"This book is a substantial and timely contribution to Brahms studies. Its strategy is to focus on a single critical work, the C-Minor Piano Quartet, analyzing and interpreting it in great detail, but also using it as a stepping-stone to connect it to other central Brahms works in order to reach a new understanding of the composer s technical language and expressive intent. It is an original and worthy contribution on the music of a major composer." Patrick McCreless

Expressive Forms in Brahms s Instrumental Music integrates a wide variety of analytical methods into a broader study of theoretical approaches, using a single work by Brahms as a case study. On the basis of his findings, Smith considers how Brahms s approach in this piano quartet informs analyses of similar works by Brahms as well as by Beethoven and Mozart.

Musical Meaning and Interpretation Robert S. Hatten, editor"

Handel wrote over 100 cantatas, compositions for voice and instruments that describe the joy and pain of love. In "Handel as Orpheus," the first comprehensive study of the cantatas, Ellen Harris investigates their place in Handel's life as well as their extraordinary beauty.

The cantatas were written between 1706 and 1723--from the time Handel left his home in Germany, through the years he spent in Florence and Rome, and into the early part of his London career. In this period he lived as a guest in aristocratic homes, and composed these chamber works for his patrons and hosts, primarily for private entertainments. In both Italy and England his patrons moved in circles in which same-sex desire was commonplace--a fact that is not without significance, Harris reveals, for the cantatas exhibit a clear homosexual subtext.

Addressing questions about style and form, dating, the relation of music to text, rhythmic and tonal devices, and voicing, "Handel as Orpheus" is an invaluable resource for the study and enjoyment of the cantatas, which have too long been neglected. This innovative study brings greater understanding of Handel, especially his development as a composer, and new insight into the role of sexuality in artistic expression.

The Guarneri Quartet is fabled for its unique longevity and high-spirited virtuosity. Here is its story from the inside--a story filled with drama, humor, danger, compassion, and, of course, glorious music.

A player who studies and performs the exalted string-quartet repertoire has opted for a very special life. Arnold Steinhardt, tracing his own development as a student, orchestra player, and budding young soloist, gives a touching account of how he and his intrepid colleagues were converted to chamber music despite the daunting odds against success. And he reveals, as no one has before, the intensely difficult process by which--on the battlefield of daily three-hour rehearsals--four individualists master and then overcome the confining demands of ensemble playing.

"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.