0
Your cart

Your cart is empty

Browse All Departments
Price
  • R100 - R250 (43)
  • R250 - R500 (111)
  • R500+ (748)
  • -
Status
Format
Author / Contributor
Publisher

Books > Music > Western music, periods & styles > Classical music (c 1750 to c 1830)

Beethoven's Symphony No. 9 (Hardcover): Alexander Rehding Beethoven's Symphony No. 9 (Hardcover)
Alexander Rehding
R2,486 Discovery Miles 24 860 Ships in 12 - 17 working days

Beethoven's Ninth Symphony has held musical audiences captive for close to two centuries. Few other musical works hold such a prominent place in the collective imagination; each generation rediscovers the work for itself and makes it its own. Honing in on the significance of the symphony in contemporary culture, this book establishes a dialog between Beethoven's world and ours, marked by the earthshattering events of 1789 and of 1989. In particular, this book outlines what is special about the Ninth in millennial culture. In the present day, music is encoded not only as score but also as digital technology. We encounter Beethoven 9 flashmobs, digitally reconstructed concert halls, globally synchonized performances, and other time-bending procedures. The digital artwork 9 Beet Stretch even presents the Ninth at glacial speed over twenty-four hours, challenges our understanding of the symphony, and encourages us to confront the temporal dimension of Beethoven's music. In the digital age, the Ninth emerges as a musical work that is recomposed and reshaped-and that is robust enough to live up to such treatment-continually adapting to a changing world with changing media.

Metric Manipulations in Haydn and Mozart - Chamber Music for Strings, 1787-1791 (Hardcover): Danuta Mirka Metric Manipulations in Haydn and Mozart - Chamber Music for Strings, 1787-1791 (Hardcover)
Danuta Mirka
R2,177 Discovery Miles 21 770 Ships in 12 - 17 working days

Metric Manipulations in Haydn and Mozart makes a significant contribution to music theory and to the growing conversation on metric perception and musical composition. Focusing on the chamber music of Haydn and Mozart produced during the years 1787 to 1791, the period of most intense metric experimentation in the output of both composers, author Danuta Mirka presents a systematic discussion of metric manipulations in music of the late 18th-century. By bringing together historical and present-day theoretical approaches to rhythm and meter on the basis of their shared cognitive orientations, the book places the ideas of 18th-century theorists such as Riepe, Sulzer, Kirnberger and Koch into dialogue with modern concepts in cognitive musicology, particularly those of Fred Lerdahl and Ray Jackendoff, David Temperley, and Justin London. In addition, the book puts considerations of subtle and complex meter found in 18th-century musical handbooks and lexicons into point-by-point contact with Harald Krebs's recent theory of metrical dissonance. The result is an innovative and illuminating reinterpretation of late 18th-century music and music perception which will have resonance in scholarship and in analytical teaching and practice. Metric Manipulations in Haydn and Mozart will appeal to students and scholars in music theory and cognition/perception, and will also have appeal to musicologists studying Haydn and Mozart.

Orchestrating the Nation - The Nineteenth-Century American Symphonic Enterprise (Hardcover): Douglas Shadle Orchestrating the Nation - The Nineteenth-Century American Symphonic Enterprise (Hardcover)
Douglas Shadle
R1,807 Discovery Miles 18 070 Ships in 12 - 17 working days

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 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.

