Titles in the Listener's Companion Series provide readers with a deeper understanding of key musical genres and the work of major artists and composers. Aimed at nonspecialists, each volume clearly explains how to listen to works from particular artists, composers, and genres. Examining both the context in which the music appeared and its form, authors provide the environments in which key musical works were written and performed-from a 1950s bebop concert at the Village Vanguard to a performance of Handel's Messiah in eighteenth-century Dublin. Wolfgang Amade Mozart (1756-1791) remains as popular today as ever. His recordings fill iTunes playlists, and annual Mozart festivals are performed worldwide. His eminence as a musician has supported overseas guided tours, served as the subject of a cartoon series (Little Amadeus: twenty-nine episodes from 2006 to 2008), inspired movies and documentaries, and launched a French rock opera. In Experiencing Mozart: A Listener's Companion, music historian David Schroeder illustrates how the issues Mozart cared about so deeply remain important to modern listeners. His views on politics, women, authority, and religion are provided, along with compelling analysis of selected great symphonies and sonatas, moving concertos and innovative keyboard works, and groundbreaking operas. Schroeder merges his vast knowledge of the great artist's personal and professional life, late eighteenth-century European culture and society, and remarkable musicianship to guide listeners in the art of listening to Mozart. This work is an ideal introduction to readers and listeners at any level.

A complete new edition of Beethoven's conversation books, now translated into English in their entirety for the first time. Covering a period associated with the revolutionary style of what we call "late Beethoven", these often lively and compelling conversations are now finally accessible in English for the scholar and Beethoven-lover. Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827) is recognized the world over as a composer of musical masterpieces exhibiting heroic strength, particularly in the face of his increasing deafness from ca. 1798. By 1818, the Viennese composer hadbegun carrying blank booklets with him, for his acquaintances to jot their sides of conversations, while he answered aloud. Often, he himself used the pocket-sized booklets to make shopping lists and other reminders, including occasional early sketches for his compositions. Today, 139 of these booklets survive, covering the years 1818 up to the composer's death in 1827 and including such topics as music, history, politics, art, literature, theatre, religion, and education as perceived on a day-to-day basis in post-Napoleonic Europe. An East German edition, begun in the 1960s and essentially complete by 2001, represents a diplomatic transcription of these documents. It is a masterpiece of pure scholarship but is difficult to use for anyone who is not a specialist. Moreover, Beethoven scholarship has moved on significantly since the long-ranging genesis of the German edition. These important booklets arehere translated into English in their entirety for the first time. The volumes in this series include an updated editorial apparatus, with revised and expanded notes and many new footnotes exclusive to this edition, and brand newintroductions, which together place many of the quickly changing conversational topics into context. Due to the editor's many years of research in Vienna, his acquaintance with its history and topography, as well as his familiarity with obscure documentary resources, this edition represents an entirely new venture in source studies - vitally informative for scholars not only in music but also in a wide variety of disciplines. At the same time, these oftenlively and compelling conversations are now finally accessible for the English-speaking music lover or history buff who might want to dip into them and hear what Beethoven and his friends were discussing at the next table. THEODORE ALBRECHT is Professor of Musicology at Kent State University, Ohio.

Music examples and charts illustrate the analyses, and each essay is fully annotated by the editor. In some cases, the results of the original research by the editor or by others working in the field are published here for the first time. Much of the material has never before appeared in English.

A score embodying the best available musical text.

Historical background what is known of the circumstances surrounding the origins of the work, including (where relevant) original source material.

A detailed analysis of the music, by the editor of the volume or another well-known scholar.

Other significant analytic essays and critical comments, exposing the student to a variety of opinions about the music."

First Published in 1996. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Improvisation was a crucial aspect of musical life in Europe from the late eighteenth century through to the middle of the nineteenth, representing a central moment in both public occasions and the private lives of many artists. Composers dedicated themselves to this practice at length while formulating the musical ideas later found at the core of their published works; improvisation was thus closely linked to composition itself. The full extent of this relation can be inferred from both private documents and reviews of concerts featuring improvisations, while these texts also inform us that composers quite often performed in public as both improvisers and interpreters of pieces written by themselves or others. Improvisations presented in concert were distinguished by a remarkable degree of structural organisation and complexity, demonstrating performers' consolidated abilities in composition as well as their familiarity with the rules for improvising outlined by theoreticians.

