The story of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's life is well known. Austrian-born to a tyrannical father who worked him - fiercely; unhappily married to a spendthrift woman; a child-like character ill at ease amid the aristocratic splendour of the Viennese court; a musical genius who died young thus depriving the world of future glories. Yet only that last point is really true. In this comprehensive biography, John Suchet examines the many myths and misunderstandings surrounding the world's best-loved composer. From his early days as a child prodigy performing for the imperial royal family in Vienna to the last months of his short life, driven to exhaustion by a punitive workload, one thing remained constant: his happy disposition. Through trials and tribulations, grand successes and disheartening setbacks, Suchet shows us the real Mozart - blessed with an abundance of talent yet sometimes struggling to earn a living. His mischievous nature and earthy sense of humour, his ease and confidence in his own incredible abilities; these were traits that never left him. His music has brought comfort to countless generations; his life, though brief, is no less fascinating.

A Conductor's Guide to the Choral-Orchestral Works of the Classical Period, Part I: Haydn and Mozart is the fourth volume in Jonathan Green's innovative study of the vast body of choral-orchestral repertoire. A treasure-trove for conductors of choir and orchestras, in this volume all of the masses, oratorios, cantatas, litanies, vespers, and minor sacred works of Haydn and Mozart are carefully examined. For each work, the author has compiled the text source, duration, date of composition, date and place of premiere, location of manuscript materials, commercially available editions, a selected discography, a bibliography, and a brief history of the work. Most importantly, the performance concerns for the choir, orchestra, and soloists of each work are evaluated and described. This will prove to be an invaluable programming aid for conductors and a touchstone for anyone embarking on research into this music.

A fully updated edition of the leading reference work on musical key characteristics during the Baroque, Classical and Romantic periods. This is a revised second edition of Dr. Steblin's important work on key characteristics, first published in 1983 by UMI Research Press and re-issued by the University of Rochester Press in 1996. The revision has been limited to athorough correction and update of the material in the first edition, so as to not disrupt the content and organization, for which the book has been praised as a significant and noteworthy reference for both scholars and research students alike. The book discusses the extra-musical meanings associated with various musical keys by ancient Greek and medieval-renaissance theorists and in particular composers and writers on music in the Baroque, Classical,and early Romantic periods. Chapters focus on Mattheson's extensive key descriptions from 1713, the Rameau-Rousseau and Marpurg-Kirnberger controversies regarding unequal versus equal temperaments, and C.F.D. Schubart's influential list based on the sharp-flat [bright-dark] principle of key-distinctions. Rita Katherine Steblin is a world-renowned music scholar, living and working in Vienna.

This collection of essays addresses a very broad range of E. T. A. Hoffmann's most significant works, examining them through the lens of "transgression." Transgression bears relevance to Hoffmann's life and professions in three ways. First, his official career path was that of jurisprudence; he was active as a lawyer, a judge and eventually as one of the most important magistrates in Berlin. Second, his personal life was marked by numerous conflicts with political and social authorities. Seemingly no matter where he went, he experienced much chaos, grief and impoverishment in leading his always precarious existence. Third, his works explore characters and concepts beyond the boundaries of what was considered aesthetically acceptable. "Normal" bourgeois existence was often juxtaposed to the lives of criminals, sinners, and other deviants, both within the spaces of the known world as well as in supernatural realms. He, perhaps more than any other author of the German Romantic movement, regularly portrayed the dark side of existence in his works, including unconscious psychological phenomena, nightmares, somnambulism, vampirism, mesmerism, Doppelganger, and other forms of transgressive behavior. It is the intention of this volume to provide a new look at Hoffmann's very diverse body of work from numerous perspectives, stimulating interest in Hoffmann in English language audiences.

The collection of 59 short works known as "L'Organiste" was written by Cesar Franck in 1889 and 1890 for the harmonium and is most often played on organ. This score is an exact reprint of the original edition published by Enoch (Paris) in 1892.

