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Books > Music > Western music, periods & styles > Baroque music (c 1600 to c 1750)
Music at German Courts serves to illustrate the extraordinary diversity of eighteenth-century German court music establishments without losing sight of what these Kapellen had in common. What was musical life at German courts really like during the eighteenth century? Were musical ensembles as diverse as the Holy Roman Empire's kaleidoscopic political landscape? Through a series of individual case studies contributed by leading scholars from Germany, Poland, the United States, Canada, and Australia, this book investigates the realities of musical life at fifteen German courts of varied size (ranging from kingdoms to principalities), religious denomination, and geographical location. Significant shifts that occurred in the artistic priorities of each court are presented through a series of "snapshots"- in effect "core sample" years - which highlight both individualand shared patterns of development and decline. What emerges from the wealth of primary source material examined in this volume is an in-depth picture of music-making within the daily life of individual courts, featuring acast of music directors, instrumentalists, and vocalists, together with numerous support staff drawn from across Europe. Music at German Courts serves to illustrate the extraordinary diversity of eighteenth-century German court music establishments without losing sight of what these Kapellen had in common. SAMANTHA OWENS is Senior Lecturer in Musicology at the University of Queensland, Brisbane, Australia. BARBARA M. REUL is Associate Professor of Musicology at Luther College, University of Regina, Canada. JANICE B. STOCKIGT is a Principal Fellow of the University of Melbourne, Australia. Contributors: DIETER KIRSCH, URSULA KRAMER, MICHAEL MAUL, MARY OLESKIEWICZ, SAMANTHA OWENS, RASHID-S. PEGAH, BAERBEL PELKER, BARBARA M. REUL, WOLFGANG RUF, BERT SIEGMUND, JANICE B. STOCKIGT, MICHAEL TALBOT, RUEDIGER THOMSEN-FUERST, ALINA ZORAWSKA-WITKOWSKA, STEVEN ZOHN
This is the third volume in an on-going series of books surveying the choral-orchestral repertoire. In this study, Green reviews Bach's entire oeuvre, including the more than two hundred works that are rarely performed and therefore rarely discussed. All Bach's works from BWV1 to BWV249 are analyzed, making this volume one of the most useful handbooks on this repertoire. Green reviews each work in great detail, providing information such as an instrumentation list, performance times, publishers, availability of materials, manuscript location (when possible), the hand of the copyist(s), text sources, a discography, and bibliographies specific to each composition. Most importantly, for each work there is a detailed description of the performance issues within the score. This includes evaluations of each solo vocal role, an evaluation of the choral and orchestral parts, along with an estimation of their respective difficulties. There are a number of indexes that provide brief biographical or historical information about each text source indexed back to the works themselves. There is also an index of works by type, vocal solos, choral voicing, instrumentation, liturgical calendar, performance chronology, title, and chorale usage.
Although he is often identified as a Monteverdi scholar (Approaches to Monteverdi: Aesthetic, Psychological, Analytical and Historical Studies, published in the Variorum series in 2013), the majority of Jeffrey Kurtzman's work has focused on other sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Italian sacred music. Organized into three sections, part one begins with a chapter on the Monteverdi Mass and Vespers of 1610 which spotlights the other major work in Monteverdi's first prominent sacred print, the Missa in illo tempore, followed by examples of Kurtzman's work on the sacred music of other composers such as Giovanni Francesco Capello and Palestrina. The section concludes with a piece on polyphonic psalm structures in seventeenth-century Italian Office music. Part two includes pieces which explore the relationship between the standard clef set, the high clef set, specific Magnificat tones and sounding pitch in the Magnificats of Roman composers; the issue of polyphonic psalm antiphons and the question of vocal and instrumental substitutes for plainchant antiphons in the Vespers service; and the use of instruments in the performance of sacred music, demonstrating that the concertato style of the seventeenth century had its origins in the practice of substituting instruments for voices and doubling voices with instruments, thereby introducing multifaceted possibilities for varying sonorities through the course of a composition. Part 3 contains two articles: the first surveying various styles in the Office repertoire of the seventeenth-century based on the approximately 1500 prints of Italian Office music in Kurtzman's and Anne Schnoebelen's catalogue of Mass, Office and Holy Week Music Printed in Italy, 1516-1770. The second article, published for the first time in this volume, assesses the impact on Italian liturgical music of the Catholic reform of the second half of the sixteenth-century.
