Reconstructs the socio-political history of the heroic in music through case studies spanning the middle ages to the twenty-first century The first part of this volume reconstructs the various musical strategies that composers of medieval chant, Renaissance madrigals, and Baroque operas, cantatas or oratorios employed when referring to heroic ideas exemplifying their personal moral and political values. A second part investigating the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries expands the previous narrow focus on Beethoven's heroic middle period and the cult of the virtuoso. It demonstrates the wide spectrum of heroic positions - national, ethnic, revolutionary, bourgeois and spiritual - that filtered not only into 'classical' large-scale heroic symphonies and virtuoso solo concerts, but also into chamber music and vernacular dance music. The third part documents the forced heroization of music in twentieth-century totalitarian regimes such as Nazi-Germany and the Soviet Union and its consequences for heroic thinking and musical styles in the time thereafter. Final chapters show how recent rock-folk and avant-garde musicians in North America and Europe feature new heroic models such as the everyday hero and the scientific heroine revealing new confidence in the idea of the heroic.

Wilfrid Mellers is a composer, musician and author. Honorary Fellow of Downing College, Cambridge. This is his classic book on Bach.

This catalogue completes the bibliographic survey of French harpsichord music begun in Bruce Gustafson's French Harpsichord Music of the Seventeenth Century: A Thematic Catalogue of Sources with Commentary (Ann Arbor, 1979). It has entries for all of the printed music known to have existed, over 230 volumes, and 150 manuscripts. It offers precise transcriptions of the title pages, full contents, dating, locations, editions, facsimiles, evaluations in the contemporary press, identifications of dedicatees, and stylistic comments. The eighteenth-century French harpsichord repertory is shown to extend from 1699 to about 1780, from Louis Marchand's Pieces de clavecin to the four Symphonies concertantes by Jean-Francois Tapray that juxtapose the harpsichord and piano as solo instruments. All original keyboard music is included. Since the introduction of the piano into France occurred during the twenty years preceding 1780, this Catalogue includes some music that may have been intended for that instrument rather than for the harpsichord. This period of transition is discussed in full in the Introduction.

This is the first dedicated study of the musical patronage of Roman baronial families in the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. Patronage - the support of a person or institution and their work by a patron - in Renaissance society was the basis of a complex network of familial and political relationships between clients and patrons, whose ideas, values, and norms of behavior were shared with the collective. Bringing to light new archival documentation, this book examines the intricate network of patronage interrelationships in Rome. Unlike other Italian cities where political control was monocentric and exercised by single rulers, sources of patronage in Rome comprised a multiplicity of courts and potential patrons, which included the pope, high prelates, nobles and foreign diplomats. Morucci uses archival records, and the correspondence of the Orsini and Colonna families in particular, to investigate the local activity and circulation of musicians and the cultivation of music within the broader civic network of Roman aristocratic families over the period. The author also shows that the familial union of the Medici and Orsini families established a bidirectional network for artistic exchange outside of the Eternal City, and that the Orsini-Colonna circle represented a musical bridge between Naples, Rome, and Florence.

This book (published in German by Bärenreiter in 1988 and now available in English translation for the first time) is a comprehensive guide to the genesis, transmission, structure, meaning, and performance considerations of Bach's St John Passion. One of Bach's most fascinating works, its text demonstrates a profound understanding of St John's Gospel. The musical design of the choruses with their numerous interrelationships is quite unique and demands some explanation. The fact that the Passion exists in four different versions leads Dürr to ask which changes were intentional and which were the result of practical constraints or of orders issued by church authorities.

The tercentenary of Marc-Antoine Charpentier's death in 2004 stimulated a surge of activity on the part of performers and scholars, confirming the modern assessment of Charpentier (1643-1704) as one of the most important and inventive composers of the French Baroque. The present book provides a snapshot of Charpentier scholarship in the early years of the new century. Its 13 chapters illustrate not only the sheer variety of strands currently pursued, but also the way in which these strands frequently intertwine and generate the potential for future research. Between them, they examine facets of the composer's compositional language and process, aspects of his performance practice and notation, the contexts within which he worked, and the nature of his legacy. The appendix contains a transcription of the inventory of Charpentier's manuscripts prepared when their sale to the Royal Library was negotiated in 1726 - an invaluable research tool, as numerous chapters in the book demonstrate. The wide variety of topics covered here will appeal both to readers interested in Charpentier's music and to those with a broader interest in the music and culture of the French Baroque, including aspects of patronage, church and theatre. Far from treating his output in isolation, this book places it in the wider context alongside such composers as Lully, Lalande, Marais, FranAois Couperin and Rameau; it also views the composer in relation to his Italian training. In the process, the under-examined question of influence - who influenced Charpentier? whom did he influence? - repeatedly comes to the fore. The book's Foreword was written by H. Wiley Hitchcock shortly before he died. Hitchcock's own part in raising the profile of Charpentier and his music to the level of recognition which it now enjoys cannot be emphasized enough. Appropriately the volume is dedicated to his memory.

