Was Richard Strauss the most incandescent composer of the twentieth century or merely a bourgeoisie artist and Nazi sympathizer? For the fifty years since his death on September 8, 1949, Richard Strauss has remained dogmatically elusive in the wider body of musical and historical criticism. Lauded as nothing less than the "greatest musical figure" of his time by Canadian musician, Glenn Gould, in 1962, Strauss also has attracted his share of posthumous epithets: in summary, an artist who lived off his own fat during his later years. As recently as 1995, the English critic Rodney Milnes wrote, "the court of posterity is still reserving judgment." In Richard Strauss: Man, Musician, Enigma, biographer Michael Kennedy demonstrates that the many varying shades of criticism that have painted this figure in the past half century resemble the similar understandings and misunderstandings held by his contemporaries--perceptions that touched almost every aspect of Strauss' life and career. Introducing his detailed work more as a broad explication than a firm answer to the Straussian riddle, Kennedy's scope includes the exuberant, extroverted Strauss of young adulthood as well as the phlegmatic and aloof middle-aged man who resembled a "prosperous bank manager;" the arch-fiend of modernism and the composer who redefined the term; a man who professed to lack all spiritual curiosity and a musician who penned the touching ballet Der Kometentanz; an at times almost humble family man and an artist who claimed to be as interesting as Napoleon and Alexander the Great. Kennedy clearly elucidates his enigmatic subject by building his analysis around the few constants in Strauss' life: his profound admiration for German culture, his dependence on his own family for guidance, and his "Nietzschean total absorption in art." This frame offers everyone from Straussian scholars to general readers an insightful and easy-to-follow biographical narrative. Kennedy also deals at length with Strauss' problematic relationship with Nazi authorities, detailing his incompatible roles as the father-in-law of a Jewish woman and as one of the country's leading composers. Michael Kennedy is the chief music critic of the (London) Sunday Telegraph and the author of many books about music.

On September 15, 1945 the composer Anton Webern was shot in confusing circumstances in a small mountain village near Salzburg. The world lost a composer of extreme originality whose mature music was still almost unknown. When Webern's works did come to light, he immediately became one of the most influential figures in music of the second half of this century. This book focuses on several aspects of Webern's life that have been treated only briefly in earlier accounts: his youthful instability, his often embarrassing dependence on Schoenberg, his naive nationalism and his absolute belief in the value of the brief moments of music he produced.

Dmitri Shostakovich (1906-1975) has a reputation as one of the leading composers of the twentieth century. But the story of his controversial role in history is still being told, and his full measure as a musician still being taken. This collection of essays goes far in expanding the traditional purview of Shostakovich's world, exploring the composer's creativity and art in terms of the expectations--historical, cultural, and political--that forged them.

The collection contains documents that appear for the first time in English. Letters that young "Miti" wrote to his mother offer a glimpse into his dreams and ambitions at the outset of his career. Shostakovich's answers to a 1927 questionnaire reveal much about his formative tastes in the arts and the way he experienced the creative process. His previously unknown letters to Stalin shed new light on Shostakovich's position within the Soviet artistic elite.

The essays delve into neglected aspects of Shostakovich's formidable legacy. Simon Morrison provides an in-depth examination of the choreography, costumes, decor, and music of his ballet "The Bolt" and Gerard McBurney of the musical references, parodies, and quotations in his operetta "Moscow, Cheryomushki." David Fanning looks at Shostakovich's activities as a pedagogue and the mark they left on his students' and his own music. Peter J. Schmelz explores the composer's late-period adoption of twelve-tone writing in the context of the distinctively "Soviet" practice of serialism. Other contributors include Caryl Emerson, Christopher H. Gibbs, Levon Hakobian, Leonid Maximenkov, and Rosa Sadykhova. In a provocative concluding essay, Leon Botstein reflects on the different ways listeners approach the music of Shostakovich."

Dmitry Shostakovich was one of the most successful composers of the twentieth century - a musician who adapted as no other to the unique pressures of his age. By turns vilified and feted by Stalin during the Great Purge, Shostakovich twice came close to the whirlwind of political repression and he remained under political surveillance all his life, despite the many privileges and awards heaped upon him in old age. Yet Shostakovich had a remarkable ability to work with, rather than against, prevailing ideological demands, and it was this quality that ensured both his survival and his posterity. Pauline Fairclough's absorbing new biography offers a vivid portrait that goes well beyond the habitual cliches of repression and suffering. Featuring quotations from previously unpublished letters as well as rarely-seen photographs, Fairclough provides a fresh insight into the music and life of a composer whose legacy, above all, was to have written some of the greatest and most cherished music of the last century.