Beethoven's Lives will be required reading for anyone interested in understanding how Beethoven biography has evolved through the ages. When Ludwig van Beethoven died in March 1827, the world of music felt an intense loss. The composer's funeral procession was one of the largest Vienna had ever witnessed, and the poet Franz Grillparzer's eulogy brought the tensions between the composer's life and music into sharp focus: the deaf and aloof genius, the alienated and eccentric artist, unable to form a lasting relationship with a woman but reaching out to mankind. These apparent contradictionswere to attract many Beethoven biographers yet to come. Here, Lewis Lockwood, himself a much-lauded Beethoven biographer, tells the story of Beethoven biography, from the earliest attempts made directly after the composer's death to the present day. Beethoven's Lives casts a wide net, tracing the story of Beethoven biography from Anton Schindler as biographer and falsifier, through the authoritative Alexander Wheelock Thayer and down tothe present. The list includes Gustav Nottebohm, the first scholar to study Beethoven's sketchbooks. With his work, biography could begin to reflect on the inner life of the artist as expressed in his music, and in this sense, sketchbooks could be seen as artistic diaries. Even Richard Wagner thought of writing a Beethoven biography, and the late nineteenth and early twentieth century saw the emergence of French and English traditions of Beethoven biography. In the tumultuous twentieth century, with world wars and fractured politics, the writing of Beethoven biography was sometimes caught up in the storm. By bringing the story down to our time, Lewis Lockwood identifiestraditions of Beethoven biography that today's scholars and writers need to be aware of. As Lockwood shows, each biography reflects not only on the individual writer's knowledge and interests, but also his inner sense of purposeas each writer works within the intellectual framework of his time. LEWIS H. LOCKWOOD is one of the leading authorities on Beethoven worldwide. Having taught at Princeton and Harvard, some of his key Beethoven publications include: Beethoven: The Music and the Life (Norton, 2003; translated into many languages), as well as Beethoven's Symphonies: An Artistic Vision (Norton, 2015) and with the Julliard String Quartet: Inside Beethoven'sQuartets: History, Performance, Interpretation (Harvard University Press, 2008). He is known for his studies of Beethoven's life and work, including the composer's autograph manuscripts and sketchbooks.

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.

Reveals the brilliant musical and pedagogical thinking of the famed eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century Neapolitan composer and teacher of royal students. Giovanni Paisiello (1740-1816) was one of the most important composers of opera in the eighteenth century. His operas were performed throughout Europe, and his fame led to appointments as a maestro di cappella and composer at prominent European courts. This book is the first study to address his work as a teacher of composition and what we would today call music theory. The practice of partimento (figured or unfigured bass lines) was an integral part of the training of musicians at the renowned conservatories in eighteenth-century Naples. By employing these often-unprepossessing partimento bass lines, young musicians learned the techniques of variation, improvisation, and composition while seated at the harpsichord. Paisiello's Regole per bene accompagnare il Partimento (Rules for Harpsichordists; 1782) survives in both autograph and printed forms. It contains forty-six partimenti that have long been considered the core of his pedagogic oeuvre. However, two recently discovered manuscripts contain a further forty-one unknown partimenti, notated as two- and three-part disposizioni (realizations). The present study offers numerous insights gleaned from the surviving sources and bolsters our understanding of how to perform the music of Paisiello and his contemporaries: music that has often survived in an incomplete form. These findings are relevant not just for keyboard players but also for singers, instrumentalists, and anyone interested in the inner workings of eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century music.

In an intentionally light-hearted style, Fritz Spiegl has researched the lives and loves of the great composers through the ages. In an alphabetically arranged panorama of biographical portraits, he humorously uncovers hitherto unknown aspects of the composers' personalities that are, at best, discreetly ignored by serious musical analysts or, at worst, have never made the history books at all. He also includes some of the female composers, such as Augusta Holmes and Maria Szymanowska, who are only just becoming appreciated for their contributions to music. Fritz Spiegl's treatment and disclosures, however, are not just idle gossip. His concise use of biographical details gives a clear picture of each composer's musical career, revealing how his emotional life came to influence his music and, in some cases, vice versa. This volume alo features a special section which contains Spiegl's extensive researches into some of the pets of the great composers.

