Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart is one of the great icons of Western music. An amazing prodigy-he toured the capitals of Europe while still a child, astonishing royalty and professional musicians with his precocious skills-he wrote as an adult some of the finest music in the entire European tradition. Julian Rushton offers a concise and up-to-date biography of this musical genius, combining a well-researched life of the composer with an introduction to the works-symphonic, chamber, sacred, and theatrical-of one of the few musicians in history to have written undisputed masterpieces in every genre open to composers of his time. Rushton offers a vivid portrait of the composer, ranging from Mozart the Wunderkind-travelling with his family from Salzburg to Vienna, Paris, London, Rome, and Milan-to the mature author of such classic works as "The Marriage of Figaro", "Don Giovanni", and "The Magic Flute". During the past half-century, scholars have thoroughly explored Mozart's life and music, offering new interpretations of his compositions based on their historical context and providing a factual basis for confirming or, more often, debunking fanciful accounts of the man and his work. Rushton takes full advantage of these biographical and musical studies as well as the definitive New Mozart Edition to provide an accurate account of Mozart's life and, equally important, an insightful look at the music itself, complete with musical examples. An engaging biography for general readers that will also be an informative resource for scholars, this new addition to the prestigious Master Musicians series offers an authoritative portrait of one of the defining figures of European culture.

This is a translation of the second (1858) edition of Berlioz's landmark treatise by Mary Cowden Clarke, daughter of music publisher Vincent Novello. The book was quick to establish itself as a standard work, reflecting Berlioz's keen understanding of the orchestra as both composer and conductor. It is intended as a textbook on the craft of orchestration and to promote better understanding of the essential character of each instrument. Technical details and sonorities are discussed and illustrated with musical examples from composers Berlioz admired, including Gluck and Beethoven, and from his own compositions. This edition includes a section on new instruments, such as the saxophone and concertina, and on the orchestra, and a discussion on the art of conducting. Today the treatise is an important source of information on musical practices of the time and provides us with valuable insight into Berlioz's imaginative and original thinking as a musician.

Hector Berlioz (1803 60189) was one of the most original and colourful composers of his generation, whose music in many ways was ahead of its time. He was also a highly respected journalist and critic, producing monthly articles for the Journal des D bats for over thirty years, as well as other writings including his posthumously published autobiographical M moires. Unlike journalism, which he disliked, letter-writing was a task which he relished and at which he excelled, producing sometimes four or five in a day and more than 3,500 during his lifetime. The letters reflect the man - exuberant, imaginative, idealistic, opinionated and witty - and give us a fascinating, first-hand, insight into his life. This two-volume selection includes some 300 examples. Volume 1 includes letters to family, fellow musicians such as Hiller, Lizst and Schumann, and friends such as Auguste Morel and fellow critic Joseph D'Ortigue.

Hector Berlioz (1803 1869) was one of the most original and colourful composers of his generation, whose music in many ways was ahead of its time. He was also a highly respected journalist and critic, producing monthly articles for the Journal des D bats for over thirty years, as well as other writings including his posthumously published autobiographical M moires. Unlike journalism, which he disliked, letter-writing was a task which he relished and at which he excelled, producing sometimes four or five in a day and more than 3,500 during his lifetime. The letters reflect the man - exuberant, imaginative, idealistic, opinionated and witty - and give us a fascinating, first-hand, insight into his life. This two-volume selection includes some 300 examples. Volume 2, with a preface by the composer Charles Gounod, is devoted to Berlioz's letters to his lifelong friend, the lawyer and writer Humbert Ferrand.

Louis Spohr (1784-1859) was one of the most popular musicians of the early Romantic period, but of his considerable output (including 10 symphonies, 15 violin concertos, nine operas and a large amount of chamber music), only the Octet op.32 and the Nonet op.31 are heard regularly today. Spohr established his name as a virtuoso violinist and completed his Violin method in 1831. As a conductor, he contributed to the increasing use of the baton to direct performances. He travelled widely in Europe, visiting London for the first time in 1820, when he directed a Philharmonic Society concert, and returning four times between 1843 and 1853. This autobiography, begun in 1847, gives a lively (but not necessarily always accurate) account of life as a professional musician. Spohr's own account ends at June 1838, and the book was completed by family members using materials provided by his wife.