Remarkable new study...Its central submission, that we have hitherto disregarded or misinterpreted the most profound intuitions of a unique composer, certainly carries conviction. And even after one reading there are already musical passages that this Schubert enthusiast finds himself hearing in quite a new way. Bayan Northcott, BBC MUSIC MAGAZINE A sensitive and richly allusive commentary... likely to change the way we listen to certain works. Brian Newbould The old stereotypes of Schubert as Bohemian artist and unselfconscious creator have been replaced over the past half-century with a picture of a difficult man in difficult times. The author aims to redress the balance, concentrating firstly on works where Schubert's beliefs are clearly expressed (masses, other religious music, songs amounting to Geistliche Lieder). This also prompts an examination of instrumental masterpieces (Unfinished and Great C Major Symphonies, and the Wanderer Fantasy), which show that Schubert's religious side encompasses awe and terror as well as wonder. Schubert's 'complete voice' is thus clearly heard, rather than the sombre one currently emphasised in both literature and concert. LEO BLACK is a former BBC chief producer for music.

This book contains sixteen essays on Venetian music in its last great period, stretching from the second half of the 17th century to the fall of the Republic in 1797. Two essays deal with musical institutions (academies and conservatories), nine with the life and works of Antonio Vivaldi, and five with contemporaries of Vivaldi active in Venice (Albinoni, Marcello, Vinaccesi). A substantial supplementary chapter updates, and where necessary revises, the facts and arguments of the original essays, which collectively date from the years 1973-1995. All the essays are written in English, but many originally appeared in Italian journals and conference proceedings that are hard for English-speaking readers to obtain. The volume is carefully indexed, enabling the reader easily to make connections between the essays.

Heinrich Schenker ranks among the most important figures in the development of western music theory in the twentieth century. His approach to the analysis of music permeates nearly every aspect of the field and continues to this day to be a topic of great interest among music theorists, historians, composers and performers. In his four volume work, Die letzen Sonaten von Beethoven: Kritische Ausgabe mit Einfuhrung und Erlauterung (The Last Piano Sonatas by Beethoven: Critical edition with Introduction and Commentary) Schenker presented editions of Beethoven's Opp. 109, 110, 111 and 101 that were, at the time, unprecedented in their faithfulness to such authoritative sources as Beethoven's autograph manuscripts. He included a movement-by-movement and section-by-section discussion of form and content that grew increasingly penetrating from one volume to the next as the musical theory for which he is now known was developed, alongside inspired and detailed suggestions for the performance of each section of each work. In Beethoven's Last Piano Sonatas: An Edition, with Elucidation, noted Schenker scholar John Rothgeb presents the first English language edition and translation of these important works. Rothgeb builds upon Schenker's text, adding explanations of certain points in the commentary, references to corrections and other remarks entered by Schenker in his personal copies of the volumes, and graphic presentations of several passages (a practice that became standard in Schenker's own analytical work later in his career). Making these seminal works accessible to English speaking scholars and students for the first time, Beethoven's Last Piano Sonatas is an essential reference for music theorists, historians, performers, and composers alike.

This book challenges the assumption that Franz Schubert (1797-1828), best known for the lyricism of his songs, symphonies and chamber music, lacked comparable talent for drama. It is commonly assumed that Franz Schubert (1797-1828), best known for the lyricism of his songs, symphonies, and chamber music, lacked comparable talent for drama. Challenging this view, Drama in the Music of Franz Schubert provides a timely re-evaluation of Schubert's operatic works, while demonstrating previously unsuspected locations of dramatic innovation in his vocal and instrumental music. The volume draws on a range of critical approaches and techniques, including semiotics, topic theory, literary criticism, narratology, and Schenkerian analysis, to situate Schubertian drama within its musical and cultural-historical context. In so doing, the study broadens the boundaries of what might be considered 'dramatic' within the composer's music and offers new perspectives for its analysis and interpretation. Drama in the Music of Franz Schubert will be of interest to musicologists, music theorists, composers, and performers, as well as scholars working in cultural studies, theatre, and aesthetics. JOE DAVIES is College Lecturer in Music at Lady Margaret Hall, University of Oxford. JAMES WILLIAM SOBASKIE is Associate Professor of Music at Mississippi State University. Contributors: Brian Black, Lorraine Byrne Bodley, Joe Davies, Xavier Hascher, Marjorie Hirsch, Anne Hyland, Christine Martin, Clive McClelland, James William Sobaskie, Lauri Suurpaa, Laura Tunbridge, Susan Wollenberg, Susan Youens