Rolland's biography attempts to provide an overview of Handel's life and works from his early lessons in music to the classical context in which he is commonly placed. Originally published in English in 1916, Hull's translation gives an insight into biographical facts and the musical pieces composed by Handel including his operas, oratorios and chamber music. This title will be of interest to students of music and musical history.

Kaikhosru Shapurji Sorabji (1892-1988) was an unusual legend in his own lifetime: a Parsi composer and critic living in England whose compositions are of such length and difficulty that he felt compelled to ban public performances of them. This book, the first devoted to Sorabji, explores his life and character, his music, his articles and letters. It both presents the legend accurately and dispels its exaggerated aspects. The portrait which emerges is not of a crank or eccentric but of a highly original and accomplished musical thinker whom recent performances and recordings confirm as unique and important. Most of the contributors knew Sorabji personally. They have all written about or performed his music, gaining international recognition for their work. Generous quotation of Sorabji's published and unpublished music and prose assists in bringing him and his work strikingly to life. The book also contains the most complete and accurate register of his work ever published.

Schubert Studies comprises eleven essays by renowned Schubert scholars and performers. The volume sheds light on certain aspects of Schubert's music and biography which have hitherto remained relatively neglected, or which warrant further investigation. Musical topics include analyses of tempo conventions, transitional procedures and rhythmic organization. There are reassessments of several works, using autograph research, performing experience and other approaches; while assumptions as to the extent of Schubert's influence on later Czech composers are also brought into question. Concerns with aspects of Schubert's biography, in particular the social and musical circles in which he moved, come under examination in several essays. The final two chapters deal specifically with the composer's relationships with women, and the psychological and physiological illnesses from which he suffered. Each of the essays here charts new and existing evidence to provide fresh perspectives on these aspects of Schubert's life and music, making this volume an indispensable tool for scholars concerned with his work.

An outstanding anthology in which notable musicians, artists, scientists, thinkers, poets, and more-from Gustavo Dudamel and Carrie Mae Weems to Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Paul Muldoon-explore the influence of music on their lives and work Contributors include: Laurie Anderson Jamie Barton Daphne A. Brooks Edgar Choueiri Jeff Dolven Gustavo Dudamel Edward Dusinberre Corinna da Fonseca-Wollheim Frank Gehry James Ginsburg Ruth Bader Ginsburg Jane Hirshfield Pico Iyer Alexander Kluge Nathaniel Mackey Maureen N. McLane Alicia Hall Moran Jason Moran Paul Muldoon Elaine Pagels Robert Pinsky Richard Powers Brian Seibert Arnold Steinhardt Susan Stewart Abigail Washburn Carrie Mae Weems Susan Wheeler C. K. Williams Wu Fei What happens when extraordinary creative spirits-musicians, poets, critics, and scholars, as well as an architect, a visual artist, a filmmaker, a scientist, and a legendary Supreme Court justice-are asked to reflect on their favorite music? The result is Ways of Hearing, a diverse collection that explores the ways music shapes us and our shared culture. These acts of musical witness bear fruit through personal essays, conversations and interviews, improvisatory meditations, poetry, and visual art. They sound the depths of a remarkable range of musical genres, including opera, jazz, bluegrass, and concert music both classical and contemporary. This expansive volume spans styles and subjects, including Pico Iyer's meditations on Handel, Arnold Steinhardt's thoughts on Beethoven's Grosse Fuge, and Laurie Anderson and Edgar Choueiri's manifesto for spatial music. Richard Powers discusses the one thing about music he's never told anyone, Daphne Brooks draws sonic connections between Toni Morrison and Cecile McLorin Salvant, and Ruth Bader Ginsburg reveals what she thinks is the sexiest duet in opera. Poems interspersed throughout further expand how we can imagine and respond to music. Ways of Hearing is a book for our times that celebrates the infinite ways music enhances our lives.

Beethoven's piano sonatas are a cornerstone of the piano repertoire and favourites of both the concert hall and recording studio. The sonatas have been the subject of much scholarship, but no single study gives an adequate account of the processes by which these sonatas were composed and published. With source materials such as sketches and correspondence increasingly available, the time is ripe for a close study of the history of these works. Barry Cooper, who in 2007 produced a new edition of all 35 sonatas, including three that are often overlooked, examines each sonata in turn, addressing questions such as: Why were they written? Why did they turn out as they did? How did they come into being and how did they reach their final form? Drawing on the composer's sketches, autograph scores and early printed editions, as well as contextual material such as correspondence, Cooper explores the links between the notes and symbols found in the musical texts of the sonatas, and the environment that brought them about. The result is a biography not of the composer, but of the works themselves.

