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Books > Music > Western music, periods & styles > 20th century music
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.
This volume covers the development of modern music from World War I to the present. Specific musical responses can be identified from the prevailing social, economic and political circumstances. Since World War II musical languages have tended to converge, with developments in technology and communications. Robert P. Morgan is the author of "Twentieth Century Music", and co-editor of "Alban Berg: Historical and Analytical Perspectives".
Sound film captivated Sergey Prokofiev during the final two decades of his life: he considered composing for nearly two dozen pictures, eventually undertaking eight of them, all Soviet productions. Hollywood luminaries such as Gloria Swanson tempted him with commissions, and arguably more people heard his film music than his efforts in all other genres combined. Films for which Prokofiev composed, in particular those of Sergey Eisenstein, are now classics of world cinema. Drawing on newly available sources, Composing for the Red Screen examines-for the first time-the full extent of this prodigious cinematic career. Bartig examines how Prokofiev's film music derived from a self-imposed challenge: to compose "serious" music for a broad audience. The picture that emerges is of a composer seeking an individual film-music voice, shunning Hollywood models and objecting to his Soviet colleagues' ideologically expedient film songs. Looking at Prokofiev's film music as a whole-with well-known blockbusters like Alexander Nevsky considered alongside more obscure or aborted projects-reveals that there were multiple solutions to the challenge, each with varying degrees of success. Prokofiev carefully balanced his own populist agenda, the perceived aesthetic demands of the films themselves, and, later on, Soviet bureaucratic demands for accessibility.
Originally published in 1943, Models for Beginners in Composition represents one of Arnold Schoenberg's earliest attempts at reaching a broad American audience through his pedagogical ideas. The novelty of this book was its streamlined approach, basing all aspects of composition including motivic design, harmony, and the construction of themes on the two-measure phrase. This newly revised edition by Gordon Root incorporates many of Schoenberg's corrections to the original manuscript. It also includes a significant commentary elucidating the evolution of Schoenberg's pedagogical approach. In its function as a practical manual for the American classroom, Models for Beginners in Composition is unique among Schoenberg's texts. The current Commentary explores Schoenberg's experience as a teacher at UCLA while tracing the development of the two-measure phrase as the main component of his pedagogical method. It demonstrates the way in which Schoenberg simultaneously preserved and adapted European ideas about tonal theory and pedagogy when he came to America, a give and take that allowed for increased theoretical originality and scope. Models for Beginners in Composition established the two-measure phrase as one of the most significant of Schoenberg's contributions to American music education. This new edition, with Schoenberg's corrections and newly added commentary, allows readers to utilize and explore the text in greater depth. Students of composition, Schoenberg scholars, music theorists, and historians of music theory alike will no doubt welcome this new edition.
Composer, pianist, and critic Claude Debussy's musical aesthetic represents the single most powerful influence on international musical developments during the long fin de siecle period. The development of Debussy's musical language and style was affected by the international political pressures of his time, beginning with the Franco-Prussian War of 1871 and the rise of the new Republic in France, and was also related to the contemporary philosophical conceptualization of what constituted art. The Debussy idiom exemplifies the ways in which various disciplines - musical, literary, artistic, philosophical, and psychological - can be incorporated into a single, highly-integrated artistic conception. Rethinking Debussy draws together separate areas of Debussy research into a lucid perspective that reveals the full significance of the composer's music and thought in relation to the broader cultural, intellectual, and artistic issues of the twentieth century. Ranging from new biographical information to detailed interpretations of Debussy's music, the volume offers significant multidisciplinary insight into Debussy's music and musical life, as well as the composer's influence on the artistic developments that followed. Chapters include: "Russian Imprints in Debussy's Piano Music"; "Music as Encoder of the Unconscious in Pelleas et Melisande"; "An Artist High and Low, or Debussy and Money"; "Debussy's Ideal Pelleas and the Limits of Authorial Intent"; "Debussy in Daleville: Toward Early Modernist Hearing in the United States"; and more. Rethinking Debussy will appeal to students and scholars of French music, opera, and modernism, and literary and French studies scholars, particularly concerned with Symbolism and theatre. General readers will be drawn to the book as well, particularly to chapters focusing on Debussy's finances, dramatic works, and reception.