Discoveries from the Fortepiano - A Manual for Beginners and Seasoned Performers (Hardcover): Donna Louise Gunn Discoveries from the Fortepiano - A Manual for Beginners and Seasoned Performers (Hardcover)
Donna Louise Gunn
R3,608 Discovery Miles 36 080 Ships in 12 - 17 working days

Discoveries from the Fortepiano meets the demand for a manual on authentic Classical piano performance practice that is at once accessible to the performer and accurate to the scholarship. Uncovering a wide range of eighteenth-century primary sources, noted keyboard pedagogue Donna Gunn examines contemporary philosophical beliefs and principles surrounding Classical Era performance practices. Gunn introduces the reader to the Viennese fortepiano and compares its sonic and technical capabilities to the modern piano. In doing so, she demonstrates how understanding Classical fortepiano performance aesthetics can influence contemporary pianists, paying particular focus to technique, dynamics, articulation, rhythm, ornamentation, and pedaling. The book is complete with over 100 music examples that illustrate concepts, as well as sample model lessons that demonstrate the application of Gunn's historically informed style on the modern piano. Each example is available on the book's companion website and is given three recordings: the first, a modern interpretation of the passage on a modern piano; the second, a fortepiano interpretation; and the third, a historically informed performance on a modern piano. With its in-depth yet succinct explanations and examples of the Viennese five-octave fortepiano and the nuances of Classical interpretation and ornamentation, Discoveries from the Fortepiano is an indispensable educational aid to any pianist who seeks an academically and artistically sound approach to the performance of Classical works.

Fanny Hensel - The Other Mendelssohn (Hardcover): R Larry Todd Fanny Hensel - The Other Mendelssohn (Hardcover)
R Larry Todd
R1,763 Discovery Miles 17 630 Ships in 12 - 17 working days

Granddaughter of the philosopher Moses Mendelssohn and sister of the composer Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy, Fanny Hensel (1805-1847) was an extraordinary musician who left well over four hundred compositions, most of which fell into oblivion until their rediscovery late in the twentieth century. In Fanny Hensel: The Other Mendelssohn, R. Larry Todd offers a compelling, authoritative account of Hensel's life and music, and her struggle to emerge as a publicly recognized composer.

Music for a Mixed Taste - Style, Genre, and Meaning in Telemann's Instrumental Works (Hardcover): Steven Zohn Music for a Mixed Taste - Style, Genre, and Meaning in Telemann's Instrumental Works (Hardcover)
Steven Zohn
R2,218 Discovery Miles 22 180 Ships in 12 - 17 working days

Georg Philipp Telemann gave us one of the richest legacies of instrumental music from the eighteenth century. Though considered a definitive contribution to the genre during his lifetime, his concertos, sonatas, and suites were then virtually ignored for nearly two centuries following his death. Yet these works are now among the most popular in the baroque repertory. In Music for a Mixed Taste , Steven Zohn considers Telemann's music from stylistic, generic, and cultural perspectives. He investigates the composer's cosmopolitan "mixed taste"-a blending of the French, Italian, English, and Polish national styles-and his imaginative expansion of this concept to embrace mixtures of the old (late baroque) and new (galant) styles. Telemann had an equally remarkable penchant for generic amalgamation, exemplified by his pioneering role in developing hybrid types such as the sonata in concerto style ("Sonate auf Concertenart") and overture-suite with solo instrument ("Concert en ouverture"). Zohn examines the extramusical meanings of Telemann's "characteristic" overture-suites, which bear descriptive texts associating them with literature, medicine, politics, religion, and the natural world, and which acted as vehicles for the composer's keen sense of musical humor. Zohn then explores Telemann's unprecedented self-publishing enterprise at Hamburg, and sheds light on the previously unrecognized borrowing by J.S. Bach from a Telemann concerto. Music for a Mixed Taste further reveals how Telemann's style polonaise generates musical and social meanings through the timeless oppositions of Orient-Occident, urban-rural, and serious-comic.