A History of the Symphony: The Grand Genre identifies the underlying cultural factors that have shaped the symphony over the past three hundred years, presenting a unified view of the entire history of the genre. The text goes beyond discussions of individual composers and the stylistic evolution of the genre to address what constitutes a symphony within each historical period, describing how such works fit into the lives of composers and audiences of the time, recognizing that they do not exist in a vacuum but rather as the products of numerous external forces spurring their creation. In three parts, the text proceeds chronologically, drawing connections between musical examples across regions and eras: The Classical Symphony The Romantic Symphony The Symphony in the Modern Era Within this broad chronology-from the earliest Italian symphonies of the 18th century to the most experimental works of the 20th century-discussion of the development of the genre often breaks down along national lines that outline divergent but parallel paths of stylistic growth. In consideration of what is and is not a symphony, musical developments in other genres are presented as they relate to the symphony, genres such as the serenade, the tone poem, and the concert overture. Suitable for a one-semester course as well as a full-year syllabus, and with illustrative musical examples throughout, A History of the Symphony places composers and works in sociological and musical contexts while confronting the fundamental question: What is a symphony?

Ernest Newman's four-volume Life of Wagner, originally published between 1933 and 1947, remains a classic work of biography. The culmination of forty years' research on the composer and his works (Newman's first Study of Wagner was first published in 1899), these books present a detailed portrait of perhaps the most influential, the most controversial and the most frequently reviled composer in the whole history of western music. Newman was aware that no biography can ever claim to be complete or completely accurate: 'The biographer can at no stage hope to have reached the final truth. All he can do is to make sure that whatever statement he may make, whatever conclusion he may come to, shall be based on the whole of the evidence available at the time of writing.' In this aim he triumphantly succeeds. Volume 1 covers the years 1813 to 1848.

Both a beguiling portrait of the artist and an idiosyncratic self-portrait of the author, "Mysterious Mozart" is Philippe Sollers's alternately oblique and searingly direct interpretation of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's oeuvre and lasting mystique, audaciously reformulated for the postmodern age.

With a mix of slang, abstractions, quotations, first- and third-person narratives, and blunt opinion, French writer and critic Philippe Sollers taps into Mozart's playful correspondence and the lesser-known pieces of his enormous repertoire to analyze the popularity and public perceptions of his music. Detailing Mozart's drive to continue producing masterpieces even when saddled with debt and riddled with illness and anxiety, Sollers powerfully and meticulously analyzes Mozart's seven last great operas using a psychoanalytical approach to the characters' relationships.

As Sollers explores themes of constancy, prodigy, freedom, and religion, he offers up bits of his own history, revealing his affinity for the creative geniuses of the eighteenth century and a yearning to bring that era's utopian freedom to life in contemporary times. What emerges is an inimitable portrait of a man and a musician whose greatest gift is a quirky companionability, a warm and mysterious appeal that distinguishes Mozart from other great composers and is brilliantly echoed by Sollers's artful tangle of narrative.

(Misc). Includes music by Amy Marcy Beach, Teresa Carreno, Cecile Chaminade, Louise Dumont Farrenc, Fanny Mendelssohn Hensel, Margaret Ruthven Lang, Clara Gottschalk Peterson, and Clara Schumann. With composer biographies.