How have Handel's 'lives' in biographies and histories moulded our understanding of the musician, the man and the icon? To evaluate the familiar, even over-familiar, story of Handel's life could be seen as a quixotic endeavour. How can there be anything new to say? This book seeks to distinguish fact from fiction, not only to produce a new biography but also to explore the concepts of biography and dissemination by using Handel's life and lives as a case study. By examining the images of Handel to be found in biographies and music histories - the genius, the religious profound, the master of musical styles, the distiller into music of English sentiment, the glorifier of the Hanoverians, the hymner of the middle class, the independent, the prodigious, the generous, the sexless, the successful, the wealthy, the bankrupt, the pious, the crude, the heroic, the devious, the battler of ill-fortune, the moral exemplar - and by adding new factual information, David Hunter shows how events are manipulated into stories and tropes. Onesuch trope has been employed to portray numerous persons as Handel's enemies regardless of whether Handel considered them as such. Picking apart the writing of Handel's biographers and other reporters, Hunter exposes the narrative underpinnings - the lies, confusions, presumptions, and conclusions, whether direct and inferred or assumed - to show how Handel's 'lives' in biographies and histories have moulded our understanding of the musician, the man andthe icon. DAVID HUNTER is Music Librarian at the University of Texas at Austin.

Synopsis of Vocal Musick, by the unidentified A.B., was published in London in 1680 and appears to have only ever had one edition. Its relatively short shelf-life belies its importance to the history of early British music theory. Unlike other English theoretical writings of the period, the Synopsis derives many of its aspects from the continental theoretical tradition, including the first references in English theory to the modern fractional time signatures that had been invented in Italy in the mid-seventeenth century, the first references in English to compound time and the first explanations of tempo terms such as Adagio and Presto. In these respects the treatise forms an important link between English and continental theoretical traditions and may have encouraged the adoption of Italian principles which became a common feature of English writings by the early eighteenth century. The treatise is essentially in two parts. The first section of the book comprises rudimentary instruction on understanding notation and intervals, descriptions of common vocal ornaments and instruction in the process of learning to sing. The second part consists of a selection of psalms, songs and catches which are provided as exercises for the singer, though several of them require a reasonably advanced degree of skill. These pieces provide valuable insight into the way both sacred and secular music might have been performed by amateur musicians in the Restoration period. They include 14 rare English madrigal settings by the Italian composer Gastoldi - further evidence of the Italian influence which pervades the text. This is the first modern edition of the Synopsis, and indeed the first edition to appear since its original publication.

'How refreshing, to read a book about music written for a music lover and not a musicologist. In clear, lucid, entertaining prose, Jane Glover makes those of us who lack musical literacy better understand and appreciate Handel's divinity.' - Donna Leon, author of Handel's Bestiary and the Inspector Brunetti mysteries Handel in London tells the story of a young German composer who in 1712, followed his princely master to London and would remain there for the rest of his life. That master would become King George II and the composer was George Frideric Handel. Handel, then still only twenty-seven and largely self-taught, would be at the heart of musical activity in London for the next four decades, composing masterpiece after masterpiece, whether the glorious coronation anthem, Zadok the Priest, operas such as Giulio Cesare, Rinaldo and Alcina or the great oratorios, culminating, of course, in Messiah. Here, Jane Glover, who has conducted Handel's work in opera houses and concert halls throughout the world, draws on her profound understanding of music and musicians to tell Handel's story. It is a story of music-making and musicianship, of practices and practicalities, but also of courts and cabals, of theatrical rivalries and of eighteenth-century society. It is also, of course, the story of some of the most remarkable music ever written, music that has been played and sung, and loved, in this country - and throughout the world - for three hundred years.

