Maurice Ravel, as composer and scenario writer, collaborated with some of the greatest ballet directors, choreographers, designers and dancers of his time, including Diaghilev, Ida Rubinstein, Benois and Nijinsky. In this book, the first study dedicated to Ravel's ballets, Deborah Mawer explores these relationships and argues that ballet music should not be regarded in isolation from its associated arts. Indeed, Ravel's views on ballet and other stage works privilege a synthesized aesthetic. The first chapter establishes a historical and critical context for Ravel's scores, engaging en route with multimedia theory. Six main ballets from Daphnis et Chloe through to Bolero are considered holistically alongside themes such as childhood fantasy, waltzing and neoclassicism. Each work is examined in terms of its evolution, premiere, critical reception and reinterpretation through to the present; new findings result from primary-source research, undertaken especially in Paris. The final chapter discusses the reasons for Ravel's collaborations and the strengths and weaknesses of his interpersonal relations. Mawer emphasizes the importance of the performative dimension in realizing Ravel's achievement, and proposes that the composer's large-scale oeuvre can, in a sense, be viewed as a balletic undertaking. In so doing, this book adds significantly to current research interest in artistic production and interplay in early twentieth-century Paris.

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.

Sir Thomas Beecham is often described as having 'championed' the music of Frederick Delius, and this is no exaggeration. From the moment he heard Delius's music as a young man, Beecham was captivated by its strange, romantic beauty, and its hold on him remained firm. During the next 50 years, he promoted Delius's music through a series of unrivalled performances, unearthing early pieces, arranging others and recording most of them, sometimes more than once. Lyndon Jenkins provides the first in-depth study of this extraordinary creative relationship. Starting with the first meeting of the composer and conductor in 1907, Jenkins charts Beecham's gradual introduction of Delius's compositions to British and foreign audiences, the operatic premieres and revivals, the Delius festivals that he organized in 1929 and 1946, and the formation of the Delius Trust upon the composer's death in 1934. Also described is Beecham's continuing crusade for Delius's music up to his own death in 1961, which included a model edition of the scores, a biography and an internationally celebrated recorded legacy. The book includes a critical discography. Lyndon Jenkins provides a vivid account of an achievement that remains without parallel in the history of British music.

Thomas Schuttenhelm provides a detailed account of the events leading up to and throughout the compositional process associated with Michael Tippett's Fifth String Quartet and a comprehensive analysis of the entire quartet. The commentary discusses this work in the context of Tippett's creative development and places it within the historical context of the genre of the string quartet. The commentary includes interviews with the members of the Lindsay String Quartet, who premiered the work, as well as previously unpublished letters from the composer and interviews with Tippett in which he discusses the quartet in detail. Special attention is given to Tippett's preliminary attempts, which were only recently discovered (2011) and to the evidence that suggests he altered the original ending. Included are images from the composer's sketchbooks and manuscripts, as well as the original beginning and the altered ending.

The Spanish Republican exile of 1939 impacted music as much as it did literature and academia, with well-known figures such as Adolfo Salazar and Roberto Gerhard forced to leave Spain. Exile is typically regarded as a discontinuity - an irreparable dissociation between the home country and the host country. Spanish exiled composers, however, were never totally cut off from the musical life of Francoist Spain (1939-1975), be it through private correspondence, public performances of their work, honorary appointments and invitations from Francoist institutions, or a physical return to Spanish soil. Music and Exile in Francoist Spain analyses the connections of Spanish exiled composers with their homeland throughout 1939-1975. Taking the diversity and heterogeneity of the Spanish Republican exile as its starting point, the volume presents extended comparative case studies in order to broaden and advance current conceptions of, and debates surrounding, exile in musicology and Spanish studies. In doing so, it significantly furthers academic research on individual composers including Salvador Bacarisse, Julian Bautista, Roberto Gerhard, Rodolfo Halffter, Julian Orbon and Adolfo Salazar. As the first English-language monograph to explore the exiled composers from the perspectives of historiography, music criticism, performance and correspondence, Eva Moreda Rodriguez's vivid reconception of the role of place and nation in twentieth-century music history will be of particular interest for scholars of Spanish music, Spanish Republican history, and exile and displacement more broadly.

