This is an essential book for all performers and students of Classical and Romantic music. Problems of performing practice did not disappear with the death of Handel. This book is the first to examine the changing relationship, during the period 1750-1900, between what composers committed to paper and what performers were expected to play.

From the Foreword by Sir Roger Norrington:

`This is the book we have been waiting for ... Music-making must always involve guesses and inspirations, creative hunches and improvised strategies, above all, instinct and imagination. But if we don't have all the answers, the least we can do is to set out on our journey with the right questions. These questions and indeed many of the possible answers, Clive Brown gives in wonderful profusion. I cannot recommend this book too highly.'

This guide to Mozart's two most popular piano concertos--the D minor, K. 466, and the C major, K. 467 (the so-called "Elvira Madigan")--presents the historical background of the works, placing them within the context of Mozart's compositional and performance activities at a time when his reputation as both composer and pianist was at its peak. The special nature of the concerto, as both a form and genre, is explored through a selective survey of some of the approaches that various critics have taken in discussing Mozart's concertos. The concluding chapter discusses a wide range of issues of interest to modern performers.

Why do so many operas end in suicide, murder, and death? Why do many characters in large-scale operas exhibit neurotic behaviours worthy of psychoanalysis? Why are the legendary "grands operas" so seldom performed today? Anselm Gerhard argues in this text that such questions can only be answered by recognizing that daily life in rapidly urbanized mid-19th-century Paris introduced not just new social forces, but also new modes of perception and expectations of art. He attempts to provide a realistic portrayal of life in a metropolic, librettists and composers of "grand opera" developed new forms and conventions, as well as new staging performance practices. For example, the "tableau", in which the chorus typically plays the role of a destructive mob. These larger urban and social concerns are brought to bear in Gerhard's discussions of eight operas, composed by Rossini, Auber, Meyebeer, Verdi, and Louise Bertin.

Beethoven's Third Symphony, originally entitled "Bonaparte", now bears the title "Eroica" ("Heroic"). Napoleon promised an Enlightened Europe but ultimately Beethoven was disillusioned by him. This handbook treats the politics, aesthetics, reception, and musical meaning of this decisive work, which, because of its unique design, powerfully expanded the potential of symphonic expression. Beethoven's ideals, derived largely from the writings of Friedrich Schiller and clearly perceived already by the composer's contemporaries, are readily apparent in the music.

Haydn's Symphonies Nos. 82-7 are seminal works in Haydn's output and mark a new level of compositional attainment, launching the important cycle of mature Haydn symphonies written for an international audience. This book considers both stylistic aspects of the symphonies and their broader cultural context, in particular the important phenomenon of Haydn's international success in the 1780s, the reception of Haydn's symphonies by Parisian audiences, and the aesthetic basis for their extraordinary appeal at the end of the eighteenth century.

Mozart was not only an extraordinary musical genius but a man who lived through the great change from the old society to the modern one in which we still live. He was one of the "new men" of the age--his music gives voice to anxieties and consolations that are still ours. This biography sets Mozart's life within the history of an age plunging into revolution and European war. Avoiding guesswork, it probes his crucial relationships with his father, his wife and his employer. It studies--in depth though in nontechnical language--characteristic examples of his music and asks what they can tell us about their author and ourselves.

This is the first individual study of Beethoven's Violin Concerto. It explores the work's background and the influences that combined in its creation, and describes its indifferent initial reception. It considers the numerous textual problems that confront the performer, including discussion of Beethoven's adaptation for piano and orchestra. Following a detailed synopsis of the work itself, a final section reviews the wide variety of cadenzas that have been written to complement the concerto throughout its performance history.

Schroeder here sets out to challenge the widely held view of Haydn as an inspired instrumental musician who composed in isolation from 18th-century enlightened thinking. By means of both documentary and musical investigation the author seeks instead to present him as a culturally and politically sensitive representative of the Age of Enlightenment.

