Censorship had an extraordinary impact on Alban Berg's operaLulu, composed by the Austrian during the politically tumultuous years spanning 1929 to 1935. Based on plays by Frank Wedekind that were repeatedly banned from being published and performed from1894 until the end of World War I, the libretto was in turn censored by Berg himself when he characterized it as a morality play after submitting it to authorities in Nazi Germany in 1934. After Berg died the next year, the third act was censored by his widow, Helene, and his former teacher, Arnold Schoenberg. In "Taken by the Devil", author Margaret Notley uncovers the unusual and uniquely generative role of censorship throughout the lifecycle of Berg's great opera. Placing the opera and its source material in wider cultural contexts, Notley provides close readings of the opera's libretto and score to reveal techniques employed by the composer and by Wedekind before him in negotiating censorship. She also explores ways in which Berg chose to augment discrepancies between the plays rather than flatten them as in certain performances of the plays during the 1920s, adding further dimensions of interpretation to the work. Elegantly readable,"Taken by the Devil"is one of the most meticulously researched and nuanced studies of Lulu to date, and illuminates the process of politically-driven censorship of theater, music, and the arts during the tumultuous early twentieth century.

The first historical and critical study of neoclassicism from the genesis of the concept in fin de siecleFrance in the 1870s through the Schoenberg/Stravinsky polemic. By the end of the nineteenth century the traits of "classicism" in music had become clearly established. This codification cast long shadows over contemporary artists, encouraging a movement away from order, continuity and tradition towards freedom, innovation and novelty - and the term neoclassicism made its first appearance. This study, the first ever critical examination of "neoclassicism" in music, provides a broad cultural context for the investigation of its origins, then looks in turn at Wagner and the French reaction to him; Saint-Saens, d'Indy, Debussy, Ravel and their French contemporaries; Germany and France in the decade which includes the First World War, with special reference to Thomas Mann and Ferrucio Busoni, and to Jean Cocteau and the "New Simplicity"; and Igor Stravinsky, the composer most frequently cited in connection with this term. Reprint; first published 1988.

An exploration of avant-garde music and operatic form in Weimar Germany Weimar Germany -- the age of Bauhaus and Brecht -- was a time of significant activity in all areas of the artistic avant-garde. Musicologist Susan Cook explores this intriguing period in a look at Zeitoper (topical opera)and its primary exponents, Ernst Krenek, Kurt Weill and Paul Hindemith. Zeitoper has proved to be of importance as an experimental form that broadened the definition of modern opera and musical theatre, incorporating elements previously thought unsuitable. Celebrating modern life in its libretti, its scores borrowed heavily from American dance music and jazz. Opera for a New Republic is the first book to provide a broad historical,cultural and artistic context for the development of this operatic genre. Through it we learn that Zeitoper, although short-lived, has proved to be a vital component in the development of twentieth-century operatic style. Susan Cook is Professor of Musicology at the University of Wisconsin.

This is an illustrated biography of the American conductor and composer Leonard Bernstein. Despite international fame and success, he was a man constantly struggling with inner conflicts. The best loved and most successful conductor of his generation, also a virtuoso pianist, he was adored by an international public, but suffered years of hostile criticism from the New York press. An inspiration to fellow American musicians, he was the first native American to direct a major American orchestra, and the first to conquer Europe (conducting the Vienna Philharmonic and at La Scala, Milan). His conducting style was famously flamboyant, yet he possessed a rare ability to communicate his music to the listener, who was often held spellbound. But Bernstein often dismissed conducting for its temporary character, and declared himself to be primarily a composer. Among other musicals, Bernstein wrote the world-famous West Side Story (1957), and the moving score to the film On the Waterfront, but he never enjoyed unanimous critical acclaim for his serious classical works, such as Chichester Psalms and Mass. In later years he feared that he would be remembered solely for his musicals.

for SATB wordless chorus, viola solo, and orchestra A suite for solo viola, wordless chorus (SATB), and small orchestra, Flos Campi is one of Vaughan Williams's most enigmatic pieces. Although the six movements all borrow their titles from the Old Testament's Song of Solomon, the chorus never articulates a single word. Instead, it serves as a section of the orchestra, creating an elegant vocal texture and backdrop to the viola's haunting solo lines. The work was premiered in October 1925 by the violist Lionel Tertis, singers from the RCM, and the Queen's Hall Orchestra, directed by Sir Henry Wood.

