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 twenty 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. Volume 1: Debussy and Ravel [Marianne Wheeldon]; Sibelius [Joseph Kraus]; Bartok [JosephN. Straus]; Hindemith [David Neumeyer]; Schoenberg [Matthew R. Shaftel]; Berg [Dave Headlam]; Webern [David Clampitt]; Villa-Lobos [Eero Tarasti]; Prokofiev [Neil Minturn] Volume 2: Shostakovich [Patrick McCreless]; Britten [Christopher Mark]; Ligeti [Jane Piper Clendinning]; Berio [Richard Hermann]; Xenakis [Evan Jones]; Scelsi [Eric Drott]; Cage (David W. Bernstein]; Babbitt [Andrew Mead]; Carter [Jonathan W. Bernard]; Mel Powell [Jeffrey Perry]; Shulamit Ran [Robert W. Peck]

In Ira Gershwin: The Art of the Lyricist, the older and less flamboyant of the Gershwin brothers at last steps out of the shadows to claim his due as one of American songwriting's most important and enduring innovators. Philip Furia traces the development of Ira Gershwin's lyrical art from his early love of light verse and Gilbert and Sullivan, through his apprentice work in Tin Pan Alley, to his emergence as a prominent writer during the golden era of Broadway and Hollywood musicals. He reveals how Gershwin took the everyday speech of ordinary Americans and made it sing.

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.

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.

Since its original publication in 1930, Henry Cowell's New Musical Resources has become recognized 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." For this new 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.

Described by Walton as the 'greatest symphony since Beethoven', Vaughan Williams's fourth symphony was composed in 1935 and is noted for its abrasively dissonant harmonic language, unlike much of the composer's other work. This new, scholarly edition, edited by David Matthews, will replace the existing OUP edition from 1935 and the Eulenburg edition from 1983. The preliminary text will include a preface, sources and editorial method, and detailed textual notes.

Between May 1949 and August 1954 the composers Pierre Boulez and John Cage exchanged a series of remarkable letters that reflect on their own music and the culture of the time. This correspondence, together with other relevant documents, has been edited and annotated by Jean-Jacques Nattiez and is now available for the first time in English in a paperback edition.

Michael Nyman's book is a first-hand account of experimental music from 1950 to 1970. First published in 1974, it has remained the classic text on a significant form of music making and composing that developed alongside, and partly in opposition to, the postwar modernist tradition of composers such as Boulez, Berio, or Stockhausen. The experimentalist par excellence was John Cage whose legendary 4' 33'' consists of four minutes and thirty three seconds of silence to be performed on any instrument. Such pieces have a conceptual rather than purely musical starting point and radically challenge conventional notions of the musical work. Nyman's book traces the revolutionary attitudes that were developed toward concepts of time, space, sound, and composer/performer responsibility. It was within the experimental tradition that the seeds of musical minimalism were sown and the book contains reference to the early works of Reich, Riley, Young, and Glass. This second edition contains a new Foreword, an updated discography, and a historical overview by the author.

From the end of the nineteenth century a national musical consciousness gradually developed in the USA as composers began to turn away from the European conventions on which their music had hitherto been modelled. It was in this period of change that experimentation was born. In this book, the composer and scholar David Nicholls considers the most influential figures in the development of American experimental music, including Charles Ives, Charles Seeger, Ruth Crawford, Henry Cowell, and the young John Cage. He analyses the music and ideas of this group, explaining the compositional techniques invented and employed by them and the historical and cultural context in which they emerged.

Described by Aaron Copland as 'among the finest creations in the modern repertoire', Alban Berg's Violin Concerto has become a twentieth-century classic. In this authoritative and highly readable guide to the work the reader is introduced not only to the concerto itself but to all that surrounded and determined its composition. This is a book about musical culture in the 1930s, about the Second Viennese School, about tonality, atonality and serialism, about Berg's own musical development, compositional method and the private significance the Violin Concerto held for him. The book describes the genesis of the work, its performance history and critical reception and, in two detailed musical chapters, provides a section-by-section account of the book and a closer analysis of the musical language and structure. Anthony Pople's ability to combine musical anecdote with scholarly discussion makes this guide compelling reading for the amateur and the specialist alike.

Leo Ornstein: Modernist Dilemmas, Personal Choices traces the meteoric rise and heretofore inexplicable disappearance of the Russian-American, futurist-anarchist, pianist-composer from his arrival in the United States in 1906 through a career that lasted nearly a century. Outliving his admirers and critics by decades Leo Ornstein passed away in 2002 at the age of 108. Frequently compared to Igor Stravinsky and Arnold Schoenberg, for a time Ornstein enjoyed a kind a celebrity granted few living musicians. And then he turned his back on it all. This first, full-length biographical study draws upon interviews, journals, and letters from a wide circle of Ornstein's friends and acquaintances to track the Ornstein family as it escaped the horrors of the Russian pogroms, and it situates the Russian-Jewish-American musician as he carved out an identity amidst World War I, the flu pandemic, and the Red Scare. While telling Leo Ornstein's story, the book also illuminates the stories of thousands of immigrants with similar harrowing experiences. It also explores the immeasurable impact of his unexpected marriage in 1918 to Pauline Mallet-Prevost, a Park Avenue debutante.