Mozart's Ghosts traces the many lives of this great composer that emerged following his early death in 1791. Crossing national boundaries and traversing two hundred years-worth of interpretation and reception, author Mark Everist investigates how Mozart's past status can be understood as part of today's veneration. Everist forges new paths to reach the composer, examining a number of ways in which Western culture has absorbed the idea of Mozart, how various cultural agents have appropriated, deployed, and exploited Mozart toward both authoritarian and subversive ends, and how the figure of Mozart and his impact illuminate the cultural history of the last two centuries in Europe, England, and America. Modern reverence for the composer is conditioned by earlier responses to his music, and Everist argues that such earlier responses are more complex than allowed by a simple "reception studies" model. Closely linking nine case studies in an innovative cultural and theoretical framework, the book approaches the developing reputation of the composer from death to the present day along three paths: "Phantoms of the Opera" deals with stage music, "Holy Spirits" addresses the trope of the sacred, and "Specters at the Feast" considers the impact of Mozart's music in literature and film. Mozart's Ghosts adeptly moves the study of Mozart reception away from hagiography and closer to cultural and historical criticism, and will be avidly read by Mozart scholars and students of eighteenth-century music history, as well as literary critics, historians of philosophy and aesthetics, and cultural historians in general.

Grounded in knowledge of thousands of programs, this book examines how musical life in London, Leipzig, Vienna, Boston, and other cities underwent a fundamental transformation in relationship with movements in European politics. William Weber traces how musical taste evolved in European concert programs from 1750 to 1870, as separate worlds arose around classical music and popular songs. In 1780 a typical program accommodated a variety of tastes through a patterned 'miscellany' of genres, held together by diplomatic musicians. This framework began weakening around 1800 as new kinds of music appeared, from string quartets to quadrilles to ballads, which could not easily coexist on the same programs. Utopian ideas and extravagant experiments influenced programming as ideological battles were fought over who should govern musical taste. More than a hundred illustrations or transcriptions of programs enable readers to follow Weber's analysis in detail.

First published in 1989. This study explores Italian attitudes to opera while Vincenzo Bellini was studying and composing. It draws mainly on Italian critical and aesthetic writing dating from the end of an era that was still dominated by the Italian bel canto. Many of the writers considered are unfamiliar today, but they express the accepted views on music, opera, and singing that dominated a particularly insular tradition. This title will be of interest to students of Italian and Music History.

C. P. E. Bach Studies collects together nine wide-ranging essays by leading scholars of eighteenth-century music. Offering fresh perspectives on one of the towering figures of the period, the authors explore Bach's music in its cultural contexts, and show in diverse and complementary ways the reciprocal relationship between Bach's work and contemporary literary, theological, and aesthetic debates. Topics include Bach's relation to theories of sensibility and the sublime; the free fantasy and concepts of self and being; and Bach's engagement with music history and the legacy of his predecessors. Wider questions of C. P. E. Bach reception also play an important part in the book, which explores not only the interpretation of Bach's music in his time, but also its reception over the two centuries since his death.

Like his father Leopold, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was dependent on a court aristocracy in whose eyes he was little more than a domestic servant. Unlike his father, however, his personal makeup was already that of the freelance artist who sought to follow the flow of his own artistic conscience and imagination rather than the courtly conventions and standards of the day. In "Mozart: the Sociology of a Genius", Elias paints a portrait of this extraordinarily gifted artist born into a society that did not yet possess either the concept of 'genius' or (at least in music) that of freelance artist. The apparent contradictions of his character - the refined elegance of his compositions and the coarseness of his lavatorial humour - reflect his uncomfortable and eventually tragic straddling of two social worlds. The volume also includes two major essays on cognate topics, previously unpublished in English: on the courtly painter Watteau's "Embarkation for Cythera", and on 'The fate of German Baroque poetry: between the traditions of court and middle class'.

The biography of French composer, Halevy. The book contains excerpts from his diary, and also correspondence and photographs. Halevy is the composer of La Juive.

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.

In Rethinking Schubert, today's leading Schubertians offer fresh perspectives on the composer's importance and our perennial fascination with him. Subjecting recurring issues in historical, biographical and analytical research to renewed scrutiny, the twenty-two chapters yield new insights into Schubert, his music, his influence and his legacy, and broaden the interpretative context for the music of his final years. With close attention to matters of style, harmonic and formal analysis, and text setting, the essays gathered here explore a significant portion of the composer's extensive output across a range of genres. The most readily explicable aspect of Schubert's appeal is undoubtedly our continuing engagement with the songs. Schubert will always be the first port of call for scholars interested in the relationship between music and the poetic text, and several essays in Rethinking Schubert offer welcome new inquiries into this subject. Yet perhaps the most striking feature of modern scholarship is the new depth of thought that attaches to the instrumental works. This music's highly protracted dissemination has combined with a habitual critical hostility to produce a reception history that is hardly congenial to musical analysis. Empowered by the new momentum behind theories of nineteenth-century harmony and form and recently-published source materials, the sophisticated approaches to the instrumental music in Rethinking Schubert show decisively that it is no longer acceptable to posit Schubert's instrumental forms as flawed lyric alternatives to Beethoven. What this volume provides, then, is not only a fresh portrait of one of the most loved composers of the nineteenth century but also a conspectus of current Schubertian research. Whether perusing unknown repertoire or refreshing canonical works, Rethinking Schubert reveals the extraordinary methodological variety that is now available to research, painting a contemporary portrait of Schubert that is vibrant, plural, trans-national and complex.

