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Books > Music > Western music, periods & styles > 20th century music
'People are always asking, 'Aren't you proud of your famous brother?' I was, of course, but often wished he was not so famous so that one could see more of this brother who was such a joy to be with. Janet Baker has written that the air crackled when he walked into the room, and she was right...' The younger of Benjamin Britten's two sisters, Elizabeth ('Beth') Britten first published this loving and revealing portrait of their shared childhood in 1986. She evokes the Lowestoft upbringing of the four Britten siblings, their dentist father Robert, and mother Edith, who keenly encouraged the children's interest in music. She recalls the flat they shared in London while Benjamin studied at the Royal College of Music; and tells of 'The Old Mill at Snape', Britten's home/studio after its renovation by Beth's future father-in-law. Of special interest are Britten's letters to Beth from America, where he and Peter Pears emigrated in 1939 then became ensconced after war broke out.
This title was first published in 2001. This work provides detailed information taken from the 'Programmes-as-Broadcast' daily log of output held at the BBC Written Archives Centre in Caversham. Arranged in chronological order, entries are given for broadcasts of first performances of musical works in the United Kingdom, and include details of: the date of the broadcast, the composer, the title of the work, performers and conductor. In addition to its usefulness as a reference tool, the Chronicle enables us to gauge the trends in twentieth-century British musical life, and the role of the BBC in their promotion.
Serious scholarship on the music of Ralph Vaughan Williams is currently enjoying a lively revival after a period of relative quiescence, and is only beginning to address the enduring affection of concert audiences for his music. The essays that comprise this volume extend the study of Vaughan Williams's music in new directions that will be of interest to scholars, performers and listeners alike. This volume contains the work of eleven North American scholars who have been recipients of the Ralph Vaughan Williams Fellowship based at the composer's own school, Charterhouse, which was created and has been supported by the Carthusian Trust since 1985. This wide-ranging and detailed collection of essays covers the spectrum of genres in which Vaughan Williams wrote, including dance, symphony, opera, song, hymnody and film music. The contributors also employ a range of analytical and historical methods of investigation to illuminate aspects of Vaughan Williams's compositional techniques and influences, musical, literary and visual.
Critically acclaimed biography of one of England's best loved composers, with a full discussion and evaluation of his works. Gerald Finzi is one of the best-known modern English composers. While he is especially famous as a song-writer, for his sensitive settings of poets such as Hardy and Wordsworth, he also wrote in other genres; notable works includethe exquisite cantata Dies Natalis, and his cello concerto. He also exerted a major influence in the musical world as a whole, championing the neglected Ivor Gurney and reviving eighteenth-century composers with the amateur orchestra he founded. In this lively and sensitive study of his life and works, Diana McVeagh, the renowned Elgar and Finzi scholar, has made use of interviews with the main figures in his life, correspondence with contemporaries such as Vaughan Williams, Edmund Blunden, Arthur Bliss, Edmund Rubbra, Howard Ferguson and Herbert Howells, and her access to previously unpublished material in the form of his widow, Joy's, unpublished journal. The Finzithat emerges is a multi-faceted and complex character. The author shows how he developed from a solitary, introverted youth into a man with strong views and a myriad of interests: everything from education, pacifism, vegetarianism, to the Arts and Crafts movement, the English pastoral tradition, English apple varieties, and the significance of ancestry, friendship and marriage in an artist's life. She also discusses every work within the narrative of Finzi's life, and shows what makes his output so outstanding. Diana McVeagh is the author of the highly acclaimed Elgar the Music Maker [2007]; of the entries on Elgar and Finzi for The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians [1980, 2001]; and of the Finzi entry in The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography [2004].
"Masterworks of 20th-Century Music" introduces over 100 of the greatest compositions by world composers that have entered the standard orchestral repertory. The author surveyed dozens of major American orchestras to find which pieces are commonly performed, and has focused on these works that an average audience member is most likely to hear. Among the popular pieces profiled are Aaron Copland's "Appalachian Spring"; Gustav Holst's "The Planets;" Igor Stravinsky's "Le sacre du printemps;" Samuel Barber's "Knoxville: Summer of 1915;" George Gershwin's "An" "American in Paris"; Charles Ives's "Three Places in New England"; and many more. With each entry is given a wealth of information about: the composer, when and where the piece was first performed, in what "style" it was composed, and a basic analysis of the music. This book serves the general reader interested in 20th-century music, plus students, teachers, and scholars.
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.