More than 70 works of Hogarth include musical references, and Jeremy Barlow's book is the first full-length work devoted to this aspect of his imagery. The first two chapters examine the evidence for Hogarth's interest in music and the problems of assessing accuracy, realism and symbolic meaning in his musical representations. Subsequent chapters show how musical details in his works may often be interpreted as part of his satirical weaponry; the starting point seems to have been his illustrations of the clamorous 'rough music' protest in Samuel Butler's immensely popular poem Hudibras. Hogarth's use of music for satirical purposes also has connections with a particular type of burlesque music in 18th-century England. It may be seen too in the roles played by his humiliated fiddlers or abject ballad singers. Each of the final two chapters focuses on a particular Hogarth subject: his paintings of a scene from a theatrical satire of music and society, The Beggar's Opera, and the print The Enraged Musician itself. The latter work draws together uses of musical imagery discussed previously and the book concludes with an analysis of its internal relations from a musical perspective. The book is lavishly illustrated with Hogarth's drawings, prints and paintings. Many other images are reproduced to provide contextual background. Several indices and appendices enhance the book's value as a reference tool: these include an annotated index of Hogarth's instruments, with photographs or other representations of the instruments he depicts; a detailed index of Hogarth's works with musical imagery; the texts and music for broadside ballads and single-sheet songs related to Hogarth's titles; 18th-century texts and street cries related to Hogarth's The Enraged Musician, and other musical examples indicated in the text. Also included is a facsimile of Bonnell Thornton's burlesque Ode on St CA|cilia's Day.

Intended as a supplement to The Mechanical Muse: The Piano, Pianism and Piano Music, c.1760-1850, this Companion provides additional information which, largely for reasons of space but also of continuity, it was not possible or desirable to include in that volume. The book is laid out alphabetically and full biographical entries are provided for all musical figures mentioned, including composers, performers, theoreticians and teachers, as well as piano makers and publishers of music, within the period covered by The Mechanical Muse. There are also entries on figures of importance from outside the period but whose influence is palpably important within it, such as J.S. Bach. As well as biographical information, all these entries contain lists of principal works and a section on further reading so that readers can follow up people and matters of particular interest. Also included in The Companion are entries devoted to particular works and other information of relevance, such as descriptions of musical forms, characteristics of dances and so on, as well as some technical information on music and explanations of technical terms pertaining to keyboard instruments themselves and to ways of playing them. This Companion is not intended to replace existing reference books such as Grove or Musik in Geschichte und Gegenwart, but will be useful for those who desire to know more about a particular topic and do not necessarily have access to more specialist reference works, or time to visit large or specialist libraries. As such it is indispensable to users of The Mechanical Muse.

French Music Since Berlioz explores key developments in French classical music during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. This volume draws on the expertise of a range of French music scholars who provide their own perspectives on particular aspects of the subject. Deirdre Donnellon's introduction discusses important issues and debates in French classical music of the period, highlights key figures and institutions, and provides a context for the chapters that follow. The first two of these are concerned with opera in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries respectively, addressed by Thomas Cooper for the nineteenth century and Richard Langham Smith for the twentieth. Timothy Jones's chapter follows, which assesses the French contribution to those most Germanic of genres, nineteenth-century chamber music and symphonies. The quintessentially French tradition of the nineteenth-century salon is the subject of James Ross's chapter, while the more sacred setting of Paris's most musically significant churches and the contribution of their organists is the focus of Nigel Simeone's essay. The transition from the nineteenth to the twentieth century is explored by Roy Howat through a detailed look at four leading figures of this time: Faure, Chabrier, Debussy and Ravel. Robert Orledge follows with a later group of composers, Satie & Les Six, and examines the role of the media in promoting French music. The 1930s, and in particular the composers associated with Jeune France, are discussed by Deborah Mawer, while Caroline Potter investigates Parisian musical life during the Second World War. The book closes with two chapters that bring us to the present day. Peter O'Hagan surveys the enormous contribution to French music of Pierre Boulez, and Caroline Potter examines trends since 1945. Aimed at teachers and students of French music history, as well as performers and the inquisitive concert- and opera-goer, French Music Since Berlioz is an essential companion for anyone interested in the culture of France.

