|
|
Books > Arts & Architecture > Music > Musical instruments & instrumental ensembles > Chamber ensembles
"Reading "The Beethoven Quartet Companion made me want to listen to
the quartets again from a new sociological as well as musical
perspective. It is an invaluable guide not only for professional
and amateur musicians but also for anyone who is curious about
culture and wants to find out more."--Yo-Yo Ma
"These essays are the most readable, useful, and well-informed
commentary available today on these masterworks. Michael
Steinberg's 'program notes' to each quartet, directed at once to
the musical beginner and to the expert, are as eloquent and
persuasive as popular writing about music can get. . . . His essays
are followed by equally expert and accessible contributions by
other masters on The Master, providing literate music lovers with
the context and equipment for a richer enjoyment and clearer
understanding of these sixteen unique conversations among two
violins, a viola, and a cello."--David Littlejohn, author of "The
Ultimate Art: Essays Around and About Opera
"A fine collection of essays to assist the music lover in the
seemingly endless quest to illuminate the Beethoven string
quartets."--Arnold Steinhardt, The Guarneri String Quartet
"This book delivers on the implied promise of its title--it
provides a lively, readable, and wide-ranging introduction to the
quartets. Readers at many levels of experience will find it
profitable."--Lewis Lockwood, author of "Beethoven: Studies in the
Creative Process
This is a performing edition of Walton's
iano Quartet, first published in 1918 and one of his first
compositions to have survived. The work was later revised by Walton
in 1974-5, and this edition is based on the score published in the
Walton Edition Chamber Music volume for string quartet.
In Making Light Raymond Knapp traces the musical legacy of German
Idealism as it led to the declining prestige of composers such as
Haydn while influencing the development of American popular music
in the nineteenth century. Knapp identifies in Haydn and in early
popular American musical cultures such as minstrelsy and operetta a
strain of high camp-a mode of engagement that relishes both the
superficial and serious aspects of an aesthetic experience-that
runs antithetical to German Idealism's musical paradigms. By
considering the disservice done to Haydn by German Idealism
alongside the emergence of musical camp in American popular music,
Knapp outlines a common ground: a humanistically based aesthetic of
shared pleasure that points to ways in which camp receptive modes
might rejuvenate the original appeal of Haydn's music that has
mostly eluded audiences. In so doing, Knapp remaps the
historiographical modes and systems of critical evaluation that
dominate musicology while troubling the divide between serious and
popular music.
|
|