This collection brings together for the first time essays on postmodernism and music and covers a wide range of musical styles including concert music, jazz, film music, and popular music. Topics include:
* the importance of technology and marketing in postmodern music
* the appropriation and reworking of Western music by non-Western bands
* postmodern characteristics in the music of Gorecki, Rochberg, Zorn and Bolcom as well as Bjork and Wu Tang Clan
* issues of music and race
* comparisons of postmodern architecture to postmodern music.

This volume presents recent research into Dmitry Shostakovich's life (1906-1975) and work by leading scholars, and aims to place the composer in a variety of different contexts: musical, literary, and historical. The contributors are musicologists, Russian literature specialists, biographers, and cultural historians, and their diverse fields of expertise are reflected in the interdisciplinary nature of the materials collected here, contributing substantially to our knowledge of the composer.

The Stage Works of Philip Glass is the first publication to exclusively examine Glass's stage works from 1976 to the present day. Glass, who is regularly acclaimed as the most popular living classical composer, created stage works that have had a mesmerizing effect on younger generations. Robert Waters analyses Glass and his music for the theatre in the context of other composers interested in so-called minimalist features. His discussion includes three introductory chapters that address the validity versus invalidity of terms such as minimalism, post-minimalism, postmodernism, and neo-Romanticism, together with a brief overview of Glass's life and works. Waters examines the different types of theatre responsible for Glass's impact, including Robert Wilson's Theater of Images. He sheds light on Glass's philosophy regarding staging, text, and other theatrical components, which includes a defiance of conventional narrative, visual and aural dissociation as a theatrical technique, and deconstructionist concepts.

**WINNER of Presto Books' Best Composer Biography** NINE WORKS OF BEETHOVEN, NINE WINDOWS INTO THE LIFE AND LEGACY OF A MUSICAL GENIUS. 'We are doubly blessed that Beethoven should have led such an extraordinary life. Laura has combined the two - the genius of his music and the richness of his experiences - to shine a revealing light on our greatest composer' John Humphrys _________________________ Ludwig van Beethoven: to some, simply the greatest ever composer of Western classical music. Yet his life remains shrouded in myths. In Beethoven, Oxford professor Laura Tunbridge cuts through the noise. With each chapter focusing on a period of his life, piece of music and revealing theme - from family to friends, from heroism to liberty - she provides a rich insight into the man and the music. Revealing a wealth of never-before-seen material, this tour de force is a compelling, accessible portrayal of one of the world's most creative minds and it will transform how you listen for ever. _________________________ 'Tunbridge has come up with the seemingly impossible: a new way of approaching Beethoven's life and music . . . profoundly original and hugely readable' John Suchet, author Beethoven: The Man Revealed 'This well researched and accessible book is a must read for all who seek to know more about the flesh and blood tangible Beethoven.' John Clubbe, author of Beethoven: The Relentless Revolutionary 'This book is really wonderful! ... However many books on Beethoven you own, find the space for one more. This one' Stephen Hough, pianist, composer, writer 'In a year when everyone's looking for a new take on Beethoven, Laura Tunbridge has found nine. Fresh and engaging' Norman Lebrecht, author of Genius and Anxiety 'Remarkable . . . she captures the essence of his genius and character. I'll always want to keep it in easy reach' Julia Boyd, author of Travellers in the third Reich

West Side Story first became famous in Spain when the Robert Wise film opened there in 1962, the version remaining popular for decades. Brief international tours came to various cities in Spain in the 1980s, but their presence did not diminish memory of the film, which played a major influence on the country's first stage adaptation of the show in 1996. Directed by Ricard Reguant and produced in Barcelona by Focus, the production also toured. After another international tour played in three Spanish cities in summer 2009, the Madrid company SOM Produce mounted a rendition in 2018 directed and choreographed by Federico Barrios, the first Spanish stage version based on the original 1957 staging. This Element compares the adaptations of the 1996 and 2018 versions in detail, illuminating issues encountered when translating a musical for another culture.

Academic attention has focused on America's influence on European stage works, and yet dozens of operettas from Austria and Germany were produced on Broadway and in the West End, and their impact on the musical life of the early twentieth century is undeniable. In this ground breaking book, Derek B. Scott examines the cultural transfer of operetta from the German stage to Britain and the USA and offers a historical and critical survey of these operettas and their music. In the period 1900-1940, over sixty operettas were produced in the West End, and over seventy on Broadway. A study of these stage works is important for the light they shine on a variety of social topics of the period - from modernity and gender relations to new technology and new media - and these are investigated in the individual chapters. This book is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.

