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Books > Arts & Architecture > Music > Western music, periods & styles > Classical music (c 1750 to c 1830)
Satirically utilized by Strauss II to highlight the deceptive aristocratic class, under Lehar, Schoenberg, Mahler, and Webern's pens the waltz became the pivot between the conscious and unconscious, forcing the music into a paralytic "second state" analogous with the stagnation of the Habsburg Empire. The Waltz: The Decadence and Decline of Austria's Unconscious shows how over the hundred years between the Vienna Congress and the dissolution of the Empire, the waltz altered from signifier of upper-class artifice-covering with glitz and glamour the poverty and war central to the time-to the link between the three classes, between man and nature, and between Viennese and "Other." Danielle Hood wields the Freudian concepts of the uncanny and the doppelganger to explain this revolution from the simple signification of a dance to the psychological anxiety of a subject's place in society.
Villa-Lobos and Modernism: The Apotheosis of Cannibal Music provides a new assessment of the Brazilian composer Heitor Villa-Lobos in terms of his contributions to the Modernist Movement of the twentieth century. In this profound study, Ricardo Averbach elevates Cultural Cannibalism as a major manifestation of the Modernist aesthetics and Villa-Lobos as its top exponent in the music field. Villa-Lobos's anthropophagic appetite for multiple opposing aesthetics enlightens through the juxtaposition of contradictory elements, leaving a legacy of unmatched originality, a glittering kaleidoscope of sounds that draw from the radical power of Josephine Baker to the outrageous extravagance of Carmen Miranda, from Dada to Einstein's counterintuitive scientific findings, from folklorism to atonality. The constructed analyses use the works of Stravinsky as a familiar and popular touchstone for accessing Villa-Lobos as the leading exponent of an aesthetic movement that has been neglected due to a traditional Eurocentric view of Modernism. Averbach opens up new possibilities for the study of twentieth-century music, in general, while unveiling how much our present aesthetics owes to the Modernist ideas introduced by the Brazilian composer.
Bruno Maderna, one of the most influential composers in the 20th century, was the oldest of the group of Italian composers born in the 1920s (Berio, Nono, Donatoni...) who began their career shortly before the Second World War and were able to exploit the opportunities offered by the new world that emerged in the post-war years. Maderna's story is quite unique. He rose to fame early in life as a child prodigy and his exceptional talent was soon noticed by Gian Francesco Malipiero, who stimulated his interest in ancient music, a passion that remained constant even when the European avant-garde insisted that new music should start from year zero. After a first approach to the "classic" dodecaphony, his musical style tended toward the integral seriality and the "opera aperta". In the last years he developed a particular interest for the theatre. Satyricon was born in Tanglewood in a short version, and later became a big success all over the world, particular after his death. His work as a conductor made him particularly sensitive to the reaction of the public, leading him to carefully calibrate his approach to composition, without being swayed by fashionable ideals or philosophies. Despite his warm and outgoing nature, Maderna rarely expressed his personal views in writing or in interviews. Many of the biographical details given here are taken from his correspondence and from reports of his travels and engagements across the world, which took him as far as the United States, but also to Persia, South America and Japan.
In the early eighteenth century, the benefit performance became an essential component of commercial music-making in Britain. Benefits, adapted from the spoken theatre, provided a new model from which instrumentalists, singers, and composers could reap financial and professional rewards. Benefits could be given as theatre pieces, concerts, or opera performances for the benefit of individual performers; or in aid of specific organizations. The benefit changed Britain's musico-theatrical landscape during this time and these special performances became a prototype for similar types of events in other European and American cities. Indeed, the charity benefit became a musical phenomenon in its own right, leading, for example, to the lasting success of Handel's Messiah. By examining benefits from a musical perspective - including performers, audiences, and institutions - the twelve chapters in this collection present the first study of the various ways in which music became associated with the benefit system in eighteenth-century Britain.
Einojuhani Rautavaara (1928-2016) has been called Finland's most notable musical export after Sibelius. His prolific output includes eleven operas; eight symphonies; eleven concertos; choral works for the Orthodox, Lutheran, and Roman Catholic churches; secular choral works; chamber music; vocal solos; and keyboard works. Many of these works were commissioned by internationally known performers and ensembles including Vladimir Ashkenazy, Richard Stoltzman, Hilary Hahn, Anne Akiko Meiers, Gerald Finley, the Philadelphia Orchestra, and the Juilliard School of Music Orchestra. Perhaps most frequently performed are his Cantus Arcticus, a concerto for recorded arctic birds and orchestra, Angel of Light, his seventh symphony, and the Lorca choral suite depicting Death as a stalker in a Spanish village. Rautavaara's Journey in Music is divided into two sections; the first a biography and discussion of works that show his various style changes, from neoclassical, to twelve-tone, to neoromantic, and finally to a personal expressive style combining elements of twelve-tone and tonality. The second part divides his works by genre and gives more detailed information of stylistic analysis, libretto, provenance, and, often, reception.
