Topics are musical signs developed and employed primarily during the long eighteenth century. Their significance relies on associations that are clearly recognizable to the listener with different genres, styles and types of music making. Topic theory, which is used to explain conventional subjects of musical composition in this period, is grounded in eighteenth-century music theory, aesthetics, and criticism, while drawing also from music cognition and semiotics. The concept of topics was introduced into by Leonard Ratner in the 1980s to account for cross-references between eighteenth-century styles and genres. As the invention of a twentieth-century academic, topic theory as a field is comparatively new, and The Oxford Handbook of Topic Theory provides a much-needed reconstruction of the field's aesthetic underpinnings.
The volume grounds the concept of topics in eighteenth-century music theory, aesthetics, and criticism. Documenting the historical reality of individual topics on the basis of eighteenth-century sources, it traces the origins of topical mixtures to transformations of eighteenth-century musical life, and relates topical analysis to other methods of music analysis conducted from the perspectives of composers, performers, and listeners. Focusing its scope on eighteenth-century musical repertoire, The Oxford Handbook of Topic Theory lays the foundation for further investigation of topics in music of the nineteenth, twentieth, and twenty-first centuries.

Many of the most famous composers in classical music spent considerable periods in spa towns, whether taking in the waters, or searching for patrons among the rich and influential clientele who frequented these pioneer resorts, or soaking up the relaxing and decadent ambience of these enchanted and magical places. At Baden bei Wein, Mozart wrote his Ave Verum Corpus, and Beethoven sketched out his Ninth Symphony. Johannes Brahms spent 17 summers in Baden-Baden, where he stayed in his own specially-built composing cavern and consorted with Clara Schumann. Berlioz came to conduct in Baden-Baden for nine seasons, writing his last major work, Beatrice and Benedict, for the town's casino manager. Chopin, Liszt, and Dvorak were each regular visitors to Carlsbad and Marienbad. And it was in Carlsbad that Beethoven met Goethe. Concerts, recitals, and resident orchestras have themselves played a major role in the therapeutic regimes and the social and cultural life of European and North American watering places since the late eighteenth century. To this day, these spa towns continue to host major music festivals of the highest caliber, drawing musicians and loyal audiences on both local and international levels.
This book explores the music making that went on in the spas and watering places in Europe and the United States during their heyday between the early-eighteenth and the mid-twentieth centuries. Music was a hugely important part of the experience of taking a spa cure. Bands played during the early morning and late afternoon while people took the waters and bathed. Spa orchestras and ensembles entertained those gathering socially or resting in assembly rooms, pump rooms and in gardens and parks. In the evenings spa guests enjoyed concerts, visits to the theatre, balls, dances and gambling sessions at the casino, at all of which music played a major role.
Expert author Ian Bradley draws on original archival material and the diaries and letters of composers. His book ranges chronologically and geographically, beginning with Bath and Baden near Vienna, which both flourished in the eighteenth century, continuing through Baden-Baden, the Bohemian spas and Bad Ischl in the nineteenth century and on to Buxton and Saratoga Springs which saw their glory days in the early twentieth century. A concluding chapter brings the subject up to date with a review of the musical activities taking place in spa towns today and of the music that accompanies treatments in modern spas, now so ubiquitous and so important and growing a feature in the booming world of leisure, tourism, health and well-being.