This edited volume of case studies presents a selective history of French music and culture, but one with a dynamic difference. Eschewing a traditional chronological account, the book explores the nature of relationships between one main period, broadly the 'long' modernist era between 1860-1960, and its own historical 'others', referencing topics from the Romantic, classical, baroque, renaissance and medieval periods. It probes the emergent interplay, intertextualities and scope for reinterpretation across time and place. Notions of cultural meaning are paramount, especially those pertaining to French identity, national and individual. While founded on historical musicology, the approach benefits from interdisciplinary association with philosophy, political history, literature, fine art, film studies and criticism. Attention is paid to French composers' celebrations and remakings of their predecessors. Editions of and writings about earlier music are examined, together with the cultural reception of performances of past repertoire. Organized into two parts, each of the eleven chapters characterizes a specific cultural network or temporal interplay, which may result in synthesis, disjunction, or historical misreading. The interwar years and those surrounding the Second World War prove particularly rich sources of enquiry. This volume aims to attract a wide readership of musicologists and musicians, as well as cultural historians, other humanities scholars and concert-goers.
Peter Kivy presents a selection of his new and recent writings on the philosophy of music, a subject to which he has for many years been one of the most eminent contributors. In his distinctively elegant and informal style, Kivy explores such topics as musicology and its history, the nature of musical works, and the role of emotion in music, in a way that will attract the interest of philosophical and musical readers alike.
Olivier Messiaen: A Research and Information Guide, Second Edition presents researchers with the most significant and helpful resources on Olivier Messiaen, one of the twentieth century's greatest composers. With multiple indices, this annotated bibliography will serve as an excellent tool for librarians, researchers, and scholars sorting through the massive amount of material in the field. The second edition has been fully revised and updated.
The American Wind Symphony Editions comprises the more than 150 works commissioned by Robert Austin Boudreau for the American Waterways Wind Orchestra and published by the C. F. Peters Corporation. They are here presented for the first time in a complete catalog with detailed descriptive data, biographical information on the composers or arrangers, and score facsimiles. The published music represents about half of the over 300 works commissioned by the orchestra since 1957 in the largest such project in wind instrument history. Presented in this catalog are the published works of 83 composers from 28 countries, including such notables as Alan Hovhaness, Toshiro Mayuzumi, Krzysztof Penderecki, Ned Rorem, and Heitor Villa-Lobos. Genres include original concert and chamber music, incidental and occasional music, and theatrical and pop pieces, as well as arrangements of past masters. The compositional characteristics of each work are described, and data on number of performers, date of composition, duration, score accessibility, composer nationality and dates, and itemized instrumentation is listed. The catalog further provides appendixes classifying the music by composer nationality, duration of works, type of soloist, number of performers, programming category, and other fields. A selective discography is included, as are indexes of works by composer and title. Background history on the wind orchestra and music publisher is also provided.
This book examines the origin, content, and development of the musical thought of Heinrich Schenker and Arnold Schoenberg. One of the premises is that Schenker's and Schoenberg's inner musical lives are inseparable from their inner spiritual lives. Curiously, Schenker and Schoenberg start out in much the same musical-spiritual place, yet musically they split while spiritually they grow closer. The reception of Schenker's and Schoenberg's work has sidestepped this paradox of commonality and conflict, instead choosing to universalize and amplify their conflict. Bringing to light a trove of unpublished material, Arndt argues that Schenker's and Schoenberg's conflict is a reflection of tensions within their musical and spiritual ideas. They share a particular conception of the tone as an ideal sound realized in the spiritual eye of the genius. The tensions inherent in this largely psychological and material notion of the tone and this largely metaphysical notion of the genius shape both their musical divergence on the logical (technical) level in theory and composition, including their advocacy of the Ursatz versus twelvetone composition, and their spiritual convergence, including their embrace of Judaism. These findings shed new light on the musical and philosophical worlds of Schenker and Schoenberg and on the profound artistic and spiritual questions with which they grapple.