Richard Wagner's magnum opus meets the celebrated translator of Jules Verne novels in this colorful and original work. Frederick Paul Walter makes Twilight for the Gods accessible not only to scholars and opera buffs but also to fans of Tolkien, Star Wars, and Hogwarts through a dazzling new translation in lively modern English and annotations that spotlight the libretto, lyrics, and stage directions. The translation conveys Wagner's humor, rhymes, alliterative effects, subliminal messages, and inventive tale spinning, plus it also gets the most basic ingredient right: the actual story! It highlights the motives, secrets, and plot twists-what's really going on and what its narrative shows. Accompanying the translation and annotations are dozens of photos of classic artwork by Arthur Rackham, Howard Pyle, Aubrey Beardsley, the 1876 costume and set designs, and much more.
The repertoire of the early Viennese ballroom was highly influential in the broader histories of both social dance and music in nineteenth-century Europe. Yet music scholarship has traditionally paid little attention to ballroom dance music before the era of the Strauss dynasty, with the exception of a handful of dances by Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven. This book positions Viennese social dances in their specific performing contexts and investigates the wider repertoire of the Viennese ballroom in the decades around 1800, most of which stems from dozens of non-canonical composers. Close examination of this material yields new insights into the social contexts associated with familiar dance types, and reveals that the ballroom repertoire of this period connected with virtually every aspect of Viennese musical life, from opera and concert music to the emerging category of entertainment music that was later exemplified by the waltzes of Lanner and Strauss.
The Russian avant-garde were trend-setters in a"'Golden Age" of world art at the beginning of the 20th century. Today their work continues to enrich our culture through their paintings, poetry, architecture, cinema, music, and theater. The Three Apostles of Russian Music looks at three figures in the Soviet avant-garde who led modernist music in the 1920s. Mosolov, Popov, and Roslavets were popular composers who are now unfortunately forgotten. These remarkable musicians produced compositions like the sensational machine music Foundry by Mosolov. The first symphony by Popov attracted musicians in Europe and America but was banned after the premiere, while Roslavets discovered serialism before Schoenberg, opening up a new trend in modernism. These 'apostles' of the Russian avant-garde have had followers in Russia, Europe, and America where their influence remains today. This book is the first study in English of their work, lives, and legacy.
One-Handed Piano Compositions and Injury Awareness: History, Study of Selected Works, and Mindful Practice calls readers to dive into the realm of one-handed piano works so they can enrich their concert repertoire with new and original works and perform beyond the limitations of their injuries if they are in a period of recovery. Zheni Atanasova wrote this book as a guide meant to inspire fellow musicians in their search for unique musical works and help colleagues navigate their professional career in case of an injury so they can thrive in such a challenging period. The author provides solutions for those who aspire to build a career in music performance even when their professional development is hindered by an injury. She offers a single source that holds the answers to a broad spectrum of questions pertaining to piano performance, wellness, and practice.
Brahms in Context offers a fresh perspective on the much-admired nineteenth-century German composer. Including thirty-nine chapters on historical, social and cultural contexts, the book brings together internationally renowned experts in music, law, science, art history and other areas, including many figures whose work is appearing in English for the first time. The essays are accessibly written, with short reading lists aimed at music students and educators. The book opens with personal topics including Brahms's Hamburg childhood, his move to Vienna, and his rich social life. It considers professional matters from finance to publishing and copyright; the musicians who shaped and transmitted his works; and the larger musical styles which influenced him. Casting the net wider, other essays embrace politics, religion, literature, philosophy, art, and science. The book closes with chapters on reception, including recordings, historical performance, his compositional legacy, and a reflection on the power of composer myths.
Winner of the 2019 ASCAP-Deems Taylor Award for Outstanding Musical Biography Vincent Persichetti: Grazioso, Grit, and Gold is the first critical biography of this esteemed American composer, bringing together thorough scholarship by Andrea Olmstead and contributions by prominent performers. Olmstead weaves a captivating narrative of the composer from his early life and musical training, starting with his early career in Philadelphia during the 1920s and '30s and through his teaching at Juilliard and death in 1987. The book sheds light on Persichetti's personal and professional life, the multiple forces that shaped his musical development, and his far-reaching influence on the modern American composition scene. In addition to Olmstead's biographical and analytical treatment of the composer, notable performers bring fresh insights to individual pieces. Among the contributors are C. Matthew Balensuela (solo wind Parables), Geoffrey Burleson (Concerto for Piano, Four Hands, and Piano Quintet), Mirian Conti (Poems and Frog Dance for piano), Andrew Mast (Divertimento for wind ensemble), and Larry Thomas Bell (Harmonium song cycle, Piano Concerto, and Ninth Symphony). Scholars, performers, and all lovers of Persichetti's music will find Olmstead's book compelling as it enshrines Persichetti's legacy as a composer, teacher, and pianist. Those seeking to perform, teach, or simply enjoy Persichetti's music will find this an invaluable resource.