The Whistling Blackbird: Essays and Talks on New Music is the long-awaited book of essays from Robert Morris, the greatly admired composer and music theorist. In these essays, Morris presents a new and multifaceted view of recent developments in American music. His views on music, as well as his many compositions, defy easy classification, favoring instead a holistic, creative, and critical approach. The Whistling Blackbird contains fourteen essays and talks, divided into three parts, preceded by an "Overture" that portrays what it means to compose music in the United States today. Part 1 presents essays on American composers John Cage, Milton Babbitt, Richard Swift, and Stefan Wolpe. Part 2 comprises talks on Morris's music that illustrate his ideas and creative approaches over forty years of music composition, including his outdoor compositions, an ongoing project that began in 1999. Part 3 includes four essays in music criticism: on the relation of composition to ethnomusicology; on phenomenology and attention; on music theory at the millennium; and on issues in musical time. Threaded throughout this collection of essays are Morris's diverse and seemingly disparate interests and influences. English romantic poetry, mathematical combinatorics, group and set theory, hiking, Buddhist philosophy, Chinese and Japanese poetry and painting, jazz and nonwestern music, chaos theory, linguistics, and the American transcendental movement exist side by side in a fascinating and eclectic portrait of American musical composition at the dawn of the new millennium. Robert Morris is Professor of Music Composition at the Eastman School of Music, University of Rochester.

This edition of Walton's celebrated Viola Concerto (1962 version) has been off-printed from the William Walton Edition full score, and combines the scholarship of the Edition with the practical benefits of the smaller format. An introduction is provided by the volume editor, Christopher Wellington. Orchestral material is available on hire/rental.

Embertides is a four-movement suite for organ based on the roughly equal divisions of the church year - Advent, Lent, Whitsun, and Michaelmas - which in turn hark back to earlier, secular traditions. Throughout, there are short references and hints to plainsong and other hymns relevant to the seasons. Drawing on a wide range of colours and textures, the composer creates an evocative and varied suite of pieces, perfectly suited for both recital and church performance; as such, the work will be welcomed by a wide range of players.

This fun and innovative collection introduces cellists to a range of pop and rock styles. Building on the trail-blazing approach to cello playing that he developed in Ten American Cello Etudes and Ten International Cello Encores, Aaron Minsky presents the intermediate student with attractive new pieces that explore a number of technical and musical challenges.

Pianoworks: Popular Styles is a superb one-stop introduction to key musical styles of the last 100 years. Through 18 original pieces it captures the essential ingredients of blues, gospel, rock, jazz, and Latin, as well as neo-classicism, minimalism, and other popular classical styles. The pieces are carefully tailored for students of the Pianoworks series, covering technically Book 2 and the final section of Book 1, and the collection works equally well as a stand-alone repertoire resource.

This edition of Walton's Cello Concerto has been off-printed from the Wiliam Walton Edition full score, and combines the scholarship of the Edition (including an introduction by the editor) with the practical benefits of a study score format. Dating from 1956, the work was commissioned by Gregor Piatigorsky and premiered by him the following year. Walton regarded this work as the best of his three solo concertos. Orchestral material is available on hire/rental.

