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Books > Arts & Architecture > Music > Western music, periods & styles > Classical music (c 1750 to c 1830)
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.
A few weeks after the reunification of Germany, Leonard Bernstein
raised his baton above the ruins of the Berlin Wall and conducted a
special arrangement of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony. The central
statement of the work, that "all men will be brothers," captured
the sentiment of those who saw a brighter future for the newly
reunited nation. This now-iconic performance is a palpable example
of "musical monumentality" - a significant concept which underlies
our cultural and ideological understanding of Western art music
since the nineteenth-century. Although the concept was first raised
in the earliest years of musicological study in the 1930s, a
satisfying exploration of the "monumental" in music has not yet
been made. Alexander Rehding, one of the brightest young stars in
the field, takes on the task in Music and Monumentality, an
elegant, thorough treatment that will serve as a foundation for all
future discussion in this area.
This book was first published in 2009. This fascinating study of ethnic theatrical representation provides original perspectives on the cultural milieu, compositional strategies and operatic legacy of Joseph Haydn. The portrayal of Jews changed markedly during the composer's lifetime. Before the Enlightenment, when Jews were treated as a people apart, physical infirmities and other markers of 'difference' were frequently caricatured on the comedic stage. However, when society began to debate the 'Jewish Question' - understood in the later eighteenth century as how best to integrate Jews into society as productive citizens - theatrical representations became more sympathetic. As Caryl Clark describes, Haydn had many opportunities to observe Jews in his working environments in Vienna and Eisenstadt, and incorporated Jewish stereotypes in two early works. An understanding of Haydn's evolving approach to ethnic representation on the stage provides deeper insight into the composer's iconic wit and humanity, and to the development of opera as a cultural art form across the centuries.
An insteresting case of self-borrowing. Bach took music from this work for his own Mass in B-minor (BWV 191/1 corresponds to the Gloria in excelsis Deo, BWV 191/2 to the Domine Deus, BWV 191/3 to the Cum sancto spiritu). This unusual cantata, the only one with a Latin text, may have been written to celebrate the Peace of Dresden (which ended the 2nd Silesian war) and first performed on Christmas day, 1745. This newly engraved, carefully edited vocal score is based on the Bach Gessellschaft edition. The convenient A4 size is ideal for vocalists, choruses, and rehearsal pianists.
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, and published several books on the state of contemporary European music, including Music and Manners in France and Germany (1841) and Thirty Years' Musical Recollections (1862), both reissued in this series. In the two-volume Modern German Music, published in 1854, he revisits many of the topics and places discussed in the 1841 volume, but views them from the other side of the Year of Revolution, 1848, which, he argues, changed the cultural as well as the political atmosphere of the German states significantly and permanently. Lively descriptions of German cities, their culture and especially their music festivals are accompanied by extended essays on Spohr, Beethoven, Schubert and Mendelssohn, but Chorley is by no means an uncritical observer, and his comments on the rise of nationalism and militarism in the German states after 1848 now seem prophetic.
Henry Fothergill Chorley was music critic of The Athenaeum for over thirty years, and published several books on the state of contemporary European music, including Music and Manners in France and Germany (1841) and Thirty Years' Musical Recollections (1862), both reissued in this series. In the two-volume Modern German Music, published in 1854, he revisits many of the topics and places discussed in the 1841 volume, but views them from the other side of the Year of Revolution, 1848, which, he argues, changed the cultural as well as the political atmosphere of the German states significantly and permanently. Lively descriptions of German cities, their culture and especially their music festivals are accompanied by extended essays on Spohr, Beethoven, Schubert and Mendelssohn, but Chorley is by no means an uncritical observer, and his comments on the rise of nationalism and militarism in the German states after 1848 now seem prophetic.
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.
Providing a fresh approach to the social history of the Victorian era, this book examines the history and development of the tonic sol-fa sight-singing system, and its impact on British society. Instead of focusing on the popular classical music canon, McGuire combines musicology, social history and theology to investigate the perceived power of music within the Victorian era. Through case studies on temperance, missionaries, and women's suffrage, the book traces how John Curwen and his son transformed Sarah Glover's sight-singing notation from a strictly local phenomenon into an internationally-used system. They built an infrastructure that promoted its use within Great Britain and beyond, to British colonies and other lands experiencing British influence, such as India, South Africa, and especially Madagascar. McGuire demonstrates how tonic sol-fa was believed to be of importance beyond music education - that music could improve the morals of individual singers and listeners, thus transforming society.
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.
