(Amadeus). Performer and scholar Abram Loft wants every chamber musician to be a strong, collaborative ensemble voice. Here's his hard-headed advice on choosing colleagues, rehearsing and performing effectively together, building repertoire, programming, touring and other facets of the art and business of a chamber music career. Ranging from hilarious to sobering, this is essential reading for music lovers, amateur players, students, teachers and today's many emerging professional ensembles. Recent events in the field, including some strident litigation, highlight the usefulness of this veteran's realistic counsel.

'They are not for you but for a later age!' Ludwig van Beethoven, on the Opus 59 quartets Beethoven's sixteen string quartets are some of the most extraordinary and challenging pieces of music ever written. They have inspired artists of all kinds - not only musicians - and have been subject to endless reinterpretation. What does it feel like to be a musician taking on these iconic works? And how do the four string players who make up a quartet interact, both musically and personally? The Takács is one of the world's pre-eminent string quartets. Performances of Beethoven have shaped their work together for over forty years. Using the history of both the Takács Quartet and the Beethoven quartets as the backbone to his story, Edward Dusinberre, first violinist of the Takács since 1993, recounts the exhilarating challenge of tackling these pieces. Beethoven for a Later Age takes the reader inside the daily life of a quartet, vividly showing the necessary creative tension between individual and group expression and how four people can enjoy making music together over a long period of time. The key, the author argues, is in balancing continuity with change and experimentation - a theme that lies at the heart of Beethoven's remarkable compositions. No other composer has posed so many questions about the form and emotional content of a string quartet, and come up with so many different answers. In an accessible style, suitable for novices and chamber music enthusiasts alike, Dusinberre illuminates the variety and inherent contradictions of Beethoven's quartets, composed against the turbulent backdrop of the Napoleonic Wars and their aftermath, and shows that engaging with this radical music continues to be as invigorating now as it was for its first performers and audiences.

for SATB or SSA and string orchestra, with optional organ Set of parts for John Rutter's much-loved Nativity Carol, one of the composer's earliest pieces. The string accompaniment is compatible with both SATB and SSA versions of Nativity Carol, and this set includes the following string parts: 4 x vln I, 4 x vln II, 3 x vla, 2 x vc, 1 x db.

for SATB and piano (with opt bass and drums) Optional parts for bass and drum set enliven this joyous arrangement for choir and piano of a traditional spiritual. Propelled by a light swing tempo, the mood grows more and more euphoric with each succeeding stanza of text, and the uplifting music surges towards an opulent conclusion.

for SATB and four-piece ensemble (piccolo, oboe, harp, organ) Four-piece chamber ensemble accompaniment to Rutter's vibrant carol. Pack includes full score and set of parts. Compatible with the original mixed voices version, as well as the upper voices and unison versions, available separately and in John Rutter Carols, Carols for Choirs 2, Carols for Choirs 4, and 100 Carols for Choirs. Not compatible with the abridged arrangement of this carol by Kenneth Pont.

for SATB and four-piece ensemble (flute, oboe, harp, organ) Four-piece chamber ensemble accompaniment to Rutter's uplifting carol. Pack includes full score and set of parts.

for SATB and four-piece ensemble (flute, oboe, harp, piano) Four-piece chamber ensemble accompaniment to Rutter's arrangement in 2/2 time. Pack includes full score and set of parts. Compatible with the mixed voices leaflet, as well as the versions in in 100 Carols for Choirs and Carols for Choirs 3.

Though individual pieces from the late fifteenth century are widely accepted as being written for instruments rather than voices, they are traditionally considered as exceptions within the context of a mainstream of vocal polyphony. After a rigorous examination of the criteria by which music of this period may be judged to be instrumental, Dr Jon Banks isolates all such pieces and establishes them as an explicit genre alongside the more commonly recognized vocal forms of the period. The distribution of these pieces in the manuscript and early printed sources of the time demonstrate how central instrumental consorts were to musical experience in Italy at this time. Banks also explores the social background to Italian music-making, and particularly the changing status of instrumentalists with respect to other musicians. Convincing evidence is put forward in particular for the lute ensemble to be a likely performance context for many of the surviving sources. The book is not intended to be a prescriptive account for the role of instruments in late medieval music, but instead restores an impressive but largely overlooked consort repertory to its rightful place in the history of music.

Set against the vivid background of 1920s Sydney, A Distant Prospect is an intimate, hilarious and ultimately deeply moving coming-of-age adventure told with a touch of poetry by a quintessentially Irish narrator.

Vaughan Williams's famous romance for solo violin and orchestra is given new life in this beautiful arrangement, which features the original solo line as part of a string sextet. Perfect as a rehearsal tool in preparation for a larger-scale orchestral concert, the arrangement is also ideal for performance in a chamber recital.

More String Time Joggers is a welcome addition to the ensemble repertoire for beginner strings from the authors of the award-winning Fiddle Time series. This exciting collection provides inventive and enjoyable ensemble material for all string groups, whatever their size.