In this first full-scale study of performance practice in Haydn's keyboard music, Bernard Harrison confronts the important issues facing any performer of Haydn's keyboard music, and at the same time develops some of the recurring controversial questions in broader research on Haydn's oeuvre. 'a major contribution to Haydn scholarship. Potential performers of the composer's keyboard music will find a commanding and well-documented exposition of the problems facing him or her; at the same time the volume will be of fundamental value to those interested in Haydn's music who are not primarily practitioners ... comprehensive and authoritative.' David Wyn Jones

Although there are many accounts of Mozart's life, and countless descriptions and analyses of his music, this is the first attempt to portray Mozart's creative life as a composer. Küster selects forty works or groups of works covering virtually every important stage in Mozart's career, from the first keyboard compositions of the young Wunderkind to Mozart's final days and the Requiem. He draws on Mozart's letters, documentary material, and textual and musical quotations to illuminate his interpretation of Mozart's musical personality.

Established by musicians in 1813, the Philharmonic is the world's second oldest concert society; only Leipzig is senior. Weber and Mendelssohn were active honorary members; Joachim and Clara Schumann lifelong friends. The list of gold medalists runs from Elgar and Beecham to Sibelius, Rachmaninov, and Tippett. Most instrumentalists and many singers of international repute mounted its platforms. Berlioz, Wagner, Tchaikovsky, Grieg, Dvorak and Strauss came to preside over their music. Celebrating a venerable institution, this history, based upon exhaustive research in the Society's archives, also addresses wider themes, which continue to bear upon concert life: the evolution of repertoire and performance, audience, agent and conductor; networks of recruitment; patronage and the market place; the collective biography and proliferation of London orchestras; the economics of fees and rehearsals. Shaw once claimed that the Philharmonic's generosity towards Beethoven was the only creditable incident in English history, and never mentioned by historians. A leading authority on the economic and social history of music now attempts to repair that omission.

In this book on Beethoven's Piano Sonata in E, Op. 109, Nicholas Marston combines source studies and a Schenkerian analytical approach to produce one of the most extensive and detailed studies of a Beethoven piano sonata ever published. The study is based on a complete transcription of all the surviving autograph musical sources: the sketches, a fragmentary Urschrift, and the autograph score. Early printed editions and manuscript copies are also discussed and the text is handsomely supported by extensive transcription from the sources. After an introductory chapter in which previous work - notably that of Heinrich Schenker himself - on this sonata is reviewed, chapter 2 draws upon Beethoven's letters, conversation books, sketchbooks, and other sources to build up a detailed 'biography' of Op. 109. The middle chapters form the core of the analytical study: the sketches for each of the three movements are analysed both to reveal aspects of the genesis of the movement and to build up a particular analytical approach to the final version. The discussion embraces all levels of detail; even Beethoven's previously misunderstood notation of final barlines in the autograph score is shown to be musically significant. In the concluding chapter the notion of 'sketch' is extended beyond Op. 109 and the results of the whole study are summarized. The book might be read as a study in the extension of conventional Schenkerian analysis. Marston argues that individual movements of Op. 109 are structurally incomplete and that satisfactory closure is achieved only at the level of the entire work. The concluding theme-and-variation movement is crucial, and Marston offers a rare Schenkerian perspective onlarge-scale coherence in this genre. But in combining these analytical perceptions with an understanding of Beethoven's sketches more as valid proto-compositions in their own right than as wrong turnings en route to a 'perfect' finished work, Marston also offers a unique and compelling interpretation of this profound and beautiful masterpiece of late Beethoven.

Beethoven composed far more folksong settings than any other type of composition. Most are British songs, including Auld Lang Syne and the The Miller of Dee , with text by such authors as Burns, Byron and Scott. Yet Beethoven's settings, commissioned by George Thomson of Edinburgh, have been neglected by performers and scholars alike, and nearly all accounts of them are both superficial and startlingly inaccurate. This book is based on a very elablorate study of a wide range of sources, and dispels the many myths that have been circulating about this music. Every one of the 179 settings is dated to within a few weeks and an account is given of the souces of the melodies and texts, the difficulties of sending the music across Europe during the Napoleonic Wars (smugglers were even called upon to assist!), the fees Beethoven received, and when and how the texts were added. By comparing Beethoven's settings with those of his predecessors Pleyel, Haydhn and Kozeluch, the author demonstrates that Beethoven comprehensively transcended the bounds of convention, producing settings of extra-ordinary quality and originality. This book is intended for scholars, students, and those interested i

Following on from his reflections on conducting the nine Beethoven symphonies, Del Mar now gives his views on the remainder of Beethoven's orchestral output. He offers analyses of the music's structure, pointing out key events in the score, and gives advice on how to achieve the desired effect. Drawing on a lifetime's experience of conducting, these reflections are an essential starting-point for young conducters.

