The works of twenty composers from the golden age of English romantic song, major figures - Parry, Stanford, Vaughan Williams, Quilter, Ireland, Gurney, Warlock and Finzi - studied alongside the lesser-known. Constantly illuminating. JOHN STEANE, GRAMOPHONE The composers in this book represent the outstanding songwriters from what we can now see as the golden age of English romantic song. As well as the major figures - Parry, Stanford, Vaughan Williams, Quilter, Ireland, Gurney, Warlock and Finzi - there are chapters on lesser-known composers, such as Denis Browne and Charles Orr. Detailed consideration is given to three songwriters who have sufferedunaccountable neglect, Arthur Somervell, Armstrong Gibbs and Herbert Howells, and there are chapters on Elgar, Delius and Holst, whose reputations were made in other fields but whose contribution to English song is nevertheless important. Also taking their rightful places in the book are Frank Bridge, Arnold Bax, George Butterworth and E.J. Moeran. Each chapter begins with a discussion of its composer's song-output and of the poets and poetry he sets, and goes on to give an account of the influences on him and the hallmarks of his style; the songs are then discussed in detail, focusing on the major works. The text is illustrated with musical examples and there is a comprehensive bibliography and index. TREVOR HOLD was a composer and poet who wrote extensively on English song. His setting of Laurie Lee's 'Day of these Days' won the English Poetry and Song Society/English Music Society 2002 GoldenJubilee Song Competition. He died in January 2004.

Musicians frequently incorporated portions of works by other musicians into their own compositions and performances throughout the twentieth century. This book examines how this practice of "quotation" affected cultural dialogues regarding race, childhood, madness and the mass media. When a musician borrows from a piece, he or she draws upon not only a melody but also the cultural associations of the original piece. By working with and altering a melody, a musician also transforms those associations.

As a noted composer and critic, Paul Dukas was a major figure in fin-de-siecle and early twentieth-century French music. Best known for L'Apprenti sorcier, he was internationally recognised as an artist and intellectual ofdistinction who contributed significantly to Parisian musical cultures and critical debates. As a noted composer and critic, and later an editor and composition teacher, Paul Dukas (1865-1935) was a major figure in fin-de-siecle and early twentieth-century French music. Although his catalogue of published scores was relatively modest in quantity, he was internationally recognised as an artist and intellectual of distinction who contributed significantly to Parisian musical cultures and critical debates as they evolved from the 1890s until the 1930s Moving in the same circles as Debussy and Faure, as well as networking with trailblazers such as the Ballets Russes director Sergei Diaghilev and the conductor Serge Koussevitzky, Dukas created works that reflect French sensibilities but also resonate with transnational audiences. L'Apprenti sorcier is still his best-known work, while the opera Ariane et Barbe-Bleue has been revived and remains relevant for the twenty-first century. Works such as the Piano Sonata and the ballet La Peri respectively exemplify the twin attractions of tradition and progress for the composer. Intensely self-critical, however, he ended up destroying many of his scores. This book is the first full-length Anglophone study of Dukas. It perceives his critical essays as a form of creative, philosophical thought that synthesised the riches of the Parisian music scene yet also represented the formationand development of his own artistic voice. Investigating Dukas's interrelated identities as composer and critic, it seeks to explain his broad aesthetic motivations and artistic agenda. LAURA WATSON is Lecturer in Musicat Maynooth University.

A colourful and attractive suite for solo harp, in the words of the composer, "directly inspired by a working visit to Santa Fe-a city beautifully set in an area of New Mexico suffused over many centuries by the culture and rhythms of Spain. The opening Landscape calls on the harp's sense of atmosphere, the central Nocturne on its power of sonorous line, and the finale, Sun Dance, on its rhythmic capacity.

The displacement of Chou Wen-chung from his native China in 1948 forced him into Western-European culture. Ultimately finding his vocation as a composer, he familiarized himself with classical and contemporary techniques but interpreted these through his traditionally oriented Chinese cultural perspective. The result has been the composition of a unique body of repertoire that synthesizes the most progressive Western compositional idioms with an astonishingly traditional heritage of Asian approaches, not only from music, but also from calligraphy, landscape painting, poetry, and more. Chou's importance rests not only in his compositions, but also in his widespread influence through his extensive teaching career at Columbia University, where his many students included Bright Sheng, Zhou Long, Tan Dun, Chen Yi, Joan Tower, and many more. During his tenure at Columbia, he also founded the U.S.-China Arts Exchange, which continues to this day to be a vital stimulus for multicultural interaction. The volume will include an inventory of the Chou collection in the Paul Sacher Stiftung in Basel, Switzerland.

