This is a comprehensive biography of perhaps the first important American woman composer, Amy Marcy Beach. She enjoyed an international reputation in the early 20th century, especially for her symphonies. In recent years there has been a great revival of interest in her work, and many of her compositions have been performed and recorded.

This book examines the BBC's campaign to raise the cultural awareness of British mass audiences in the early days of radio. As a specific case, it focuses on policies and plans behind transmissions of contemporary music between 1922, when the BBC was founded, and spring 1936. This reception study traces and analyzes the BBC's attempts to manipulate critical and public responses to this repertory.

Alan Rawsthorne is one of the leading British composers of the twentieth century. His music ranges from popular works such as the overture Street Corner to late masterpieces of enormous power, and includes some outstanding film scores. John McCabe explores the man and his music, drawing on a lifetime's knowledge to create a vivid portrait. This volume also includes a free CD sampler of Rawsthorne's works.

Michael Kater's work probes the relationship of music to society and politics in the Nazi regime, 1933-1945. It addresses the question of whether or not the Nazi regime, which utilized music and musicians for the regime's own political purposes, controlled the musicians and the music, or whether these remained in some measure autonomous. A major question is also answered in these pages: how did the creative genius survive?

Ned Rorem is celebrated as one of America's greatest living composers. His diary of his early years, "The Paris Diary and the New York Diary," was widely acclaimed. "The Later Diaries" continues one of the most sustained efforts in the intimate journal form ever undertaken and offers candid insights into his astonishing life, career, art, friendships, and love. In these years, "Lions, Miss Julie," and "Poems of Love and the Rain" were composed and most of his books written; he also continued to meet the famous and infamous and to write of them with the charm that Janet Flanner characterized as "worldly, intelligent, licentious, highly indiscreet."

Based on the popular Chinese story 'King Chu Doffs his Armour', this concerto is influenced by both Western and Eastern traditions. It is constructed around a classical Chinese solo pipa work (of the same name), and retains the structure of the traditional manuscript. The musical influences are distinctly Chinese, but Zhou Long adds an introduction, cadenza, and coda in keeping with the Western concerto tradition.

Contemporary British composers talk about their music, with the emphasis on the aesthetic sensibilities and psychological processes behind composing rather than technique. This book features interviews with leading and upcoming British composers who use the same raw materials but produce classical music that takes very different forms. Uniquely, Andrew Palmer approaches the sometimes baffling worldof contemporary music from the point of view of the inquisitive, music-loving amateur rather than the professional critic or musicologist. Readers can eavesdrop on conversations in which composers are asked a number of questionsabout their professional lives and practices, with the emphasis on the aesthetic sensibilities and psychological processes behind composing rather than technique. Throughout, the book seeks to explore why composers write the kindof music they write, and what they want their music to do. Along the way, readers are confronted with an unspoken but equally important question: if some composers are writing music that the public doesn't want to engage with, who's to blame for that? Are composers out of touch with their public, or are we too lazy to give their music the attention it deserves? ANDREW PALMER is a freelance writer and photographer. He is editor of Composing in Words: William Alwyn on His Art (Toccata Press, 2009), author of Divas... In Their Own Words (Vernon Press, 2000) and co-author of A Voice Reborn (Arcadia Books, 1999). Since 1998 he has been a corresponding editor of Strings magazine (USA). Interviewees include: Julian Anderson, Simon Bainbridge, Sally Beamish, George Benjamin, Michael Berkeley, Judith Bingham, Harrison Birtwistle, Howard Blake, Gavin Bryars, Diana Burrell, Tom Coult, Gordon Crosse, Jonathan Dove, David Dubery, Michael Finnissy, Cheryl Frances-Hoad, Alexander Goehr, Howard Goodall, Christopher Gunning, Morgan Hayes, Robin Holloway, Oliver Knussen, James MacMillan, Colin Matthews, David Matthews, Peter Maxwell Davies, John McCabe, Thea Musgrave, Roxanna Panufnik, Anthony Payne, Elis Pehkonen, Joseph Phibbs, Gabriel Prokofiev, John Rutter, Robert Saxton, John Tavener, Judith Weir, Debbie Wiseman, Christopher Wright

for soloists, SATB, children's chorus and orchestra with Chinese flute and erhu This opera in four acts is based on an ancient Chinese myth about a snake-shaped spirit that attains human form to experience love. The English libretto by Cerise Lim Jacobs sensitively adapts the story for modern audiences, and Zhou Long's music uses both Western and Chinese sounds to create a pioneering cross-cultural opera. Long was awarded the 2011 Pulitzer Prize for Music for Madame White Snake, and the Pulitzer jury described the work as 'a deeply expressive opera that draws on a Chinese folk tale to blend the musical traditions of the East and the West.' Madame White Snake was first staged by Opera Boston on 26 February 2010 at the Culter Majestic Theatre, Boston, USA, and received its first Chinese staging at the Beijing International Festival on 10 October 2010, Beijing, China.