Roderick Chadwick and Peter Hill give a detailed account of the evolution of Olivier Messiaen's Catalogue d'oiseaux for piano solo, from its initial conception in the Black Forest in 1953 to its completion and premiere in the Parisian 'Concerts du Domaine Musical' at the end of the decade. Through close examination of the composer's birdsong cahiers they demonstrate how Messiaen translated nature into music in a way that had a major impact on his later work. They also consider issues of performance, and Messiaen's artistic relationship with his dedicatee and wife-to-be, Yvonne Loriod, including the significance of her two recordings of the cycle. This book illuminates the Catalogue from a variety of angles: its historical significance, as a study of how mimicry of nature can be transformed into music of mesmeric originality, and as a guide that offers a wealth of fresh insights to listeners and performers.

First Published in 1998. This book serves as the key to study of Kodaly for an English-speaking audience. The volume presents a biographical outline, a catalog of his compositions according to genre, and over 1,400 annotated primary and secondary sources. Three indexes cover listings by author and title, Kodaly's compositions, and proper names. Primary sources include Kodaly's own essays, articles, lectures on folk music and art music, letters and other documents, and his folk music collections and facsimiles. Secondary sources include: biographical and historical studies; theoretic, analytic, stylistic, and aesthetic studies of his music; discussions of folk music influences and art music influences; studies of his compositional process; and discussions of the Kodaly concept. Doctoral dissertations and Masters theses pertaining to Kodaly are included in this guide. This annotated, topically organized book is the first to draw together the most important primary and secondary bibliographic sources that cover his varied activities as composer, ethnomusicologist, linguist, and educator.

An anthology including the organ arrangements of Walton's works which were made with his authorization, plus new ones by Robert Gower. The varied and idiomatic arrangements in this book are indispensable additions to every organist's library.

Collection of critical and analytical scholarly essays on the music of Ravel by prominent scholars. Unmasking Ravel: New Perspectives on the Music fills a unique place in Ravel studies by combining critical interpretation and analytical focus. From the premiere of his works up to the present, Ravel has been associated with masks and the related notions of artifice and imposture. This has led scholars to perceive a lack of depth in his music and, consequently, to discourage investigation of his musical language. This volume balances and interweavesthese modes of inquiry. Part 1, "Orientations and Influences," illuminates the sometimes contradictory aesthetic, biographical, and literary strands comprising Ravel's artistry and our understanding of it. Part 2, "Analytical Case Studies," engages representative works from Ravel's major genres using a variety of methodologies, focusing on structural process and his complex relation to stylistic convention. Part 3, "Interdisciplinary Studies," integratesmusical analysis and art criticism, semiotics, and psychoanalysis in creating novel methodologies. Contributors include prominent scholars of Ravel's and fin-de-siecle music: Elliott Antokoletz, Gurminder Bhogal, Sigrun B. Heinzelmann, Volker Helbing, Steven Huebner, Peter Kaminsky, Barbara Kelly, David Korevaar, Daphne Leong, Michael Puri, and Lauri Suurpaa. Peter Kaminsky is Professor of Music at the University of Connecticut, Storrs.

Ben Johnston is an American composer internationally known for his work with extended just intonation. This is a critical-analytical study of his early compositions, his studies with Harry Partch and John Cage, and his experiments with just intonation, serialism, indeterminacy, jazz, and finally, extended just intonation. Pieces are analyzed and biographical material is included. The main emphasis of the text, however, is on examining Johnston's research about tuning and scalar theory as it relates to just intonation. For a long time Johnston worked in isolation; few people understood why someone would want to change the standard pitch system. But gradually, as his music began to be heard, especially his string quartets, performers and audiences experienced for themselves the kind of clarity and beauty that is possible with just intonation. This book is written for readers of varying musical backgrounds. Thos interested in studying and performing Johnston's music will find the book helpful in understanding his notational system and learning how to listen for just intervals. Many examples and figures document the musical analyses, which explain his compositional techniques. With a foreword by John Cage, a catalog and discography of Johnston's music, and a bibliography of the composer's writings.