A History of the Symphony: The Grand Genre identifies the underlying cultural factors that have shaped the symphony over the past three hundred years, presenting a unified view of the entire history of the genre. The text goes beyond discussions of individual composers and the stylistic evolution of the genre to address what constitutes a symphony within each historical period, describing how such works fit into the lives of composers and audiences of the time, recognizing that they do not exist in a vacuum but rather as the products of numerous external forces spurring their creation. In three parts, the text proceeds chronologically, drawing connections between musical examples across regions and eras: The Classical Symphony The Romantic Symphony The Symphony in the Modern Era Within this broad chronology-from the earliest Italian symphonies of the 18th century to the most experimental works of the 20th century-discussion of the development of the genre often breaks down along national lines that outline divergent but parallel paths of stylistic growth. In consideration of what is and is not a symphony, musical developments in other genres are presented as they relate to the symphony, genres such as the serenade, the tone poem, and the concert overture. Suitable for a one-semester course as well as a full-year syllabus, and with illustrative musical examples throughout, A History of the Symphony places composers and works in sociological and musical contexts while confronting the fundamental question: What is a symphony?

The theoretical and musical background to the relationship between the piano and orchestra in Mozart's concertos. The interactive relationship between the piano and the orchestra in Mozart's concertos is an issue central to the appreciation of these great works, but one that has not yet received serious attention, a gap which this new study seeks to remedy by exploring the historical implications and hermeneutic potential of dramatic dialogue. The author shows that invocations of dramatic dialogue are deeply ingrained in late-eighteenth-century writings on instrumental music, and he develops this theme into an original and highly positive view of solo/orchestra relations in Mozart's concertos. He analyses behavioural patterns in the concertos and links them to theoretical discussion oflate-eighteenth-century drama and to analogous relational development in Mozart's operas Idomeneo, Die Entfuhrung aus dem Serail, Le nozze di Figaro and Don Giovanni. Mozart's piano concertos emerge afresh from this new approach as an extraordinary medium of Enlightenment, as significant in their way as the greatest late-eighteenth-century operatic and theatrical works. SIMON P. KEEFE is James Rossiter Hoyle Chair of Music, University of Sheffield.

First published in 1992. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Recordings of classical music abound, so how do you know which one to choose? Which ones will stand the test of time and best showcase the composer's vision; who are the conductors, orchestras and soloists that shine? This handy reference guide from Classic FM looks at the 100 most popular pieces of classical music, and explains which particular recording to choose for each and why, to help any budding or committed enthusiast to build their collection.

When it comes to buying classical music, it can be hard to know where to start. Packed full of essential information, this pocket-sized handbook reviews the most important record labels and recommends 100 recordings, providing a useful starting point for beginners and a wealth of options for more experienced listeners.

Classic FM's Handy Guides are a fun and informative set of introductions to standout subjects within classical music, each of which can be read and digested in one sitting: a perfect collectible series whether you re new to the world of classical music or an aficionado.

This book discusses the myriad ways in which Beethoven begins his works and the structural, rhetorical, and emotional implications of these beginnings for listeners. Examining the opening moments of nearly 200 compositions, it offers a new method of analysis of Beethoven's music. At the same time, it sets Beethoven's work in context through a close study of beginnings in the compositions of the Classical Era.

Proposes a new way of listening to Beethoven by understanding his music as an expression of his entire self, not just the iconic scowl Despite the ups and downs of his personal life and professional career - even in the face of deafness - Beethoven remained remarkably consistent in his most basic convictions about his art. This inner consistency, writes the music historian Mark Evan Bonds, provides the key to understanding the composer's life and works. Beethoven approached music as he approached life, weighing whatever occupied him from a variety of perspectives: a melodic idea, a musical genre, a word or phrase, a friend, a lover, a patron, money, politics, religion. His ability to unlock so many possibilities from each helps explain the emotional breadth and richness of his output as a whole, from the heaven-storming Ninth Symphony to the eccentric Eighth, and from the arcane Great Fugue to the crowd-pleasing Wellington's Victory. Beethoven's works, Bonds argues, are a series of variations on his life. The iconic scowl so familiar from later images of the composer is but one of many attitudes he could assume and project through his music. The supposedly characteristic furrowed brow and frown, moreover, came only after his time. Discarding tired myths about the composer, Bonds proposes a new way of listening to Beethoven by hearing his music as an expression of his entire self, not just his scowling self.