'Wonderful ... we need music in our lives now more than ever' HERBIE HANCOCK 'Joan Koenig is on a wonderful mission to enrich children's lives through music' DR GUY DEUTSCHER A pioneering music educator reveals how parents and caregivers can harness the power of music and use it to supercharge early childhood development. Since opening her famed Parisian conservatory over three decades ago, Joan Koenig has led a global movement to improve children's lives and minds with the transformative power of music. With a curriculum and philosophy drawn from cutting-edge science, L'Ecole Koenig has educated and empowered even the youngest students. From baby Max, whose coordination and communication grow as he wiggles and coos along to targeted songs and dance; to five-year-old Sara, who nourishes her empathy, creativity, and memory, while practising music from other cultures. In The Musical Child, Koenig shares stories from her classrooms, along with tips about how to use the latest research during these critical years, when children are most sensitive to musical exposure-and most receptive to its benefits. A gift for parents, caregivers, musicians, and educators, The Musical Child reveals the multiple ways music can help children thrive-and how, in the 21st century, its practice is more vital than ever. * Filled with at-home activities and musical games * Recordings and tutorials available instantly with scannable QR codes
Again and again people turn to music in order to assist them make sense of traumatic life events. Music can help process emotions, interpret memories, and create a sense of collective identity. While the last decade has seen a surge in academic studies on trauma and loss in both the humanities and social sciences, how music engages suffering has not often been explored. Performing Pain uncovers music's relationships to trauma and grief by focusing upon the late 20th century in Eastern Europe. The 1970s and 1980s witnessed a cultural preoccupation with the meanings of historical suffering, particularly surrounding the Second World War and the Stalinist era. Journalists, historians, writers, artists, and filmmakers repeatedly negotiated themes related to pain and memory, truth and history, morality and spirituality both during glasnost and the years prior. In the copious amount of scholarship devoted to cultural politics during this era, the activities of avant-garde composers stands largely silent. Performing Pain considers how works by Alfred Schnittke, Galina Ustvolskaya, Arvo Part, and Henryk Gorecki musically address contemporary concerns regarding history and suffering through composition, performance, and reception. Drawing upon theories from psychology, sociology, literary and cultural studies, this book offers a set of hermeneutic essays that demonstrate the ways in which people employ music in order to make sense of historical traumas and losses. Seemingly postmodern compositional choices-such as quotation, fragmentation, and stasis-provide musical analogies to psychological and emotional responses to trauma and grief. The physical realities of embodied performance focus attention on the ethics of pain and representation while these works' inclusion as film music interprets contemporary debates regarding memory and trauma. Performing Pain promises to garner wide attention from academic professionals in music studies as well as an interdisciplinary audience interested in Eastern Europe and aesthetic articulations of suffering.
One of the momentous events in twentieth century music was the advent of atonality and serialism, and the consequent proliferation of such avant-garde genres as total serialism, electronic music, and aleatory music. This book examines serialism and its progeny, formulates criteria that are applicable both to serialism and to the traditional harmony from which it developed, and focuses on the failure of serialism to solve the problem of coherent harmonic progression. Rather than seeking to denounce serialism, the work attempts to restore a balance by questioning whether its esteem is justified. In this work, Schoffman applies the criterion of the degree of indeterminacy of the chords to both traditional functional harmony and to serial and avant-garde music. Consequently, serialism and avant-garde music are placed in a historical perspective and evaluated in terms of their chordal behavior. The study is divided into four separate sections, examining the indeterminacy of progression, the indeterminacy of members of chords, chords in serial music, and destructive aspects of indeterminacy. Also included is an extensive list of musical examples, a guide to references, and a comprehensive index. With its correlations to literature, painting, and history, this volume will be an important addition to academic and public libraries, university music departments, and academies of music, as well as a valuable resource for courses in music theory and analysis, esthetics of music, and music history.
