This set of six pieces is based on folk song melodies and dance forms from Transylvania which was annexed to Romania in 1920. The contrasting melodies were originally for violin or shepherd's flute, but the unusual harmonies are original with Bart?k. The performance time for the complete set of dances is approximately 4 minutes, 15 seconds. Included is an outstanding CD recording from the Naxos label.

Examines the decline and resurgence of Haydn's reputation in an effort to better understand the forces that shape critical reception on a broad scale. By the 1840s Joseph Haydn, who died in 1809 as the most celebrated composer of his generation, had degenerated into the bewigged "Papa Haydn," a shallow placeholder in music history who merely invented the forms used by Beethoven.In a remarkable reversal, Haydn swiftly regained his former stature within the opening decades of the twentieth century. Reviving Haydn: New Appreciations in the Twentieth Century examines both the decline and the subsequent resurgence of Haydn's reputation in an effort to better understand the forces that shape critical reception on a broad scale. No single person or event marked the turning point for Haydn's reputation. Instead a broad resurgence reshaped opinion in Europe and the United States in short order. The Haydn revival engaged many of the music world's leading figures -- composers (Vincent d'Indy and Arnold Schoenberg), conductors (Arturo Toscanini), performers (Wanda Landowska), critics (Lawrence Gilman), and scholars (Heinrich Schenker and Donald Tovey) -- each of whom valued Haydn's music for specific reasons and used it to advance particular goals. Yet each advocated for a rehearing and rereading of the composer's works, calling for a new appreciation of Haydn's music. Bryan Proksch is Assistant Professor of Music History at Lamar University.

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.

Students of all ages will delight in these 26 simple piano arrangements of familiar melodies such as "Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring" and "Wachet Auf," plus other fun-to-play pieces.

In 1829 Goethe famously described the string quartet as 'a conversation among four intelligent people'. Inspired by this metaphor, Edward Klorman's study draws on a wide variety of documentary and iconographic sources to explore Mozart's chamber works as 'the music of friends'. Illuminating the meanings and historical foundations of comparisons between chamber music and social interplay, Klorman infuses the analysis of sonata form and phrase rhythm with a performer's sensibility. He develops a new analytical method called multiple agency that interprets the various players within an ensemble as participants in stylized social intercourse - characters capable of surprising, seducing, outwitting, and even deceiving one another musically. This book is accompanied by online resources that include original recordings performed by the author and other musicians, as well as video analyses that invite the reader to experience the interplay in time, as if from within the ensemble.

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.

This title was first published in 2003. From 1821 until his death, Schubert compiled or specially composed for publication 42 song sets, yet during his own lifetime, and until now, their integrity and importance as sets have been virtually ignored. In this book, Michael Hall asserts that these songs sets are not arbitrary collections, as so often assumed, but highly integrated works in their own right. Approaching these songs as sets the book throws light on Schubert's largely undiscussed intellectual preoccupations. They reveal that he was au fait with most of the philosophical concerns of his time, especially those which touched on Romanticism. But although the sets reflect Romanticism in their topics, Hall maintains that they are the epitome of classical balance. In encouraging students and performers to approach these songs as sets, this study aims to alter perceptions of this important repertory.

Franz Schubert (1797-1828) is now rightly recognized as one of the greatest and most original composers of the nineteenth century. His keen understanding of poetry and his uncanny ability to translate his profound understanding of human nature into remarkably balanced compositions marks him out from other contemporaries in the field of song. Schubert was one of the first major composers to devote so much time to song and his awareness that this genre was not rated highly in the musical hierarchy did not deter him, throughout a short but resolute and hard-working career, from producing songs that invariably arrest attention and frequently strike a deeply poetic note. Schubert did not emerge as a composer until after his death, but during his short lifetime his genius flowered prolifically and diversely. His reputation was first established among the aristocracy who took the art music of Vienna into their homes, which became places of refuge from the musical mediocrity of popular performance. More than any other composer, Schubert steadily graced Viennese musical life with his songs, piano music and chamber compositions. Throughout his career he experimented constantly with technique and in his final years began experiments with form. The resultant fascinating works were never performed in his lifetime, and only in recent years have the nature of his experiments found scholarly favor. In The Unknown Schubert contributors explore Schubert's radical modernity from a number of perspectives by examining both popular and neglected works. Chapters by renowned scholars describe the historical context of his work, its relation to the dominant artistic discourses of the early nineteenth century, and Schubert's role in the paradigmatic shift to a new perception of song. This valuable book seeks to bring Franz Schubert to life, exploring his early years as a composer of opera, his later years of ill-health when he composed in the shadow of death, and his efforts to reflect in his music his own profound inner experience.

