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Books > Arts & Architecture > Music > Western music, periods & styles > 20th century music
for SATB unaccompanied This serene and reflective setting of the Magnificat and Nunc Dimittis was commissioned to mark the 300th anniversary of the death of Thomas Ken, Bishop of Bath and Wells. With expansive harmonies and arching melodic lines, this accessible setting will appeal to any cathedral, chapel, or church choir looking for fresh service material.
for SATB and piano Happy the man's gentle pace, tender harmonies, and flowing piano accompaniment perfectly capture the reflective and uplifting message of John Dryden's text: 'Happy the man...He who, secure within, can say; Tomorrow do thy worst, for I have lived today'. Featuring stirring climaxes, expressive vocal lines, and a fluid piano part, this piece will give rise to a moving performance. Happy the man is featured on the Wroclaw Philharmonic Choir's CD of Bob Chilcott's music.
The music of Maurice Ravel (1875-1937), beloved by musicians and
audiences since its debut, has been a difficult topic for scholars.
The traditional stylistic categories of impressionism, symbolism,
and neoclassicism, while relevant, have offered too little purchase
on this fascinating but enigmatic work. In Ravel the Decadent,
author Michael Puri provides an innovative and productive solution
by locating the aesthetic origins of this music in the French
Decadence and demonstrating the extension of this influence across
the length of his oeuvre. From an array of Decadent topics Puri
selects three--memory, sublimation, and desire--and uses them to
delineate the content of this music, pinpoint its overlap with
contemporary cultural discourse, and link it to its biographical
context, as well as to create new methods altogether for the
analysis and interpretation of music.
For voice and piano or guitar This volume contains newly edited versions of all Walton's songs for voice and piano, together with Anon in Love for voice and guitar and songs from radio plays. It also includes the first publication of the scores of the orchestral versions of Anon in Love and A Song for the Lord Mayor's Table. Walton wrote songs throughout his life, the first, 'Tell me where is Fancy bred?', written when he was a chorister at Christ Church, Oxford, the last, A Song for the Lord Mayor's Table, a song-cycle for Elisabeth Schwarzkopf written in the early 1960s. They all reveal his ear for word-setting, an imaginative response to the text, and an ability to conjure striking musical images from his chosen material.
Camille Saint-Saens (1835-1921): A Thematic Catalogue of His
Complete Works ensures an objective knowledge of the total musical
creation of this extraordinary French musician. Volume 1, published
in 2002, examines the instrumental works. Volume 2 explores the
dramatic works.
Germany in the Loud Twentieth Century seeks to understand recent German history and contemporary German culture through its sounds and musics, noises and silences, using the means and modes of the emerging field of Sound Studies. German soundscapes present a particularly fertile field for investigation and understanding, Feiereisen and Hill argue, due to such unique factors in Germany's history as its early and especially cacophonous industrialization, the sheer loudness of its wars, and the possibilities of shared noises in its division and reunification. Organized largely but not strictly chronologically, chapters use the unique contours of the German aural experience to examine how these soundscapes - the sonic environments, the ever-present arrays of noises with which everyone lives - ultimately reveal the possibility of "national" sounds. Together the chapters consider the acoustic national identity of Germany, or the cultural significance of sounds and silence, since the development and rise of sound-recording and sound-disseminating technologies in the early 1900s Chapters draw examples from a remarkably broad range of contexts and historical periods, from the noisy urban spaces at the turn of the twentieth century to battlefields and concert halls to radio and television broadcasting to the hip hop soundscapes of today. As a whole, the book makes a compelling case for the scholarly utility of listening to them. An online "Bonus Track" of teaching materials offers instructors practical tips for classroom use.
The universally acclaimed and award-winning Oxford History of
Western Music is the eminent musicologist Richard Taruskin's
provocative, erudite telling of the story of Western music from its
earliest days to the present. Each book in this superlative
five-volume set illuminates-through a representative sampling of
masterworks-the themes, styles, and currents that give shape and
direction to a significant period in the history of Western music.