Benjamin Britten was one of the greatest composers of the twentieth century. He wrote a feast of music from an early age, first achieving international fame in 1945 with his opera Peter Grimes; now more operas by Britten are performed worldwide than by any other composer born in the twentieth century. In this incisive guide, John Bridcut discusses Britten's music and explores his musical influences, his complex personality, his emotional and professional relationships, and the fascinating nooks and crannies of his daily life, normally overlooked. An indispensable source of fresh insights into this towering figure in British music, this is an updated edition of the Faber Pocket Guide to Britten, including the full text of Britten's speech On Receiving the First Aspen Award.

The works of Claude Debussy (1862-1918) had a major impact on the music of the 20th century, influencing a range of figures from Ravel and Stravinsky to Henri Dutilleux and Toru Takemitsu. Less well known is Debussy's influence on the popular culture of the period. Matthew Brown shows how Debussy's music has surfaced in an array of contexts from the film music of the 1940s to the dance music of the 1990s. It is easy to see how Debussy's impressionist soundscapes for orchestra such as La Mer and Iberia could be perfect models for accompaniments to film scenes, but as Brown makes clear Debussy's music and influence cannot by reduced to dreamy imitations of Clair de Lune. As he traces the trajectory of Debussy's stylistic evolution, Brown shows how facets of this style were reinterpreted in a surprising variety of popular musical contexts.

Like all fields of creative endeavour, music has long been caught up - voluntarily and otherwise - in matters political. Music has been used and abused, claimed and disowned, for propaganda purposes, as a vehicle for protest, as a means of articulating national, racial and sexual identities, and in the name of religious, courtly, party political and commercial imperatives. Scholarly interest in the political dimensions of music and music making has increased greatly in recent decades to the point where a consolidated overview has become indispensable to furthering our understanding of the forces at play. This timely four volume series brings together classic essays addressing the intersection of music and politics, in the broad sense of the word, written by leading international scholars over the past few decades. The essays, which encompass art and vernacular musics in western and non-western cultures, ancient and modern, are grouped together under the headings of patronage, ideology, protest and identity politics. Each volume is edited by a recognized authority in their field and includes a select bibliography and an introduction which offers an authoritative overview of research in the area. This four-volume series offers a significant benefit to students, lecturers and libraries as it brings together leading articles in the field from disparate journals which are often difficult to locate and of limited access. Students are thus able to study leading articles side by side for comparison whilst lecturers are provided with an invaluable 'one-stop' teaching resource.

Schoenberg's quartets and trio, composed over a nearly forty-year period, occupy a central position among twentieth-century chamber music. This volume, based on papers presented at a conference in honor of David Lewin, collects a wide range of approaches to Schoenberg's pieces.

The first part of the book provides a historical context to these works, examining Viennese quartet culture and traditions, Webern's reception of Schoenberg's Second Quartet, Schoenberg's view of the Beethoven quartets, and the early reception of Schoenberg's First Quartet. The second part examines musical issues of motive, text setting, meter, imitative counterpoint, and closure within Schoenberg's quartets and trio.

The clarinetist Rebecca Rischin has written a captivating book. . . . Her research dispels several long-cherished myths about the 1941 premiere. . . . Rischin lovingly brings to life the other musicians Etienne Pasquier, cellist; Henri Akoka, clarinetist; and Jean Le Boulaire, violinist who played with Messiaen, the pianist at the premiere." Alex Ross, The New Yorker "This book offers a wealth of new information about the circumstances under which the Quartet was created. Based on original interviews with the performers, witnesses to the premiere, and documents from the prison camp, this first comprehensive history of the Quartet's composition and premiere held my interest from beginning to end. . . . For the End of Time touches on many things: faith, friendship, creativity, grace in a time of despair, and the uncommon human alliances that wartime engenders." Arnold Steinhardt, Chamber Music"The clarification of the order of composition of the movements is just one of the minor but cumulatively significant ways in which Rischin modifies the widely accepted account of the events at Stalag VIII A. . . . For the End of Time is a thorough and readable piece of investigative journalism that clarifies some important points about the Quartet's genesis." Michael Downes, Times Literary Supplement The premiere of Olivier Messiaen's Quartet for the End of Time on January 15, 1941, has been called one of the great stories of twentieth-century music. Composed while Messiaen (1908 1992) was imprisoned by the Nazis in Stalag VIII A, the work was performed under the most trying of circumstances: the temperature, inferior instruments, and the general conditions of life in a POW camp.Based on testimonies by the musicians and their families, witnesses to the premiere, former prisoners, and on documents from Stalag VIII A, For the End of Time examines the events that led to the Quartet's composition, the composer's interpretive preferences, and the musicians' problems in execution and how they affected the premiere and subsequent performances. Rebecca Rischin explores the musicians' life in the prison camp, their relationships with each other and with the German camp officials, and their intriguing fortunes before and after the momentous premiere. This paperback edition features supplementary texts and information previously unavailable to the author about the Quartet's premiere, Vichy and the composer, the Paris premiere, a recording featuring Messiaen as performer, and an updated bibliography and discography."