The Oxford Handbook of Topic Theory (Hardcover): Danuta Mirka The Oxford Handbook of Topic Theory (Hardcover)
Danuta Mirka
R4,780 Discovery Miles 47 800 Ships in 12 - 17 working days

Topics are musical signs developed and employed primarily during the long eighteenth century. Their significance relies on associations that are clearly recognizable to the listener with different genres, styles and types of music making. Topic theory, which is used to explain conventional subjects of musical composition in this period, is grounded in eighteenth-century music theory, aesthetics, and criticism, while drawing also from music cognition and semiotics. The concept of topics was introduced into by Leonard Ratner in the 1980s to account for cross-references between eighteenth-century styles and genres. As the invention of a twentieth-century academic, topic theory as a field is comparatively new, and The Oxford Handbook of Topic Theory provides a much-needed reconstruction of the field's aesthetic underpinnings.
The volume grounds the concept of topics in eighteenth-century music theory, aesthetics, and criticism. Documenting the historical reality of individual topics on the basis of eighteenth-century sources, it traces the origins of topical mixtures to transformations of eighteenth-century musical life, and relates topical analysis to other methods of music analysis conducted from the perspectives of composers, performers, and listeners. Focusing its scope on eighteenth-century musical repertoire, The Oxford Handbook of Topic Theory lays the foundation for further investigation of topics in music of the nineteenth, twentieth, and twenty-first centuries.

Bewitching Russian Opera - The Tsarina from State to Stage (Hardcover): Inna Naroditskaya Bewitching Russian Opera - The Tsarina from State to Stage (Hardcover)
Inna Naroditskaya
R2,921 Discovery Miles 29 210 Ships in 12 - 17 working days

In Bewitching Russian Opera: The Tsarina from State to Stage, Inna Naroditskaya investigates the musical lives of four female monarchs who ruled Russia for most of the eighteenth century - Catherine I, Anna, Elizabeth, and Catherine the Great. Engaging with ethnomusicological, historical, and philological approaches, her study traces the tsarinas' deeply invested interest in musical drama, as each built theaters, established drama schools, commissioned operas and ballets, and themselves wrote and produced musical plays. Naroditskaya examines the creative output of the tsarinas across the contexts in which they worked and lived, revealing significant connections between their personal creative aspirations and contemporary musical-theatrical practices, and the political and state affairs conducted during their reigns. Bewitching Russian Opera ultimately demonstrates that the theater served as an experimental space for these imperial women, in which they rehearsed, probed, and formulated gender and class roles, and enacted on the musical stage political ambitions and international conquests which they would later carry out on the world stage itself.
Beginning with the eighteenth-century imperial court, Naroditskaya illustrates the increased theatricality of the court and the popularity of musical theater among nobles, which occurred alongside an appropriation of folk and court ceremonies into the theater. Through contemporary performance theory, she demonstrates how the opportunity for role-playing and costume-changing in performative spaces allowed individuals to cross otherwise rigid boundaries of class and gender. A close look at a series of operas and musical theater productions - from Catherine the Great's fairy tale operas to Tchaikovsky's Pique Dame - illuminates the transition of these royal women from powerful political and cultural figures during their own reigns, to a marginalized and unreal Other under the patriarchal dominance of the subsequent period. These tsarinas successfully fostered the concept of a modern nation and collective national identity, only to then have their power and influence undone in Russian cultural consciousness through the fairy-tales operas of the 19th century that positioned tsarinas as "magical" and dangerous figures rightfully displaced and conquered--by triumphant heroes on the stage, and by the new patriarchal rulers in the state.

The Art of Tonal Analysis - Twelve Lessons in Schenkerian Theory (Hardcover): Carl Schachter The Art of Tonal Analysis - Twelve Lessons in Schenkerian Theory (Hardcover)
Carl Schachter; Edited by Joseph N. Straus
R1,723 Discovery Miles 17 230 Ships in 12 - 17 working days