What is music, and why does it move us? From Pythagoras to the present, writers have struggled to isolate the essence of "pure" or "absolute" music in ways that also account for its profound effect. In Absolute Music: The History of an Idea, Mark Evan Bonds traces the history of these efforts across more than two millennia, paying special attention to the relationship between music's essence and its qualities of form, expression, beauty, autonomy, as well as its perceived capacity to disclose philosophical truths. The core of this book focuses on the period between 1850 and 1945. Although the idea of pure music is as old as antiquity, the term "absolute music" is itself relatively recent. It was Richard Wagner who coined the term, in 1846, and he used it as a pejorative in his efforts to expose the limitations of purely instrumental music. For Wagner, music that was "absolute" was isolated, detached from the world, sterile. His contemporary, the Viennese critic Eduard Hanslick, embraced this quality of isolation as a guarantor of purity. Only pure, absolute music, he argued, could realize the highest potential of the art. Bonds reveals how and why perceptions of absolute music changed so radically between the 1850s and 1920s. When it first appeared, "absolute music" was a new term applied to old music, but by the early decades of the twentieth century, it had become-paradoxically-an old term associated with the new music of modernists like Schoenberg and Stravinsky. Bonds argues that the key developments in this shift lay not in discourse about music but rather the visual arts. The growing prestige of abstraction and form in painting at the turn of the twentieth century-line and color, as opposed to object-helped move the idea of purely abstract, absolute music to the cutting edge of musical modernism. By carefully tracing the evolution of absolute music from Ancient Greece through the Middle Ages to the twentieth-century, Bonds not only provides the first comprehensive history of this pivotal concept but also provokes new thoughts on the essence of music and how essence has been used to explain music's effect. A long awaited book from one of the most respected senior scholars in the field, Absolute Music will be essential reading for anyone interested in the history, theory, and aesthetics of music.

A woman wearing a ballgown singing in the snow for returning ski troops; a technician's tears ruining a master recording of a new wartime song; fresh recruits spontaneously standing and doffing their caps to a new song, thereby creating the new wartime anthem. This well researched, multi-faceted book depicts the relationship between song and society during WWII in the USSR. Chapter topics range from the creation and distribution of the songs to how the public received and shaped them. The body of song that came out of that era created a true cultural legacy which reflected both the hearts of the individuals fighting as well as the narrative of the party and state in bringing the nation to victory.

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.

The Organ and Its Music in German-Jewish Culture examines the powerful but often overlooked presence of the organ in synagogue music and the musical life of German-speaking Jewish communities. Tina Fruhauf expertly chronicles the history of the organ in Jewish culture from the earliest references in the Talmud through the 19th century, when it had established a firm and lasting presence in Jewish sacred and secular spaces in central Europe. Fruhauf demonstrates how the introduction of the organ into German synagogues was part of the significant changes which took place in Judaism after the Enlightenment, and posits the organ as a symbol of the division of the Jewish community into Orthodox and Reform congregations. Newly composed organ music for Jewish liturgy after this division became part of a cross-cultural music tradition in 19th and 20th century Germany, when a specific style of organ music developed which combined elements of Western and Jewish cultures. Concluding with a discussion of the organ in Jewish communities in Israel and the USA, the book presents in-depth case studies which illustrate how the organ has been utilized in the musical life of specific Jewish communities in the 20th century.
Based on extensive research in the archives of organ builders and Jewish musicians, The Organ and Its Music in German-Jewish Culture offers comprehensive and detailed descriptions of specific organs as well as fascinating portraits of Jewish organists and composers. With an extensive companion website featuring full color illustrations and over 200 organ dispositions, this book will be eagerly read by performers, students, and scholars of the organ, as well as students and scholarsin historical musicology and Jewish music.

The story of the first roughly half century of jazz is really the story of some of the greatest musicians of all time. Scott Joplin, Glenn Miller, Louis Armstrong, Fats Waller, Duke Ellington, Count Basie, Benny Goodman, Billie Holiday, and Ella Fitzgerald all made tremendous contributions, influencing countless jazz musicians and singers. This work provides biographical sketches of the aforementioned artists and many others who made jazz so popular in the first half of the twentieth century. Biographies cover the pioneers of jazz in New Orleans in the late 1890s and early 1900s; the soloists who fueled the Jazz Age in the 1920s; the musicians and bandleaders of the big band and swing era of the late 1920s and early 1930s; and icons from the height of jazz's popularity on through the end of the war. A discography is provided for each artist.