The difficulties of interpreting Elgar are interestingly explained by a conductor of legendary knowledge and understanding. For the students of conducting this book is nothing short of invaluable.

This is the fullest catalogue in any language of the works of the great Czech composer Leos Janacek. The entry for each work includes detailed information on date of composition, source of texts, performing forces, duration, manuscript locations, publication, performances and production, dedication, and literature. The catalogue also includes a complete annotated edition of the composer's writings.

In this authoritative study, one of the first to appear in English, Erik Levi explores the ambiguous relationship between music and politics during one of the darkest periods of recent cultural history. Utilising material drawn from contemporary documents, journals and newspapers, he traces the evolution of reactionary musical attitudes which were exploited by the Nazis in the final years of the Weimar Republic, chronicles the mechanisms that were established after 1933 to regiment musical life throughout Germany and the occupied territories, and examines the degree to which the climate of xenophobia, racism and anti-modernism affected the dissemination of music either in the opera house and concert hall, or on the radio and in the media.

A detailed study of the well-known, yet poorly understood, music theory of composer Paul Hindemith (1895-1963). The music theory of composer Paul Hindemith (1895-1963), originally entitled Unterweisung im Tonsatz, is well known, yet poorly understood. This book provides a critical engagement with Hindemith's Unterweisung, particularly concerning its relationship to existing acoustic music theories. By examining different Unterweisung-versions, it charts the evolution of Hindemith's use of language and mode of communication, including his reference to polytonality, atonality, Fuxian species counterpoint, and avoidance of existing music for his examples. It also elaborates the source material on which the theory is based, using a reconstruction of Hindemith's personal library. Central to the book is the relationship of Hindemith's Unterweisung to his compositional practice. Hindemith's fascination with the challenges of music theory falls into a middle period in his oeuvre, enabling profitable comparisons with his compositional practice both before and after his theory-making. The book also comprises a detailed discussion of Hindemith's theoretical and compositional legacy. Beginning with an overview of existing polemics, it draws together unpublished materials from the Yale Hindemith Institute with reminiscences from former students to construct an Unterweisung reception history. The book shows that, while many areas of Hindemith's theory have been overtaken by recent interests in music theory that relate to cognition and geometry, his influence has been deeply felt. SIMON DESBRUSLAIS is Lecturer in Music and Director of Performance at the University of Hull and an internationally acclaimed trumpet soloist.

From the Tibetan Buddhist and Native American influences in the music of Pauline Oliveros to the arresting blend of Jamaican dancehall, rap, and bhangra of Apache Indian, this groundbreaking work examines the rise of 'world music' and 'world beat.' Musicologist Timothy Taylor draws on a wide variety of sources, from popular culture, interviews, liner notes, the Internet and the music itself, charting a path through the issues surrounding contemporary world music. Included in this volume are detailed discussions of such musicians as the Kronos Quartet, Ladysmith Black Mambazo, Youssou N'Dour, Peter Gabriel, Johnny Clegg, Angelique Kidjo, Sheila Chandra, Apache Indian, Zap Mama and a host of others.
Exloring the dynamics behind such collaborations as Paul Simon and Ladysmith Black Mambazo, Taylor addresses the effects that these collaborations have on the music itself with particular emphasis on musical authenticity and the expectations around it. In addition to looking at the ways western pop/rock appropriates music from other cultures, he also demonstrates how cross-cultural collaborations bring music and musicians from other cultures to a much wider audience. Global Pop offers a fascinating and timely survey of popular music and its impact on contemporary culture along with our ways of looking at and living in the world.

This book examines two notable forms of chamber music involving piano and strings. Smallman surveys the development of these genres from their origins in the mid-eighteenth century to the present day.