Carl Schachter is the world's leading practitioner of Schenkerian theory and analysis. His articles and books have been broadly influential, and are seen by many as models of musical insight and lucid prose. Yet, perhaps his greatest impact has been felt in the classroom. At the Mannes College of Music, the Juilliard School of Music, Queens College and the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, and at special pedagogical events around the world, he has taught generations of musical performers, composers, historians, and theorists over the course of his long career. In Fall 2012, Schachter taught a doctoral seminar at the CUNY Graduate Center in which he talked about the music and the musical issues that have concerned him most deeply; the course was in essence a summation of his extensive and renowned teaching. In The Art of Tonal Analysis, music theorist Joseph Straus presents edited transcripts of those lectures. Accompanied by abundant music examples, including analytical examples transcribed from the classroom blackboard, Straus's own visualizations of material that Schachter presented aurally at the piano, and Schachter's own extended Schenkerian graphs and sketches, this book offers a vivid account of Schachter's masterful pedagogy and his deep insight into the central works of the tonal canon. In making the lectures of one of the world's most extraordinary musicians and musical thinkers available to a wide audience, The Art of Tonal Analysis is an invaluable resource for students and scholars of music.

Sounds of the Metropolis - The 19th-Century Popular Music Revolution in London, New York, Paris, and Vienna (Hardcover): Derek... Sounds of the Metropolis - The 19th-Century Popular Music Revolution in London, New York, Paris, and Vienna (Hardcover)
Derek B. Scott
R1,823 Discovery Miles 18 230 Ships in 12 - 17 working days

The phrase "popular music revolution" may instantly bring to mind such twentieth-century musical movements as jazz and rock 'n' roll. In Sounds of the Metropolis, however, Derek Scott argues that the first popular music revolution actually occurred in the nineteenth century, illustrating how a distinct group of popular styles first began to assert their independence and values. London, New York, Paris, and Vienna feature prominently as cities in which the challenge to the classical tradition was strongest, and in which original and influential forms of popular music arose, from Viennese waltz and polka to vaudeville and cabaret.
Scott explains the popular music revolution as driven by social changes and the incorporation of music into a system of capitalist enterprise, which ultimately resulted in a polarization between musical entertainment (or "commercial" music) and "serious" art. He focuses on the key genres and styles that precipitated musical change at that time, and that continued to have an impact upon popular music in the next century. By the end of the nineteenth century, popular music could no longer be viewed as watered down or more easily assimilated art music; it had its own characteristic techniques, forms, and devices. As Scott shows, "popular" refers here, for the first time, not only to the music's reception, but also to the presence of these specific features of style. The shift in meaning of "popular" provided critics with tools to condemn music that bore the signs of the popular-which they regarded as fashionable and facile, rather than progressive and serious.
A fresh and persuasive consideration of the genesis of popular music on its own terms, Sounds ofthe Metropolis will appeal to students of music, cultural sociology, and history.

International Who's Who in Classical Music 2007 (Hardcover, 23rd edition): Robert J Elster International Who's Who in Classical Music 2007 (Hardcover, 23rd edition)
Robert J Elster; Europa Publications; Edited by (associates) Alison Neale
R10,269 Discovery Miles 102 690 Ships in 12 - 17 working days

The International Who's Who in Classical Music 2007 is an unparalleled source of biographical information on singers, instrumentalists, composers, conductors and managers. The directory section lists orchestras, opera companies and other institutions connected with the classical music world. Each biographical entry comprises personal information, principal career details, repertoire, recordings and compositions, and full contact details where available. Appendices provide contact details for national orchestras, opera companies, music festivals, music organizations and major competitions and awards. Entries include individuals involved in all aspects of the world of classical music: composers, instrumentalists, singers, arrangers, writers, musicologists, conductors, directors and managers. Among those listed in this new edition are Philip Glass, Lang Lang, George Crumb, Evelyn Glennie, Yo-Yo Ma and Inga Nielsen. Over 8,000 detailed biographical entries. Covers the classical and light classical fields. Includes both up-and-coming musicians and well-established names. This book will prove invaluable for anyone in need of reliable, up-to-date information on the individuals and organizations involved in classical music.