Gregor Tassie describes Nikolay Myaskovsky as "one of the great enigmas of 20th-century Russian music." Between the two world wars, the symphonies of Myaskovsky enjoyed great popularity and were performed by all major American and European orchestras; they were some of the most inspiring symphonic works of the last hundred years and prolonged the symphonic genre. But accusations of "formalism" at the 1948 USSR Composers Congress resulted in the purposeful neglect of his music until the collapse of the Soviet Union. Myaskovsky wrote some of the most inspiring symphonic works of the last hundred years and prolonged and extended the symphonic genre. In Nikolay Myaskovsky: The Conscience of Russian Music, Tassie gives readers the first modern English-language biography of this Russian composer since his death in 1950. Tassie draws together information from the composer's diaries and letters, as well as the memoirs of friends and colleagues-even his secret police files-to chronicle Myaskovsky's early life, subsequent far-reaching influence as a composer, teacher, and journalist, and his final persecution by the Soviet government. This biography will surely rekindle interest in Myaskovsky's remarkable body of work and will interest aficionados, students, and scholars of the modern classical music tradition and history of the arts in Russia.

In his 1985 book The Idea of Music: Schoenberg and Others, Peter Franklin set out a challenge for musicology: namely, how best to talk and write about the music of modern European culture that fell outside of the modernist mainstream typified by Schoenberg, Berg, and Webern? Thirty years on, this collected volume of essays by Franklin's students and colleagues returns to that challenge and the vibrant intellectual field that has since developed. Moving freely between insights into opera, Volksoper, film, festival, and choral movement, and from the very earliest years of the twentieth century up to the 1980s, its authors listen with a 'critical ear': they site these musical phenomena within a wider web of modern cultural practices - a perspective, in turn, that enables them to exercise a disciplinary self-awareness after Franklin's manner.

How and why is pre-existing music used in films? What effects can its use have on films and their audiences? And what lasting impact can appropriation have on the music? Reeled In is a comprehensive exploration of these questions, considering the cinematic quotation of Beethoven symphonies, Beatles songs, and Herrmann scores alike in films ranging from the early sound era to the present day, and in every role from 'main title theme' to 'music playing in bar'. Incorporating a discussion of such factors as copyright and commerce alongside examination of texts and their effects, this broad study is a significant contribution to the scholarship on music in screen media, demonstrating that pre-existing music possesses unique attributes that can affect both how filmmakers construct their works and how audiences receive them, to an extent regardless of the music's style, genre, and so on. This book also situates the reception of music by film, and by audiences experiencing that music through film, as significant processes within present-day culture, while more generally providing an illuminating case study of the kinds of borrowings, adaptations, and reinventions that characterize much of today's art and entertainment.

This edited volume of case studies presents a selective history of French music and culture, but one with a dynamic difference. Eschewing a traditional chronological account, the book explores the nature of relationships between one main period, broadly the 'long' modernist era between 1860-1960, and its own historical 'others', referencing topics from the Romantic, classical, baroque, renaissance and medieval periods. It probes the emergent interplay, intertextualities and scope for reinterpretation across time and place. Notions of cultural meaning are paramount, especially those pertaining to French identity, national and individual. While founded on historical musicology, the approach benefits from interdisciplinary association with philosophy, political history, literature, fine art, film studies and criticism. Attention is paid to French composers' celebrations and remakings of their predecessors. Editions of and writings about earlier music are examined, together with the cultural reception of performances of past repertoire. Organized into two parts, each of the eleven chapters characterizes a specific cultural network or temporal interplay, which may result in synthesis, disjunction, or historical misreading. The interwar years and those surrounding the Second World War prove particularly rich sources of enquiry. This volume aims to attract a wide readership of musicologists and musicians, as well as cultural historians, other humanities scholars and concert-goers.

This title was first published in 2000. John Ireland (1879-1962) was as elusive as the music that he composed. His music resists easy categorization, in part because it is linked so closely to specific events, places and people in Ireland's personal life. The Music of John Ireland explores the expressive and extramusical qualities of Ireland's compositions and their complex system of personal musical symbols, images and ideas. Fiona Richards interweaves biography and musical analysis in a series of chapters which take their themes from the significant influences in Ireland's life: Anglo-Catholicism, paganism, the countryside, the city, love and war. Ireland emerges as highly individual, struggling with his religious beliefs, his sexuality, and an uncertainty as to his success. His music, often an expression of a state of mind, is given, for the first time, the close investigation that it merits. Ireland preferred to compose on a small scale, showing a masterful command of form and a gift for melody. Richards reveals how the essence of the man shines through in the miniatures that he wrote.

Xenakis: His Life in Music is a full-length study of the influential contemporary composer Iannis Xenakis. Following the trajectory of Xenakisa (TM)s compositional development, James Harley, who studied with Xenakis, presents the works together with clear explanations of the technical and conceptual innovations that shaped them.

Harley examines the relationship between the composer and two early influences: Messiaen and Le Corbusier. Particular attention is paid to analyzing works which were vital to the composera (TM)s creative development, from early, unpublished works to the breakthrough pieces Metastasis and Pithoprakta, through the oft-discussed decade of formalization and the evolving styles of the succeeding three decades.