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

Throughout Spanish colonial America, limpieza de sangre (literally, "purity of blood ") determined an individual's status within the complex system of social hierarchy called casta. Within this socially stratified culture, those individuals at the top were considered to have the highest calidad-an all-encompassing estimation of a person's social status. At the top of the social pyramid were the Peninsulares: Spaniards born in Spain, who controlled most of the positions of power within the colonial governments and institutions. Making up most of the middle-class were criollos, locally born people of Spanish ancestry. During the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, Peninsulare intellectuals asserted their cultural superiority over criollos by claiming that American Spaniards had a generally lower calidad because of their "impure " racial lineage. Still, given their Spanish heritage, criollos were allowed employment at many Spanish institutions in New Spain, including the center of Spanish religious practice in colonial America: Mexico City Cathedral. Indeed, most of the cathedral employees-in particular, musicians-were middle-class criollos. In Playing in the Cathedral, author Jesus Ramos-Kittrell explores how liturgical musicians-choristers and instrumentalists, as well as teachers and directors-at Mexico City Cathedral in the mid-eighteenth century navigated changing discourses about social status and racial purity. He argues that criollos cathedral musicians, influenced by Enlightenment values of self-industry and autonomy, fought against the Peninsulare-dominated, racialized casta system. Drawing on extensive archival research, Ramos-Kittrell shows that these musicians held up their musical training and knowledge, as well as their institutional affiliation with the cathedral, as characteristics that legitimized their calidad and aided their social advancement. The cathedral musicians invoked claims of "decency " and erudition in asserting their social worth, arguing that their performance capabilities and theoretical knowledge of counterpoint bespoke their calidad and status as hombres decentes. Ultimately, Ramos-Kittrell argues that music, as a performative and theoretical activity, was a highly dynamic factor in the cultural and religious life of New Spain, and an active agent in the changing discourses of social status and "Spanishness " in colonial America. Offering unique and fascinating insights into the social, institutional, and artistic spheres in New Spain, this book is a welcome addition to scholars and graduate students with particular interests in Latin American colonial music and cultural history, as well as those interested in the intersections of music and religion.

Alla Osipenko is the gripping story of one of history's greatest ballerinas, a courageous rebel who paid the price for speaking truth to the Soviet state. The daughter of a distinguished Russian aristocratic and artistic family, Osipenko was born in 1932, but raised almost in a cocoon of pre-Revolutionary decorum and protocol. In Leningrad she studied directly under Agrippina Vaganova, the most revered and influential of all Russian ballet instructors. In 1950, she joined the Mariinsky (then-Kirov) Ballet, where her lines, shapes, movement both exemplified the venerable traditions of Russian ballet and projected those traditions into uncharted and experimental realms. She was the first of her generation of Kirov stars to enchant the West when she danced in Paris in 1956. Five years later, she was a key figure in the sensational success of the Kirov in its European debut. But Osipenko's sharp tongue and candid independence, as well as her almost-reckless flouting of Soviet rules for personal and political conduct, soon found her all but quarantined in Russia. An internationally acclaimed ballerina at the height of her career, she found that she would now have to prevail in the face of every attempt by the Soviet state and the Kirov administration to humble her. Throughout the book, Osipenko talks frankly and freely in a way that few Russians of her generation have allowed themselves to. She discusses her traumatic relationship to the Soviet state, her close but often-fraught relationship with her family, her four husbands, her lovers, her colleagues, her son's arrest for selling dollars in Leningrad and subsequent death. This biography features a cast of characters drawn from all sectors of Soviet and post-Perestroika society.

Examining, for the first time, the compositions of Johann Joseph Fux in relation to his contemporaries Bach and Handel, The Musical Discourse of Servitude presents a new theory of the late baroque musical imagination. Author Harry White contrasts musical "servility" and "freedom" in his analysis, with Fux tied to the prevailing servitude of the day's musical imagination, particularly the hegemonic flowering of North Italian partimento method across Europe. In contrast, both Bach and Handel represented an autonomy of musical discourse, with Bach exhausting generic models in the mass and Handel inventing a new genre in the oratorio. A potent critique of Lydia Goehr's seminal The Imaginary Museum of Musical Works, The Musical Discourse of Servitude draws on Goehr's formulation of the "work-concept" as an imaginary construct which, according to Goehr, is an invention of nineteenth-century reception history. White locates this concept as a defining agent of automony in Bach's late works, and contextualized the "work-concept" itself by exploring rival concepts of political, religious, and musical authority which define the European musical imagination in the first half of the eighteenth century. A major revisionist statement about the musical imagination in Western art music, The Musical Discourse of Servitude will be of interest to scholars of the Baroque, particularly of Bach and Handel.