Water Music - Making Music in the Spas of Europe and North America (Hardcover): Ian Bradley Water Music - Making Music in the Spas of Europe and North America (Hardcover)
Ian Bradley
R1,032 Discovery Miles 10 320 Ships in 12 - 17 working days

Many of the most famous composers in classical music spent considerable periods in spa towns, whether taking in the waters, or searching for patrons among the rich and influential clientele who frequented these pioneer resorts, or soaking up the relaxing and decadent ambience of these enchanted and magical places. At Baden bei Wein, Mozart wrote his Ave Verum Corpus, and Beethoven sketched out his Ninth Symphony. Johannes Brahms spent 17 summers in Baden-Baden, where he stayed in his own specially-built composing cavern and consorted with Clara Schumann. Berlioz came to conduct in Baden-Baden for nine seasons, writing his last major work, Beatrice and Benedict, for the town's casino manager. Chopin, Liszt, and Dvorak were each regular visitors to Carlsbad and Marienbad. And it was in Carlsbad that Beethoven met Goethe. Concerts, recitals, and resident orchestras have themselves played a major role in the therapeutic regimes and the social and cultural life of European and North American watering places since the late eighteenth century. To this day, these spa towns continue to host major music festivals of the highest caliber, drawing musicians and loyal audiences on both local and international levels.
This book explores the music making that went on in the spas and watering places in Europe and the United States during their heyday between the early-eighteenth and the mid-twentieth centuries. Music was a hugely important part of the experience of taking a spa cure. Bands played during the early morning and late afternoon while people took the waters and bathed. Spa orchestras and ensembles entertained those gathering socially or resting in assembly rooms, pump rooms and in gardens and parks. In the evenings spa guests enjoyed concerts, visits to the theatre, balls, dances and gambling sessions at the casino, at all of which music played a major role.
Expert author Ian Bradley draws on original archival material and the diaries and letters of composers. His book ranges chronologically and geographically, beginning with Bath and Baden near Vienna, which both flourished in the eighteenth century, continuing through Baden-Baden, the Bohemian spas and Bad Ischl in the nineteenth century and on to Buxton and Saratoga Springs which saw their glory days in the early twentieth century. A concluding chapter brings the subject up to date with a review of the musical activities taking place in spa towns today and of the music that accompanies treatments in modern spas, now so ubiquitous and so important and growing a feature in the booming world of leisure, tourism, health and well-being.

Rossini - His Life and Works (Hardcover, 2nd Revised edition): Richard Osborne Rossini - His Life and Works (Hardcover, 2nd Revised edition)
Richard Osborne
R1,643 Discovery Miles 16 430 Ships in 12 - 17 working days

Gioachino Rossini was one of the most influential, as well as one of the most industrious and emotionally complex of the great nineteenth-century composers. Between 1810 and 1829, he wrote 39 operas, a body of work, comic and serious, which transformed Italian opera and radically altered the course of opera in France. His retirement from operatic composition in 1829, at the age of 37, was widely assumed to be the act of a talented but lazy man. In reality, political events and a series of debilitating illnesses were the determining factors. After drafting the Stabat Mater in 1832, Rossini wrote no music of consequence for the best part of twenty-five years, before the clouds lifted and he began composing again in Paris in the late 1850s. During this glorious Indian summer of his career, he wrote 150 songs and solo piano pieces his 'Sins of Old Age' and his final masterpiece, the Petite Messe solennelle. The image of Rossini as a gifted but feckless amateur-the witty, high-spirited bon vivant who dashed off The Barber of Seville in a mere thirteen days-persisted down the years, until the centenary of his death in 1968 inaugurated a process of re-evaluation by scholars, performers, and writers. The original 1985 edition of Richard Osborne's pioneering and widely acclaimed Rossini redefined the life and provided detailed analyses of the complete Rossini oeuvre. Twenty years on, all Rossini's operas have been staged and recorded, a Critical Edition of his works is well advanced, and a scholarly edition of his correspondence, including 250 previously unknown letters from Rossini to his parents, is in progress. Drawing on these past two decades of scholarship and performance, this new edition of Rossini provides the most detailed portrait we have yet had of one of the worlds best-loved and most enigmatic composers.