This study provides a new view of a composer long considered to be one of the century's most rigorously intellectual creators, Anton Webern. By examining a central pre-twelve-tone work, the Trakl cycle, Op 14, in the context of the Viennese intellectual and artistic climate, Professor Shreffler shows how Webern's responses to Trakl's complex verse enabled him to expand his musical vocabulary. The author's emphasis on Webern's compositional process is of particular importance: whether because of the anxiety of creating a new musical language, or because of an innate hyper-perfectionism (or both), Webern rejected most of what he composed. A close examination of the manuscript sources - fragments, sketches, and fair copies - of Webern's comparatively neglected middle-period lieder enables her to shed light on Webern's musical language and his working methods. A focus on the sources also helps to modify the view that his music progressed steadily in the direction of the twelve-tone technique. The works reveal instead a concern with expressing the essence of the text; this lyricism, rather than articulating a substantially different aesthetic from the later works, provides a better understanding of the consummate lyricism of all his music, however compressed or fragmented its utterance in the `classic' twelve-tone works.

In the aftermath of World War I, a sense of impasse and thwarted promise shaped the political and cultural spheres in Britain. Writers such as D. H. Lawrence, Hilda Doolittle, T. S. Eliot and Wyndham Lewis were among the literary figures who responded by pursuing vividness, autonomy and impersonality in their work. Yet the extent to which these practices were reflected in ideas about music from within the same milieu has remained unrecognised. Uncovering the work of composer-critics who worked alongside these figures - including Philip Heseltine (Peter Warlock), Cecil Gray and Kaikhosru Sorabji - Sarah Collins traces the shared tendencies of literary and musical modernisms in interwar Britain. Collins explores the political investments underpinning these tendencies, as well as the influence of English Nietzscheanism and related intellectual currents, arguing that a particular conception of the self, history, and the public characterised an ethos of 'lateness' within this milieu.

Mieczyslaw Weinberg left his family behind and fled his native Poland in September 1939. He reached the Soviet Union, where he become one of the most celebrated composers. He counted Shostakovich among his close friends and produced a prolific output of works. Yet he remained mindful of the nation that he had left. This book examines how Weinberg's works written in Soviet Russia compare with those of his Polish contemporaries; how one composer split from his national tradition and how he created a style that embraced the music of a new homeland, while those composers in his native land surged ahead in a more experimental vein. The points of contact between them are enlightening for both sides. This study provides an overview of Weinberg's music through his string quartets, analysing them alongside Polish composers. Composers featured include Bacewicz, Meyer, Lutoslawski, Panufnik, Penderecki, Gorecki, and a younger generation, including Szymanski and Knapik.

Satie's music and ideas are inextricably linked with the City of Light. This book situates Satie's work within the context and sonic environment of contemporary Paris. Erik Satie's (1866-1925) music appeals to wide audiences and has influenced both experimental artists and pop musicians. Little about Satie was conventional, and he resists classification under easy headings such as "classical music". Instead of pursuing the path of a professional composer, Satie initially earned a living as a cafe pianist and moved in bohemian circles which prized satire, popular culture and experiment. Small wonder that his music is fundamentally new in conception. It is music which is not always designed to be listened to attentively: music which can be machine-like but is to be played by humans. For Satie, music was part of a wider concept of artistic creation,as evidenced by his collaborations with leading avant-garde artists and in works which cross traditional genre boundaries such as his texted piano pieces. His music was created in some of the most exciting and creatively stimulating environments of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century: Montmartre and Montparnasse. Paris was the artistic centre of Europe, and Satie was a notorious figure whose music and ideas are inextricably linked with the City of Light. This book situates Satie's work within the context and sonic environment of contemporary Paris. It shows that the influence of street music, musicians and poets interested in new technology, contemporary innovations and radical politics are all crucial to an understanding of Satie. Music from the ever-popular Gymnopedies to newly discovered works are discussed, and an online supplement features rare pieces recorded especially for the book. CAROLINE POTTER is Reader in Music at Kingston University London. A graduate in both French and Music, she has published widely on French music since Debussy and was Series Advisor to the Philharmonia Orchestra's Paris2014-15 season.