Southwest Shuffle documents an important period in country music. During the '30s and early '40s, hundreds of thousands of 'Okies', "Arkies", and other rural peoples from around the Southwest resettled in California, in search of work. A country music scene quickly blossomed there, with performers playing Western Swing, Cowboy, and Honky Tonk country. After World War II, these styles rocked country music, leading to the innovations of '60s performers like Buck Owens and Merle Haggard in creating the so-called 'Bakersfield Sound'. These stories are based on original interviews and archival research by one of the most respected writers on this period of country history. Kienzle writes vibrantly, reflecting his long-time love for these musical styles.

Southwest Shuffle documents an important period in country music history. During the '30s and early '40s, hundreds of thousands of "Okies," "Arkies," and other rural folks from around the Southwest resettled in California, in search of work. A country music scene quickly blossomed there, with performers playing Western Swing, Cowboy, and Honky Tonk country. After World War II, these styles rocked country music, leading to the innovations of '60s performers like Buck Owens and Merle Haggard in creating the so-called "Bakersfield Sound." These stories are based on original interviews and archival research by one of the most respected writers on this period of country history. Kienzle writes in a vibrant style, reflecting his long-time love for these musical styles.

1956 was a year of transition in Poland, and an important year for Polish music. This year saw the beginning of a political thaw - sometimes called the Polish October - in communist Poland. It was also the year of the establishment of the 'Warsaw Autumn' International Festival of Contemporary Music. This was a time of great artistic ferment in Polish music, which also deeply influenced symphonic thinking. The year 1956 is thus an appropriate starting point for Beata Boleslawska's study of the contemporary Polish symphonic tradition. Boleslawska investigates the influential Polish avant-garde, illuminating the ways in which new musical means and ideas influenced symphonic music and the genre of the symphony in the music of such important composers as Witold Lutoslawski (1913-1994), Henryk Mikolaj Gorecki (1933-2010) and Krzysztof Penderecki (b. 1933). Referring to the main elements of the European tradition, as well as examining briefly the symphonic activity in Poland before 1956, the book concentrates on the symphonic writing in the context of avant-garde trends, represented by the so-called 'Polish school of composers', as well as on its later redefinitions proposed by Polish composers up to the present day.

The Symphonic Poem in Britain 1850-1950aims to raise the status of the genre generally, and in Britain specifically, by reaffirming British composers' confidence in dealing with literary texts. The Symphonic Poem in Britain 1850-1950 aims to raise the status of the genre generally and in Britain specifically. The volume reaffirms British composers' confidence in dealing with literary texts and takes advantage of the contributors' interdisciplinary expertise by situating discussions of the tone poem in Britain in a variety of historical, analytical and cultural contexts. This book highlights some of the continental models that influenced British composers, and identifies a range of issues related to perceptions of the genre. Richard Strauss became an important figure in Britain during this time, not only in terms of the clear impact of his tone poems, but the debates over their value and even their ethics. A focus on French orchestral music in Britain represents a welcome addition to scholarly debate, and links to issues in several other chapters. The historical development of the genre, the impact of compositional models, issues highlighted in critical reception as well as programming strategies all contribute to a richer understanding of the symphonic poem in Britain. Works by British composers discussed in more detail include William Wallace's Villon (1909), Gustav Holst's Beni Mora(1909-10), Hubert Parry's From Death to Life (1914), John Ireland's Mai-Dun (1921), and Frank Bridge's orchestral 'poems' (1903-15).

Serious scholarship on the music of Ralph Vaughan Williams is currently enjoying a lively revival after a period of relative quiescence, and is only beginning to address the enduring affection of concert audiences for his music. The essays that comprise this volume extend the study of Vaughan Williams's music in new directions that will be of interest to scholars, performers and listeners alike. This volume contains the work of eleven North American scholars who have been recipients of the Ralph Vaughan Williams Fellowship based at the composer's own school, Charterhouse, which was created and has been supported by the Carthusian Trust since 1985. This wide-ranging and detailed collection of essays covers the spectrum of genres in which Vaughan Williams wrote, including dance, symphony, opera, song, hymnody and film music. The contributors also employ a range of analytical and historical methods of investigation to illuminate aspects of Vaughan Williams's compositional techniques and influences, musical, literary and visual.

First published in 1998, this volume is the first book to focus on the American symphony. Neil Butterworth surveys the development of the symphony in the United States from early European influences in the last century to the present day, and asks why American composers have shown such allegiance to a musical form which their European contemporaries appear to have discarded. An overview of the growth of musical societies in America during the eighteenth century and the establishment of the first professional orchestras during the early part of the nineteenth century is followed by chronological analyses of the works of those composers who have played important parts in the progress of symphony in the United States, from Charles Ives, Aaron Copland and Leonard Bernstein, to contemporary figures such as William Bolcom and John Harbison. Complete with a comprehensive catalogue of symphonies and an extensive discography, this book is an indispensable reference work.