Howard Hanson details the career and works of a composer called by several critics "the most important figure in American music in the second quarter of the 20th century." Hanson's compositions elicited the broadest possible range of critical reaction. While early works from the 1920s were viewed as dissonant, avant-garde experimentations, within a decade his compositions in a similar style were viewed as solid, conservative works. Within this range, it was generally agreed that Hanson represented the best in solid compositional and orchestrational technique, and audiences greeted his new compositions with unquestioned approval throughout his 60-plus year career. As an important proponent of American music during his forty year tenure as Director of the Eastman School of Music, he conducted premieres of literally thousands of works by American composers and always encouraged young American composers.
Although Berg decided immediately after seeing Buchner's play Woyzeck in May 1914 to set it to music, he did not complete his opera until 1922, with the Berlin premiere taking place in 1925. Berg's Wozzeck traces the composer's slow but determined progress. Using compositional sketches, diaries, notebooks and other archival material, author Patricia Hall reveals the challenges Berg faced--from his induction as a soldier in World War I, to the hyperinflation of the twenties. In addition to the precise chronology of the opera, the sketches show how Berg derived large-scale form from the Buchner text, and how his compositional style evolved during the nine years in which he composed the opera. A comprehensive visual database on the book's companion website of the extant sketches from seven archives in the United States, Germany and Austria allows the reader to examine, for the first time, Berg's sketches in high resolution color scans.
This cantata features sixteen highly-varied folk song settings, bound together in seasonal groupings to take the listener on an engaging journey through the year from Spring to Winter. The prologue implores us to 'sing and be merry', and many of the songs facilitate this with their charmingly light-hearted melodies and imaginative orchestral accompaniment. There are also darker moments, such as the haunting and heart-rending setting of 'The Unquiet Grave' in 'Autumn'. For this comprehensive new edition, the editor Graham Parlett has drawn on all available sources, providing an authoritative full score with critical commentary. This edition also makes available new materials for the version for string orchestra and piano, and a new vocal score.
A study in contrasts, the career of Sergey Prokofiev spanned the
globe, leaving him witness to the most significant political and
historical events of the first half of the twentieth century. In
1918, after completing a program of studies at the St. Petersburg
conservatory, Prokofiev escaped Russia for the United States and
later France where, like most emigre artists of the time, he made
Paris his home. During these hectic years, he composed three
ballets and three operas, fulfilled recording contracts, and played
recitals of tempestuous music. Scores were stored in suitcases,
scenarios and librettos drafted on hotel letterhead. The constant
uprooting and transience fatigued him, but he regarded himself as a
person of action who, personally and professionally, traveled
against rather that with the current. Thus, in 1936, as political
anxieties increased in Western Europe, Prokofiev escaped back to
Russia. Though at first pampered by the totalitarian regime,
Prokofiev soon suffered official correction and censorship. He
wrote and revised his late ballets and operas to appease his
bureaucratic overseers but, more often than not, his labors came to
naught. Following his official condemnation in 1948, many of his
compositions were withdrawn from performance. Physical illness and
mental exhaustion characterized his last years. Housebound, he
journeyed inward, creating a series of works on the theme of youth
whose music sounds despondently optimistic.
John McCabe is a thoroughly documented bio-bibliography of one of Britain's leading composers. John McCabe has an international reputation, both as a composer and a pianist, whose compositions cover most of the established forms. The complete list of his works and performances have never before been presented in such detail. Articles and features by and about the composer contain annotations, often in the form of quotations from the material. National, academic, and public libraries, as well as specialized music libraries and archives, will find this work a valuable research tool. The work begins with a brief biography of John McCabe prepared with the composer's assistance and is followed by a complete list of works and performances classified by genre and arranged alphabetically by title of composition. Performance and publication information is provided for each work, including its first and other selected performances. A list of McCabe's publishers is followed by a discography of commercially produced sound recordings divided into sections on McCabe as a composer and as a performer. A bibliography of writings by and about McCabe includes gramaphone record reviews written by McCabe for the British journal Records and Recordings between 1967 and 1974. An alphabetical and a chronological list of compositions appear in appendices.