This volume gathers together twelve essays on the composer's music, reflecting the author's interests in aesthetic and psychological issues, the sacred works, methods of structural analysis, and the problems of making critical editions. The opera Orfeo and two madrigals from Monteverdi's Book Eight are the subject of aesthetic and psychological investigation, especially from the perspective of Michel Foucault's The Order of Things and the psychology of C.J. Jung, all supported by musical analysis. Two essays analyze in detail the structural principles of the psalms Laetatus sum from the 1610 Vespers and the first Dixit Dominus from the Sevla Morale e spirituale of 1641. Two others re-examine the story of Monteverdi's Mass of Thanksgiving and consider the question of what sacred music Monteverdi actually or likely wrote but is now lost. The final essay critiques and compares the methodology and problems of the Malipiero and Cremona editions of Monteverdi's Opera Omnia. All but one of these essays were originally published over a time span of twenty years in journals, conference reports, Festschriften, and as book chapters. The majority of them were not widely distributed or readily available until now. The essay on the Malipiero and Cremona editions appears here for the first time.
This annotated bibliography of J.S. Bach studies bring together in one place the most important and useful resources, describes the tools available for Bach research, and provides starting points for reading on many works and topics. Keeping the needs of the beginning Bach scholar firmly in mind, the authors provide concise explanations and summaries of important and potentially confusing topics in Bach research. Topics include bibliographic tools and sources; Bach's world; repertory and editions; vocal and instrumental music; performance; and approaches to Bach's music. The book concludes with detailed indexes of all topics, authors, and titles cited.
The composition of the solo concerto studied as an evolving debate (rather than a static technique), and for its stylistic features. The solo concerto, a vast and important repertory of the early to mid eighteenth century, is known generally only through a dozen concertos by Vivaldi and a handful of works by Albinoni and Marcello. The authors aim to bring thisrepertory to greater prominence and have, since 1995, been involved in a research programme of scoring and analysing over nine hundred concertos, representing nearly the entire repertory available in early prints and manuscripts.Drawing on this research, they present a detailed study and analysis of the first-movement ritornello form, the central concept that enabled composers to develop musical thinking on a large scale. Their approach is firstly to present the ritornello form as a rhetorical argument, a musical process that dynamically unfolds in time; and secondly to challenge notions of a linear stylistic development from baroque to classical, instead discovering composers trying out different options, which might themselves become norms against which new experiments could be made. SIMON McVEIGH is Professor of Music, Goldsmiths College, University of London; JEHOASH HIRSHBERG is Professor in the Musicology Department, Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
Research in the 20th and 21st centuries into historical performance practice has changed not just the way performers approach music of the 17th and 18th centuries but, eventually, the way audiences listen to it. This volume, beginning with a 1915 Saint-SaA"ns lecture on the performance of old music, sets out to capture musicological discussion that has actually changed the way Baroque music can sound. The articles deal with historical instruments, pitch, tuning, temperament, the nexus between technique and style, vibrato, the performance implications of musical scores, and some of the vexed questions relating to rhythmic alteration. It closes with a section on the musicological challenges to the ideology of the early music movement mounted (principally) in the 1990s. Leading writers on historical performance practice are represented. Recognizing that significant developments in historically-inspired performance have been led by instrument makers and performers, the volume also contains representative essays by key practitioners.