This volume draws together a collection of Robin A. Leaver's essays on Bach's sacred music, exploring the religious aspects of this repertoire through consideration of three core themes: liturgy, hymnology, and theology. Rooted in a rich understanding of the historical sources, the book illuminates the varied ways in which Bach's sacred music was informed and shaped by the religious, ritual, and intellectual contexts of his time, placing these works in the wider history of Protestant church music during the Baroque era. Including research from across a span of forty years, the chapters in this volume have been significantly revised and expanded for this publication, with several pieces appearing in English for the first time. Together, they offer an essential compendium of the work of a leading scholar of theological Bach studies.

This pathbreaking study reveals Purcell's extensive use of symmetry and reversal in his much-loved trio sonatas, and shows how these hidden structural processes make his music multilayered and appealing. Purcell's trio sonatas are among the cornerstones of Baroque chamber music. The composer himself unassumingly described them as "a just imitation of the most famed Italian masters." However, analysis of their underlying structuresreveals that Purcell's modesty hides a highly original blend of Italian models, complex English traditional compositional devices, and his own near obsession with compositional and contrapuntal technique. Alon Schab'spathbreaking Sonatas of Henry Purcell: Rhetoric and Reversal begins with an overview of the two sets of sonatas and their sources, their movement types, and some of the basic compositional and rhetorical procedures they demonstrate. The book's main part highlights several covert structures that are not necessarily heard but are consistent and played an important part in the compositional process. Symmetry, both temporal and spatial, governs much ofthese underlying structures. Beneath the surface of his studies in Italian style, Purcell created intricate correspondences between the micro and macro levels of the works, as well as unities of proportions and, above all, impressive mirrorlike structures. Schab's book opens an important window to seventeenth-century compositional technique and offers further evidence of Purcell's use of advanced compositional techniques in works that aimed to be pleasurable for the amateur and excitingly thought-provoking for the professional. Alon Schab is a lecturer at the University of Haifa.

This deeply expressive arioso, which opens Handel's Ode for the Birthday of Queen Anne (1713), was performed at the wedding of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle at St George's Chapel, Windsor, on 19 May 2018. Originally scored in D major for counter-tenor, with trumpet and strings, the work is here arranged by John Rutter for performance by soprano and organ (or strings and organ continuo), with or without solo trumpet, in the slightly lower key of C major. This package contains (1) the orchestral score in C major, and (2) the instrumental parts (solo trumpet, 1st and 2nd violins, viola, cello, bass, organ continuo) in two versions, in C major and D flat major. The D flat version of the parts is to enable performance with modern strings but natural trumpet, the trumpet playing in Handel's original key of D major but at baroque pitch (A = 415).

These four splendid anthems were composed for the coronation of George II in October 1727 and have since retained a position at the heart of the English choral tradition. The popular anthem Zadok the priest has been performed at all subsequent coronations, and Handel's other contributions to the royal occasion - Let thy hand be strengthened, The King shall rejoice, and My heart is inditing - have the same majestic grandeur, with affecting contrasts between different sections of the sacred texts. The editor, Clifford Bartlett, has corrected various inconsistencies in Handel's score, and complete details of sources and editorial method, additional performance notes, and a critical commentary can be viewed in the companion full score available on hire. This continuo part is also available as part of the wind set.

Bach's Changing World is a study of popular culture in the community in which Bach spent the last, the longest, and the most productive part of his life: the Leipzig middle-class. The Leipzig middle-class evolved with the cooperation and gratitude of an extravagant, greedy, and disinterested absolutist ruler. Bach's Changing World documents how this community and other German communities responded toa variety of religious, social, and political demands that emerged during the years of the composer's lifetime. An accepted, admired, and trusted member of this community, as evidenced by the commissions he received for secular celebrations from royalty and members of the middle-class alike -- in addition to functioning as church composer -- Bach shared its values. Contributors: Carol K. Baron, Susan H. Gillespie, Katherine Goodman, Joyce L. Irwin, Tanya Kevorkian, Ulrich Siegele, John Van Cleve, and Ruben Weltsch. Carol K. Baron is Fellow for Life in the Department of Music at Stony Brook University, where she was co-founder and administrator of the Bach Aria Festival and Institute.