An eye-opening reexamination of Handel's beloved religious oratorio Every Easter, audiences across the globe thrill to performances of Handel's "Hallelujah Chorus," but they would probably be appalled to learn the full extent of the oratorio's anti-Judaic message. In this pioneering study, respected musicologist Michael Marissen examines Handel's masterwork and uncovers a disturbing message of anti-Judaism buried within its joyous celebration of the divinity of the Christ. Discovering previously unidentified historical source materials enabled the author to investigate the circumstances that led to the creation of the Messiah and expose the hateful sentiments masked by magnificent musical artistry-including the famed "Hallelujah Chorus," which rejoices in the "dashing to pieces" of God's enemies, among them the "people of Israel." Marissen's fascinating, provocative work offers musical scholars and general readers alike an unsettling new appreciation of one of the world's best-loved and most widely performed works of religious music.

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A monumental accomplishment from the age of Enlightenment, the string quartets of Joseph Haydn hold a central place not only in the composer's oeuvre, but also in our modern conception of form, style, and expression in the instrumental music of his day. Here, renowned music historians Floyd and Margaret Grave present a fresh perspective on a comprehensive survey of the works. This thorough and unique analysis offers new insights into the creation of the quartets, the wealth of musical customs and conventions on which they draw, the scope of their innovations, and their significance as reflections of Haydn's artistic personality. Each set of quartets is characterized in terms of its particular mix of structural conventions and novelties, stylistic allusions, and its special points of connection with other opus groups in the series. Throughout the book, the authors draw attention to the boundless supply of compositional strategies by which Haydn appears to be continually rethinking, reevaluating, and refining the quartet's potentials. They also lucidly describe Haydn's famous penchant for wit, humor, and compositional artifice, illuminating the unexpected connections he draws between seemingly unrelated ideas, his irony, and his lightning bolts of surprise and thwarted expectation. Approaching the quartets from a variety of vantage points, the authors correct many prevailing assumptions about convention, innovation, and developing compositional technique in the music of Haydn and his contemporaries.
Going beyond traditional modes of study, The String Quartets of Joseph Haydn blends historical analysis and factual information with critical appraisal in a way that will engage all Haydnenthusiasts.

In 1714, the 29 year-old Johann Sebastian Bach was promoted to the position of concertmaster at the ducal court of Weimar. This post required him for the first time in his already established career to produce a regular stream of church cantatas-one cantata every four weeks. Among the most significant works of this period is Ich hatte viel Bekummernis in meinem Herzen (Cantata 21). Generally known in English as "I had much affliction," Cantata 21 draws from several psalms and the Book of Revelations and offers a depiction of the spiritual ascent of the soul from intense tribulation to joy and exaltation. Although widely performed and loved by musicians, Cantata 21 has endured much criticism from scholars and critics who claim that the piece lacks organizational clarity and stylistic coherence. In Tears into Wine, renowned Bach scholar Eric Chafe challenges the scholarly consensus, arguing that Cantata 21 is an exceptionally carefully designed work, and that it displays a convergence of musical structure and theological purpose that is paradigmatic of Bach's sacred work as a whole. Drawing on a wide range of Lutheran theological writing, Chafe shows that Cantata 21 reaches beyond the scope of the individual liturgical occasion to voice a breadth of meaning that encompasses much of the core of Lutheran thought. Chafe artfully demonstrates that instead of simply presenting a musical depiction of the soul's journey from sorrow to bliss, Cantata 21 expresses the various stages of God's revelation and their impact on the believing soul. As a result, Chafe reveals that Cantata 21 has a formal design that mirrors Lutheran belief in unfolding revelation, with the final movement representing the work's "crown"-the goal toward which all of the earlier movements are directed. Complete with full text translations of the cantata and the liturgical readings that would have accompanied it at the first performance, Tears into Wine is a monumental book that is ideally suited for Bach scholars and students, as well as those generally interested in the relationship between theology and music.

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.

