros, and the beloved's kiss; The Muse as temptress and redemptress: Sibelius's early symphonic narratives; Mahler's Fifth and Sixth Symphonies: Idyllic fantasies, the sublime, formal mastery, and processes of mourning and reparation; 'She dies': Trauma and erotic elegy in Bartók's pre-First World War music; Names, chords and the 'pale princess' in Debussy's musical language of love; Poulenc's erotics of humour, melancholy, abjection and redemption; Names, chords and Lulu's portrait as Muse; Fetishistic 'Inventions on a Chord': Szymanowski, Schumann, Brahms, Wagner, Weill and Poulenc; Bibliography; Index.

Stephen Downes is Senior Lecturer in Music at the University of Surrey, UK.

'A wonderful book. Once the hermeneutic dust had settled, it was inevitable that a book would emerge which would put the New Musicology on solidly analytical foundations. This is that book. In ten richly-packed and eloquent chapters, Downes pursues his Muse from Beethoven and Rossini through to Berg and Poulenc, effortlessly straddling the divide between Romanticism and Modernism, informing his survey of the musical erotic with a seemingly enyclopaedic knowledge. A book which puts the music back into interdisciplinary music studies.' Michael Spitzer, University of Durham, UK

• Contents: Introduction; The Muse as immaculate beloved: Stendhal's 'crystallization' process and listening to Rossini and Beethoven; Schumann, Chopin, the fan of Eros, and the beloved's kiss; The Muse as temptress and redemptress: Sibelius's early symphonic narratives; Mahler's Fifth and Sixth Symphonies: Idyllic fantasies, the sublime, formal mastery, and processes of mourning and reparation; 'She dies': Trauma and erotic elegy in Bartók's pre-First World War music; Names, chords and the 'pale princess' in Debussy's musical language of love; Poulenc's erotics of humour, melancholy, abjection and redemption; Names, chords and Lulu's portrait as Muse; Fetishistic 'Inventions on a Chord': Szymanowski, Schumann, Brahms, Wagner, Weill and Poulenc; Bibliography; Index.

Stephen Downes is Senior Lecturer in Music at the University of Surrey, UK.

'A wonderful book. Once the hermeneutic dust had settled, it was inevitable that a book would emerge which would put the New Musicology on solidly analytical foundations. This is that book. In ten richly-packed and eloquent chapters, Downes pursues his Muse from Beethoven and Rossini through to Berg and Poulenc, effortlessly straddling the divide between Romanticism and Modernism, informing his survey of the musical erotic with a seemingly enyclopaedic knowledge. A book which puts the music back into interdisciplinary music studies.' Michael Spitzer, University of Durham, UK

• Contents: Introduction; The Muse as immaculate beloved: Stendhal's 'crystallization' process and listening to Rossini and Beethoven; Schumann, Chopin, the fan of Eros, and the beloved's kiss; The Muse as temptress and redemptress: Sibelius's early symphonic narratives; Mahler's Fifth and Sixth Symphonies: Idyllic fantasies, the sublime, formal mastery, and processes of mourning and reparation; 'She dies': Trauma and erotic elegy in Bartók's pre-First World War music; Names, chords and the 'pale princess' in Debussy's musical language of love; Poulenc's erotics of humour, melancholy, abjection and redemption; Names, chords and Lulu's portrait as Muse; Fetishistic 'Inventions on a Chord': Szymanowski, Schumann, Brahms, Wagner, Weill and Poulenc; Bibliography; Index.