Leading authorities explore, in direct and accessible language, chamber-music masterpieces by twenty-one prominent composers since 1900. Modern composers as diverse as Bela Bartok, Maurice Ravel, Benjamin Britten, and John Cage have confided some of their most personal and intense thoughts to the medium of the string quartet. The resulting repertoire has won the allegiance of string players-and of listeners in the concert hall and at home. Yet, until now, no book has addressed the language of these remarkable works, their interactions with the masterpieces of Beethoven and others, and theirnew approaches to musical expression. Intimate Voices, organized in rough chronological order, offers the observations and intuitions of leading authorities on quartets by twenty-one composers from eleven countries. Its two volumes-available separately or together-comprise an indispensable guide to amateur and professional chamber musicians, scholars, students, and anyone seeking a deeper acquaintance with the great achievements of twentieth-century music. Edited by Evan Jones, Associate Professor of Music Theory, Florida State University College of Music.

The music of the prolific Heitor Villa-Lobos (1887-1959) typifies Brazil, in its diversity, spirit of racial amalgam, and awesome beauty. Through the sheer quantity of his output, his original use of folkloric material, and the striking accessibility of his scores, Villa-Lobos has become the best-known and most significant Latin American composer of all time. This book provides an introduction to his music, and by focusing attention on important or unusual works from his large oeuvre, charts Villa-Lobos's own often anguished musical journey through the Brazilian landscape. Jungle, grasslands, river, city, and ocean all find a legitimate place in his aural mosaic of Brazil, but as he approached death his music assumed a deep spiritual quality of peace and resignation. His personal journey of discovery and fulfilment is clearly explained, set against the pervasive backdrop of social and political upheaval which characterized Brazil during Villa-Lobos's lifetime. Simon Wright has lectured, broadcast, and written on all aspects of Latin American music, and was awarded the Rocha Miranda Award of the Anglo-Brazilian Society for research in Brazil.

One of the Broadway musicals that can genuinely claim to have transformed the genre, West Side Story has been featured in many books on Broadway, but it has yet to be the focus of a scholarly monograph. Nigel Simeone begins by exploring the long process of creating West Side Story, including a discussion of Bernstein's sketches, early drafts of the score and script, as well as cut songs. The core of the book is a commentary on the music itself. West Side Story is one of the very few Broadway musicals for which there is a complete published orchestral score, as well as two different editions of the piano-vocal score. The survival of the original copied orchestral score, and the reminiscences of Sid Ramin and Irwin Kostal, reveal details of the orchestration process, and the extent to which Bernstein was involved in this. Simeone's commentary considers: musical characteristics and compositional techniques used to mirror the drama (for example, the various uses of the tritone), motivic development, the use and reinvention of Broadway and other conventions, the creation of dramatic continuity in the score through the use of motifs and other devices, the unusual degree of dissonance and rhythmic complexity (at least for the time), and the integration of Latin-American dance forms (Mambo, Huapango and so on). Simeone also considers the reception of West Side Story in the contemporary press. The stir the show caused included the response that it was the angular, edgy score that made it a remarkable achievement. Not all reviews were uncritical. Finally, the book looks in detail at the making of the original Broadway cast recording, made in just one day, included on the accompanying downloadable resources.

Beginning from the unlikely vantage point of Venice in the aftermath of fascism and World War II, this book explores operatic production in the city's nascent postwar culture as a lens onto the relationship between opera and politics in the twentieth century. Both opera and Venice in the middle of the century are often talked about in strikingly similar terms: as museums locked in the past and blind to the future. These cliches are here overturned: perceptions of crisis were in fact remarkably productive for opera, and despite being physically locked in the past, Venice was undergoing a flourishing of avant-garde activity. Focusing on a local musical culture, Harriet Boyd-Bennett recasts some of the major composers, works, stylistic categories and narratives of twentieth-century music. The study provides fresh understandings of works by composers as diverse as Stravinsky, Prokofiev, Verdi, Britten and Nono.

Thomas Ades is a dominant force in contemporary music, whose work attracts significant attention and acclaim, and has been performed by many renowned ensembles. This volume - the first to present a range of scholarly essays on every aspect of Ades's music - offers authoritative accounts of Ades's major compositions from a variety of analytical, critical, cultural and historical perspectives. The opening chapters focus on Ades's earlier music, offering close readings of key works. Further essays focus on his engagement with forms and instrumental genres. The final chapters turn to Ades's texted music and highlight how themes introduced in earlier chapters cut across Ades's entire output. Richly illustrated with musical examples and supported by further online material, this book provides a multi-faceted portrait of Ades's work that opens up new ways of thinking about, and engaging with, his music.