Philip Glass has, almost single-handedly, crafted the dominant sound of late-twentieth-century classical music. Yet in Words Without Music, his critically acclaimed memoir, he creates an entirely new and unexpected voice, that of a born storyteller and an acutely insightful chronicler, whose behind-the-scenes recollections allow readers to experience those moments of creative fusion when life so magically merged with art. From his childhood in Baltimore to his student days in Chicago and at Juilliard, to his first journey to Paris and a life-changing trip to India, Glass movingly recalls his early mentors, while reconstructing the places that helped shape his creative consciousness. Whether describing working as an unlicensed plumber in gritty 1970s New York or composing Satyagraha, Glass breaks across genres and re-creates, here in words, the thrill that results from artistic creation. Words Without Music ultimately affirms the power of music to change the world.

Facsimile of the composition draft of Peter Grimes, showing Britten's compositional method; companion volume containing essays on its history and significance. Peter Grimes, Benjamin Britten's first opera, established his stature as a composer, marked a turning point in the fortunes of English opera, and conquered operatic stages around the world. Though its setting and music reflect Britten's greatlove for his native East Anglia, the inspiration for the work was a chance encounter with the poetry of George Crabbe while Britten and the tenor Peter Pears (who eventually created the title role) were stayingin California in 1941; they made a number of draft scenarios while they waited for a passage to England, and after their return Montagu Slater was asked to write the libretto. The full score was completed by February 1945. The single document that reveals most about the work's creative history is the composition draft in which the composer wrestled with text and music, gradually fashioning the opera into its final version. The colour facsimile of this fascinating manuscript is published to coincide with the 50th anniversary of its first production. It is accompanied by a commentary volume containing a series of essays on the work's history and its contemporary significance by leading Britten scholars, together with a brief note on the work by PETER PEARS(apparently never before published) and an account of the first production by the late ERIC CROZIER, who directed it. The volume is illustrated with colour reproductions of some of the original costume designs by Kenneth Green, his portrait of BenjaminBritten, and contemporary black and white photographs.

In this lively collection of interviews, storied music writer Jas Obrecht presents a celebration of the world's most popular instrument as seen through the words, lives, and artistry of some of its most beloved players. Readers will read--and hear--accounts of the first guitarists on record, pioneering bluesmen, gospel greats, jazz innovators, country pickers, rocking rebels, psychedelic shape-shifters, singer-songwriters, and other movers and shakers. In their own words, these guitar players reveal how they found their inspirations, mastered their instruments, crafted classic songs, and created enduring solos. Also included is a CD of never-before-heard moments from Obrecht's insightful interviews with these guitar greats. Highlights include Nick Lucas's recollections of waxing the first noteworthy guitar records; Ry Cooder's exploration of prewar blues musicians; Carole Kaye and Ricky Nelson on the early years of rock and roll; Stevie Ray Vaughan on Jimi Hendrix; Gregg Allman on his brother, Duane Allman; Carlos Santana, Eric Johnson, and Pops Staples on spirituality in music; Jerry Garcia, Neil Young, and Tom Petty on songwriting and creativity; and early interviews with Eddie Van Halen, Joe Satriani, and Ben Harper.

A selection of twenty-eight of Luke Howard's favourite and most requested compositions for solo piano, including Portrait Gallery and In Metaphor, Solace. Faber Music presents this beautiful book of scores and photographs, matching the sold-out first edition. These wonderful neo-classical style pieces are ideal for intermediate to advanced level pianists.

A River Out Of Eden is Howard Goodall's vibrant choral anthem for SATB voices and piano, composed to celebrate the service of Sid and Cindy Davis at St Luke's United Methodist Church, Houston. The music sets two distinct accounts of creation: William Tyndale's translation from The Book of Genesis and an excerpt from Annie Dillard's Pilgrim at Tinker Creek. Intertwined through Goodall's contemporary musical style, the disorder underlying Dillard's text erupts into Tyndale's joyous refrain: 'And there spronge a rever out of Eden', the music a reflection upon our dependence on the natural world. An optional organ part is also available to download from fabermusic.com.

Antonio Carlos Jobim has been called the greatest of all contemporary Brazilian songwriters. He wrote both popular and serious music and was a gifted piano, guitar and flute player. One of the key figures in the creation of the bossa nova style, Jobim's music made a lasting impression worldwide, and many of his songs are now standards of the popular music repertoire. In The Music of Antonio Carlos Jobim, one of the first extensive musicological analyses of the Brazilian composer, Peter Freeman examines the music, philosophy and circumstances surrounding the creation of Jobim's popular songs, instrumental compositions and symphonic works. Freeman attempts to elucidate not only the many musical influences that formed Jobim's musical output, but also the stylistic peculiarities that were as much the product of a gifted composer as the rich musical environment and heritage that surrounded him.