The English Bach Awakening concerns the introduction into England of J.S. Bach's music and information about him. Hitherto this subject has been called 'the English Bach revival', but that is a misnomer. 'Revival' implies prior life, yet no reference to Bach or to his music is known to have been made in England during his lifetime (1685-1750). The book begins with a comprehensive chronology of the English Bach Awakening. Eight chapters follow, written by Dr Philip Olleson, Dr Yo Tomita and the editor, Michael Kassler, which treat particular parts of the Awakening and show how they developed. A focus of the book is the history of the manuscripts and the printed editions of Bach's '48' - The Well-tempered Clavier - in England at this time, and its culmination in the 'analysed' edition that Samuel Wesley and Charles Frederick Horn published in 1810-1813 and later revised. Wesley's multifaceted role in the Bach Awakening is detailed, as are the several efforts that were made to translate Forkel's biography of Bach into English. A chapter is devoted to A.F.C. Kollmann's endeavour to prove the regularity of Bach's Chromatic Fantasy, and the book concludes with a discussion of portraits of Bach in England before 1830.

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.

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.

Whilst E.T.A. Hoffmann (1776-1822) is most widely known as the author of fantastic tales, he was also prolific as a music critic, productive as a composer, and active as a conductor. This book examines Hoffmann's aesthetic thought within the broader context of the history of ideas of the late-eighteenth and early-nineteenth centuries, and explores the relationship between his musical aesthetics and compositional practice. The first three chapters consider his ideas about creativity and aesthetic appreciation in relation to the thought of other German romantic theorists, discussing the central tenets of his musical aesthetic - the idea of a 'religion of art', of the composer as a 'genius', and the listener as a 'passive genius'. In particular the relationship between the multifaceted thought of Hoffmann and Friedrich Schleiermacher is explored, providing some insight into the way in which diverse intellectual traditions converged in early-nineteenth-century Germany. In the second half of the book, Hoffmann's dialectical view of music history and his conception of romantic opera are discussed in relation to his activities as a composer, with reference to his instrumental music and his two mature, large-scale operas, Aurora and Undine. The author also addresses broader issues pertaining to the ideological and historical significance of Hoffmann's musical and literary oeuvre.

Many standard musicological reference works document the use of the trombone from its beginning to the middle of the 17th century, and then from Mozart to the present, but few deal with the intervening years. This book reproduces the texts from two dozen treatises, dictionaries, and encyclopedias, along with English translations, published between 1697 and 1811. It provides an overview of the use of the trombone during that time in America and seven European countries and examines its use in choral music, opera, symphonic music and military music.

This volume of essays brings together the best of recent scholarship on Johann Christian Bach, the youngest son of J.S. Bach and a friend and mentor of Mozart. J.C. Bach had a cosmopolitan career, beginning in Berlin as a pupil of his half-brother, C.P.E. Bach, then a sojourn to Italy where he studied with Padre Martini in Bologna; after making his successful debut with operas for Turin and Naples he moved to London, where he became a leading composer and impresario. The articles selected for this volume represent the principal themes of scholarly research and writing over the past fifty years. The introduction provides a survey of J.C. Bach's career and an overview of recent literature. The collection includes English translations of two articles first published in German in the Bach-Jahrbuch, as well as one article published as recently as 2015. An appendix lists the complete contents of The Collected Works of Johann Christian Bach, using the Warburton catalogue numbers.

This volume of essays brings together a selection of the most significant and representative writings on Mendelssohn from the last fifty years. Divided into four main subject areas, it makes available twenty-two essays which have transformed scholarly awareness of this crucial and ever-popular nineteenth-century composer and musician; it also includes a specially commissioned introductory chapter which offers a critical overview of the last half century of Mendelssohn scholarship and the direction of future research. The addition of new translations of two influential essays by Carl Dahlhaus, hitherto unavailable in English, adds to the value of this volume which brings back in to circulation important scholarly works and constitutes an indispensable reference work for Mendelssohn scholars.