Listeners, performers, students and teachers will find here the analytical tools they need to understand and interpret musical evidence from the baroque era. Scores for eleven works, many reproduced in facsimile to illustrate the conventions of 17th and 18th century notation, are included for close study. Readers will find new material on continuo playing, as well as extensive treatment of singing and French music. The book is also a concise guide to reference materials in the field of baroque performance practice with extensive annotated bibliographies of modern and baroque sources that guide the reader toward further study. First published by Ashgate (at that time known as Scolar Press) in 1992 and having been out of print for some years, this title is now available as a print on demand title.
The viola da gamba was a central instrument in European music from the late 15th century well into the late 18th. In this comprehensive study, Bettina Hoffmann offers both an introduction to the instrument -- its construction, technique and history -- for the non-specialist, interweaving this information with a wealth of original archival scholarship that experts will relish. The book begins with a description of the instrument, and here Hoffmann grapples with the complexity of various names applied to this and related instruments. Following two chapters on the instrument's construction and ancestry, the core of the book is given to a historical and geographical survey of the instrument from its origins into the classical period. The book closes with a look at the revival of interest in the 19th and 20th centuries.
For nearly two centuries, Johann Sebastian Bach has been regarded as a cornerstone of Western musical culture. His music inspired subsequent generations of composers and philosophers alike, and continues to capture our imaginations in many ways. Bach studies is part of this picture, often seen as providing excellent examples of musicological scholarship. For The Baroque Masters: Bach, the editor has chosen thirty-three published articles which, in his view, not only represent a broad spectrum of the scholarly discussions on Bach's life and works, but will also facilitate the on-going study of Bach's creative genius. The articles have been selected to ensure that this volume will be considered useful for not only those students who are currently engaging in Bach studies at universities but also for more seasoned Bach scholars as they consider future direction of Bach studies.
The past four decades have seen an explosion in research regarding seventeenth-century opera. In addition to investigations of extant scores and librettos, scholars have dealt with the associated areas of dance and scenery, as well as newer disciplines such as studies of patronage, gender, and semiotics. While most of the essays in the volume pertain to Italian opera, others concern opera production in France, England, Spain and the Germanic countries.
Since 1978, the 300th anniversary of Vivaldi's death, there has been an explosion of serious writing about his music, life and times. Much of this has taken the form of articles published in academic journals or conference proceedings, some of which are not easy to obtain. The twenty-two articles selected by Michael Talbot for this volume form a representative selection of the best writing on Vivaldi from the last 30 years, featuring such major figures in Vivaldi research as Reinhard Strohm, Paul Everett, Gastone Vio and Federico Maria Sardelli. Aspects covered include biography, Venetian cultural history, manuscript studies, genre studies and musical analysis. The intention is to serve as a 'first port of call' for those wishing to learn more about Vivaldi or to refresh their existing knowledge. An introduction by Michael Talbot reviews the state of Vivaldi scholarship past and present and comments on the significance of the articles.
This anthology represents scholarly literature devoted to Handel over the last few decades, and contains different kinds of studies of the composer's biography, operatic career, singers, librettists, and his relationship with the music of other composers. Case studies range from recent research that transforms our knowledge of large-scale English works to an interdisciplinary exploration of an individual opera aria. Designed to bring easy and convenient access to students, performers and music lovers, the wide-ranging articles are selected by David Vickers (co-editor of the recent Cambridge Handel Encyclopedia) from diverse sources - not only familiar important journals, but also specialist yearbooks, festschrifts, not easily accessible newsletters, conference proceedings and exhibition catalogues. Many of these represent an up-to-date understanding of modern Handel studies, deal with fascinating biographical issues (such as the composer's art collection, his chronic health problems, and the nature of popular anecdotal evidence), and fill gaps in the mainstream Handelian literature.