This is an essential guide for students of the nine Beethoven symphonies and a starting-point for young conductors. Drawing on his lifelong experience of conducting these works, Del Mar offers an analysis of the music's structure, pointing out key events in the score and offering advice on how to achieve the desired effect. He also compares variant readings in the different editions and further traces the development of Beethoven's style and that of the symphony over the 24 years of their composition.

No change has had a more profound influence on the development of music-making over the last two decades than the growth of the historical performance movement. The notion that we can - and indeed should - perform music in the manner its composers intended has led to a search for original methods and styles of performance. At first this was the pursuit of a small coterie, but in recent years the explosion of popular interest in what has been called the 'authenticity' movement has led to a sea-change in our listening habits. Performances on period instruments are now supplanting those on modern instruments in some central areas of the classical repertory, and by many this is perceived as a threat. For the first time, this book explores the thinking behind the search for so-called authenticity in musical performance, and questions some of the received opinions about its worth and purpose. The contributors include critics Nicholas Kenyon of Early Music and Will Crutchfield of the New York Times, alongside Howard Mayer Brown, Philip Brett, Robert P. Morgan, Richard Taruskin, and Gary Tomlinson, all of them experts in their field. The variety of views expressed is sure to provoke wide discussion and to stimulate new thought among both scholars and performers about the future of the historical performance movement.

Mozart's Clarinet Concerto, written in 1791 during the last month of the famous composer's life, is the most frequently performed and highly revered concerto in clarinet literature. This insightful book examines the concerto in detail and analyzes the musical theories and performance techniques of eight of the world's greatest clarinetist's: Stanley Hasty, Robert Marcellus, Anthony Gigliotti, Harold Wright, Rudolf Jettel, Ulysse Delecluse, Jack Brymer, and Michel Incenzo. The author's introductory chapter offers historical perspective on the most significant points of each interpretation, highlighting both the striking number of similarities and also the important differences in each artist's approach to the concerto. The insight into the musical thinking of these renowned artists will be of interest to all musical performers and to all lovers of music. David E. Etheridge, vice-president of the International Clarinetists Society, and a former player in the Oklahoma Symphony Orchestra, is a professor of clarinet at the University of Oklahoma. He holds a doctorate in musical arts from the Eastman School of Music.

Written by one of the world's outstanding music historians and critics, the late Alfred Einstein, this classic study of Mozart's character and works brings to light many new facts about his relationship with his family, his susceptibility to ambitious women, and his associations with musical contemporaries, as well as offering a penetrating analysis of his operas, piano music, chamber music, and symphonies.

During the nineteenth century, nearly one hundred symphonies were written by over fifty composers living in the United States. With few exceptions, this repertoire is virtually forgotten today. In the award-winning Orchestrating the Nation: The Nineteenth-Century American Symphonic Enterprise, author Douglas W. Shadle explores the stunning stylistic diversity of this substantial repertoire and uncovers why it failed to enter the musical mainstream. Throughout the century, Americans longed for a distinct national musical identity. As the most prestigious of all instrumental genres, the symphony proved to be a potent vehicle in this project as composers found inspiration for their works in a dazzling array of subjects, including Niagara Falls, Hiawatha, and Western pioneers. With a wealth of musical sources at his disposal, including never-before-examined manuscripts, Shadle reveals how each component of the symphonic enterprise-from its composition, to its performance, to its immediate and continued reception by listeners and critics-contributed to competing visions of American identity. Employing an innovative transnational historical framework, Shadle's narrative covers three continents and shows how the music of major European figures such as Beethoven, Schumann, Wagner, Liszt, Brahms, and Dvorak exerted significant influence over dialogues about the future of American musical culture. Shadle demonstrates that the perceived authority of these figures allowed snobby conductors, capricious critics, and even orchestral musicians themselves to thwart the efforts of American symphonists despite widespread public support of their music. Consequently, these works never entered the performing canons of American orchestras. An engagingly written account of a largely unknown repertoire, Orchestrating the Nation shows how artistic and ideological debates from the nineteenth century continue to shape the culture of American orchestral music today.