Junior Hanon - The Virtuoso Pianist in 60 Exercises Arranged in a Simplified and Condensed Format (Paperback, 2nd ed.): 518 Junior Hanon - The Virtuoso Pianist in 60 Exercises Arranged in a Simplified and Condensed Format (Paperback, 2nd ed.)
518
R260 R220 Discovery Miles 2 200 Save R40 (15%) Ships in 10 - 15 working days

A slight condensation of Hanon's first exercises. The simplification in layout and range make the exercises appear less difficult to a young student.

Elementary Method for the Piano, Op. 101 (Book): Ferdinand Beyer, Gayle Kowalchyk, E. L. Lancaster Elementary Method for the Piano, Op. 101 (Book)
Ferdinand Beyer, Gayle Kowalchyk, E. L. Lancaster
R481 R397 Discovery Miles 3 970 Save R84 (17%) Ships in 10 - 15 working days
Matthew Cooke (Paperback): Ian Cutts Matthew Cooke (Paperback)
Ian Cutts
R214 Discovery Miles 2 140 Ships in 12 - 17 working days

Chapel Royal meets country choir in this collection of eleven strophic psalm-settings, one anthem and two Christmas hymns, for four-part choir without organ. These elaborate settings with fugal passages are suitable for a reasonably competent choir and could provide useful material for evensongs and concerts. The introduction attempts to explain how this London composer, who was trained in the Chapel Royal, came to write music for a country church in Hertfordshire.

The Organ Music of Johannes Brahms (Hardcover): Barbara Owen The Organ Music of Johannes Brahms (Hardcover)
Barbara Owen
R1,758 Discovery Miles 17 580 Ships in 12 - 17 working days

Influenced by Robert and Clara Schumann and Joseph Joachim, Johannes Brahms not only learned to play the organ at the beginning of his career, but also wrote significant compositions for the instrument as a result of his early counterpoint study. He composed for the organ only sporadically or as part of larger choral and instrumental works in his subsequent career. During the final year of his life, however, he returned to pure organ composition with a set of chorale preludes--though many of these are thought to have been revisions of earlier works. Today, the organ works of Johannes Brahms are recognized as beautifully-crafted compositions by church and concert organists across the world and have become a much-cherished component of the repertoire. Until now, however, most scholarly accounts of Brahms's life and work treat his works for the organ as a minor footnote in his development as a composer.
Precisely because the collection of organ works is not extensive, the pieces--composed at different times during Brahms's lifetime--help to map his path as a composer, pinpointing various stages in his artistic development. In this volume, Barbara Owen offers the first in-depth study of this corpus, considering Brahms's organ works in relation to his background, methods, and overall artistic development, his contacts with organs and organists, the influence of his predecessors and contemporaries, and analyses of each specific work and its place in Brahms's career. Her expert history and analysis of Brahms's individual organ works and their interpretation also investigates contemporary practices relative to the performance of these pieces. The book's three valuable appendices present aguide to editions of Brahms's organ works, a discussion of the organ in Brahms's world that highlights some organs the composer would have heard, and a listing of the organ transcriptions of Brahms's work.
Blending unique insights into composition and performance practice, this book will be read eagerly by performers, students, and scholars of the organ, Brahms, and the music of the Nineteenth Century.

Perfect Pitch, Third Revised Edition - An Autobiography (Hardcover): Nicolas Slonimsky Perfect Pitch, Third Revised Edition - An Autobiography (Hardcover)
Nicolas Slonimsky; Edited by Electra Slonimsky Yourke
R2,164 R1,867 Discovery Miles 18 670 Save R297 (14%) Ships in 12 - 17 working days
Perfect Pitch, Third Revised Edition - An Autobiography (Paperback): Nicolas Slonimsky Perfect Pitch, Third Revised Edition - An Autobiography (Paperback)
Nicolas Slonimsky; Edited by Electra Slonimsky Yourke
R715 Discovery Miles 7 150 Ships in 12 - 17 working days
Beethoven and the Voice of God (Hardcover): Wilfrid Mellers Beethoven and the Voice of God (Hardcover)
Wilfrid Mellers
R1,433 Discovery Miles 14 330 Ships in 12 - 17 working days

Wilfrid Mellers is a composer, musician and author. Honorary Fellow of Downing College, Cambridge. This is his classic book on Beethoven.