More String Time Joggers is a welcome addition to the ensemble repertoire for beginner strings from the authors of the award-winning Fiddle Time series. This exciting collection provides inventive and enjoyable ensemble material for all string groups, whatever their size.

More String Time Joggers is a welcome addition to the ensemble repertoire for beginner strings from the authors of the award-winning Fiddle Time series. This exciting collection provides inventive and enjoyable ensemble material for all string groups, whatever their size.

More String Time Joggers is a welcome addition to the ensemble repertoire for beginner strings from the authors of the award-winning Fiddle Time series. This exciting collection provides inventive and enjoyable ensemble material for all string groups, whatever their size.

for SATB and four-piece ensemble (flute, oboe, harp, organ) Four-piece chamber ensemble accompaniment to Rutter's carol arrangement. Pack includes full score and set of parts. Compatible with the accompanied version, available as a leaflet or in the carol collection Joy to the World. Not compatible with the unaccompanied version in the carol collection O Holy Night.

Vaughan Williams's famous romance for solo violin and orchestra is given new life in this beautiful arrangement. For the first time, violinists can perform the original solo line as part of a string quartet, while also joining the other players for the longer tutti sections. Perfect as a rehearsal tool in preparation for a larger-scale orchestral concert, the arrangement is also ideal for performance in a chamber recital.

The first detailed contextual study of chamber music in Beethoven's Vienna, at a time when the string quartet reigned supreme among the different chamber genres This book is the first detailed contextual study of string quartets in Beethoven's Vienna, at a time when that genre reigned supreme among the different chamber genres. Focusing on a key transition period in the early nineteenth century, which bore witness to fundamental shifts in the 'private' sphere of music-making, it explores the 'cultivation' of string quartets by composers, critics, listeners, performers, publishers and patrons. The book highlights these parties' interactions, ideas and ideals, which were central to defining the unique cultures of chamber music arising at this time. We gain fresh insights into publishing and marketing, performance venues and practices, review culture, listening theories and practices, and composition in early nineteenth-century Vienna. Until now, the unique theatricality of chamber music, and the 'social' nature of its discourse, has been poorly appreciated. Cultivating String Quartets in Beethoven's Vienna addresses this misconception and enriches our understanding of this crucial period of change, in which concert life began and previously 'private' music was moved out onto the stage. NANCY NOVEMBER is Associate Professor in Musicology at the University of Auckland.

The first study of the performance practice, repertoire and context of the modern 'brass ensemble' in the musical world. Whereas the British 'brass band' originated in the nineteenth century and rapidly developed into a nationwide working-class movement, the perceived modern 'brass ensemble' has a less clear foundation and identity. This book is the first to focus exclusively on the performance, practice, repertoire and context of the 'brass ensemble' in the musical world. Following World War II, the brass quintet and other orchestral groupings emerged in the United States and Europe, with musical customs established by professional players playing orchestral instruments. These groups initially played a combination of the music of Gabrieli and his contemporaries as well as newly commissioned works. By the late twentieth century, however, repertory spanned works by Elliott Carter, Maxwell Davies and Lutoslawski, together with music that integrated jazz, commercial elements, and landmark transcriptions. At the book's heart is the story of the London-based, internationally acclaimed, Philip Jones Brass Ensemble. But this is not a story of one ensemble, as the 'brass ensemble' can be defined in several forms. The Modern Brass Ensemble in Twentieth-Century Britain offers a comprehensive account by an author and performer who was involved in many of the key developments of the modern 'brass ensemble'.

What does it mean to talk about musical coherence at the end of a century characterised by fragmentation and discontinuity? How can the diverse influences which stand behind the works of many late twentieth-century composers be reconciled with the singular immediacy of the experiences that they can create? How might an awareness of the distinctive ways in which these experiences are generated and controlled affect the way we listen to, reflect upon and write about this music? Mark Hutchinson outlines a novel concept of coherence within Western art music from the 1980s to the turn of the millennium as a means of understanding the work of a number of contemporary composers, including Thomas Ades, Kaija Saariaho, Toru Takemitsu and Gyoergy Kurtag, whose music cannot be fitted easily into a particular compositional school or analytical framework. Coherence is understood as a multi-layered phenomenon experienced, above all, in the act of listening, but reliant upon a variety of other aspects of musical experience, including compositional statements, analysis, and connections of aesthetic, as well as listeners' own, imaginative conceptualisations. Accordingly, the approach taken here is similarly multi-faceted: close analytical readings of a number of specific works are combined with insights drawn from philosophy and aesthetics, music perception, and critical theory, with a particular openness to novel metaphorical presentations of basic musical ideas about form, language and time.

This single-movement quartet was commissioned by the Cardiff University Quartet on 25 April 1968. It was dedicated to Mathias' colleague and composer Alun Hoddinott and his wife Rhiannon.