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includes interviews with the members of the Lindsay String Quartet, who premiered the work, as well as previously unpublished letters from the composer and interviews with Tippett in which he discusses the quartet in detail.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.

First emerging in North America and Europe in the late 1920s, contemporary percussion practices have transitioned from the fringes of contemporary music to the forefront over the past 90 years. In the 1960s contemporary percussion practices reached Australian shores and a new generation of artists added their voices to this narrative. The role of Australian activity is not yet embedded in the wider narrative of international contemporary percussion, nor is the significance of developments in contemporary percussion practices fully realised in the context of Australian music history. In this monograph, political, social and cultural influences on this art form will be examined for the first time in a historical survey of contemporary percussion music in Australia over a 50-year period, from 1960 to 2010. The rise of the percussion ensemble in the twentieth century to a standard chamber music ensemble is now recognised as one of the major advances in western art music practice internationally. A focus will be placed on ensemble activity via definitive documentation and analysis of ensembles that are amongst the most pioneering and longest established of Australian contemporary music organisations, including the Australian Percussion Ensemble, Synergy Percussion, Adelaide Percussions, Nova Ensemble, Tetrafide Percussion, Taikoz, Clocked Out and Speak Percussion amongst others. Closing with a discussion of influences and identity, this historical narrative will expand our understanding of the impact of Australian contributions to the international contemporary music scene while simultaneously examining how developments in contemporary percussion have contributed to Australia's cultural identity.

American composer Louise Talma (1906-1996) was the first female winner of two back-to-back Guggenheim Awards (1946, 1947), the first American woman to have an opera premiered in Europe (1962), the first female winner of the Sibelius Award for Composition (1963), and the first woman composer elected to the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters (1974). This book analyses Talma's works in the context of her life, focusing on the effects on her work of two major changes she made during her adult life: her conversion to Catholicism as an adult, under the guidance of Nadia Boulanger, and her adoption of serial compositional techniques. Employing approaches from traditional musical analysis, feminist and queer musicology, and women's autobiographical theory to examine Talma's body of works, comprising some eighty pieces, this is the first full-length study of this pioneering composer. Exploring Talma's compositional language, text-setting practices, and the incorporation of autobiographical elements into her works using her own letters, sketches, and scores, as well as a number of other relevant documents, this book positions Talma's contributions to serial and atonal music in the United States, considers her role as a woman composer during the twentieth century, and evaluates the legacy of her works and career in American music.

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.

Music, Art and Diplomacy shows how a vibrant field of cultural exchange between East and West was taking place during the Cold War, which contrasts with the orthodox understanding of two divided and antithetical blocs. The series of case studies on cultural exchanges, focusing on the decades following the Second World War, cover episodes involving art, classical music, theatre, dance and film. Despite the fluctuating fortunes of diplomatic relations between East and West, there was a continuous circulation of cultural producers and products. Contributors explore the interaction of arts and politics, the role of the arts in diplomacy and the part the arts played in the development of the Cold War. Art has always shunned political borders, wavering between the guidance of individual and governmental patrons, and borderless expression. While this volume provides insight into how political players tried to harness the arts to serve their own political purposes, at the same time it is clear that the arts and artists exploited the Cold War framework to reach their own individual and professional objectives. Utilizing archives available only since the collapse of the Soviet Union, the volume provides a valuable socio-cultural approach to understanding the Cold War and cultural diplomacy.

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. It is 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; Analytical Approaches.

Re-Locating the Sounds of the Western examines the use and function of musical tropes and gestures traditionally associated with the American Western in new and different contexts ranging from Elizabethan theater, contemporary drama, space opera and science fiction, Cold War era European filmmaking, and advertising. Each chapter focuses on a notable use of Western musical tropes, textures, instrumentation, form, and harmonic language, delving into the resonance of the music of the Western to cite bravura, machismo, colonisation, violence, gender roles and essentialism, exploration, and other concepts.