An examination of the work and music of the Royalist composer William Lawes. William Lawes is arguably one of the finest English composers of the early seventeenth century. Born in Salisbury in 1602, he rose to prominence in the early 1630s; in 1635 he gained a prestigious post among the elite private musicians of Charles I (the "Lutes, Viols and Voices"). With the outbreak of civil war in 1642, Lawes took arms in support of the king; he died during the Siege of Chester in September 1645. This book is divided into three sections. The first is a contextual examination of music at the court of Charles I, with specific reference to the abovementioned arcane group of musicians; much of Lawes's surviving consort music appears to have been written to be performed by this group. The remainder of the book deals with William Lawes the composer. The second section is a detailed study of Lawes's autograph sources: the first of its kind. It includes 62 black and white facsimile images, and complete inventories of all the autographs, and presents ground-breaking new research into Lawes's scribal hand, the sources and their functions, and new evidence for their chronology. The third section comprises six chapters on Lawes's consort music; in these chapters various topics are examined, such as chronology, Lawes's compositional process, and the relationship between Lawes's music and the court context from which it arose. This book willbe of interest to scholars working on English music in the Early Modern period, but also to those interested in source studies, compositional process and the function of music in the Early Modern court. JOHN CUNNINGHAMis a Senior Lecturer in Music, at Bangor University.

This collection presents a selection of varied repertoire by J. S. Bach in new arrangements for the organ. Bringing a wealth of popular pieces under the fingers and feet of intermediate players, the volume caters for all parts of a church service, as well as providing recital repertoire and popular encores. Taking its cue from the Baroque practice of transcription, and with the needs of modern players in mind, this volume presents a set of pieces with wide and varied use and makes a valuable addition to any organist's repertoire.

Exposes the roots of 18th-century musical cosmopolitanism through an investigation of exchanges and collaborations between musicians and dancers from the two major national musical traditions in the early years of the century. This study stems from discoveries in a trove of documents belonging to Charles-Henri de Lorraine, prince de Vaudemont, who served as governor of Milan under the Spanish crown from 1698 to 1706. These documents, together with a mass of other sources - letters, diaries, treatises, libretti, scores - offer a vivid new picture of musical life in Paris and Milan as well as exchanges between France and Italy. The book is both a patronage study and an examination of the contributions by - and the difficulties facing - musicians and dancers who worked across national and cultural boundaries. Music, Dance, and Franco-Italian Cultural Exchange, c.1700 follows the careers of the prince and the French violinist and composer Michel Pignolet de Monteclair. In the context of a renewed fascination with Italian music in the 1690s, Monteclair made a name for himself in Paris as a pedagogue and composer who understood both national styles and blended them in a way that was successful on French terms. Vaudemont hired Monteclair to direct a French violin band and to compose dance music for a series of new operas that observers declared "the best in Italy" but are virtually unknown today. These productions involved collaborations among a mixed company of French and Italian musicians, dancers, composers, and librettists modeled on the practice of Turinese court operas. The book is an account of the contributions of these figures to the cultural life of Paris, Milan, and other northern Italian states, and to the creative mixing of musical styles, operatic conventions, and dance technique in France and Italy through the 1720s and beyond. The connections fostered by Vaudemont thus played a heretofore unrecognized early role in the development of 18th-century cosmopolitanism, and they attest to both the liveliness and the artistic importance of such exchanges in the era before the well-known travels of Handel, Telemann, and Vivaldi.

Music, Place, and Identity in Italian Urban Soundscapes circa 1550-1860 presents new perspectives on the role music played in the physical, cultural, and civic spaces of Italian cities from the sixteenth to the nineteenth century. Across thirteen chapters, contributors explore the complex connections between sound and space within these urban contexts, demonstrating how music and sound were intimately connected to changing social and political practices. The volume offers a critical redefinition of the core concept of soundscape, considering musical practices through the lenses of territory, space, representation, and identity, in five parts: Soundscape, Phonosphere, and Urban History Urban Soundscapes across Time Urban Soundscapes and Acoustic Communities Urban Soundscapes in Literary Sources Reconstructing Urban Soundscapes in the Digital Era Music, Place, and Identity in Italian Urban Soundscapes circa 1550-1860 reframes our understanding of Italian music history beyond models of patronage, investigating how sounds and musics have contributed to the construction of human identities and communities.

