James Webster is a musicologist, specializing in the music of Joseph Haydn and other composers of the classical era. His professional position is as the Goldwyn Smith Professor of Music at Cornell University. He has published several books in his field, including a massive study of Haydn's "Farewell" Symphony and (with Georg Feder) the Haydn article in the current edition of the New Grove, spun off as a separate book.
Webster's work is notable for its scholarly care, particular his willingness to sift through and assess conflicting sources of historical evidence. His biography of Haydn particularly reflects this tendency, and unlike several earlier Haydn biographers, he is generally unwilling to fill in the narrative with conjecture, particularly conjecture about how Haydn must have felt or what he must have done on some particular occasion.
Webster is also an impassioned devotee of the earlier works of Haydn, and has consistently asserted his opposition to the views of Charles Rosen and others who assert a course of "progress" and learning through the composer's career.
Books
- The New Grove Haydn. London: Macmillian; New York: Palgrave, 2002.
- Haydn's "Farewell" Symphony and the Idea of Classical Style: Through-Composition and Cyclic Integration in His Instrumental Music. Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1991.
External link
- Professor Webster's page at Cornell University; includes partial bibliography
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