Between 1958 and 2002, Luciano Berio wrote fourteen pieces entitled Sequenza, along with several versions of the same work for different instruments, revisions of the original pieces and also the parallel Chemins series, where one of the Sequenzas is used as the basis for a new composition on a larger scale. The Sequenza series is one of the most remarkable achievements of the late twentieth century - a collection of virtuoso pieces that explores the capabilities of a solo instrument and its player, making extreme technical demands of the performer whilst developing the musical vocabulary of the instrument in compositions so assured and so distinctive that each piece both initiates and potentially exhausts the repertoire of a new genre. The Sequenzas have significantly influenced the development of composition for solo instruments and voice, and there is no comparable series of works in the output of any other composer. Series of pieces tend to be linked by the instruments for which the composer writes, but this is a series in which the pieces are linked instead by the variety of instruments for which Berio composed. The varied approaches taken by the contributors in discussing the pieces demonstrate the richness of this repertoire and the many levels on which Berio and these landmark compositions can be considered. Contributions are arranged under three main headings: Performance Issues; Berio's Compositional Process and Aesthetics; and Analytical Approaches.

Hans Keller 1919-1985: A musician in dialogue with his times is the first full biography of Hans Keller and the first appearance in print of many of his letters. Eight substantial chapters, integrating original documents with their historical context, show the development of Keller's ideas in response to the people and events that provoked them. A musician of penetrating insight, Keller was also an exceptional writer and broadcaster, whose remarkable mind dominated British musical life for forty years after the Second World War. It was a vital time for music in Britain, fuelled by unprecedented public investment in the arts and education and the rapid development of recording and broadcasting. Keller was at the centre of all that was happening and his far-sighted analysis of the period is deeply resonant today. Illustrated throughout by extracts from Keller's writings, diaries and correspondence with musicians including Arnold Schoenberg, Benjamin Britten and Yehudi Menuhin, this book vividly conveys the depth of his thought and the excitement of the times. Published for the centenary of Keller's birth, it is an illuminating celebration of his life and works for all those interested in the music and history of post-war Britain.

The last of the Spanish Romantics, composer, conductor, and impresario Federico Moreno Torroba (1891-1982) left his mark on virtually every aspect of Spanish musical culture during a career which spanned six decades, and saw tremendous political and cultural upheavals. After Falla, he was the most important and influential musician: in addition to his creative activities, he was President of the General Society of Authors and Editors and director of the Academy of Fine Arts and Teatro Zarzuela. His enduring contributions as a composer include copious amounts of guitar music composed for Andres Segovia and several highly successful zarzuelas which remain in the repertoire today. Written by two leading experts in the field, Federico Moreno Torroba: A Musical Life in Three Acts explores not only his life and work, but also the relationship of his music to the cultural milieu in which he moved. It sheds particular light on the relationship of Torroba's music and the cultural politics of Francisco Franco's dictatorship (1939-75). Torroba came of age in a cultural renaissance that sought to reassert Spain's position as a unique cultural entity, and authors Walter A. Clark and William Krause demonstrate how his work can be understood as a personal, musical response to these aspirations. Clark and Krause argue that Torroba's decision to remain in Spain even during the years of Franco's dictatorship was based primarily not on political ideology but rather on an unwillingness to leave his native soil. Rather than abandon Spain to participate in the dynamic musical life abroad, he continued to compose music that reflected his conservative view of his national and personal heritage. The authors contend that this pursuit did not necessitate allegiance to a particular regime, but rather to the non-political exaltation of Spain's so-called 'eternal tradition', or the culture and spirit that had endured throughout Spain's turbulent history. Following Franco's death in 1975, there was ambivalence towards figures like Torroba who had made their peace with the dictatorship and paid a heavy price in terms of their reputation among expatriates. Moreover, his very conservative musical style made him a target for the post-war avant-garde, which disdained his highly tonal and melodic espanolismo. With the demise of high modernism, however, the time has come for this new, more distanced assessment of Torroba's contributions. Richly illustrated with figures and music examples, and with a helpful discography for reference, this biography brings a fresh perspective on this influential composer to Latin American and Iberian music scholars, performers, and lovers of Spanish music alike.