Thirty Years' Musical Recollections, first published in 1862, is a year-by-year commentary in two volumes on the European operas, ballets, singers and dancers popular in London from 1830 to 1859. It's author was music critic of The Athaneum for over thirty years and also wrote book reviews, novels, plays and poems. Volume 1 covers the period 1830-1847 and serves as a valuable reference work to the musical life of London during these years. Starting with his reminiscences of the opera season in 1830, Chorley takes the reader on a journey from early performances of Italian and German opera in England, via works by Rossini, Bellini and Donizetti and the first appearances of Lablache and of Mademoiselle Taglioni, through to Verdi's operas in 1846. He also describes famous opera singers including Maria Malibran, Giambattista Rubini, Madame Grisi, Madame Pasta, Madame Persiani, Rachel Felix, Signor Mario, and Mademoiselle Jenny Lind.

Henry Fothergill Chorley was music critic of The Athenaeum for over thirty years. This three-volume book, published in 1841, originated in a journal written by Chorley while travelling in Europe. His aim was to 'illustrate the present state of theatrical, orchestral, and chamber music abroad', focusing on aspects that would be least familiar to an English readership. There are detailed accounts of Paris and Berlin, with prominence given to opera, theatre, art galleries and monuments. Chorley also describes visits to Brunswick, Leipzig, Dresden and Nuremburg, and performances by artists including Mendelssohn and Liszt. He intersperses anecdotes about transport, lodgings, landscapes and local customs. Chorley's incisive and entertaining eyewitness accounts will fascinate music-lovers and theatre historians, as well as others interested in the performing arts or travel writing in the nineteenth-century. Volume 1 describes his visits to Paris and Brunswick, focusing on opera.

Henry Fothergill Chorley was music critic of The Athenaeum for over thirty years. This three-volume book, published in 1841, originated in a journal written by Chorley while travelling in Europe. His aim was to 'illustrate the present state of theatrical, orchestral, and chamber music abroad', focusing on aspects that would be least familiar to an English readership. There are detailed accounts of Paris and Berlin, with prominence given to opera, theatre, art galleries and monuments. Chorley also describes visits to Brunswick, Leipzig, Dresden and Nuremburg, and performances by artists including Mendelssohn and Liszt. He intersperses anecdotes about transport, lodgings, landscapes and local customs. Chorley's incisive and entertaining eyewitness accounts will fascinate music-lovers and theatre historians, as well as others interested in the performing arts or travel writing in the nineteenth-century. Volume 3 describes visits to Leipzig, Dresden, Nuremburg and Paris.

Reflecting a wide variety of approaches to eighteenth-century opera, this Companion brings together leading international experts in the field to provide a valuable reference source. Viewing opera as a complex and fascinating form of art and social ritual, rather than reducing it simply to music and text analysis, individual essays investigate aspects such as audiences, architecture of the theaters, marketing, acting style, and the politics and strategy of representing class and gender. Overall, the volume provides a synthesis of well established knowledge, reflects recent research on eighteenth-century opera, and stimulates further research. The reader is encouraged to view opera as a cultural phenomenon that can reveal aspects of our culture, both past and present. Eighteenth-century opera is experiencing continuing critical and popular success through innovative and provoking productions world-wide, and this Companion will appeal to opera goers as well as to students and teachers of this key topic.

Reflecting a wide variety of approaches to eighteenth-century opera, this Companion brings together leading international experts in the field to provide a valuable reference source. Viewing opera as a complex and fascinating form of art and social ritual, rather than reducing it simply to music and text analysis, individual essays investigate aspects such as audiences, architecture of the theaters, marketing, acting style, and the politics and strategy of representing class and gender. Overall, the volume provides a synthesis of well established knowledge, reflects recent research on eighteenth-century opera, and stimulates further research. The reader is encouraged to view opera as a cultural phenomenon that can reveal aspects of our culture, both past and present. Eighteenth-century opera is experiencing continuing critical and popular success through innovative and provoking productions world-wide, and this Companion will appeal to opera goers as well as to students and teachers of this key topic.