Australia offers tremendous scope for understanding the relationship between music, spirituality and landscape. This major, generously-illustrated new volume examines, in fifteen chapters, some of the ways in which composers and performers have attempted to convey a sense of the Australian landscape through musical means. The book embraces the different approaches of ethnomusicology, gender studies, musical analysis, performance studies and cultural history. Ranging across the country, from remote parts of the Northern Territory to the bustling east coast cities, from Tasmanian wilderness to tropical Queensland, the book includes references to art and literature as well as music. Issues of national identity, belonging and aboriginalization are an integral part of the book, with indigenous responses to place examined alongside music from the western orchestral, chamber and choral repertories. The book provides valuable insight into a wide range of music inspired by Australia, from the Yanyuwa people to Jewish communities in Victoria; from Peter Sculthorpe's opera Quiros to the work of European expats living in Australia before the Second World War; from historic Ealing film scores to contemporary sound installations. The work of many significant composers is discussed in detail, among them Ross Edwards, Barry Conyngham, David Lumsdaine, Anne Boyd and Fritz Hart. Throughout the book there is a sense of the vibrancy and diversity of the music inspired by the sights and sounds of the Australian landscape.

Maurice Durufle (1902-1986) is best known as composer of the hauntingly beautiful and moving Requiem of 1947, and as organist during his long tenure at the church of Saint-Etienne-du-Mont in Paris. He studied composition and organ with Tournemire, Vierne, Gigout, and Dukas among others, and became well known outside France through tours and conferences, often attended with his wife, the late Marie-Madeleine Chevalier. Ebrecht has brought together in this centenary tribute a fine collection of articles on Durufle's life and work that will enthrall all those who have come under the spell of this great master of French Impressionism. About the contributors: Marie-Claire Alain the renowned French organist, recording artist, and teacher was one of Durufles first harmony students at the Paris Conservatoire. James Frazier has studied liturgy and music at several universities, and was a Fulbright scholar in France, where he studied privately with Madame Durufle. Maria Rubis Bauer concluded her doctoral dissertation on Durufle at the University of Kansas. Jeffrey Reynolds is Associate Professor of Humanities and chair of the music department at the University of Alabama, Birmingham. Herndon Spillman's landmark recording of the complete works of Durufle won him a Grand Prix du Disque in 1973. He is Professor of Music at Louisiana State University. Eliane Chevalier was the sister of Marie-Madeleine Durufle, with whom she shared a passion for music. Ned Tipton is Director of Music of the American Cathedral in Paris.

Pioneers in their fields and two of the best-known women in music in the twentieth century, Nadia and Lili Boulanger have previously been considered in isolation from one another. Yet, as Caroline Potter's new book demonstrates, their careers were closely linked during Lili Boulanger's short life (1893-1918) and there are several intriguing connections between their musical works. This biography also provides the first full analysis of the Boulanger sisters' musical styles, placing them within the context of French musical history. Their lives are also a case study in the issues of gender which surround music making even to the present day. Despite an unusually privileged upbringing, Nadia and Lili Boulanger exemplify the struggle women experienced when attempting to enter the professional music world. Lili became the first woman to win the Prix de Rome in 1913, and Nadia gained second place in 1908. Yet in spite of this initial success, Nadia Boulanger was to give up composing in her thirties and devoted the remainder of her long life to teaching. Her pupils included several of the great composers of the century, including Aaron Copland and Elliott Carter. This book, focusing on their musical careers, is essential reading for anyone interested in French music of the twentieth century.

Mauricio Kagel was undoubtedly one of the major figures in the new music of the last fifty years. Growing up in the rich cultural atmosphere of Buenos Aires in the 1940s and '50s, where the writer Jorge Luis Borges was one of his teachers, he became a member of avant-garde circles as well as receiving a rigorous musical education. By 1957 Kagel had acted on the advice of Pierre Boulez to move to Europe to pursue a career as a composer. He quickly established himself at Cologne, the rallying point for young composers at the time, and became one of the leading, if controversial, figures at the famous Darmstadt summer courses. He embraced multiple serialism, aleatory technique and electronics, but he is best known for his pioneering explorations in music theatre, radio play, film and mixed media. BjArn Heile charts Kagel's compositional development, considering the aesthetic and ideological issues the composer raises in his work. Focusing on Kagel's use of music as a means of intellectual inquiry, Heile shows Kagel to constantly question the nature of music and its role in society. Kagel's broadening of the concept of music to include theatre, film and other media, his disdain for purism as well as his subversive humour and sense of the absurd have challenged reified notions of music and art. Heile considers Kagel's background as Argentine immigrant to Europe (born to Russian-Jewish immigrants to Argentina) to situate the composer's aesthetic. What emerges is the breadth of Kagel's imagination and the multiplicity of contexts he drew from, which were both distinctive and, in the age of pluralist multiculturalism and globalization, exemplary. As Heile demonstrates, it was Kagel's enlarged notion of music as inherently multimedial that may be his most important contribution to new music, and on which his reputation ultimately rests.