The first English language discussion of the life and music of this twentieth century Norwegian composer. The Norwegian composer Ludvig Irgens-Jensen (1894-1969) was one of the towering creative figures of his native land, although his dignified and powerful music does not receive the attention its quality deserves, either at home orabroad. The success of his dramatic symphony Heimferd (Homecoming) in 1930 brought him national fame, but the post-War triumph of modernism, coupled with his personal modesty, pushed Irgens-Jensen's tonal music into the shadows: its contrapuntally based textures and its modally tinged harmonies were seen as things of the past. But a growing number of recordings is revealing him as one of the most distinguished and distinctive voices in twentieth-century music, a figure of international importance who wrote music of striking nobility and strength of purpose - with some meltingly lovely melodic lines. Arvid O. Vollsnes' Ludvig Irgens-Jensen: The Life and Music of a Norwegian Composer is the first discussion in English of this profoundly decent man and his life-enhancing music. A review of the original Norwegian publication of this book in Aftenposten, the main Norwegian daily paper, described it as 'a gripping biographical portrait. As well as Irgens-Jensen's life we get a broad picture of Norwegian musical life from the 1920s to his death in 1969'. A CD of extracts from Irgens-Jensen's works has been prepared to accompany the English edition, providing readers with an introduction to his highly individual and immediately appealing sound-world.

In this book, a leading authority on film music examines scores of the silent film era. The first of three projected volumes investigating music written for films, this thoughtful and pathbreaking study demonstrates the richness of silent film music as it details the way in which scores were often planned from the start as an integral part of the whole cinematic experience.
Following an introductory chapter that outlines several key theoretical questions and surveys eight decades of writing on film music, Martin Miller Marks focuses on those scores created between 1895 and 1924. He begins by considering two early examples, one German (written by persons unknown for Skladanowsky's Bioskop exhibitions in 1895 and 1896) and one French (scored by Camille Saint-Saens for the 1908 film L'Assassinat du Duc de Guise). Subsequent chapters fully discuss Walter Cleveland Simon's music for the American film An Arabian Tragedy (1912) as well as the Joseph Breil accompaniment to D. W. Griffith's Birth of a Nation (1915). As described in this book, Breil's memorable score--though a compilation derived from many sources--was played by an orchestra as Griffith's sweeping images filled the screen, thus contributing significantly to the great film's success while also achieving remarkable power in its own right. Marks then concludes with a look at Erik Satie's witty and innovative music for the French film Entr'acte (1924), which was the first film score of consequence by an avant-garde composer.
Giving unprecedented attention to a vibrant, important, and oft-neglected facet of twentieth-century music, Music and the Silent Film will interest scholars of film theory, film history, modern music, and modern aesthetics."

Performance Practice in the Music of Steve Reich provides a performer's perspective on Steve Reich's compositions from his iconic minimalist work, Drumming, to his masterpiece, Music for 18 Musicians. It addresses performance issues encountered by the musicians in Reich's original ensemble and the techniques they developed to bring his compositions to life. Drawing comparisons with West African drumming and other non-Western music, the book highlights ideas that are helpful in the understanding and performance of rhythm in all pulse-based music. Through conversations and interviews with the author, Reich discusses his percussion background and his thoughts about rhythm in relation to the music of Ghana, Bali, India, and jazz. He explains how he used rhythm in his early compositions, the time feel he wants in his music, the kind of performer who seems to be drawn to his music, and the way perceptual and metrical ambiguity create interest in repetitive music.

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

Modernism in music still arouses passions and is riven by controversies. Taking root in the early decades of the twentieth century, it achieved ideological dominance for almost three decades following the Second World War, before becoming the object of widespread critique in the last two decades of the century, both from critics and composers of a postmodern persuasion and from prominent scholars associated with the 'new musicology'. Yet these critiques have failed to dampen its ongoing resilience. The picture of modernism has considerably broadened and diversified, and has remained a pivotal focus of debate well into the twenty-first century. This Research Companion does not seek to limit what musical modernism might be. At the same time, it resists any dilution of the term that would see its indiscriminate application to practically any and all music of a certain period. In addition to addressing issues already well established in modernist studies such as aesthetics, history, institutions, place, diaspora, cosmopolitanism, production and performance, communication technologies and the interface with postmodernism, this volume also explores topics that are less established; among them: modernism and affect, modernism and comedy, modernism versus the 'contemporary', and the crucial distinction between modernism in popular culture and a 'popular modernism', a modernism of the people. In doing so, this text seeks to define modernism in music by probing its margins as much as by restating its supposed essence.

The first detailed narrative of the Composers' Forum, documenting the vast array of composers, musical styles, ideologies, and audience responses in New York in the 1930s. The New York Composers' Forum was a weekly series of new-music concerts sponsored by the Federal Music Project and Works Progress Administration. It showcased the music of modern American composers such as Aaron Copland, Amy Beach, Henry Cowell, and Ruth Crawford Seeger, and included question-and-answer sessions between the composers and audiences. These sessions led to discussions, arguments, and sometimes even riots, all documented in nearly complete transcripts. This book is the first to tell the story of the Composers' Forum. Following the fascinating threads of dialogue from the transcripts, Melissa de Graaf explores the remarkable diversity of composers and musical styles represented, including numerous composers who have since been ignored or forgotten. She also examines the composers' and listeners' attitudes toward modernism, politics, gender, race, and American identity. In this important study of a unique and overlooked American institution, de Graaf shows that "modern" aesthetics in the 1930s comprised far more diverse styles and thought than we imagine today. Melissa J. de Graaf is Associate Professor ofMusicology at the University of Miami.