Some of the most popular works of nineteenth-century music were labeled either "Hungarian" or "Gypsy" in style, including many of the best-known and least-respected of Liszt's compositions. In the early twentieth century, Bela Bartok and his colleagues questioned not only the Hungarianness but also the good taste of that style. Bartok argued that it should be discarded in favor of a national style based in the "genuine" folk music of the rural peasantry. Between the heyday of the nineteenth-century Hungarian-Gypsy style and its replacement by a new paradigm of "authentic" national style was a vigorous decades-long debate-one little known inside or outside Hungary-over what it meant to be Hungarian, European, and modern.
Redefining Hungarian Music from Liszt to Bartok traces the historical process that defined the conventions of Hungarian-Gypsy style. Author Lynn M. Hooker frames her study around the 1911 celebration of Liszt's centennial. In so doing, she analyzes Liszt's problematic role as a Hungarian-born composer and leader of Hungarian art music who spent most of his life outside of Hungary and questioned whether Hungary's national music was more the creation of Hungarians or Roma (Gypsies). The themes of race and nation that emerge in the discussion of Liszt are further developed in an analysis of discourse on Hungarian national music throughout the Hungarian press in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Showing how the "discovery" of "genuine" folk music by Bartok and Kodaly, often depicted as a purely "scientific" matter, responds directly to concerns raised by earlier writers about the "problem of Hungarian music," Hooker argues that the innovations of Bartok and Kodaly and their circle are not so much in correcting a flawed concept of the national as in using the idea of national authenticity to open up freedom for composers to explore more stylistic options, including the exploration of modernist musical language. Meticulously researched and elegantly written, Redefining Hungarian Music from Liszt to Bartok is essential reading for musicologists, musicians, and concertgoers alike."

for SSATB (with divisions) unaccompanied A setting of one of the seven Advent 'O' Antiphons, O Oriens makes use of luxurious and exotic harmonies, creating a shimmering texture reminiscent of the biblical Morning Star referenced in the title. The focus on human enlightenment in winter's darkness means the piece is equally suitable for secular celebrations of Christmas. It was commissioned for the Choir of Merton College, Oxford, and in 2013 was shortlisted for a British Composer Award.

Rethinking Britten offers a fresh portrait of one of the most widely performed composers of the 20th century. In twelve essays, a diverse group of contributors--both established authorities and leading younger voices--explore a significant portion of Benjamin Britten's extensive oeuvre across a range of genres, including opera, song cycle, and concert music. Well informed by earlier writings on the composer's professional career and private life, Rethinking Britten also uncovers many fresh lines of inquiry, from the Lord Chamberlain's last-minute censorship of the Rape of Lucretia libretto to psychoanalytic understandings of Britten's staging of gender roles; from the composer's delight in schoolboy humor to his operatic revival of Purcellian dance rhythms; from his creative responses to Cold-War-era internationalism to his dealings with BBC Television. Each essay blends awareness of overarching contexts with insights into particular expressive achievements. Balancing biographical, archival, and analytic commentary with cultural and historical criticism, Rethinking Britten broadens the interpretive context surrounding all phases of Britten's career and is essential reading for scholars and fans alike.

The 1960s saw the emergence in the Netherlands of a generation of avant-garde musicians (including figures such as Louis Andriessen, Willem Breuker, Reinbert de Leeuw and Misha Mengelberg) who were to gain international standing and influence as composers, performers and teachers, and who had a defining impact upon Dutch musical life. Fundamental to their activities in the sixties was a pronounced commitment to social and political engagement. The lively culture of activism and dissent on the streets of Amsterdam prompted an array of vigorous responses from these musicians, including collaborations with countercultural and protest groups, campaigns and direct action against established musical institutions, new grassroots performing associations, political concerts, polemicising within musical works, and the advocacy of new, more 'democratic' relationships with both performers and audiences. These activities laid the basis for the unique new music scene that emerged in the Netherlands in the 1970s and which has been influential upon performers and composers worldwide. This book is the first sustained scholarly examination of this subject. It presents the Dutch experience as an exemplary case study in the complex and conflictual encounter of the musical avant-garde with the decade's currents of social change. The narrative is structured around a number of the decade's defining topoi: modernisation and 'the new'; anarchy; participation; politics; self-management; and popular music. Dutch avant-garde musicians engaged actively with each of these themes, but in so doing they found themselves faced with distinct and sometimes intractable challenges, caused by the chafing of their political and aesthetic commitments. In charting a broad chronological progress from the commencement of work on Peter Schat's Labyrint in 1961 to the premiere of Louis Andriessen's Volkslied in 1971, this book traces the successive attempts of Dutch avant-garde musicians to reconcile the era's evolving social agendas with their own adventurous musical practice.