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.

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 portrait of Schubert that is vibrant, plural, trans-national, and complex.

The life and music of Beethoven still fascinate classical music lovers, new and old. His many symphonies, sonatas, concertos, string quartets, and his one opera enchant audiences, challenge performers, engage students, and support scholars in their work. In Experiencing Beethoven, music historian Geoffrey Block explores in layman's terms a highly representative body of about two dozen Beethoven instrumental and vocal works, offering listeners who know him well, or are just discovering him, an opportunity to grasp the breadth and depth of his musical genius. Designed for those unversed in musical terminology or theory, Experiencing Beethoven places the composer's works within the evolving context of his personal and professional life and social and cultural milieu. Block sheds light on the public and private audiences of Beethoven's music, from the concerts for the composer's own financial benefit to the debut of the "Eroica" Symphony at the palace of Prince Lobkowitz to the historic public premiere of his Ninth Symphony. Experiencing Beethoven paints a portrait of the composer's youth in Bonn, his early triumphs and artistic maturation in Vienna, and-despite the challenges his music posed to his contemporaries- the recognition he received during his lifetime as the most acclaimed composer of the era. Block conveys the range and scope of Beethoven's achievement, from his heroic style to his lyricism, grappling throughout with the composer's power to communicate his idealistic musical vision to listeners in both his time and ours. Finally, Experiencing Beethoven explores why Beethoven's music continues to enjoy an unwavering appeal in an age saturated with a range of musical styles.

A unique and revelatory book of music history that examines in what is perhaps the best-known and most-popular symphony ever written and its four-note opening, which has fascinated musicians, historians, and philosophers for the last 200 years. Music critic Matthew Guerrieri reaches back before Beethoven's time to examine what might have influenced him in writing his Fifth Symphony, and forward into our own time to describe the ways in which the Fifth has, in turn, asserted its influence.

Mit Schostakowitschs Symphonien wird die Geschichte der Gattung im 20. Jahrhundert unter den besonderen Bedingungen musikalischer Produktion in der Sowjetunion fortgeschrieben. Die Beitrage dieses Bandes behandeln Schostakowitschs Anbindung an die symphonische Tradition, seinen Umgang mit politischer Dichtung und der Doktrin des sozialistischen Realismus, Perspektiven der westlichen Rezeption seiner Symphonien sowie kompositorische Aspekte und Kontexte der spezifischen Anlage einzelner Werke. Das Bonner Symposion 2004 versammelte eine Reihe namhafter Autoren im Vorfeld des Jubilaumsjahres 2006, deren individuelle Zugangsweisen ein aktuelles Bild der wissenschaftlichen Diskurse zum Werk des Komponisten bieten.

The life and works of Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy are enjoying a considerable resurgence of interest. This volume presents the most recent trends in Mendelssohn research, examining three broad categories - reception history, historical and critical essays, and case studies of particular compositions. Much of the book depends on a wealth of primary nineteenth-century documents, including little-known autograph manuscripts, letters and sketches of the composer. Four studies consider various facets of Mendelssohn reception in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Friedhelm Krummacher considers the abiding popularity of Mendelssohn's music in England, while Peter Ward Jones reviews Mendelssohn's business dealings with English publishers; Donald Mintz examines the composer's posthumous reputation from the perspective of the revolutionary agenda of mid-nineteenth-century Germany; and Lawrence Kramer considers dynamic multiple layers of meaning in the Calm Sea and Prosperous Voyage Overture and The First Walpurgisnight. Four essays, by Judith Silber Ballan, J. Rigbie Turner, Wm. A. Little, and David Brodbeck, treat Mendelssohn's relationships with A. B. Marx, E. Devrient, Franz Liszt, and Frederick William IV. Finally, two studies by R. Larry Todd and Christa Jost focus on two major piano works, the Preludes and Fugues op. 35 and the Variations serieuses op. 54.