Playing in the Cathedral - Music, Race, and Status in New Spain (Hardcover): Jesus A. Ramos-Kittrell Playing in the Cathedral - Music, Race, and Status in New Spain (Hardcover)
Jesus A. Ramos-Kittrell
R2,019 Discovery Miles 20 190 Ships in 12 - 17 working days

Throughout Spanish colonial America, limpieza de sangre (literally, "purity of blood ") determined an individual's status within the complex system of social hierarchy called casta. Within this socially stratified culture, those individuals at the top were considered to have the highest calidad-an all-encompassing estimation of a person's social status. At the top of the social pyramid were the Peninsulares: Spaniards born in Spain, who controlled most of the positions of power within the colonial governments and institutions. Making up most of the middle-class were criollos, locally born people of Spanish ancestry. During the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, Peninsulare intellectuals asserted their cultural superiority over criollos by claiming that American Spaniards had a generally lower calidad because of their "impure " racial lineage. Still, given their Spanish heritage, criollos were allowed employment at many Spanish institutions in New Spain, including the center of Spanish religious practice in colonial America: Mexico City Cathedral. Indeed, most of the cathedral employees-in particular, musicians-were middle-class criollos. In Playing in the Cathedral, author Jesus Ramos-Kittrell explores how liturgical musicians-choristers and instrumentalists, as well as teachers and directors-at Mexico City Cathedral in the mid-eighteenth century navigated changing discourses about social status and racial purity. He argues that criollos cathedral musicians, influenced by Enlightenment values of self-industry and autonomy, fought against the Peninsulare-dominated, racialized casta system. Drawing on extensive archival research, Ramos-Kittrell shows that these musicians held up their musical training and knowledge, as well as their institutional affiliation with the cathedral, as characteristics that legitimized their calidad and aided their social advancement. The cathedral musicians invoked claims of "decency " and erudition in asserting their social worth, arguing that their performance capabilities and theoretical knowledge of counterpoint bespoke their calidad and status as hombres decentes. Ultimately, Ramos-Kittrell argues that music, as a performative and theoretical activity, was a highly dynamic factor in the cultural and religious life of New Spain, and an active agent in the changing discourses of social status and "Spanishness " in colonial America. Offering unique and fascinating insights into the social, institutional, and artistic spheres in New Spain, this book is a welcome addition to scholars and graduate students with particular interests in Latin American colonial music and cultural history, as well as those interested in the intersections of music and religion.

Easy Classical Piano Duets 1 (Staple bound): Gayle Kowalchyk, E. L. Lancaster Easy Classical Piano Duets 1 (Staple bound)
Gayle Kowalchyk, E. L. Lancaster
R261 R221 Discovery Miles 2 210 Save R40 (15%) In Stock

A valuable assortment of teacher/student duets in their original form written by teachers and composers during the 18th and 19th centuries. Arranged in order of difficulty, the student parts are limited to a single five-finger position and fall primarily within the grand staff reading range. Each book includes works by such composers as Diabelli, Gurlitt, Bercucci, Wohlfahrt, Berens and others.