Georg Philipp Telemann gave us one of the richest legacies of instrumental music from the eighteenth century. Though considered a definitive contribution to the genre during his lifetime, his concertos, sonatas, and suites were then virtually ignored for nearly two centuries following his death. Yet these works are now among the most popular in the baroque repertory. In Music for a Mixed Taste , Steven Zohn considers Telemann's music from stylistic, generic, and cultural perspectives. He investigates the composer's cosmopolitan "mixed taste"-a blending of the French, Italian, English, and Polish national styles-and his imaginative expansion of this concept to embrace mixtures of the old (late baroque) and new (galant) styles. Telemann had an equally remarkable penchant for generic amalgamation, exemplified by his pioneering role in developing hybrid types such as the sonata in concerto style ("Sonate auf Concertenart") and overture-suite with solo instrument ("Concert en ouverture"). Zohn examines the extramusical meanings of Telemann's "characteristic" overture-suites, which bear descriptive texts associating them with literature, medicine, politics, religion, and the natural world, and which acted as vehicles for the composer's keen sense of musical humor. Zohn then explores Telemann's unprecedented self-publishing enterprise at Hamburg, and sheds light on the previously unrecognized borrowing by J.S. Bach from a Telemann concerto. Music for a Mixed Taste further reveals how Telemann's style polonaise generates musical and social meanings through the timeless oppositions of Orient-Occident, urban-rural, and serious-comic.

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.

In Bewitching Russian Opera: The Tsarina from State to Stage, Inna Naroditskaya investigates the musical lives of four female monarchs who ruled Russia for most of the eighteenth century - Catherine I, Anna, Elizabeth, and Catherine the Great. Engaging with ethnomusicological, historical, and philological approaches, her study traces the tsarinas' deeply invested interest in musical drama, as each built theaters, established drama schools, commissioned operas and ballets, and themselves wrote and produced musical plays. Naroditskaya examines the creative output of the tsarinas across the contexts in which they worked and lived, revealing significant connections between their personal creative aspirations and contemporary musical-theatrical practices, and the political and state affairs conducted during their reigns. Bewitching Russian Opera ultimately demonstrates that the theater served as an experimental space for these imperial women, in which they rehearsed, probed, and formulated gender and class roles, and enacted on the musical stage political ambitions and international conquests which they would later carry out on the world stage itself.
Beginning with the eighteenth-century imperial court, Naroditskaya illustrates the increased theatricality of the court and the popularity of musical theater among nobles, which occurred alongside an appropriation of folk and court ceremonies into the theater. Through contemporary performance theory, she demonstrates how the opportunity for role-playing and costume-changing in performative spaces allowed individuals to cross otherwise rigid boundaries of class and gender. A close look at a series of operas and musical theater productions - from Catherine the Great's fairy tale operas to Tchaikovsky's Pique Dame - illuminates the transition of these royal women from powerful political and cultural figures during their own reigns, to a marginalized and unreal Other under the patriarchal dominance of the subsequent period. These tsarinas successfully fostered the concept of a modern nation and collective national identity, only to then have their power and influence undone in Russian cultural consciousness through the fairy-tales operas of the 19th century that positioned tsarinas as "magical" and dangerous figures rightfully displaced and conquered--by triumphant heroes on the stage, and by the new patriarchal rulers in the state.

Composer, diplomat, bishop: Agostino Steffani (1654-1728) was one of the most remarkable figures in late-17th and early-18th century Europe. Steffani began his life as a composer, musician, and courtier, but his accomplishments brought him high-level positions in the courts of Germany and in the Catholic Church. This book is the first to discuss all the periods and facets of Agostino Steffani's extraordinary career and to examine his entire output of musical works.

The genius of Johann Sebastian Bach transcends the boundaries of time, geography, and discipline. This collection of essays, the outgrowth of a conference held at Hofstra University, celebrates the tercentenary of the composer's birth. The contributors contend that Bach's influence extends far beyond his own life time and art form. They show the often unanticipated impact of his works in such diverse areas as literature, film, religion, and psychology.

