"First and most obviously, this is a landmark study of an important group of works and the genre to which they belong, both of which continue to enjoy substantial popularity and a problematic reception. Second, Samson has offered a beautifully crafted model for a critical, contextual, cultural, and above all musical musicological study; as its subject is a body of Liszt etudes, so it is a study of nineteenth-century etuding. It is to be hoped that it is broadly influential in our discipline, because the balances it finds are rarely reached with this kind of elegance." Notes