For well over two hundred years, Joseph Haydn has been by turns lionized and misrepresented - held up as celebrity, and disparaged as mere forerunner or point of comparison. And yet, unlike many other canonic composers, his music has remained a fixture in the repertoire from his day until ours. What do we need to know now in order to understand Haydn and his music? With over eighty entries focused on ideas and seven longer thematic essays to bring these together, this distinctive and richly illustrated encyclopedia offers a new perspective on Haydn and the many cultural contexts in which he worked and left his indelible mark during the Enlightenment and beyond. Contributions from sixty-seven scholars and performers in Europe, the Americas, and Oceania, capture the vitality of Haydn studies today - its variety of perspectives and methods - and ultimately inspire further exploration of one of western music's most innovative and influential composers.
One of the most admired qualities of Claude Debussy's music has been its seemingly effortless evocation and assimilation of exotic musical strains. He was the first great European composer to discern the possibilities inherent in the gamelan, the ensemble consisting mainly of tuned percussion instruments that originated in Java. Echoes from the East: The Javanese Gamelan and its Influence on the Music of Claude Debussy argues Debussy's encounter with the gamelan in 1889 at the Paris Exposition Universelle had a far more profound effect on his work and style than can be grasped by simply looking for passages and pieces in his output that sound "Asian" or "like a gamelan." Kiyoshi Tamagawa recounts Debussy's individual experience with the music of Java and traces its echoes through his entire compositional career. Echoes from the East adds a commentary on the modern-day issue of cultural appropriation and a survey of Debussy's contemporaries and successors who have also attempted to merge the sounds of the gamelan with their own distinctive musical styles.
This book attempts to survey this large field afresh, and to do so in connected, chronological fashion. It takes notice of the fact that concertos, overtures, ballets, and suits- often overlooked or minimized in other books on symphonic music- are also parts of the literature.
Only recently has it become obvious that conductors' annotated scores and marked orchestral parts are of great cultural, historical and musical importance. In the not-so-distant past, these artefacts had something of an uncertain status with many either languishing unopened in libraries and family archives or simply being dispersed or discarded. With the help of institutions such as the Royal Academy of Music, Harvard University and the New York Philharmonic Orchestra this has begun to change with their extensive collections of these materials now being made available to scholars and musicians. This element examines the emergence of these artefacts as didactic and interpretative tools and explores the ways in which the performance styles of ten iconic conductors active in the nineteenth, twentieth and twenty-first centuries are reflected in their annotated scores and marked orchestral parts of Mozart's Symphony No. 41, K. 551 ('Jupiter').
Whereas Dr Burney's writings are often mentioned in studies on eighteenth-century music, not much interest seems to have been given specifically to his relation to the organ, which played an important part in his professional career as a practising musician. No better introduction to the aesthetic ethos of the eighteenth-century English organ can be found than in Burney's remarks disseminated in his various writings. Taken together, they construct a coherent discourse on taste and constitute an aesthetic. Burney's view of the organ is indicative of a broader ethos of moderation that permeates his whole work, and is at one with the dominant moral philosophy of Georgian England. This conception is ripe with patriotic undertones, while it also articulates a constant plea for politeness as a condition for harmonious social interaction. He believed that moderation, simplicity, and fancy were the constituents of good taste as well as good manners.
Organized in five parts, this Companion enhances understanding of Schubert's Winterreise by approaching it from multiple angles. Part I examines the political, cultural, and musical environments in which Winterreise was created. Part II focuses on the poet Wilhelm Muller, his 24-poem cycle Die Winterreise, and changes Schubert made to it in fashioning his musical setting. Part III illuminates Winterreise by exploring its relation to contemporaneous understandings of psychology and science, and early nineteenth-century social and political conditions. Part IV focuses more directly on the song cycle, exploring the listener's identification with the cycle's protagonist, text-music relations in individual songs, Schubert's compositional 'fingerprints', aspects of continuity and discontinuity among the songs, and the cycle's relation to German Romanticism. Part V concentrates on Winterreise in the nearly two centuries since its completion in 1827, including lyrical and dramatic performance traditions, the cycle's influence on later composers, and its numerous artistic reworkings.