The Viennese Minor-Key Symphony in the Age of Haydn and Mozart (Hardcover): Matthew Riley The Viennese Minor-Key Symphony in the Age of Haydn and Mozart (Hardcover)
Matthew Riley
R2,649 Discovery Miles 26 490 Ships in 12 - 17 working days

In late eighteenth-century Vienna and the surrounding Habsburg territories, over 50 minor-key symphonies by at least 11 composers were written. These include some of the best-known works of the symphonic repertoire, such as Haydn's 'Farewell' Symphony and Mozart's Symphony No. 40 in G minor, K. 550. The driving energy, intense pathos and restlessness of these compositions demand close attention and participation from the listener, and pose urgent questions about meaning and interpretation.
In response to these questions, The Viennese Minor-Key Symphony in the Age of Haydn and Mozart combines historical perspectives with recent developments in music analysis to shed new light on this distinctive part of the repertoire. Through an intertextual, analytical approach, author Matthew Riley treats the minor-key symphony as a subgenre of several strands, reconstructing the compositional world it occupied. His work enables signals to be understood, puts characteristic strategies in clear relief, and ultimately reveals the significance this music held for both composers and listeners of the time. Riley gives us a fresh picture of the familiar masterpieces of Haydn and Mozart, while also focusing on lesser known composers.

The Careers of British Musicians, 1750-1850 - A Profession of Artisans (Hardcover): Deborah Rohr The Careers of British Musicians, 1750-1850 - A Profession of Artisans (Hardcover)
Deborah Rohr
R2,510 R2,298 Discovery Miles 22 980 Save R212 (8%) Ships in 12 - 17 working days

The study of the social context of music must consider the day-to-day experiences of its practitioners. This book traces the daily working life and aspirations of British musicians during the sweeping social and economic transformation of Britain from 1750 to 1850. It features working musicians of all types and at all levels--organists, singers, instrumentalists, teachers, composers, and entrepreneurs--and explores their educational background, their conditions of employment, their wages, the systems of patronage that supported them, and their individual perceptions.

Bach's Works for Solo Violin - Style, Structure, Performance (Hardcover): Joel Lester Bach's Works for Solo Violin - Style, Structure, Performance (Hardcover)
Joel Lester
R2,483 R2,352 Discovery Miles 23 520 Save R131 (5%) Ships in 12 - 17 working days

This book combines a performance guide for violinists, an analytical study, an exploration of Bach's style, and an investigation of musical form and continuity. J.S. Bach's three sonatas and three partitas for solo violin have been mainstays of the violin concert repertoire since the mid-nineteenth century; their long performance history, evidenced in recordings as well as in editions, offers an opportunity to study the ways in which notions of Baroque style have evolved. Central to the book is the question what type of analysis is best applied to Bach's music: wherever possible, Lester draws his analytical tools from eighteenth-century techniques, developed for this repertoire.

Free Delivery
Pinterest Twitter Facebook Google+
You may like...
The Life of Haydn - Musical Lives
David Wyn Jones Hardcover R2,311 Discovery Miles 23 110
From Paris to Peoria - How European…
R.Allen Lott Hardcover R2,181 R2,070 Discovery Miles 20 700
Music and Victorian Philanthropy - The…
Charles Edward McGuire Hardcover R2,039 Discovery Miles 20 390
Dramatic Expression in Rameaus Tragedie…
Cynthia Verba Hardcover R2,549 Discovery Miles 25 490
Beethoven the Pianist - Musical…
Tilman Skowroneck Hardcover R2,513 Discovery Miles 25 130
Mozart's Piano Music
William Kinderman Hardcover R1,447 Discovery Miles 14 470
His Master's Voice/De Stem van zijn…
Alan Kelly, Jacques Kloters Hardcover R3,080 Discovery Miles 30 800
Peter Schickele - A Bio-Bibliography
Tammy Ravas Hardcover R2,766 Discovery Miles 27 660
Liszt's Dante Symphony
Rich Disilvio Hardcover R759 R677 Discovery Miles 6 770
Music in Spain During the Eighteenth…
Malcolm Boyd, Juan Jose Carreras Hardcover R2,522 R2,309 Discovery Miles 23 090

 

Partners