A new biography of Shostakovich that views him through the intimate music of his string quartets Most previous books about Dmitri Shostakovich have focused on either his symphonies and operas, or his relationship to the regime under which he lived, or both, since these large-scale works were the ones that attracted the interest and sometimes the condemnation of the Soviet authorities. Music for Silenced Voices looks at Shostakovich through the back door, as it were, of his fifteen quartets, the works which his widow characterized as a "diary, the story of his soul." The silences and the voices were of many kinds, including the political silencing of adventurous writers, artists, and musicians during the Stalin era; the lost voices of Shostakovich's operas (a form he abandoned just before turning to string quartets); and the death-silenced voices of his close friends, to whom he dedicated many of these chamber works. Wendy Lesser has constructed a fascinating narrative in which the fifteen quartets, considered one at a time in chronological order, lead the reader through the personal, political, and professional events that shaped Shostakovich's singular, emblematic twentieth-century life. Weaving together interviews with the composer's friends, family, and colleagues, as well as conversations with present-day musicians who have played the quartets, Lesser sheds new light on the man and the musician. One of the very few books about Shostakovich that is aimed at a general rather than an academic audience, Music for Silenced Voices is a pleasure to read; at the same time, it is rigorously faithful to the known facts in this notoriously complicated life. It will fill readers with the desire to hear the quartets, which are among the most compelling and emotionally powerful monuments of the past century's music.

Among major 20th-century composers whose music is poorly understood, Sergei Prokofiev stands out conspicuously. The turbulent times in which Prokofiev lived and the chronology of his travels-he left Russia in the wake of Revolution, and returned at the height of the Stalinist purges-have caused unusually polarized appraisals of his music. While individual, distinctive, and instantly recognizable, Prokofiev's music was also idiosyncratically tonal in an age when tonality was largely passe. Prokofiev's output therefore has been largely elusive and difficult to assess against contemporary trends. More than sixty years after the composer's death, editors Rita McAllister and Christina Guillaumier offer Rethinking Prokofiev as an assessment that redresses this enigmatic composer's legacy. Often more political than artistic, these appraisals have depended not only upon the date of publication but also the geographical location of the writer. Commissioned from some of the most distinguished and rising scholars in the field, this collection highlights the background and context of Prokofiev's work. Contributors delve into the composer's relationship to nineteenth-century Russian traditions, Silver-Age and Symbolist composers and poets, the culture of Paris in the 1920s and '30s, and to his later Soviet colleagues and younger contemporaries. They also investigate his reception in the West, his return to Russia, and the effect of his music on contemporary popular culture. Still, the main focus of the book is on the music itself: his early, experimental piano and vocal works, as well as his piano concertos, operas, film scores, early ballets, and late symphonies. Through an empirical examination of his characteristic harmonies, melodies, cadences, and musical gestures-and through an analysis of the newly uncovered contents of his sketch-books-contributors reveal much of what makes Prokofiev an idiosyncratic genius and his music intriguing, often dramatic, and almost always beguiling.

Bela Bartok, who died in New York fifty years ago this September, is one of the most frequently performed twentieth-century composers. He is also the subject of a rapidly growing critical and analytical literature. Bartok was born in Hungary and made his home there for all but his last five years, when he resided in the United States. As a result, many aspects of his life and work have been accessible only to readers of Hungarian. The main goal of this volume is to provide English-speaking audiences with new insights into the life and reception of this musician, especially in Hungary.

Part I begins with an essay by Leon Botstein that places Bartok in a large historical and cultural context. Laszlo Somfai reports on the catalog of Bartok's works that is currently in progress. Peter Laki shows the extremes of the composer's reception in Hungary, while Tibor Tallian surveys the often mixed reviews from the American years. The essays of Carl Leafstedt and Vera Lampert deal with his librettists Bela Balazs and Melchior Lengyel respectively. David Schneider addresses the artistic relationship between Bartok and Stravinsky.

Most of the letters and interviews in Part II concern Bartok's travels and emigration as they reflected on his personal life and artistic evolution. Part III presents early critical assessments of Bartok's work as well as literary and poetic responses to his music and personality."

Carl Vine's Piano Sonatas are a crucial contribution to the piano repertoire. Each one carries the essence of pianistic traditions through Vine's own stylistic voice. The latest in the series, his Piano Sonata No.4 is comprised of three seamless movements of high character. Aphorisms opens the sonata with strings of fast lines and arpeggios articulating a set of materials that don't seem to interact as much as coexist. This leads straight into the pensive second movement, Reflection, and finally Fury which closes the sonata with relentless and violent energy. The premiere was given in November 2019 at Carnegie Hall by the pianist who commissioned the sonata, Lindsay Garritson, and has subsequently been recorded by her.