The 300th anniversary of Henry Purcell's death in 1995 stimulated a good deal of new research into his music, its sources, performance, reception and cultural context. The 23 articles in this volume have been chosen by Peter Holman as a representative selection of the best scholarly writing over the last few decades, featuring most of the leading Purcell scholars, including Curtis Price, Robert Thompson, Robert Shay, Bruce Wood, Rebecca Herissone, and Christopher Hogwood, though it also includes some earlier classic articles, by Michael Tilmouth, Richard Luckett, Margaret Laurie and others. The four sections are 'Biography and Contexts', 'Sources, Editing and Publishing', 'Styles, Genres and Compositional Process', and 'Performance, Performance Practice and Reception'. Peter Holman's introduction explores the history of Purcell scholarship, reviews its present state, comments on the significance of the articles, and offers a prospect for the future.
Claudio Monteverdi is now recognized as the towering figure of a critical transitional moment of Western music history: relentless innovator in every genre within chamber, church and theatre music; self-proclaimed leader of a 'new dispensation' between words and their musical expression; perhaps even 'Creator of Modern Music'. During recent years, as his arrestingly attractive music has been brought back to life in performance, so too have some of the most outstanding musicologists focussed intensely on Monteverdi as they worked through the 'big' questions in the historiography and hermeneutics of early Baroque music, including musical representation of language; compositional theory; social, institutional, cultural and gender history; performance practices and more. The 17 articles in this volume have been selected by Richard Wistreich to exemplify the best scholarship in English and because each, in retrospect, turns out to have been a ground-breaking contribution to one or more significant strands in Monteverdi studies.
1) Adopts a completely new approach, compared to the major textbooks -- retaining the European tradition and a historically framed narrative, within a history of all the world's music. 2) Better reflects the realities of musical life today in the United States 3) Teaches students the value of examining music from a perspective that values diversity, equity, and inclusion. 4) Unique pedagogical structure that offers one guided listening example per "Gateway," and asks students to ponder the same five questions per example: what is it, how does it work (musically), what does it mean (socially, culturally), what is its history, and where can I go from here (to learn more about this tradition)
The eighteenth century arguably boasts a more remarkable group of significant musical figures, and a more engaging combination of genres, styles and aesthetic orientations, than any century before or since, yet huge swathes of its musical activity remain under-appreciated. The Cambridge History of Eighteenth-Century Music provides a comprehensive survey, examining little-known repertories, works and musical trends alongside more familiar ones. Rather than relying on temporal, periodic and composer-related phenomena to structure the volume, it is organised by genre; chapters are grouped according to the traditional distinctions of music for the church, music for the theatre and music for the concert room that conditioned so much thinking, activity and output in the eighteenth century. A valuable summation of current research in this area, the volume also encourages readers to think of eighteenth-century music less in terms of overtly teleological developments than of interacting and mutually stimulating musical cultures and practices.
This book explores the exchange of music, musicians and musical practice between Britain and the Continent in the period c.1500-1800. This book explores the exchange of music, musicians and musical practice between Britain and the Continent in the period c.1500-1800. Inspired by Peter Holman's research and performing activities, the essays in the volume developthe theme of exchange and dialogue through the lenses of people, practices and repertory and consider the myriad ways in which musical culture participated in the dynamic relationship between Europe and Britain. Key areas addressed are music and travel; music publishing; emigre musicians; performing practice; dissemination of music and musical practice; and instruments. Holman's work has revealed the mechanisms by which continental practices were adapted to local circumstances and has helped to show that Britain enjoyed a vigorous musical culture in the long eighteenth century, in which native proponents produced original works of quality and interest and did not simply copy continental models. Following avenues opened up by Holman' scholarship, contributors to this volume explore a variety of ways in which the cross-fertilization of music and musicians has enriched European, and especially British, cultureof the early modern period.