A crucial year in the Britten/Auden relationship, which reshaped and redefined artistic direction in the immediate pre-war period. Benjamin Britten and W.H. Auden were key figures of the 1930s, and here Donald Mitchell traces their lives during one crucial year, 1936. They worked hard to establish themselves, first through the GPO film unit, in a collaboration which flowered and spilled over into the theatre, and then radio - a new medium that the liveliest creative minds of the time were exploring and exploiting. Britten and Auden also joined forces in works destined for the recital room and concert hall, among them Our Hunting Fathers, the political symbolism of which Donald Mitchell examines in depth, and On the Island, settings of early Auden that comprised Britten's first important set of songs to English texts. Much use is made of Britten's private diaries, which he kept on a daily basis, and a revealing portrait emerges of the two men's relationship, of their work together in many different fields, and of the reflection within that work of political ideas current at the time. DONALD MITCHELL was Britten's close friend and publisher from 1964 until the end of the composer's life, and his authorised biographer. The T S Eliot Memorial Lectures delivered in 1979

for upper-voice choir, SATB choir, piano, and optional timpani Setting a newly written text by Charles Bennett, this fifteen-minute choral work takes singers on a journey through five historical events: the invention of printing, the abolition of slavery, the first powered flight, the discovery of penicillin, and the first man in space. In each movement, music and words come together to create a strikingly vivid and personal account of each protagonist's experience, from the printer seeing 'each letter like a person' to the astronaut commenting on the beauty of our planet from space. Chilcott's music is as captivating as ever, with energy in abundance alongside moments of clarity and stillness. This is an ideal concert work for choirs looking to perform with an upper-voice group, or for larger SATB choruses with divisi sopranos and altos. The optional timpani part is printed separately at the back of the score.

for SATB and organ or orchestra or unaccompanied This anthology of 9 mixed-voice anthems combines new material written specially for the collection with established favourites from the Oxford catalogue, some of which appear here for the first time with SATB scoring. Containing both accompanied and a cappella pieces, and with festive anthems (with keyboard or orchestral accompaniment) alongside short, gentle blessings, Mack Wilberg Anthems contains an attractive selection of pieces suitable for a variety of liturgical seasons and will appeal to all mixed-voice church choirs.

In recent years the music of minimalist composers such as La Monte Young, Terry Riley, Steve Reich and Philip Glass has, increasingly, become the subject of important musicological reflection, research and debate. Scholars have also been turning their attention to the work of lesser-known contemporaries such as Phill Niblock and Eliane Radigue, or to second and third generation minimalists such as John Adams, Louis Andriessen, Michael Nyman and William Duckworth, whose range of styles may undermine any sense of shared aesthetic approach but whose output is still to a large extent informed by the innovative work of their minimalist predecessors. Attempts have also been made by a number of academics to contextualise the work of composers who have moved in parallel with these developments while remaining resolutely outside its immediate environment, including such diverse figures as Karel Goeyvaerts, Robert Ashley, Arvo PArt and Brian Eno. Theory has reflected practice in many respects, with the multimedia works of Reich and Glass encouraging interdisciplinary approaches, associations and interconnections. Minimalism's role in culture and society has also become the subject of recent interest and debate, complementing existing scholarship, which addressed the subject from the perspective of historiography, analysis, aesthetics and philosophy. The Ashgate Research Companion to Minimalist and Postminimalist Music provides an authoritative overview of established research in this area, while also offering new and innovative approaches to the subject.

for SATB (with optional solos) and organ or piano or small orchestra or chamber group O Come, Emmanuel is an Advent Celebration, suitable for both church and concert choirs. It is based on the 7 Great 'O' Antiphons, and fragments of the well-known plainsong hymn permeate the work. To these, Bullard has added settings of a number of other Advent texts and hymns, including the beautiful 'There is a rose-tree', a rousing setting of 'Chanticleer Carol', and new arrangements of 'Gabriel's Message' and 'Joy to the world!'. The work may be sung throughout by SATB choir, or a range of soloists may take some of the lines. The accompaniment - for organ or piano, or with small orchestra or chamber group - is equally flexible. A number of the movements make highly effective separate pieces and anthems. Written with the composer's long and practical experience, O Come, Emmanuel is a strikingly original work for Advent and Christmas that will enhance both liturgical celebrations and concert programmes at this time.