The universally acclaimed and award-winning Oxford History of
Western Music is the eminent musicologist Richard Taruskin's
provocative, erudite telling of the story of Western music from its
earliest days to the present. Each book in this superlative
five-volume set illuminates-through a representative sampling of
masterworks-the themes, styles, and currents that give shape and
direction to a significant period in the history of Western music.
John Cage's disdain for records was legendary. He repeatedly spoke of the ways in which recorded music was antithetical to his work. In Records Ruin the Landscape, David Grubbs argues that, following Cage, new genres in experimental and avant-garde music in the 1960s were particularly ill suited to be represented in the form of a recording. These activities include indeterminate music, long-duration minimalism, text scores, happenings, live electronic music, free jazz, and free improvisation. How could these proudly evanescent performance practices have been adequately represented on an LP? In their day, few of these works circulated in recorded form. By contrast, contemporary listeners can encounter this music not only through a flood of LP and CD releases of archival recordings but also in even greater volume through Internet file sharing and online resources. Present-day listeners are coming to know that era's experimental music through the recorded artifacts of composers and musicians who largely disavowed recordings. In Records Ruin the Landscape, Grubbs surveys a musical landscape marked by altered listening practices.
Completely revised and updated from recently discovered archive material, Lewis Foreman's classic biography is the essential handbook to Bax and his contemporaries. Lewis Foreman's classic biography of the composer Arnold Bax (1883-1953) was first published in 1983. Documenting the life and times of a remarkable figure whose life touched a wide circle in England and Ireland, it was notable for having many of Bax's friends and contemporaries as sources, most of whom have since died. It also informed the remarkable revival of Bax's music and reputation which has taken place over the last twenty years. Now completely revised in the light of much new material including the huge archive of the pianist Harriet Cohen, Bax's mistress, which has only just become available for research, it is a notable portrait of a unique musical milieu. Bax's extensive musical output is now comprehensively recorded and widely known and here all the music is discussed from first hand acquaintance with all the revivals and recordings. This is the essential handbook to Bax and his period. LEWIS FOREMAN is a freelance author and advisor to record companies.
for solo harp and strings Suite Lyrique is a work in six movements for harp and strings, with music taken from the composer's Suite Antique of 1979 for flute, harpsichord, and strings. The six movements - Prelude, Ostinato, Aria, (Jazz) Waltz, Chanson, and Rondeau - explore different moods and exploit the harp's sound world and capabilities to the full to create a highly attractive and joyful concert work. The harp part and full score are available on sale and string parts and scores available on hire.
'Sometimes I liken the creative act to that of being a good gardener. The musical material itself, the harmonies, rhythms, the timbres and tempi, are seeds you have planted. Composing, bringing forth the final formal arrangement of these elements, is often a business of watching them grow, knowing when to nourish and water them and when to prune and weed.' A book unlike anything ever written by a composer, part memoir and part description of the creative process, Hallelujah Junction is an absorbing journey through the musical landscape of John Adams, one of today's most admired and frequently performed composers. A musician of enormous range and technical command, Adams has built a huge audience worldwide through the immediacy and sincerity of his music, such as his Pulitzer prize-winning memorial for the September 11 attack On The Transmigration of Souls. Hallelujah Junction isn't so much an autobiography as a fascinating journey through the musical landscape of his life and times, centred around the three highly controversial operas based on social and political issues he has written in the past twenty-five years - Nixon in China, The Death of Klinghoffer and, most recently, Dr Atomic.
for SATB (with divisions) and organ Commissioned and first performed by the choir of Liverpool Cathedral, this anthem is ideal for use during the Feast of Saints Peter and Paul. The choral lines move between sonorous homophonic writing and vibrant imitative passages, and are underpinned by a repeated quaver motif in the organ. Combining a sense of joy with moments of reflection, this anthem will particularly appeal to choirs looking to expand their choral repertoire.
for SATB (with soprano semi-chorus), piano, & optional percussion (bass drum, tam-tam/gong, & 3 tom-toms) This is a colourful and dramatic celebration of nature and its powerful and hypnotizing sounds. The listener is taken on a captivating journey through the natural world, via 'tongues of thunders', the 'singing sea', and 'trumpet-throated winds'. Clustered harmonies, cross-rhythms, and vocal effects are combined with bell-like passages and rippling figurations in the piano, and the optional percussion part adds further rhythmic and dynamic interest. The semi-chorus part can be sung by one or more sopranos or a children's choir.