An innovative study of the ways in which theological themes related to earthly and heavenly 'treasures' and Bach's own apparent attentiveness to the spiritual values related to money intertwined in his sacred music. In Johann Sebastian Bach's Lutheran church setting, various biblical ideas were communicated through sermons and songs to encourage parishioners to emulate Christian doctrine in their own lives. Such narratives are based on an understanding that one's lifetime on earth is a temporal passageway to eternity after death, where souls are sent either to heaven or hell based on one's belief or unbelief. Throughout J. S. Bach's Material and Spiritual Treasures, Bach scholar Noelle M. Heber explores theological themes related to earthly and heavenly 'treasures' in Bach's sacred music through an examination of selected texts from Bach's personal theological library. The book's storyline is organised around biblical concepts that are accented in Lutheran thought and in Bach's church compositions, such as the poverty and treasure of Christ and parables that contrast material and spiritual riches. While focused primarily on the greater theological framework, Heber presents an updated survey of Bach's own financial situation and considers his apparent attentiveness to spiritual values related to money. This multifaceted study investigates intertwining biblical ideologies and practical everyday matters in a way that features both Bach's religious context and his humanity. This book will appeal to musicologists, theologians, musicians, students, and Bach enthusiasts.
Federico Maria Sardelli writes from the perspective of a professional baroque flautist and recorder-player, as well as from that of an experienced and committed scholar, in order to shed light on the bewildering array of sizes and tunings of the recorder and transverse flute families as they relate to Antonio Vivaldi's compositions. Sardelli draws copiously on primary documents to analyse and place in context the capable and surprisingly progressive instrumental technique displayed in Vivaldi's music. The book includes a discussion of the much-disputed chronology of Vivaldi's works, drawing on both internal and external evidence. Each known piece by him in which the flute or the recorder appears is evaluated fully from historical, biographical, technical and aesthetic standpoints. This book is designed to appeal not only to Vivaldi scholars and lovers of the composer's music, but also to players of the two instruments, students of organology and those with an interest in late baroque music in general. Vivaldi is a composer who constantly springs surprises as, even today, new pieces are discovered or old ones reinterpreted. Much has happened since Sardelli's book was first published in Italian, and this new English version takes full account of all these new discoveries and developments. The reader will be left with a much fuller picture of the composer and his times, and the knowledge and insights gained from minutely examining his music for these two wind instruments will be found to have a wider relevance for his work as a whole. Generous music examples and illustrations bring the book's arguments to life.
Renaissance music, like its sister arts, was most often experienced collectively. While it was possible to read Renaissance polyphony silently from a music manuscript or print, improvise alone, or perform as a soloist, the very practical nature of Renaissance music defied individualism. The reading and improvisation of polyphony was most frequently achieved through close co-operation, and this mutual endeavour extended beyond the musicians to include the society to which it is addressed. In sixteenth-century Milan, music, an art traditionally associated with the court and cathedral, came to be appropriated by the old nobility and the new aristocracy alike as a means of demonstrating social primacy and newly acquired wealth. As class mobility assumed greater significance in Milan and the size of the city expanded beyond its Medieval borders, music-making became ever more closely associated with public life. With its novel structures and diverse urban spaces, sixteenth-century Milan offered an unlimited variety of public performance arenas. The city's political and ecclesiastical authorities staged grand processions, church services, entertainments, and entries aimed at the propagation of both church and state. Yet the private citizen utilized such displays as well, creating his own miniature spectacle in a visual and an aural imitation of the ecclesiastical and political panoply of the age. Using archival documents, music prints, manuscripts and contemporary writing, Getz examines the musical culture of sixteenth-century Milan via its life within the city's most influential social institutions to show how fifteenth-century courtly traditions were adapted to the public arena. The book considers the relationship of the primary cappella musicale, including those of the Duomo, the court of Milan, Santa Maria della Scala, and Santa Maria presso San Celso, to the sixteenth-century institutions that housed them. In addition, the book investigates the musician's role as an actor and a functionary in the political, religious, and social spectacles produced by the Milanese church, state, and aristocracy within the city's diverse urban spaces. Furthermore, it establishes a context for the numerous motets, madrigals, and lute intabulations composed and printed in sixteenth-century Milan by examining their function within the urban milieu in which they were first performed. Finally, it musically documents Milan's transformation from a ducal state dominated by provincial traditions into a mercantile centre of international acclaim. Such an important study in Italian Renaissance music will therefore appeal to anyone interested in the culture of Renaissance Italy.