Since its original publication in 1930, Henry Cowell's New Musical Resources has become recognised as one of the few seminal technical studies to be written by a twentieth-century composer. In 1971, Virgil Thomson hailed it as 'a classic'. Cowell aimed to 'point out the influence the overtone series has exerted on music throughout its history, how many musical materials of all ages are related to it, and how ... a large palette of musical materials can be assembled'. In this respect Cowell was anticipating many of the ideas to be realized in electronic music by Stockhausen and others. For this 1996 edition, David Nicholls has provided an explanatory essay and annotations to Cowell's text. The essay traces the sources for the book and attempts to place Cowell's theories in the broader context of musical modernism.

Elektra was the fourth of fifteen operas by Strauss and opened his successful partnership with the librettist Hugo von Hofmannsthal. It is one of the most important operas of the early twentieth century and it solidified Strauss's status as the leading German opera-composer of his day. Bryan Gilliam's study of this major work examines its musical-historical context and also provides a detailed analysis of some of its musical features. He establishes a chronology of the evolution of the opera and places it in the larger framework of German opera of the time. His detailed examination of the sketch-books enables him to offer fresh insight into Strauss's use of motifs and overall tonal structure. In so doing he shows how the work's arresting dissonance and chromaticism has hidden its similarities to his later, seemingly more tonally conservative opera, Der Rosenkavalier - not only does Strauss in both operas exploit a variety of musical styles to express irony, parody, and other emotions, but both are in fact thoroughly tonal.

for SATB and piano or small ensemble This celebratory work sees Bob Chilcott collaborate with poet Charles Bennett to explore all that we can learn from the natural world. The first movement, 'Follow the music', leads us on a journey through the woods that is artfully reflected in the music through resonant repeated notes in the piano that take us on our own musical trail. The second movement, 'A Gift so in Tune', is more reflective, with a real potential for storytelling as we're reminded to listen to and learn from the prompts that nature gives us. Finally, the titular movement brings us a mood of bright positivity, with energetic semiquavers in the piano underpinning the singers' powerful message of how, whatever the season, we should follow the birds' example and spread our wings and find our voices. The work may be accompanied by piano, playing from the vocal score, or a small ensemble of flute, oboe, clarinet in A, horn in F, timpani, and organ, using the materials available separately.

Following their entry into Austria and the Sudetenland in the late 1930s, the Germans attempted to impose a policy of cultural imperialism on the countries they went on to occupy during World War II. Almost all music institutions in the occupied lands came under direct German control or were subject to severe scrutiny and censorship, the prime objective being to change the musical fabric of these nations and force them to submit to the strictures of Nazi ideology. This pioneering collection of essays is the first in the English language to look in more detail at the musical consequences of German occupation during a dark period in European history. It embraces a wide range of issues, presenting case studies involving musical activity in a number of occupied European cities, as well as in countries that were part of the Axis or had established close diplomatic relations with Germany. The wartime careers and creative outputs of individual musicians who were faced with the dilemma of either complying with or resisting the impositions of the occupiers are explored. In addition, there is some reflection on the post-war implications of German occupation for the musical environment in Europe. Music under German Occupation is written for all music-lovers, students, professionals and academics who have particular interests in 20th-century music and/or the vicissitudes of European cultural life during World War II.

The Operatic Archive: American Opera as History extends the growing interdisciplinary conversation in opera studies by drawing on new research in performance studies and the philosophy of history. Moving beyond traditional aesthetic conceptions of opera, this book argues for opera's powerful potential for historical impact and engagement in late twentieth- and twenty-first-century works by American composers. Considering opera's ability to serve as a vehicle for memory, historical experience, affect, presence, and the historical sublime, this volume demonstrates how opera's ability to represent and evoke historical events and historical experience differs fundamentally from the representations and recreations of other modes (specifically, literary and dramatic representations). Building on the work of performance scholars such as Joseph Roach, Rebecca Schneider, and Diana Taylor, and in consultation with recent debates in the philosophy of history, the book will be of interest to a wide range of scholars and researchers, particularly those working in the areas of opera studies and performance studies.

Musical notation is a powerful system of communication between musicians, using sophisticated symbolic, primarily non-verbal means to express musical events in visual symbols. Many musicians take the system for granted, having internalized it and their strategies for reading it and translating it into sound over long years of study and practice. This book traces the development of that system by combining chronological and thematic approaches to show the historical and musical context in which these developments took place. Simultaneously, the book considers the way in which this symbolic language communicates to those literate in it, discussing how its features facilitate or hinder fluent comprehension in the real-time environment of performance. Moreover, the topic of musical as opposed to notational innovation forms another thread of the treatment, as the author investigates instances where musical developments stimulated notational attributes, or notational innovations made practicable advances in musical style.