The Oxford Book of Choral Music by Black Composers is a landmark collection of non-idiomatic compositions from the sixteenth century to the present day, providing a comprehensive introduction to an area of choral music that has been historically under-represented. This unique anthology seeks both to improve representation in the historical canon and to showcase the music of some of the best names in choral music today.
for SSATB unaccompanied A Gaelic Blessing was commissioned by the University of Edinburgh, McDowall's alma mater, for performance by the Edinburgh University Singers conducted by Calum Robertson. This meditative, folk-style anthem is given a Scottish lilt through the use of Scotch snap rhythms and held drone-like vocal lines. The text is a traditional Scottish Gaelic blessing, translated by the Right Reverend Ian Paton, Bishop of St Andrews, Dunkeld, and Dunblane. McDowall chose this text for the 'warmth and simplicity' of the words that seem to 'resonate with the times in which we live'.
Barcelonian Gaspar Cassado (1897-1966) was one of the greatest cello virtuosi of the twentieth century and a notable composer and arranger, leaving a vast and heterogeneous legacy. In this book, Gabrielle Kaufman provides the first full-length scholarly work dedicated to Cassado, containing the results of seven years of research into his life and legacy, after following the cellist's steps through Spain, France, Italy and Japan. The study presents in-depth descriptions of the three main parts of Cassado's creative output: composition, transcription and performance, especially focusing on Cassado's plural and multi-facetted creativity, which is examined from both cultural and historical perspectives. Cassado's role within the evolution of twentieth-century cello performance is thoroughly examined, including a discussion regarding the musical and technical aspects of performing Cassado's works, aimed directly at performers. The study presents the first attempt at a comprehensive catalogue of Cassado's works, both original and transcribed, as well as his recordings, using a number of new archival sources and testimonies. In addition, the composer's significance within Spanish twentieth-century music is treated in detail through a number of case studies, sustained by examples from recovered score manuscripts. Illuminated by extraordinary source material Gaspar Cassado: Cellist, Composer and Transcriber expands and deepens our knowledge of this complex figure, and will be of crucial importance to students and scholars in the fields of Performance Practice and Spanish Music, as well as to professional cellists and advanced cello students.
In 1877, Ruskin accused Whistler of 'flinging a pot of paint in the public's face'. Was he right? After all, Whistler always denied that the true function of art was to represent anything. If a painting does not represent, what is it, other than mere paint, flung in the public's face? Whistler's answer was simple: painting is music - or it is poetry. Georges Braque, half a century later, echoed Whistler's answer. So did Braque's friends Apollinaire and Ponge. They presented their poetry as music too - and as painting. But meanwhile, composers such as Satie and Stravinsky were presenting their own art - music - as if it transposed the values of painting or of poetry. The fundamental principle of this intermedial aesthetic, which bound together an extraordinary fraternity of artists in all media in Paris, from 1885 to 1945, was this: we must always think about the value of a work of art, not within the logic of its own medium, but as if it transposed the value of art in another medium. Peter Dayan traces the history of this principle: how it created our very notion of 'great art', why it declined as a vision from the 1960s and how, in the 21st century, it is fighting back.
for Oboe and Piano John Rutter creates a peaceful and contemplative atmosphere in this new arrangement of the traditional German carol, Lo, how a Rose e'er blooming.
In Off Key, Kay Dickinson offers a compelling study of how certain
alliances of music and film are judged aesthetic failures. Based on
a fascinating and wide-ranging body of film-music mismatches, and
using contemporary reviews and histories of the turn to
post-industrialization, the book expands the ways in which the
union of the film and music businesses can be understood.
for SSAATTBB unaccompanied A reflection on the plainchant antiphon 'Pulchra es et decora', this hauntingly beautiful piece was commissioned by ORA100 for Suzi Digby and ORA Singers. The original antiphon has been transcribed and included at the beginning, and may be used as an introduction. Porter's use of rich harmonies and rippling melismatic vocal lines make this an impassioned setting of a Marian text. |
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