Ralph Vaughan Williams: A Research and Information Guide presents the most extensive annotated bibliography of its subject yet produced. It offers comprehensive coverage of the English composer's prose works and accounts for over 1,000 secondary sources from all critical and scholarly eras. A single-numbering format and substantial indexes facilitate efficient searches of what is the most complete bibliography of Ralph Vaughan Williams since Neil Butterworth's guide to research was published by Garland in 1990.

A composer and lyricist of enormous innovation and influence, Marc Blitzstein remains one of the most versatile and fascinating figures in the history of American music, his creative output running the gamut from films scores and Broadway operas to art songs and chamber pieces. A prominent leftist and social maverick, Blitzstein constantly pushed the boundaries of convention in mid-century America in both his work and his life. Award-winning music historian Howard Pollack's new biography covers Blitzstein's life in full, from his childhood in Philadelphia to his violent death in Martinique at age 58. The author describes how this student of contemporary luminaries Nadia Boulanger and Arnold Schoenberg became swept up in the stormy political atmosphere of the 1920s and 1930s and throughout his career walked the fine line between his formal training and his populist principles. Indeed, Blitzstein developed a unique sound that drew on everything contemporary, from the high modernism of Stravinsky and Hindemith to jazz and Broadway show tunes. Pollack captures the astonishing breadth of Blitzstein's work-from provocative operas like The Cradle Will Rock, No for an Answer, and Regina, to the wartime Airborne Symphony composed during his years in service, to lesser known ballets, film scores, and stage works. A courageous artist, Blitzstein translated Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill's The Threepenny Opera during the heyday of McCarthyism and the red scare, and turned it into an off-Broadway sensation, its "Mack the Knife" becoming one of the era's biggest hits. Beautifully written, drawing on new interviews with friends and family of the composer, and making extensive use of new archival and secondary sources, Marc Blitzstein presents the most complete biography of this important American artist.

The anti-fascist cantata Il canto sospeso, the string quartet Fragmente - Stille, an Diotima and the 'Tragedy of Listening' Prometeo cemented Luigi Nono's place in music history. In this study, Carola Nielinger-Vakil examines these major works in the context of Nono's amalgamation of avant-garde composition with Communist political engagement. Part I discusses Il canto sospeso in the context of all of Nono's anti-fascist pieces, from the unfinished Fucik project (1951) to Ricorda cosa ti hanno fatto in Auschwitz (1966). Nielinger-Vakil explores Nono's position at the Darmstadt Music Courses, the evolution of his compositional technique, his penchant for music theatre and his use of spatial and electronic techniques to set the composer and his works against the diverging circumstances in Italy and Germany after 1945. Part II further examines these concerns and shows how they live on in Nono's work after 1975, culminating in a thorough analysis of Prometeo.

The first volume of its kind, Dislocated Memories: Jews, Music, and Postwar German Culture draws together three significant areas of inquiry: Jewish music, German culture, and the legacy of the Holocaust. Jewish music-a highly debated topic-encompasses a multiplicity of musics and cultures, reflecting an inherent and evolving hybridity and transnationalism. German culture refers to an equally diverse concept that, in this volume, includes the various cultures of prewar Germany, occupied Germany, the divided and reunified Germany, and even "German (Jewish) memory," which is not necessarily physically bound to Germany. In the context of these perspectives, the volume makes powerful arguments on about the impact of the Holocaust and its aftermath in changing contexts of musical performance and composition. In doing so, the essays in Dislocated Memories cover a wide spectrum of topics from the immediate postwar period with music in the Displaced Persons camps to the later twentieth century with compositions conceived in response to the Holocaust and the klezmer revival at the turn of this century. Dislocated Memories builds on a wide range of recent and critical scholarship in Cold War studies, cultural history, German studies, Holocaust studies, Jewish studies, and memory studies. What binds these distinct fields tightly together are the contributors' specific theoretical inquiries that reflect separate yet interrelated themes such as displacement and memory. While these concepts link the multi-faceted essays on a micro-level, they are also largely connected in their conceptual query by focus, on the macro-level, on the presence and the absence of Jewish music in Germany after 1945. Filled with original research by scholars at the forefront of music, history, and Jewish studies, Dislocated Memories will prove an essential text for scholars and students alike.