The vast majority of writing on film music is concentrated on Hollywood in particular and on a canon of North American scores and films more generally. Recent scholarship acknowledges other traditions of film scoring but little has been written about European film music specifically. Miguel Mera and David Burnand present a volume that redresses the balance by exploring specific European filmic texts, composers and approaches to film scoring that have hitherto been neglected. Films involving British, French, German, Greek, Irish, Italian, Polish and Spanish composers are considered in detail. Starting from a study of the influence of propaganda on musical aesthetics in Nazi Germany the book includes an analysis of Italian neo-realist cinema, a consideration of the Ealing Comedies, experimental music in contemporary Spanish scoring, the invocation of traditional music, the portrayal of classical music performers, the use of space, silence and manipulation of time, and the depiction of the processes of scoring in independent film-making. Important issues that permeate all the essays involve the working relationship of composer and director, the dialectic between the diegetic and non-diegetic uses of music in films, the music-image synergism and the levels of realism that are created by the audio-visual mix. The book will appeal to those working in film studies, popular music studies, musicology, media studies and cultural theory.

For many reasons Hans Pfitzner was and remains controversial. This stems partly from his difficult personality, and partly from the nationalistic context in which are set his cultural beliefs. His music has also tended to be coloured by such labels as conservative and romantic. Yet he actually has a wide reputation for his `musical legend' Palestrina, and there is much in his output which sets him as the true heir of Wagner and Schumann. This is the first study in English of Pfitzner's output. It sets his music in the context of his cultural opinions, which, though conceived as reflections on music, have acquired a more political status to which the history of Pfitzner's times has contributed. It offers a revaluation of his music, partly in order to reveal the innate value of his stage works, chamber music, and songs, and also to illustrate the historical importance of his ideas, which reflect a German conservative tradition which was taken over and nearly destroyed by the Third Reich.

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 this engaging work Vaughan Williams takes advantage of the expressive possibilities of the cello, ranging from wistful and melancholic to lively and jovial. It was composed in 1929 and premiered the following year by its dedicatee, the legendary Spanish cellist Pablo Casals. The five folk songs on which the work is founded are 'Salisbury Plain', 'The Long Whip', 'Low down in the broom', 'Bristol Town', and 'I've been to France'.

Electronic and Experimental Music: Technology, Music, and Culture, Sixth Edition, presents an extensive history of electronic music-from its historical beginnings in the late nineteenth century to its everchanging present-recounting the musical ideas that arose in parallel with technological progress. In four parts, the author details the fundamentals of electronic music, its history, the major synthesizer innovators, and contemporary practices. This examination of the music's experimental roots covers the key composers, genres, and techniques used in analog and digital synthesis, including both art and popular music, Western and non-Western. New to this edition: A reorganized and revised chapter structure places technological advances within a historical framework. Shorter chapters offer greater modularity and flexibility for instructors. Discussions on the elements of sound, listening to electronic music, electronic music in the mainstream, Eurorack, and more. An appendix of historically important electronic music studios around the globe. Listening Guides throughout the book provide step-by-step annotations of key musical works, focusing the development of student listening skills. Featuring extensive revisions and expanded coverage, this sixth edition of Electronic and Experimental Music represents an comprehensive accounting of the technology, musical styles, and figures associated with electronic music, highlighting the music's deep cultural impact.

for SSATB and cello Night Flight was written to mark the centenary of Harriet Quimby's pioneering flight across the English channel. Setting texts by Sheila Bryer on the mysterious powers of the sea, earth, and air, McDowall uses vocal clusters and haunting solo cello lines to highlight the sense of fear, awe, and majesty experienced by an individual pitted against the elements. Cecilia McDowall was awarded the 2014 British Composer Award in the Choral category for Night Flight.