Contents:
Preface Epigraphs 1. Autobiography 2. Precursors 3. His Own Music (to 1970) 4. His Own Music (after 1970) 5. His Performances 6. His Writings 7. Radio and Audiotape 8. Visual Arts 9. Dance 10. Successors 11. Esthetics 12. Pedagogy 13. Social Philosophy 14. Coda Index

"Masterworks of 20th-Century Music" introduces over 100 of the greatest compositions by world composers that have entered the standard orchestral repertory. The author surveyed dozens of major American orchestras to find which pieces are commonly performed, and has focused on these works that an average audience member is most likely to hear. Among the popular pieces profiled are Aaron Copland's "Appalachian Spring"; Gustav Holst's "The Planets;" Igor Stravinsky's "Le sacre du printemps;" Samuel Barber's "Knoxville: Summer of 1915;" George Gershwin's "An" "American in Paris"; Charles Ives's "Three Places in New England"; and many more. With each entry is given a wealth of information about: the composer, when and where the piece was first performed, in what "style" it was composed, and a basic analysis of the music. This book serves the general reader interested in 20th-century music, plus students, teachers, and scholars.

The Music of Louis Andriessen is the first English-language collection of interviews and essays about this avant-garde composer. This book presents the musician in dialogue with a Polish-Canadian musicologist amd three of his Dutch friends and collaborators, Reinbert de Leeuw, Elmer Schönberger and Frits van der Waa. Topics include his artistic evolution, his relationship to minimalism, his prevalent interest in mysticism and meaning, the use of quotation and writing for the stage and an introduction to his musical language.

Philip Hale (1854-1934) helped put Boston on the Transatlantic map through his music writing. Mitchell reconstructs Hale's oeuvre to produce an authoritative account of the role the Boston Symphony played in the international world of nineteenth- and early twentieth-century music.

Compositional Process in Elliott Carter's String Quartets is an interdisciplinary study examining the evolution and compositional process in Elliott Carter's five string quartets. Offering a systematic and logical way of unpacking concepts and processes in these quartets that would otherwise remain opaque, the book's narrative reveals new aspects of understanding these works and draws novel conclusions on their collective meaning and Carter's place as the leading American modernist. Each of Carter's five string quartets is driven by a new idea that Carter was exploring during a particular period, which allows for each quartet to be examined under a unique lens and a deeper understanding of his oeuvre at large. Drawing on key ideas from a variety of subjects including performance studies, philosophy, music cognition, musical meaning and semantics, literary criticism, and critical theory, this is an informative volume for scholars and researchers in the areas of music theory and musicology. Analyses are supplemented with sketch study, correspondence, text manuscripts, and other archival sources from the Paul Sacher Stiftung, the Library of Congress, and the New York Public Library.

This title was first published in 2001. This work provides detailed information taken from the 'Programmes-as-Broadcast' daily log of output held at the BBC Written Archives Centre in Caversham. Arranged in chronological order, entries are given for broadcasts of first performances of musical works in the United Kingdom, and include details of: the date of the broadcast, the composer, the title of the work, performers and conductor. In addition to its usefulness as a reference tool, the Chronicle enables us to gauge the trends in twentieth-century British musical life, and the role of the BBC in their promotion.

On 10 December 1910, Giacomo Puccini's seventh opera, La fanciulla del West, had its premiere before a sold-out audience at New York City's Metropolitan Opera House. The performance was the Metropolitan Opera Company's first world premiere by any composer. By all accounts, the premiere was an unambiguous success and the event itself recognized as a major moment in New York cultural history. The initial public opinion matched Puccini's own evaluation of his opera. He called it "the best he had ever written" and expected it to become as popular as La Boheme. Yet the music reviews tell a different story. Marked by ambivalence, the reviews expose the New York City critics' struggle to reconcile the opera they expected to see with the one they actually saw, and the opera itself became embroiled in controversy over the essence of musical Americanness and the nativist perception that a uniquely American national opera tradition continued to elude both American- and foreign-born opera composers. This book seeks to account for the differences between Puccini's own assessments of the opera and those of its first audience. Offering transcriptions of the central reviews and of letters unavailable elsewhere, the book provides a historically informed understanding of La fanciulla del West and the reception of this European work as it intersected with both opera production and consumption in the United States and with the process of American musical identity formation during the very period that Americans actively sought to eradicate European cultural influences. As such, it offers a window into the development of nativism and "cosmopolitan nationalism" in New York City's musical life during the first decade of the twentieth century.