Leo Ornstein: Modernist Dilemmas, Personal Choices finds Ornstein at the center of several networks that included artists John Marin, William Zorach, Leon Kroll, writers and activists Paul Rosenfeld, Waldo Frank, Edmund Wilson, and Clair Reis, the Stieglitz Circle, and a group of English composers known as the Frankfurt Five. Ornstein's story challenges directly the traditional chronology and narrative regarding musical modernism in America and its close relation to the other arts.

This book is a collection of essays, by the leading German musicologist of our day, on one of the most controversial and influential composers of our century: Arnold Schoenberg. Schoenberg is considered here as a historical figure, as a thinker and theoretician and as a composer whose works may be subjected to technical analysis and/or examined in relation to the history of ideas. Above all, he is considered in the context of the 'New Music', the historical and cultural movement of the first two decades of this century which embrace musicians such as Webern, Schreker and Scriabin (all of whom are allotted individual essays), as well as Schoenberg himself. In addition to historical and analytical essays there are essays of a broader cultural-historical and even sociological import which should interest all those involved with twentieth-century music and ideas.

A discussion of more than 50 composers focuses on poets whose verse was set to music frequently, Housman, Hardy, De la Mare, Yeats, etc.. and song composers, Butterworth, Finzi, Gurney, Ireland, Quilter, Somervell and Vaughan Williams.

In 2008 Paul Robertson, the renowned violinist and leader of the Medici Quartet, suffered a ruptured aorta. After dying for a lengthy period on the operating table, he remained in a coma for many weeks. During this time, he experienced visions which afforded him profound insights and when he awoke, he found his understanding of the world fundamentally altered. This surprising and rewarding memoir offers a fascinating perspective on creative endeavour: the rigours of learning, the challenges of performance and the spiritual nourishment that drives us on. It is a poignant and wise book that draws on a lifetime of experiences, in both life and death.

The long-awaited memoir by 'the most prolific and popular of all contemporary composers' (New York Times) Rapturous in its ability to depict the creative process, Words Without Music allows readers to experience that sublime moment of creative fusion when life merges with art. Biography lovers will be inspired by the story of a precocious Baltimore boy, the son of a music-shop owner, who entered college at age fifteen, before traveling to Paris to study under the legendary Nadia Boulanger; Glass devotees will be fascinated by the stories behind Einstein on the Beach and Satyagraha, among so many other works. Whether recalling his experiences working at Bethlehem Steel, traveling in India, driving a cab in 1970s New York, or his professional collaborations with the likes of Allen Ginsberg, Ravi Shankar, Robert Wilson, Doris Lessing, and Martin Scorsese, Words Without Music affirms the power of music to change the world. Martin Scorsese on Words Without Music: 'I came to Philip Glass's music very simply, without any critical prodding or guidance. I listened and I was transfixed. The music was dynamic and colorful and mysterious all at once, and it put me in mind of the Zen exercise of sitting before a blank wall and contemplating the question, "What is this?" It's music that seems to go beyond music. It doesn't just stay with you, it infuses and energizes and haunts you, and carries a sense of being alive, a perception of existence itself, the rhythm of living this life. Philip's music has come to mean more and more to me as the years have gone by. I was excited to work with Philip on Kundun, and he exceeded my wildest expectations by giving us a score that was genuinely transcendent. He's exceeded my expectations again with this rich and beautifully written memoir. Who knew that he was as good a writer as he is a composer?'

Examination of Lutoslawski's life and work draws on wide-ranging and meticulous research including hours of recorded conversation with the composer himself. Third revised edition contains an additional chapter and many more photographs.

Those whose thoughts of musical theatre are dominated by the Broadway musical will find this book a revelation. From the 1850s to the early 1930s, when urban theatres sought to mount glamorous musical entertainment, it was to operetta that they turned. It was a form of musical theatre that crossed national borders with ease and was adored by audiences around the world. This collection of essays by an array of international scholars examines the key figures in operetta in many different countries. It offers a critical and historical study of the widespread production of operetta and of the enthusiasm with which it was welcomed. Furthermore, it challenges nationalistic views of music and approaches operetta as a cosmopolitan genre. This Cambridge Companion contributes to a widening appreciation of the music of operetta and a deepening knowledge of the cultural importance of operetta around the world.