Organized in five parts, this Companion enhances understanding of Schubert's Winterreise by approaching it from multiple angles. Part I examines the political, cultural, and musical environments in which Winterreise was created. Part II focuses on the poet Wilhelm Muller, his 24-poem cycle Die Winterreise, and changes Schubert made to it in fashioning his musical setting. Part III illuminates Winterreise by exploring its relation to contemporaneous understandings of psychology and science, and early nineteenth-century social and political conditions. Part IV focuses more directly on the song cycle, exploring the listener's identification with the cycle's protagonist, text-music relations in individual songs, Schubert's compositional 'fingerprints', aspects of continuity and discontinuity among the songs, and the cycle's relation to German Romanticism. Part V concentrates on Winterreise in the nearly two centuries since its completion in 1827, including lyrical and dramatic performance traditions, the cycle's influence on later composers, and its numerous artistic reworkings.
The music of early modern Naples and its renowned artistic traditions remain a fruitful area for scholars in eighteenth-century studies. Contemporary social, political, and artistic conditions had stimulated a significant growth of music, musicians and culture in the Kingdom of Naples from the beginning of the seventeenth century. Although eighteenth-century Neapolitan opera is well documented in scholarship, historians have paid much less attention to the simultaneous cultivation of instrumental genres. Yet the culture of instrumental music grew steadily and by its end became an exclusive area of focus for the royal court, a remarkable departure from past norms of patronage. By bridging this gap, Anthony R. DelDonna brings together diverse fields, including historical musicology, music theory, Neapolitan and European history. His book investigates the wide-ranging role of instrumental genres within late eighteenth-century Neapolitan culture and introduces readers to new material, including recently discovered instrumental works of Paisiello, Cimarosa and Pleyel.
Many know Antonio Salieri only as Mozart's envious nemesis from the
film "Amadeus," In this well-illustrated work, John A. Rice shows
us what a rich musical and personal history this popular stereotype
has missed.
Johann Sebastian Bach was a Lutheran and much of his music was for Lutheran liturgical worship. As these insightful essays in the twelfth volume of Bach Perspectives demonstrate, he was also influenced by--and in turn influenced--different expressions of religious belief. The vocal music, especially the Christmas Oratorio, owes much to medieval Catholic mysticism, and the evolution of the B minor Mass has strong Catholic connections. In Leipzig, Catholic and Lutheran congregations sang many of the same vernacular hymns. Internal squabbles were rarely missing within Lutheranism, for example Pietists' dislike of concerted church music, especially if it employed specific dance forms. Also investigated here are broader issues such as the close affinity between Bach's cantata libretti and the hymns of Charles Wesley; and Bach's music in the context of the Jewish Enlightenment as shaped by Protestant Rationalism in Berlin. Contributors: Rebecca Cypess, Joyce L. Irwin, Robin A. Leaver, Mark Noll, Markus Rathey, Derek Stauff, and Janice B. Stockigt.
During the 17th and 18th century musicians' mobilities and migrations are essential for the European music history and the cultural exchange of music. Adopting viewpoints that reflect different methodological approaches and diversified research cultures, the book presents studies on central scopes, strategies and artistic outcomes of mobile and migratory musicians as well as on the transfer of music. By looking at elite and non-elite musicians and their everyday mobilities to major and minor centers of music production and practice, new biographical patterns and new stylistic paradigms in the European East, West and South emerge.
In the nineteenth century, copyright law expanded to include performances of theatrical and musical works. These laws transformed how people made and consumed performances. Exploring precedent-setting litigation on both sides of the Atlantic, this book traces how courts developed definitions of theater and music to suit new performance rights laws. From Gilbert and Sullivan battling to protect The Mikado to Augustin Daly petitioning to control his spectacular 'railroad scene', artists worked with courts to refine vague legal language into clear, functional theories of drama, music, and performance. Through cases that ensnared figures including Lord Byron, Laura Keene, and Dion Boucicault, this book discovers how the law theorized central aspects of performance including embodiment, affect, audience response, and the relationship between scripts and performances. This history reveals how the advent of performance rights reshaped how we value performance both as an artistic medium and as property.
Mozart's greatest works were written in Vienna in the decade before his death (1781-1791). This biography focuses on Mozart's dual roles as a performer and composer and reveals how his compositional processes are affected by performance-related concerns. It traces consistencies and changes in Mozart's professional persona and his modus operandi and sheds light on other prominent musicians, audience expectations, publishing, and concert and dramatic practices and traditions. Giving particular prominence to primary sources, Simon P. Keefe offers new biographical and critical perspectives on the man and his music, highlighting his extraordinary ability to engage with the competing demands of singers and instrumentalists, publishing and public performance, and concerts and dramatic productions in the course of a hectic, diverse and financially uncertain freelance career. This comprehensive and accessible volume is essential for Mozart lovers and scholars alike, exploring his Viennese masterpieces and the people and environments that shaped them. |
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