This ground-breaking book is the first-ever study of the role played in musical history by song collectors. This is the first-ever book about song collectors, music's unsung heroes. They include the Armenian priest who sacrificed his life to preserve the folk music which the Turks were trying to erase in the 1915 Genocide; the prisoner in a Nazi concentration camp who secretly noted down the songs of doomed Jewish inmates; the British singer who went veiled into Afghanistan to learn, record and perform the music the Taliban wanted to silence. Some collectors have been fired by political idealism - Bartok championing Hungarian peasant music, the Lomaxes bringing the blues out of Mississippi penitentiaries, and transmitting them to the world. Many collectors have been priests - French Jesuits noting down labyrinthine forms in eighteenth-century Beijing, English vicars tracking songs in nineteenth-century Somerset. Others have been wonderfully colourful oddballs. Today's collectors are striving heroically to preserve endangered musics, whether rare forms of Balinese gamelan, the wind-band music of Chinese villages, or the sophisticated polyphony of Central African Pygmies. With globalisation, urbanisation and Westernisation causing an irreversible erosion of the world's musical diversity, Michael Church suggests we may be seeing folk music's 'end of history'. Old forms are dying as the conditions for their survival - or replacement - disappear; the death of villages means the death of village musical culture. This ground-breaking book is the sequel to the author's award-winning The Other Classical Musics, and it concludes with an inventory of the musics now under threat, or already lost for ever.
Violin and piano reduction of Walton's Violin Concerto, based on the edition published in the Walton Edition Violin and Cello Concertos volume. Commissioned by Jascha Heifetz, the work was completed in 1939 and premiered by Heifetz later that year. Walton revised the concerto in 1943 and it is this version which is presented in the current edition. Orchestral material is available on hire.
Distinguished music theorist and composer David Lewin (1933-2003) applies the conceptual framework he developed in his earlier, innovative Generalized Musical Intervals and Transformations to the varied repertoire of the twentieth century in this stimulating and illustrative book. Analyzing the diverse compositions of four canonical composers--Simbolo from Dallapiccola's Quaderno musicale di Annalibera; Stockhausen's Klavierstuck III; Webern's Op. 10, No. 4; and Debussy's Feux d'articifice --Lewin brings forth structures which he calls "transformational networks" to reveal interesting and suggestive aspects of the music. In this complementary work, Lewin stimulates thought about the general methodology of musical analysis and issues of large-scale form as they relate to transformational analytic structuring. Musical Form and Transformation, first published in 1993 by Yale University Press, was the recipient of an ASCAP Deems Taylor Award.
The book comprises a selection of some 750 letters of the composer,
Ralph Vaughan Williams, selected from an extant corpus of about
3,300. The letters are arranged chronologically and have been
chosen to provide a cumulative pen-picture of the composer in his
own words. In general the letters reflect VW's major
preoccupations: musical, personal and political. It was not VW's
way to discuss his inner creative processes but he does discuss his
music, once it had been written: for example there is much to
illustrate the process of 'washing the face' of his major pieces
before, and after, they had reached the concert platform. There is
correspondence with collaborators such as Gilbert Murray, Harold
Child and Evelyn Sharpe who provided texts; with his publishers
(mainly OUP) about printing scores and parts; with conductors such
as Adrian Boult and John Barbirolli about performances. He was in
regular correspondence with fellow composers such as Gustav Holst,
George Butterworth, Gerald Finzi, Herbert Howells, John Ireland,
Alan Bush and Rutland Boughton. There were his pupils: Elizabeth
Maconchy and Cedric Thorpe Davie amongst others. A series of close
personal friendships is well represented: his Cambridge
contemporary and cousin Ralph Wedgwood, Edward Dent, and latterly
Michael Kennedy. Above all there are insights on his lifelong
devotion to his first wife, Adeline, and his growing friendship
with Ursula Wood, who was to become his second wife.