The works of Edgard Varese (1883-1965) represent the most radical expression of 20th-century Modernism in music. Not only did he create such orchestral showpieces as "Ameriques" and "Arcana" and such mainstays of the instrumental repertoire as "Octandre" and "Density 21:5"; he also pioneered works for percussion ensemble and electronic music, both on tape and using electronic instruments. Yet books about Varese are few. Either they are biographical studies by non-musicians, or severely analytical treatises beyond the reach of the majority of music lovers who are likely to hear his works in concert. This book takes a different approach. Within a chronological scheme, its core is a series of descriptive analyses; accessible to any literate music-lover, of all Varese's available works. Malcolm MacDonald relates them to the ideas, both aesthetic and scientific, which underlay Varese's boldly original view of sound and musical structure.He shows how Varese's conception of a music that "explodes into space", of "intelligent sounds moving in space" arose from 20th-century man's expanding consciousness of his place in the universe, but also from the esoteric philosophies of late 19th-century Paris, inspired by Renaissance alchemists such as Paracelsus. Much of Varese's output is destroyed, but it is possible to infer much about his lost early works, his vast stage of composition about communication with the star Sirius, and the unachieved choral symphony "Espace", designed to be performed simultaneously in the various capitals of the world. This is also the first book to discuss the previously unpublished Varese scores released for performance in 1998 by Varese executor Chou Wen Chung.
The biography of a fascinating cultural hero, Rene Blum and the
Ballets Russes uncovers the events in the life of the enigmatic and
brilliant writer and producer who perished in the Holocaust.
Brother of Leon Blum, the first socialist prime minister of France,
Rene Blum was a passionate and prominent litterateur. He was the
editor of the chic literary journal Gil Blas where he met such
celebrated figures as Claude Debussy, Pierre Bonnard, Edouard
Vuillard, Andre Gide, and Paul Valery. As author Judith
Chazin-Bennahum's research illustrates, Blum actually arranged for
the publication of Proust's Swann's Way. But Blum's accomplishments
and legacy do not end there: after enlisting in World War I, he won
the Croix de Guerre and became a national hero. And Blum
resurrected the Ballets Russes de Monte Carlo after Diaghilev's
death. Tragically, he was arrested in 1941 during a roundup of
Jewish intellectuals and ultimately sent to Auschwitz.
This first book in English on the French composer Andre Jolivet (1905-1974) investigates his music, life and influence. A pupil of Varese and colleague of Messiaen in La Jeune France, Jolivet is a major figure in French music of the twentieth century. His music combines innovative language with spirituality, summarised in his self-declared axiom to 'restore music's ancient original meaning when it was the magic and incantatory expression of the sacred in human communities'. The book's contextual introduction is followed by contributions, edited by Caroline Rae, from leading international scholars including the composer's daughter Christine Jolivet-Erlih. These assess Jolivet's output and activities from the 1920s through to his last works, exploring creative process, aesthetic, his relationship with the exotic and influences from literature. They also examine, for the first time, the significance of Jolivet's involvement with the visual arts and his activities as conductor, teacher and critic. A chronology of Jolivet's life and works with details of first performances provides valuable overview and reference. This fascinating and comprehensive volume is an indispensable source for research into French music and culture of the twentieth century.
This first full biography of Edward J. Dent (1876-1957), Cambridge Professor of Music and foremost musicologist, tells the story of a remarkable man who played a crucial role in the formation of twentieth-century culture and cultural institutions. Operating at both personal and international levels, Dent knew and quietly influenced musicians, poets, artists, writers, politicians, theatrical producers and designers, including Busoni, E.M. Forster, Sassoon and Maynard Keynes. The book covers not only his pioneering music scholarship and cultural activities but also his personal crusades on behalf of music and opera, gays, refugees and the culturally destitute. Drawn from a wide variety of unpublished sources, from behind Dent's carefully constructed public persona of a cosmopolitan gentleman scholar the picture emerges of a more complex and fascinating human being: a lifelong pacifist and agnostic; a scion of the upper classes who voted Labour; 'the kindest heart and the wickedest tongue in Cambridge', who always helped friends in need; a natural rebel and iconoclast; an English internationalist. His seminal books and articles remain fresh and vital and his writing hugely entertaining, while his ideas on the importance of the arts in everyday life are as relevant as ever. Dent's fundamental belief in 'training the imagination' and in personal friendships, along with his lifelong quest to 'understand all music', kept music and the arts alive through the most dire periods in the last century and into our own.
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.
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.
First Published in 2000. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.
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