This is the third volume in the series Beethoven Studies. The aim of this series is to present scholarly work on Beethoven, broad in range as well as meticulous in method. The contributors have in common a special interest in the sources for Beethoven's life and for this creative activity, including original scores, sketchbooks, conversation books, correspondence, and other documentary material. Beethoven Studies 3 includes biographical, critical and analytical contributions, with a special emphasis on Beethoven's working processes. Although some of the essays are for the specialist, others, in particular the biographical ones, require little more than some knowledge and enjoyment of Beethoven's music, or an interest in the man himself. The book includes many music examples, and reproductions of autographs and watermarks, and it is very fully indexed.

The first in over half a century to be devoted to a detailed analysis of the complete Beethoven sonatas for violin and piano, this book arose from the author's desire to pass on to a younger generation more than sixty years' experience as a practising musician and teacher. Professor Rostal addresses himself to professional and amateur musicians alike, to students and to listeners, all of whom will derive pleasure and enlightenment from his words. Each of the ten Sonatas is carefully discussed, the manuscripts and first and later editions meticulously compared. Musicians will find technical and interpretative problems approached and solved and the music-lover a helpful listener's guide to these ever-popular masterpieces. As the Amadeus Quartet's Preface says of this important book, It is a "must" for all students and performers, and is a "must" for all lovers of Beethoven.' A renowned violinist and teacher, Professor MAX ROSTAL studied music under Arnold Ros138> and Carl Flesch. Founder and President of the European String Teachers' Association, he has made many recordings and is the editor of numerous wirks in the violin repertoire.

This study of a hitherto neglected aspect of Liszt and his music aims to restore a balanced view of both man and artist. In contrast to the familiar portrayal of the virtuoso pianist, Liszt is considered here as a serious man of ideas: in tracing the composer's relationships and attitudes to the twin themes of revolution and religion, Paul Merrick finds much of Liszt's music, both secular and sacred, to be inspired by the same deeply felt religious conviction that also governed his private life from an early age. The first part of the book is primarily biographical and considers Liszt's reactions to the revolutions of 1830 and 1848, his relationship with the Abbe Lamennais, the Comtesse d' Agoult, Princess Wittgenstein and Wagner, and contains the first convincing explanation for the sudden cancellation of Liszt's marriage to Princess Wittgenstein. The remaining sections consider the church music and the programmatic music that is related to this.

Written by ten leading scholars, this volume assembles studies of eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century music under the broad rubric of communication. That such an impulse motivates musical composition and performance in this period of European musical history is often acknowledged but seldom examined in depth. The book explores a broad set of issues, ranging from the exigencies of the market for books and music in the eighteenth century through to the deployment of dance topoi in musical composition. A number of close readings of individual works by Mozart, Haydn and Beethoven draw on a sophisticated body of historically-appropriate technical resources to illuminate theories of form, metre, bass lines and dance topoi. Students and scholars of music history, theory and analysis will find in this volume a set of challenging, state-of-the-art essays that will stimulate debate about musical meaning and engender further study.

Grounded in knowledge of thousands of programs, this book examines how musical life in London, Leipzig, Vienna, Boston, and other cities underwent a fundamental transformation in relationship with movements in European politics. William Weber traces how musical taste evolved in European concert programs from 1750 to 1870, as separate worlds arose around classical music and popular songs. In 1780 a typical program accommodated a variety of tastes through a patterned 'miscellany' of genres, held together by diplomatic musicians. This framework began weakening around 1800 as new kinds of music appeared, from string quartets to quadrilles to ballads, which could not easily coexist on the same programs. Utopian ideas and extravagant experiments influenced programming as ideological battles were fought over who should govern musical taste. More than a hundred illustrations or transcriptions of programs enable readers to follow Weber's analysis in detail.

Focusing on music written in the period 1800-1850, Thinking about Harmony traces the responses of observant musicians to the music that was being created in their midst by composers including Beethoven, Schubert, and Chopin. It tells the story of how a separate branch of musical activity - music analysis - evolved out of the desire to make sense of the music, essential both to its enlightened performance and to its appreciation. The book integrates two distinct areas of musical inquiry - the history of music theory and music analysis - and the various notions that shape harmonic theory are put to the test through practical application, creating a unique and intriguing synthesis. Aided by an extensive compilation of carefully selected and clearly annotated music examples, readers can explore a panoramic projection of the era's analytical responses to harmony, thereby developing a more intimate rapport with the period.