Sounding the Gallery explores the first decade of creative video work, focusing on the ways in which video technology was used to dissolve the boundaries between art and music. Becoming commercially available in the mid 1960s, video quickly became integral to the intense experimentalism of New York City's music and art scenes. The medium was able to record image and sound at the same time, which allowed composers to visualize their music and artists to sound their images in a quick and easy manner. But video not only provided artists and composers with the opportunity to produce unprecedented forms of audiovisuality; it also allowed them to create interactive spaces that questioned conventional habits of music and art consumption. Early video's audiovisual synergy could be projected, manipulated and processed live. The closed-circuit video feed drew audience members into the heart of the audiovisual experience, from where they could influence the flow, structure and sound of the video performance. Such activated spectatorship resulted in improvisatory and performative events in which the space between artists, composers, performers and visitors collapsed into a single, yet expansive, intermedial experience. Many believed that such audiovisual video work signalled a brand-new art form that only began in 1965. Using early video work as an example, this book suggests that this is inaccurate. During the twentieth century, composers were experimenting with spatializing their sounds, while artists were attempting to include time as a creative element in their visual work. Pioneering video work allowed these two disciplines to come together, acting as a conduit that facilitated the fusion and manipulation of pre-existing elements. Shifting the focus from object to spatial process, Sounding the Gallery uses theories of intermedia, film, architecture, drama and performance practice to create an interdisciplinary history of music and art that culminates in the rise of video art-music in the late 1960s.

for SAATTBB unaccompanied What sweeter music is an atmospheric setting of Robert Herrick's popular Christmas text. The carol opens with hushed, interweaving choral lines, creating a soft veil of sound that expands texturally and dynamically into an expressive central section. The sustained melodic interest in every part combines to create a gorgeous work that choirs will find a true pleasure to sing. What sweeter music will be included on a forthcoming CD by Commotio.

How is the Beatles' "Help " similar to Stravinsky's "Dance of the Adolescents?" How does Radiohead's "Just" relate to the improvisations of Bill Evans? And how do Chopin's works exploit the non-Euclidean geometry of musical chords?
In this groundbreaking work, author Dmitri Tymoczko describes a new framework for thinking about music that emphasizes the commonalities among styles from medieval polyphony to contemporary rock. Tymoczko identifies five basic musical features that jointly contribute to the sense of tonality, and shows how these features recur throughout the history of Western music. In the process he sheds new light on an age-old question: what makes music sound good?
A Geometry of Music provides an accessible introduction to Tymoczko's revolutionary geometrical approach to music theory. The book shows how to construct simple diagrams representing relationships among familiar chords and scales, giving readers the tools to translate between the musical and visual realms and revealing surprising degrees of structure in otherwise hard-to-understand pieces.
Tymoczko uses this theoretical foundation to retell the history of Western music from the eleventh century to the present day. Arguing that traditional histories focus too narrowly on the "common practice" period from 1680-1850, he proposes instead that Western music comprises an extended common practice stretching from the late middle ages to the present. He discusses a host of familiar pieces by a wide range of composers, from Bach to the Beatles, Mozart to Miles Davis, and many in between.
A Geometry of Music is accessible to a range of readers, from undergraduate music majors to scientists and mathematicians with an interest in music. Defining its terms along the way, it presupposes no special mathematical background and only a basic familiarity with Western music theory. The book also contains exercises designed to reinforce and extend readers' understanding, along with a series of appendices that explore the technical details of this exciting new theory.

for SAATBB unaccompanied This touching piece sets Yeats' beautiful words describing the love of a parent for their child. Switching between major and minor tonalities, A Cradle Song is quiet and understated, with sensitive a cappella scoring that makes the sentiments seem all the more real. This is an impressive and sophisticated debut from Swedish singer and composer Joel Nilson.