The first book in nearly a century dedicated to a close examination of the musical works of Wilhelm Friedemann Bach, first son of Johann Sebastian Bach. The first-born of the four composer sons of Johann Sebastian Bach, Wilhelm Friedemann was often considered the most brilliant. Yet he left relatively few works and died in obscurity. This monograph, the first on the composer in nearly a century, identifies the unique features of Friedemann's music that make it worth studying and performing. It considers how Friedemann's training and upbringing differed from those of his brothers, leading to a style that diverged from that of his contemporaries. Central to the book are detailed discussions of all Friedemann's extant works: the virtuoso sonatas and concertos for keyboard instruments, the extraordinary chamber compositions (especially for flute), and the hitherto-neglected vocal music, including sacred cantatas and a remarkable work in honor of King Frederick the Great of Prussia. Special sections consider performance questions unique to Friedemann's music and provide a handy list of his works and their sources. Numerous musical examples provide glimpses of many little-known compositions, including a concerto ignored by previous students of Friedemann's music, here restored to hislist of works. David Schulenberg, Professor of Music at Wagner College in New York City, has performed much of W. F. Bach's output on harpsichord, clavichord, and fortepiano. His previous writings include The Keyboard Music of J. S. Bach and The Instrumental Music of C. P. E. Bach.

One of Europe's foremost experts on early guitar music explores this little known but richly rewarding repertoire. In the seventeenth century, like today, the guitar was often used for chord strumming ("battuto" in Italian) in songs and popular dance genres, such as the ciaccona or sarabanda. In the golden age of the baroque guitar, Italy gave rise to a unique solo repertoire, in which chord strumming and lute-like plucked ("pizzicato") styles were mixed. Italian Guitar Music of the Seventeenth Century: Battuto and Pizzicato explores this little-known repertoire, providing a historical background and examining particular performance issues. The book is accompanied by audio examples on a companion website. Lex Eisenhardt is one of Europe's foremost experts on early guitar. He teaches both classical guitar and historical plucked instruments at the Conservatory of Amsterdam. He has produced a number of highly acclaimed CD recordings, and has given concerts and masterclasses in Europe, the United States, and Australia.

In recent years, scholars and musicians have become increasingly interested in the revival of musical improvisation as it was known in the Renaissance and Baroque periods. This historically informed practice is now supplanting the late Romantic view of improvised music as a rhapsodic endeavour-a musical blossoming out of the capricious genius of the player-that dominated throughout the twentieth century. In the Renaissance and Baroque eras, composing in the mind (alla mente) had an important didactic function. For several categories of musicians, the teaching of counterpoint happened almost entirely through practice on their own instruments. This volume offers the first systematic exploration of the close relationship among improvisation, music theory, and practical musicianship from late Renaissance into the Baroque era. It is not a historical survey per se, but rather aims to re-establish the importance of such a combination as a pedagogical tool for a better understanding of the musical idioms of these periods. The authors are concerned with the transferral of historical practices to the modern classroom, discussing new ways of revitalising the study and appreciation of early music. The relevance and utility of such an improvisation-based approach also changes our understanding of the balance between theoretical and practical sources in the primary literature, as well as the concept of music theory itself. Alongside a word-centred theoretical tradition, in which rules are described in verbiage and enriched by musical examples, we are rediscovering the importance of a music-centred tradition, especially in Spain and Italy, where the music stands alone and the learner must distil the rules by learning and playing the music. Throughout its various sections, the volume explores the path of improvisation from theory to practice and back again.

Dr Peter Martens provides the first complete edited English translation of, and commentary on, Isaac Vossius's De poematum cantu et viribus rythmi, a late seventeenth-century work of Continental musical humanism. plays an important but poorly understood role in the continued development of rhythmopoeia; A full translation and accompanying discussion of Vossius's own sources and musical influences allows English-language students and scholars to access and study this work in the depth and to the degree it deserves.

The performance and composition of liturgical music at El Escorial re-examined. Philip II of Spain founded the great Spanish monastery and royal palace of El Escorial in 1563, promoting within it a musical foundation whose dual function as royal chapel and monastery in the service of a Counter Reformation monarch was unique; this volume explores the performance and composition of liturgical music there from its beginnings to the death of Charles II in 1700. It traces the ways in which music styles and practices responded to the the changing functions of the institution, challenging notions about Spanish musical patronage, scrutinising musical manuscripts, uncovering the biographical details of hundreds of musicians, and examining musical practices. Michael Noone is Professor of Musicology at the University of Hong Kong.

features chapters by a group of scholars and performers of varied backgrounds and specialties The premise of the volume is the idea that constructive dialogue between musicologists and musicians, stage directors and theater historians, as well as philologists and literary critics, can shed new light on Monteverdi's two Venetian operas. will appeal to scholars and researchers in Opera Studies and Music History as well as being of interest to early music performers and all those involved with presenting opera on stage.