Music in the Classical World: Genre, Culture, and History provides a broad sociocultural and historical perspective of the music of the Classical Period as it relates to the world in which it was created. It establishes a background on the time span-1725 to 1815-offering a context for the music made during one of the more vibrant periods of achievement in history. Outlining how music interacted with society, politics, and the arts of that time, this kaleidescopic approach presents an overview of how the various genres expanded during the period, not just in the major musical centers but around the globe. Contemporaneous treatises and commentary documenting these changes are integrated into the narrative. Features include the following: A complete course with musical scores on the companion website, plus links to recordings-and no need to purchase a separate anthology The development of style and genres within a broader historical framework Extensive musical examples from a wide range of composers, considered in context of the genre A thorough collection of illustrations, iconography, and art relevant to the music of the age Source documents translated by the author Valuable student learning aids throughout, including a timeline, a register of people and dates, sidebars of political importance, and a selected reading list arranged by chapter and topic A companion website featuring scores of all music discussed in the text, recordings of most musical examples, and tips for listening Music in the Classical World: Genre, Culture, and History tells the story of classical music through eighteenth-century eyes, exposing readers to the wealth of music and musical styles of the time and providing a glimpse into that vibrant and active world of the Classical Period.

String Quartets in Beethoven's Europe is the first detailed study of string quartets in late-eighteenth- and early-nineteenth-century Europe. It brings together the work of nine scholars who explore little-studied aspects of this multi-faceted genre. Together, this book's chapters deal with compositional responses to Beethoven's string quartets and the prestige of the genre; varied compositional practices in string quartet writing, with a particular emphasis on texture and performance elements; and the reception of Beethoven's string quartets ca. 1800. They include discussions of quartets composed for the amateur and connoisseur markets in Beethoven's Europe; virtuosity, the French Violin School, and the quatuor brillant; the relationship between quartet composers and their audiences during Beethoven's era; and the cross-pollination of quartet styles in Europe's musical centers such as Vienna, Paris, and St. Petersburg.

Giovanni Battista Rubini (1794-1854) was a legendary tenor and the first 19th-century non-castrati male singer to become an international star of opera. The previous two centuries had been the era of the castrati, with tenors and basses relegated to character and supporting roles in the operas of their time. Rubini stood apart because he not only matched the castrati in coloratura and pathos, but he also had an extraordinarily high voice. With Rubini's rise, and in his wake, several tenors came to sing roles written specifically for them by Rossini, Bellini, Donizetti, and many other lesser-known bel canto composers. Signaling the end of the dominance of castrati on stage, this period would last some forty years until the advent of grand opera, Wagner, and Verdi and the appearance of the first so-called High C from the chest by Gilbert-Louis Duprez in 1837. Since then, the accepted tenor sound has followed the tradition epitomized by Enrico Caruso and, in our own era, Luciano Pavarotti and Placido Domingo. Many composers, conductors, and performers would come to regard bel canto dramatic operas as decorative and vapid until Maria Callas and Tulio Serafin demonstrated the heights this genre of opera could reach. However, opera directors and opera performers of late who have expressed an interest in reviving selected masterpieces from the bel canto tradition have found themselves confronted with the problem of locating tenors versed in the vocal techniques necessary to carry the high tessituras. In Giovanni Battista Rubini and the Bel Canto Tenors: History and Technique, Dan H. Marek explores the extraordinary life of Rubini in order to frame this special period in the history of opera and connect the technique of the castrati who were among Rubini's instructors. Drawing on the work of Berton Coffin, Marek offers long-sought answers to the challenges presented by high tessitura of bel canto operas for tenors. To further assist working singers, Giovanni Battista Rubini and the Bel Canto Tenors includes over sixty pages of exercises written by Rubini himself before 1840, which Marek, for the first time ever, has adapted to acoustical phonetics. Professional singers, teachers and their students, vocal coaches, and opera conductors will find this work indispensable as the only English-language work on high tessitura for tenor and soprano singing.