Second edition of a book which caused huge controversy in its first printing - now completely revised and updated. Argues that research into the cultural history of music can significantly help our understanding of the evolution of English national identity. Only book of its kind to cover such a revolutionary period in British music. Looks at how music reflected the privileged elite, ignoring the vast majority of 'music lovers', and was crucial in the construction of a British national identity. The second edition features a new and expanded introduction, a new chapter on Mendelssohn's Elijah - and the complete text has also been updated and revised. -- .

Composed in 1935-36 and intended to be his artistic 'credo', Shostakovich's Fourth Symphony was not performed publicly until 1961. Here, Dr Pauline Fairclough tackles head-on one of the most significant and least understood of Shostakovich's major works. She argues that the Fourth Symphony was radically different from its Soviet contemporaries in terms of its structure, dramaturgy, tone and even language, and therefore challenged the norms of Soviet symphonism at a crucial stage of its development. With the backing of prominent musicologists such as Ivan Sollertinsky, the composer could realistically have expected the premiere to have taken place, and may even have intended the symphony to be a model for a new kind of 'democratic' Soviet symphonism. Fairclough meticulously examines the score to inform a discussion of tonal and thematic processes, allusion, paraphrase and reference to musical types, or intonations. Such analysis is set deeply in the context of Soviet musical culture during the period 1932-36, involving Shostakovich's contemporaries Shebalin, Myaskovsky, Kabalevsky and Popov. A new method of analysis is also advanced here, where a range of Soviet and Western analytical methods are informed by the theoretical work of Shostakovich's contemporaries Viktor Shklovsky, Boris Tomashevsky, Mikhail Bakhtin and Ivan Sollertinsky, together with Theodor Adorno's late study of Mahler. In this way, the book will significantly increase an understanding of the symphony and its context.

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.

Looking and Listening: Conversations between Modern Art and Music invites the art and music lover to place these two realms of creative endeavor in an open dialog with one another. While the worlds of music and visual art often seem to take separate path, they are commonly parallel ones. In Looking and Listening, conductor and art connoisseur Brenda Leach takes unique pairings of well-known visual art works and musical compositions from the 20th century to identify the shared sources of inspiration, as well as similarities in theme, style and technique to explore the historical and cultural influences on the great artists and composers in the 20th century. For readers, Looking and Listening asks and answers: What does jazz have in common with paintings by Stuart Davis and Piet Mondrian? How did Gershwin s Rhapsody in Blue impact the work of artist Arthur Dove? How did painter Georgia O Keeffe and composer Aaron Copland capture the spirit of a youthful America entering the 20th century in their works? What did Kandinsky and Schoenberg share in their artistic visions? Leach takes readers on a whirlwind tour of the lives of these artists and others, surveying many of the key movements in the 20th century, from pop art to minimalism, cubism to atonalism, by comparing representative works from modern master of the visual arts and music. Leach s refreshing and innovation approach will interest those passionate over 20th century art and music and is ideal for any student or instructor, museum docent or music programmer seeking to draw the lines of connection between these two art forms."

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.

Environmental Sound Artists: In Their Own Words is an incisive and imaginative look at the international environmental sound art movement, which emerged in the late 1960s. The term environmental sound art is generally applied to the work of sound artists who incorporate processes in which the artist actively engages with the environment. While the field of environmental sound art is diverse and includes a variety of approaches, the art form diverges from traditional contemporary music by the conscious and strategic integration of environmental impulses and natural processes. This book presents a current perspective on the environmental sound art movement through a collection of personal writings by important environmental sound artists. Dismayed by the limitations and gradual breakdown of contemporary compositional strategies, environmental sound artists have sought alternate venues, genres, technologies, and delivery methods for their creative expression. Environmental sound art is especially relevant because it addresses political, social, economic, scientific, and aesthetic issues. As a result, it has attracted the participation of artists internationally. Awareness and concern for the environment has connected and unified artists across the globe and has achieved a solidarity and clarity of purpose that is singularly unique and optimistic. The environmental sound art movement is borderless and thriving.

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.

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).