'To Richter (no first name necessary), warm greetings to the best pianist in the Soviet Union - indeed in the whole world.' Prokofiev Throughout a life dedicated to music, Richter maintained a stubborn silence about his own ideals and aspirations. Here at last he opens up his heart in these exceptional interviews with Bruno Monsaingeon, who became close to Richter not long before the pianist's death in 1995. These conversations take us on a journey which begins with Richter's childhood memories, follows his early career and his development into 'an artist of the people', and finally charts his rise to international acclaim. Richter's personal notebooks, kept for nearly thirty years, constitute an unparalleled witness to the music of our time. The pianist writes with precision, humour and clarity and is uninhibitedly himself. These are the private thoughts of a nonconformist, one of the greatest performers of the century, yet one whose life was inextricably bound to the history of the USSR.

Twentieth-century music has been described as complex, vital, diverse, uncertain, experimental, self-conscious, innovative-the list is long and growing. Composers have been both credited with and accused of always searching for something "new," writing works that are mechanistic but romantic, meaningful but unskilled, beautiful but ugly! In The Twentieth Century, Robert P. Morgan helps us grasp the flavor of the era by presenting forty-five readings from the period, nearly all written by active participants in the musical developments of the time. Thus we tune in to the voices of some thirty composers-from Busoni to Babbitt, Ives to Xenakis, Satie to Stravinsky-and learn from performers Anderson and Landowska, philosopher-critics Adorno, Dahlhaus, and Meyer, and writers Cocteau, Barthes, and Eco.

This is the first introductory survey of western twentieth-century music to address popular music, art music and jazz on equal terms. It treats those forms as inextricably intertwined, and sets them in a wide variety of social and critical contexts. The book comprises four sections - Histories, Techniques and Technologies, Mediation, Identities - with 16 thematic chapters. Each of these explores a musical or cultural topic as it developed over many years, and as it appeared across a diversity of musical practices. In this way, the text introduces both key musical repertoire and critical-musicological approaches to that work. It historicises music and musical thinking, opening up debate in the present rather than offering a new but closed narrative of the past. In each chapter, an overview of the topic's chronology and main issues is illustrated by two detailed case studies.

Saving Abstraction: Morton Feldman, the de Menils, and the Rothko Chapel tells the story of the 1972 premier of Morton Feldman's music for the Rothko Chapel in Houston. Built in 1971 for "people of all faiths or none," the chapel houses 14 monumental paintings by famed abstract expressionist Mark Rothko, who had committed suicide in only one year earlier. Upon its opening, visitors' responses to the chapel ranged from spiritual succor to abject tragedy-the latter being closest to Rothko's intentions. However the chapel's founders-art collectors and philanthropists Dominique and John de Menil-opened the space to provide an ecumenically and spiritually affirming environment that spoke to their avant-garde approach to Catholicism. A year after the chapel opened, Morton Feldman's musical work Rothko Chapel proved essential to correcting the unintentionally grave atmosphere of the de Menil's chapel, translating Rothko's existential dread into sacred ecumenism for visitors. Author Ryan Dohoney reconstructs the network of artists, musicians, and patrons who collaborated on the premier of Feldman's music for the space, and documents the ways collaborators struggled over fundamental questions about the emotional efficacy of art and its potential translation into religious feeling. Rather than frame the debate as a conflict of art versus religion, Dohoney argues that the popular claim of modernism's autonomy from religion has been overstated and that the two have been continually intertwined in an agonistic tension that animates many 20th-century artistic collaborations.

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.

This book explores the crossroads between autobiographical narratives and musical composition in Alban Berg's Lulu, unveiling aspects of encoded social customs, gender identity, and personal experiences within musical structures. Exploring the crossroads between autobiographical narrative and musical composition, this book examines Berg's transformation of Frank Wedekind's Erdgeist and Die Buchse der Pandora -- the plays used in the formationof the libretto for Lulu -- according to notions of gender identity, social customs, and the aesthetics of modernity in the Vienna of the 1920s and 1930s. While Berg modernized several aspects of the plays and incorporatedserial techniques of composition from Arnold Schoenberg, he never let go of the idealistic Wagnerian perspectives of his youth. In fact, he went as far as reconfiguring aspects of Richard Wagner's life as an ideal identity to beplayed out in the compositional process. In composing the opera, Berg also reflected on the most important cultural figures in fin-de-siecle Vienna that affected his worldview, including Karl Kraus, Emil Lucka, Otto Weininger, andothers. Combining analysis of Berg's correspondence, numerous sketches for Lulu, and the finished work with interpretive models drawn from cultural studies and philosophy, this book elucidates the ways in which Berg grappled at the end of his life with his self-image as an "incorrigible romantic," and explains aspects of his musical language that have been considered strange or anomalous in Berg scholarship. Silvio J. dos Santos isassistant professor of musicology at the University of Florida.