This book explores how the Enlightenment aesthetics of theater as a moral institution influenced cultural politics and operatic developments in Vienna between the mid-eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Moralistic viewpoints were particularly important in eighteenth-century debates about German national theater. In Vienna, the idea that vernacular theater should cultivate the moral sensibilities of its German-speaking audiences became prominent during the reign of Empress Maria Theresa, when advocates of German plays and operas attempted to deflect the imperial government from supporting exclusively French and Italian theatrical performances. Morality continued to be a dominant aspect of Viennese operatic culture in the following decades, as critics, state officials, librettists, and composers (including Gluck, Mozart, and Beethoven) attempted to establish and define German national opera. Viennese concepts of operatic didacticism and national identity in theater further transformed in response to the crisis of Emperor Joseph II's reform movement, the revolutionary ideas spreading from France, and the war efforts in facing Napoleonic aggression. The imperial government promoted good morals in theatrical performances through the institution of theater censorship, and German-opera authors cultivated intensely didactic works (such as Die Zauberfloete and Fidelio) that eventually became the cornerstones for later developments of German culture.

Cultural Histories of Noise, Sound and Listening in Europe, 1300-1918 presents a range of historical case studies on the sounding worlds of the European past. The chapters in this volume explore ways of thinking about sound historically, and seek to understand how people have understood and negotiated their relationships with the sounding world in Europe from the Middle Ages through to the early twentieth century. They consider, in particular: sound and music in the later Middle Ages; the politics of sound in the early modern period; the history of the body and perception during the Ancien Regime; and the sounds of the city in the nineteenth century and sound and colonial rule at the fin de siecle. The case studies also range in geographical orientation to include considerations not only of Britain and France, the countries most considered in European historical sound studies in English-language scholarship to date, but also Bosnia-Herzegovina, British Colonial India, Germany, Italy and Portugal. Out of this diverse group of case studies emerge significant themes that recur time and again, varying according to time and place: sound, power and identity; sound as a marker of power or violence; and sound, physiology and sensory perception and technologies of sound, consumption and meaning.

Jan Swafford's biographies of composers Charles Ives and Johannes Brahms have established him as a revered music historian, capable of bringing his subjects vibrantly to life. His magnificent new biography of Ludwig van Beethoven peels away layers of legend to get to the living, breathing human being who composed some of the world's most iconic music. Swafford mines sources never before used in English-language biographies to reanimate the revolutionary ferment of Enlightenment-era Bonn, where Beethoven grew up and imbibed the ideas that would shape all of his future work. Swafford then tracks his subject to Vienna, capital of European music, where Beethoven built his career in the face of critical incomprehension, crippling ill health, romantic rejection, and 'fate's hammer', his ever-encroaching deafness. At the time of his death he was so widely celebrated that over ten thousand people attended his funeral. This book is a biography of Beethoven the man and musician, not the myth, and throughout, Swafford - himself a composer - offers insightful readings of Beethoven's key works. More than a decade in the making, this will be the standard Beethoven biography for years to come.

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

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.

In From Bach's Goldberg to Beethoven's Diabelli: Influence and Independence, music scholar and noted pianist Alfred Kanwischer gives readers an extended exploration in which each of Beethoven's 33 pieces that comprise the Diabelli Variations (Op. 120) is caringly examined and assessed for its ingredients, actions, personality, and influence on the whole. Counterpoint abounds, not only in the fugal variations, which are closely parsed, but throughout the Diabelli, revealing the noticeably Baroque character of the technical compositional devices Beethoven employs. Throughout his study, Kanwischer integrates comparisons with Bach's immortal Goldberg Variations. Both sets stand alone as among the greatest keyboard variations in the Western canon. During their creation, both composers were nearly the same age, at the zenith of their art, and in similarly felicitous frames of mind.Kanwischer underscores twenty essential similarities, from the use of melody and melodic outline and the comparability among variations in size, parallel design, ebullient outlook, increasing contrasts, daring virtuosic flights, Shakespearean blend of comic and tragic, and their respective cumulative rises to spiritual transcendence. From Bach's Goldberg to Beethoven's Diabelli takes readers on a journey of discovery that is lively and stimulating. It considers not only questions of influence but those of insight and understanding, offering a work useful not only as a reference but as a guide to performers, music instructors and devotees. This work also includes 70 visually annotated interpretive musical examples as aids to understanding.