Walton's two coronation marches - Crown Imperial, written for the coronation of George VI in 1937, and Orb and Sceptre, written for the coronation of Elizabeth II in 1953 - are both stirring marches with sweeping tunes, and famous examples of the genre. They are published here in new editions taken from the Walton Edition volume of shorter orchestral pieces, with a short preface from the editor, David Lloyd-Jones.
for SATB wordless chorus, viola solo, and orchestra A suite for solo viola, wordless chorus (SATB), and small orchestra, Flos Campi is one of Vaughan Williams's most enigmatic pieces. Although the six movements all borrow their titles from the Old Testament's Song of Solomon, the chorus never articulates a single word. Instead, it serves as a section of the orchestra, creating an elegant vocal texture and backdrop to the viola's haunting solo lines. The work was premiered in October 1925 by the violist Lionel Tertis, singers from the RCM, and the Queen's Hall Orchestra, directed by Sir Henry Wood.
Janacek wrote regular articles for the Brno daily paper and in these he expressed his attitude and feelings towards the everyday things in nature and human situations which had commanded his attention. The sounds he heard, especially the human voice, he annotated with musical sketches and these appear in this book in his own words and serve to illuminate the works which this great composer produced. The thirty-odd articles are grouped under Memories of Youth, The Sounds of Music, Travel, Birds, while included under Operatic Studies is a fascinating account of the origins of The Cunning Little Vixen. The book also contains some rare photographs and music examples, many in Janacek's own hand.
Walton's Violin Sonata was commissioned by Yehudi Menuhin after a chance encounter in Lucerne, Switzerland in September 1947. The work was completed in 1949 and first performed by Menuhin and Louis Kentner that year. This edition is based on the score published in the Walton Edition Chamber Music volume.
Unquestionably the founding work of minimalism in musical
composition, Terry Riley's In C (1964) challenges the standards of
imagination, intellect, and musical ingenuity to which "classical"
music is held. Only one page of score in length, it contains
neither specified instrumentation nor parts. Its fifty-three
motives are compact, presented without any counterpoint or evident
form. The composer gave only spare instructions and no tempo. And
he assigned the work a title that's laconic in the extreme. At the
same moment of its composition, Elliott Carter was working on his
Concerto for Piano, a work Stravinsky was to hail as a masterpiece.
Having almost completed Laborinthus II, Luciano Berio would soon
start the Sinfonia. Karlheinz Stockhausen had just finished
Momente. In context of these other works, and of the myriad of
compositional styles and trends which preceded them, In C stands
the whole idea of musical "progress" on its head.
John Cage's contribution to twentieth-century music, literature and art not only established his place as a leading figure in the post-war avant-garde, but also guaranteed his enduring controversy. His emphasis on chance, as opposed to intention, rejected traditional artistic methods and caused uproar amongst his peers. The shock provoked by pieces such as 4'33" still reverberates today, as Cage's radical approach to art and aesthetics continues to challenge and inspire artists worldwide. In his new biography Rob Haskins considers John Cage's life, art, ideas and work, evaluating the twin pillars of Cage's creative output and the ideas that lie behind it. Demystifying the artist's use of chance, and his relationship to Zen Buddhism, the book explores Cage's belief that everyday life and art are one and the same. John Cage will appeal to musicians and artists, as well as general readers interested in the art, music and ideas of the twentieth century.
As the Soviet Union's foremost composer, Shostakovich's status in the West has always been problematic. Regarded by some as a collaborator, and by others as a symbol of moral resistance, both he and his music met with approval and condemnation in equal measure. The demise of the Communist state has, if anything, been accompanied by a bolstering of his reputation, but critical engagement with his multi-faceted achievements has been patchy. This Companion offers a new starting point and a guide for readers who seek a fuller understanding of Shostakovich's place in the history of music. Bringing together an international team of scholars, the book brings up-to-date research to bear on the full range of Shostakovich's musical output, addressing scholars, students and all those interested in this complex, iconic figure. |
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