Combining musical insight with the most recent research, William Kinderman's Beethoven is both a richly drawn portrait of the man and a guide to his music. Kinderman traces the composer's intellectual and musical development from the early works written in Bonn to the Ninth Symphony and the late quartets, looking at compositions from different and original perspectives that show Beethoven's art as a union of sensuous and rational, of expression and structure. In analyses of individual pieces, Kinderman shows that the deepening of Beethoven's musical thought was a continuous process over decades of his life. In this new updated edition, Kinderman gives more attention to the composer's early chamber music, his songs, his opera Fidelio, and to a number of often-neglected works of the composer's later years and fascinating projects left incomplete. A revised view emerges from this of Beethoven's aesthetics and the musical meaning of his works. Rather than the conventional image of a heroic and tormented figure, Kinderman provides a more complex, more fully rounded account of the composer. Although Beethoven's deafness and his other personal crises are addressed, together with this ever-increasing commitment to his art, so too are the lighter aspects of his personality: his humor, his love of puns, his great delight in juxtaposing the exalted and the commonplace.
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.
This new vocal score is a digitally enhanced reprint of the one fist issued by C.F. Peters, Leipzig in the late 19th century, based upon the Bach Gesellschaft edition with the classic keyboard reduction by Gustav Rosler. With added measure numbers and in a large, easy-to-read A4 size, choruses and students of Bach's music will appreciate having this authoritative score in their libraries.
Presenting a fresh picture of the life and work of Joseph Haydn, this biography captures all the complexities and contradictions of the composer's long career. In his lifetime Haydn achieved a degree of fame that easily surpassed that of Mozart and Beethoven. Later his historical significance was more restricted, regarded exclusively as the composer who first recognised the potential of the symphony and the quartet. However, Haydn had also composed operas, oratorios and church music with similar enthusiasm and self-regard. Too easily buttonholed as a Viennese composer, he interacted consistently with the musical life of Vienna only during the earliest and latest periods of his life; London was at least as important in fashioning the composer's fame and legacy. To counter the genial view of the composer, this biography probes the darker side of Haydn's personality, his commercial opportunism and double dealing, his penny-pinching and his troubled marriage.
Most scholars since World War Two have assumed that composer Felix
Mendelssohn Bartholdy (1809-1847) maintained a strong attachment to
Judaism throughout his lifetime. As these commentators have rightly
noted, Mendelssohn was born Jewish and did not convert to
Protestantism until age seven, his grandfather was the famous
Jewish reformer and philosopher Moses Mendelssohn, and his music
was banned by the Nazis, who clearly viewed him as a Jew.
The connections between a great artist's life and work are subtle,
complex, and often highly revealing. In the case of Beethoven,
however, the standard approach has been to treat his life and his
art separately. Now, Barry Cooper's new volume incorporates the
latest international research on many aspects of the composer's
life and work and presents these in a truly integrated narrative.
In this valuable collection of essays, published to coincide with the tercentenary of Handel's birth, Reinhard Strohm examines the relationship between Handel's great operas and the earlier European Baroque tradition, focusing on the Italian school, to which they are so crucially indebted. Handel's immediate heritage included the figures of Scarlatti, Gasparini and Vivaldi; this book establishes that context, concentrating on contemporary operatic practice, and proceeds to analyse three of Handel's best-known works. It shows how they elaborate and develop the style and method of the Italian operatic theatre, embracing previous traditions and synthesizing them with a new and exciting accentuation.
This collection of articles, written by European, American and British scholars, clarifies problems of style and chronology in the music Schubert composed during the last decade of his life. Althought O. E. Deutsch's documentary biography and memoirs set new milestones in Schubert research, they left some problems of chronology unanswered. Some of the essays in this volume examine or re-examine these problems, using different methods. Robert Winter, in the longest essay, proposes numerous re-datings of works composed between 1822 and 1828 which result from a careful examination of types of paper and watermarks. Other contributors point out the limitations of applying stylistic criteria as the basis for the dating of individual works. The articles touch on all areas of Schubert's output, with the emphasis on his songs, theatre music, and orchestral and chamber works. Althought this book will be of primary interest to musicologists, and others interested in Schubert, the essays concerned with song and the theatre will also attract a wider readership.
New digitally-enhanced reprint of the classic vocal score issued by Breitkopf & Hartel in the early 20th century edited by the eminent musicologist Eusebius Mandyczewski.
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.
Ludmila Korabelnikova recounts the life and times of Alexander Tcherepnin, a prolific and often emulated composer who produced four operas, 13 ballets, four symphonies, numerous orchestral and chamber works, and more than 200 piano pieces. He was born in Russia in 1899 to a family of musicians and artists. However, Aaron Copland referred to him as "an honorary American composer" and Toru Takemitsu called him "a father figure of Japanese music." Korabelnikova focuses not only on the biographical elements of Tcherepnin's story, but also on his music and its technical innovations. She includes extended quotations by the composer himself and selective analytical commentary, based on primary sources and contemporaneous accounts.
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. |
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