This book represents the most thorough study to date of Handel's compositional procedures in his English oratorios and musical dramas. Exploring the composer's sketches and autograph scores, it offers fresh insights into the creative mind of one of the leading figures in Baroque music.

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.

Johann Sebastian Bach created what may be the most celestial and profound body of music in history; Frederick the Great built the colossus we now know as Germany, and along with it a template for modern warfare. Their fleeting encounter in 1757 signals a unique moment in history where belief collided with the cold certainty of reason. Set at the tipping point between the ancient and modern world, Evening in the Palace of Reason captures the tumult of the eighteenth century, the legacy of the Reformation, and the birth of the Enlightenment in this extraordinary tale of two men.

Previously available only in three separate books, Howard Shore's award-winning music for The Lord of the Rings trilogy is now available as a deluxe single volume of solo piano sheet music. Adorned with gorgeous color stills from the motion pictures, this is the ultimate musical tour of Middle-earth for intermediate and advanced pianists.

Professionalisation was a key feature of the changing nature of work and society in the nineteenth century, with formal accreditation, registration and organisation becoming increasingly common. Trades and occupations sought protection and improved status via alignment with the professions: an attempt to impose order and standards amid rapid social change, urbanisation and technological development. The structures and expectations governing the music profession were no exception, and were central to changing perceptions of musicians and music itself during the long nineteenth century. The central themes of status and identity run throughout this book, charting ways in which the music profession engaged with its place in society. Contributors investigate the ways in which musicians viewed their own identities, public perceptions of the working musician, the statuses of different sectors of the profession and attempts to manipulate both status and identity. Ten chapters examine a range of sectors of the music profession, from publishers and performers to teachers and military musicians, and overall themes include class, gender and formal accreditation. The chapters demonstrate the wide range of sectors within the music profession, the different ways in which these took on status and identity, and the unique position of professional musicians both to adopt and to challenge social norms.

- Emphasis on hearing musical forms is pedagogically effective and unique among form textbooks - Offers a complete course package, with workbook pages included in the Textbook, while the accompanying Anthology makes full scores of pieces covered in the book easily available - Offers clear and accessible explanations that are up to date with current scholarship

- Emphasis on hearing musical forms is pedagogically effective and unique among form textbooks - Offers a complete course package, with workbook pages included in the Textbook, while the accompanying Anthology makes full scores of pieces covered in the book easily available - Offers clear and accessible explanations that are up to date with current scholarship For the ANTHOLOGY: - Provides full scores to accompany the examples addressed in the text, creating a convenient package for instructors - This edition has been updated with 8 new pieces, bringing in additional composers

Rudolph Ganz (1877-1972) was an eminent musician and a champion of modern music. Throughout his long and prolific career as a pianist, conductor, composer, and educator, this Swiss/American musician represented an incomparable link between the old and new. Personal recollections included Liszt and Brahms and friendships with Busoni, Paderewski, Schweitzer, Toscanini, Theodore Thomas, Rachmaninoff, and Bartok. Ravel, Griffes, and Tcherepnin, among others, dedicated important compositions to him. His programs frequently offered first performances of contemporary music. As late as 1962, at age 85, Ganz continued to pioneer new music at the First International Webern Festival. This first biography of Rudolf Ganz not only fills an important and missing gap in the history of the "golden age" of pianism, but provides the first balanced appraisal of Ganz's tenure as conductor of the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra (1921-27). The author also traces Ganz's role as one of America's most imaginative and influential music educators. As conductor of the children and young people's concerts in St. Louis (1922-27), New York (1939-48), San Francisco (1939-48), and Chicago (1944-46), Ganz was responsible for introducing American youth to classical music during the early decades of this century. He extended his influence in education as president of the Chicago Musical College (1934-54) and a member of its faculty (1900-05 and 1928-69). The biography is illustrated and includes extensive endnotes and appendixes.