The wide-ranging articles offer theoretical analysis, biographical-musical interpretation, literary and religious explorations, and analyses of performance practice. They range from Howard Adams' discussion of how Bach contemporized scripture in his cantatas to Richard Spurgeon Hall's consideration of how Bach and Edwards viewed religious affections. Stephen Gottlieb assesses Bach's "Musical Offering" as an autobiographical work. Fritz Sammern-Frankenegg explores the expression of Bach's messages in the film work of Ingmar Bergman while the unlikely coupling of Bach and English author Aldous Huxley is reviewed by Sister Ann Edward Bennis. Charles M. Joseph suggests that the structure and pacing of selected Bach "Praeludia" reflect previously unseen architectural influences. The convergence of musical expression and musical rhetoric in Bach's keyboard works are the subject of David Schulenberg while Don L. Smithers reconstructs the circumstances surrounding a performance of Bach's "Leipzig Church CantataS." This unique appeal of this volume lies in its presentation of a wide range of new and provocative scholarship. The exploration of new aspects of the genius of Johann Sebastian Bach is certain to interest anyone interested in his life, work, and influence.

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.

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 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.

'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.

One of the most fascinating figures of seventeenth-century music, composer and singer Antonia Padoani Bembo (c.1640 - c.1720) was active in both Venice and Paris. Her work provides a unique cross-cultural window into the rich musical cultures of these cities, yet owing to her clandestine existence in France, for almost three centuries Bembo's life was shrouded in mystery. In this first-ever biography, Clare Fontijn unveils the enthralling and surprising story of a remarkable woman who moved in the musical, literary, and artistic circles of these European cultural centers. Rebuffed in the attempt to divorce her abusive husband, Bembo fled to Paris, leaving her children in Venice. Joining ranks with composers glorifying Louis XIV, her song charmed the Sun King and won over his court's sympathy to the cause of women. She obtained his sponsorship to live in a semi-cloistered community in Paris, where she wrote music for the spiritual and worldly needs of the royal family. Offering fine examples of sacred and secular vocal repertory for chamber settings and large ensembles, Bembo's oeuvre reveals her preoccupation with female agency through dynamic portrayals of such powerful figures as the Virgin Mary and the Duchess of Burgundy. The genres in which she worked-love song, opera, motet, cantata, trio sonata, and air-testify to the magic of her voice and to her place alongside Strozzi, Jacquet de La Guerre, and other major women composers of her time. Expertly engaging with musicology, history, and gender studies, Claire Fontijn tells the story of a brave and daring woman while providing a valuable key to a long-hidden treasure trove of music. A groundbreaking biography, Desperate Measures details the compelling life and music of a woman with courage, determination, and talent who thrived within the dictates of society and culture.

In the last decades of the 17th century, the feast of Christmas in Lutheran Germany underwent a major transformation when theologians and local governments waged an early modern "war on Christmas," discouraging riotous pageants and carnivalesque rituals in favor of more personal and internalized expressions of piety. Christmas rituals, such as the "Heilig Christ" plays and the rocking of the child (Kindelwiegen) were abolished, and Christian devotion focused increasingly on the metaphor of a birth of Christ in the human heart. John Sebastian Bach's Christmas Oratorio, composed in 1734, both reflects this new piety and conveys the composer's experience living through this tumult during his own childhood and early career. Markus Rathey's book is the first thorough study of this popular masterpiece in English. While giving a comprehensive overview of the Christmas Oratorio as a whole, the book focuses on two themes in particular: the cultural and theological understanding of Christmas in Bach's time and the compositional process that led Bach from the earliest concepts to the completed piece. The cultural and religious context of the oratorio provides the backdrop for Rathey's detailed analysis of the composition, in which he explores Bach's compositional practices, for example, his reuse and parodies of movements that had originally been composed for secular cantatas. The book analyzes Bach's original score and sheds new light on the way Bach wrote the piece, how he shaped musical themes, and how he revised his initial ideas into the final composition.

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.