A musical composer who dabbled in the Dada movement, a Bohemian gymnopediste of fin-de-siecle Montmartre, and a legendary dresser known as The Velvet Gentleman for his sartorial choices, Erik Satie was nearly unprecedented in technique, style and philosophy among European composers in the early twentieth century. Yet his legacy has largely languished in the shadows of Stravinsky, Debussy and Ravel. Mary E. Davis now brings Satie to life in this fascinating new biography that demonstrates that his musical innovations reached as far as his influence. Satie redefined the boundaries of the composer's art, devising new methods of artistic expression that melded ordinary elements and rarefied genres of words, visual art and music. Davis argues that Satie's modernist aesthetic was grounded in the contradictions apparent in his life such as enrolling in the conservative Schola Cantorum after working as a cabaret performer and is reflected in his irreverent essays, drawings and music." Erik Satie" explores how the composer was embraced by both the avant-garde and Parisian elite, an experience that immersed him in the worlds of high fashion and cutting-edge modernist art, and subsequently gave him the aesthetic impetus to create the new musical style of Neoclassicism. Satie also crucially employed the power of the image through his infamous fashion statements, Davis contends, to establish his place in the art world, and in this connection between couture and culture, Satie was at the heart of a nascent celebrity culture. A fascinating and informative portrait, with numerous illustrations that include art by Satie himself, "Erik Satie" reassesses the accepted history of modernist music and restores the composer to his rightful pioneering status.

The stage works of Saint-Saens range from grand open-air pageants to one-act comic operas, and include the first composed film score. Yet, with the exception of Samson et Dalila, his twelve operas have lain in the shadows since the composer's death in 1921. Widely performed in his lifetime, they vanished from the repertory - never played, never recorded - until now. With four twenty-first-century revivals as a backdrop, this timely book is the first study of Saint-Saens's operas, demonstrating the presence of the same breadth and versatility as in his better known works. Hugh Macdonald's wide knowledge of French music in the nineteenth century gives a powerful understanding of the different conventions and expectations that governed French opera at the time. The interaction of Saint-Saens with his contemporaries is a colourful and important part of the story.

This Companion presents a new understanding of the relationship between music and culture in and around the nineteenth century, and encourages readers to explore what Romanticism in music might mean today. Challenging the view that musical 'romanticism' is confined to a particular style or period, it reveals instead the multiple intersections between the phenomenon of Romanticism and music. Drawing on a variety of disciplinary approaches, and reflecting current scholarly debates across the humanities, it places music at the heart of a nexus of Romantic themes and concerns. Written by a dynamic team of leading younger scholars and established authorities, it gives a state-of-the-art yet accessible overview of current thinking on this popular topic.

How can the classical Karnatik music of South India illuminate performers' and researchers' understanding of the art music of seventeenth-century Italy, and specifically Monteverdi's operas? Both art forms attach great value to the skill of vocal ornamentation, and by exploring the singer's practice moving between them, this Element reveals how intercultural approaches can enable the reconsideration of the history of Western music from a global perspective. Using methods from historical and comparative musicology, theory and practice-based research, Charulatha Mani analyses vocal ornamentation and technique and arrives at an innovative approach to studying musics from the past. Musical practice, the author argues, is an enactment of hybridity and the artistic product of plurality. Specifically, in early modern Europe the fluid movement of musicians from the East paved the way to a plurality of musical cultures. This finding holds deep implications for diversity in and decolonisation of current music performance and education.

Award-winning author Jack Boss returns with the 'prequel' to Schoenberg's Twelve-Tone Music (Cambridge, 2014) demonstrating that the term 'atonal' is meaningful in describing Schoenberg's music from 1908 to 1921. This book shows how Schoenberg's atonal music can be understood in terms of successions of pitch and rhythmic motives and pitch-class sets that flesh out the large frameworks of 'musical idea' and 'basic image'. It also explains how tonality, after losing its structural role in Schoenberg's music after 1908, begins to re-appear not long after as an occasional expressive device. Like its predecessor, Schoenberg's Atonal Music contains close readings of representative works, including the Op. 11 and Op. 19 Piano Pieces, the Op. 15 George-Lieder, the monodrama Erwartung, and Pierrot lunaire. These analyses are illustrated by richly detailed musical examples, revealing the underlying logic of some of Schoenberg's most difficult pieces of music.