The English Bach Awakening concerns the introduction into England of J.S. Bach's music and information about him. Hitherto this subject has been called 'the English Bach revival', but that is a misnomer. 'Revival' implies prior life, yet no reference to Bach or to his music is known to have been made in England during his lifetime (1685-1750). The book begins with a comprehensive chronology of the English Bach Awakening. Eight chapters follow, written by Dr Philip Olleson, Dr Yo Tomita and the editor, Michael Kassler, which treat particular parts of the Awakening and show how they developed. A focus of the book is the history of the manuscripts and the printed editions of Bach's '48' - The Well-tempered Clavier - in England at this time, and its culmination in the 'analysed' edition that Samuel Wesley and Charles Frederick Horn published in 1810-1813 and later revised. Wesley's multifaceted role in the Bach Awakening is detailed, as are the several efforts that were made to translate Forkel's biography of Bach into English. A chapter is devoted to A.F.C. Kollmann's endeavour to prove the regularity of Bach's Chromatic Fantasy, and the book concludes with a discussion of portraits of Bach in England before 1830.
Analysing over 100 recordings from 1945-1975, this book examines twentieth-century baroque performance practice as evinced in all the commercially available recordings of J.S. Bach's Passions, Brandenburg Concertos and Goldberg Variations. Dorottya Fabian presents a qualitative, style-orientated history of the early music movement in its formative years through a comparison of the performance style heard in these recordings with the scholarly literature on Bach performance practice. Issues explored in the book include the availability of resources, balance, tempo, dynamics, ornamentation, rhythm and articulation. During the decades following the Second World War, the early music movement was more concerned with the revival of repertoire than with the revival of performance style which meant that its characteristics and achievements differed essentially from those of the later 1970s and 1980s. Period practice techniques were not practised even by ensembles using eighteenth-century instruments. Yet, as this survey reveals, several recordings of the period provide unexpectedly stylish interpretations using metre and pulse to punctuate the music. Such metric performance and appropriate articulation helped to clarify structure and texture and assisted in the creation of a musical discourse - the pre-eminent goal of baroque compositions.
Stephen Bonta's research on seventeenth-century Italian music, particularly for strings, spans more than 30 years. Included in this selection of his published articles is his seminal study of the early history of the bass violin which proved to be the foundation for his subsequent articles on the early history of the violoncello. In addition to the discussions of secular instrumental music, the volume features essays that explore Italian sacred music of the period, including Monteverdi's Marian Vespers.
This complete scholarly edition of the collection of manuscript choreographies from c.1565-c.1675 associated with the Inns of Court is the first full-length study of these sources to be published. It offers practical reconstructions of the dances and provides a selection of musical settings simply but idiomatically arranged for four-part instrumental ensemble or keyboard. A Part One centres on the manuscript sources which transmit the Almain, and on the trends and influences that shaped its evolution in Britain from c. 1549 to c. 1675, taking account of both music and choreography.A In viewing the Almain within its broader historical context, Ian Payne throws new light on the dance, arguing that, together with the 'measures' which accompany it in the choreographies, it owes an even greater debt to the English country dance than has hitherto been acknowledged, a popular style that received its fullest expression in Playford's English Dancing Master of 1651. A The second part of the book focuses on the dances themselves. The steps are described in detail and reconstructions provided for the nine Almains and some of the other measures included in the manuscripts. Part Three comprises a complete critical edition of the manuscripts. A These easily performable versions of the dances will be an invaluable aid to those wishing to learn the dances, reconstruct them for stagings of Shakespeare's plays or Jacobean masques, and for dance historians. |
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