Cathy Berberian (1925-1983) was a vocal performance artist, singer and composer who pioneered a way of composing with the voice in the musical worlds of Europe, North America and beyond. As a modernist muse for many avant-garde composers, Cathy Berberian went on to embody the principles of postmodern thinking in her work, through vocality. She re-defined the limits of composition and challenged theories of the authorship of the musical score. This volume celebrates her unorthodox path through musical landscapes, including her approach to performance practice, gender performativity, vocal pedagogy and the culturally-determined borders of art music, the concert stage, the popular LP and the opera industry of her times. The collection features primary documentation-some published in English for the first time-of Berberian's engagement with the philosophy of voice, new music, early music, pop, jazz, vocal experimentation and technology that has come to influence the next generation of singers such as Theo Bleckmann, Susan Botti, Joan La Barbara, Rinde Eckert Meredith Monk, Carol Plantamura, Candace Smith and Pamela Z. Hence, this timely anthology marks an end to the long period of silence about Cathy Berberian's championing of a radical rethinking of the musical past through a reclaiming of the voice as a multifaceted phenomenon. With a Foreword by Susan McClary.

The definitive account of the life and music of Hungary's greatest twentieth-century composer This deeply researched biography of Bela Bartok (1881-1945) provides a more comprehensive view of the innovative Hungarian musician than ever before. David Cooper traces Bartok's international career as an ardent ethno-musicologist and composer, teacher, and pianist, while also providing a detailed discussion of most of his works. Further, the author explores how Europe's political and cultural tumult affected Bartok's work, travel, and reluctant emigration to the safety of America in his final years. Cooper illuminates Bartok's personal life and relationships, while also expanding what is known about the influence of other musicians-Richard Strauss, Zoltan Kodaly, and Yehudi Menuhin, among many others. The author also looks closely at some of the composer's actions and behaviors which may have been manifestations of Asperger syndrome. The book, in short, is a consummate biography of an internationally admired musician.

Olivier Messiaen: A Research and Information Guide, Second Edition presents researchers with the most significant and helpful resources on Olivier Messiaen, one of the twentieth century's greatest composers. With multiple indices, this annotated bibliography will serve as an excellent tool for librarians, researchers, and scholars sorting through the massive amount of material in the field. The second edition has been fully revised and updated.

Between 1955 and 1975 music theatre became a central preoccupation for European composers digesting the consequences of the revolutionary experiments in musical language that followed the end of the Second World War. The 'new music theatre' wrought multiple, significant transformations, serving as a crucible for the experimental rethinking of theatrical traditions, artistic genres, the conventions of performance, and the composer's relation to society. This volume brings together leading specialists from across Europe to offer a new appraisal of the genre. It is structured according to six themes that investigate: the relation of new music theatre to earlier and contemporaneous theories of drama; the use of new technologies; the relation of new music theatre to progressive politics; the role of new venues and environments; the advancement of new conceptions of the performer; and the challenges that new music theatre lays down for music analysis. Contributing authors address canonical works by composers such as Berio, Birtwistle, Henze, Kagel, Ligeti, Nono, and Zimmermann, but also expand the field to figures and artistic developments not regularly represented in existing music histories. Particular attention is given to new music theatre as a site of intense exchange - between practitioners of different art forms, across national borders, and with diverse mediating institutions.

for SATB and piano or orchestra Jonathan Wikeley's choral arrangement of Vaughan Williams's Four Last Songs offers a new way to engage with these beautiful late works. The texts are by Ursula Vaughan Williams, and the set begins and ends with two poems that were inspired by Greek mythology. The opening song, 'Procris', and the closing song, 'Menelaus', have flowing piano accompaniments that remain unchanged from the original solo voice versions. The two songs in the middle, 'Tired' and 'Hands, Eyes, and Heart', are unaccompanied in this arrangement, with a double-choir texture that incorporates the original chordal piano line in a way that is consistent with Vaughan Williams's own double-choir writing. The songs are available in their original form, for solo voice and piano accompaniment, in the first volume of Collected Songs by Vaughan Williams.