The conversations the 63-year-old Rossini had with Ferdinand Hiller in Trouville in Normandy in September 1855, and the finely drafted impression of Rossini himself with which Hiller prefaces the conversations, will be of exceptional interest to all music lovers. No other single source offers so vivid a sense of Rossini the man and the musician, not to mention the many composers, performers, and people of influence he knew and met. This is the first complete publication of the conversations in English.

Empress Marie Therese, second wife of Emperor Franz II, devoted much of her life to music. She played piano and sang, compiled a large music library and supported professional musicians and composers. This comprehensive survey of the Empress as musician and patron is based upon John Rice's discovery and analysis of extensive unpublished material from her private collection. In this work Rice introduces readers to the musical and cultural worlds of the Viennese court at the end of the eighteenth century.

Specially arranged in a clear, easy-to-read format, The Easy Piano Series: Classical contains 16 really easy arrangements of classical greats for the Grade 1-2 level pianist. With music by Bach, Beethoven, Mozart, Schubert, Holst, Tchaikovsky and more.

How did revolutionary America appear to European audiences through their opera glasses? The operas studied in this volume are populated by gun-toting and slave-holding Quakers, handsome Native Americans, female middle-class political leaders, rebellious British soldiers and generous businessmen. Most of them display an unprecedented configuration of social and gender roles, which led leading composers of the time, including Mozart, Haydn, Anfossi, Piccinni and Paisiello, to introduce far-reaching innovations in the musical and dramatic fabric of Italian opera. Polzonetti presents a fresh perspective on the European cultural reception of American social and political identity. Through detailed but accessible analysis of music examples, including previously unpublished musical sources, the book documents and explains important transformations of opera at the time of Mozart's masterpieces, and its long-term consequences up to Puccini. Shedding new light on familiar and less-familiar operatic works, the study represents groundbreaking research in music, cultural and political history.

In Bewitching Russian Opera: The Tsarina from State to Stage, author 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. 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. Ultimately, this book 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 performed on the musical stage political ambitions and international conquests which they would later enact on the world stage itself.

With the Harry Potter film series now complete, Alfred Music Publishing and Warner Bros. Entertainment are proud to present big note piano arrangements from the eight epic films together in one collectible volume. For the first time ever, 36 sheet music selections by John Williams, Patrick Doyle, Nicholas Hooper, and Alexandre Desplat are collected along with eight pages of color stills from The Sorcerer's Stone to The Deathly Hallows, Part 2. By popular request, "Leaving Hogwarts" from The Sorcerer's Stone appears in print in this collection for the first time. It's a perfect gift for pianists of all ages who love the music of Harry Potter. Titles: Diagon Alley * Family Portrait * Harry's Wondrous World * Hedwig's Theme * Leaving Hogwarts * Nimbus 2000 * Voldemort * The Chamber of Secrets * Fawkes the Phoenix * Buckbeak's Flight * Double Trouble * Hagrid the Professor * Harry in Winter * Hogwarts March * Potter Waltz * This Is the Night * Dumbledore's Army * Fireworks * Loved Ones and Leaving * Professor Umbridge * Dumbledore's Farewell * Harry and Hermione * In Noctem * When Ginny Kissed Harry * Farewell to Dobby * Godric's Hollow Graveyard * Harry and Ginny * Obliviate * Ron Leaves * Snape to Malfoy Manor * Courtyard Apocalypse * Harry's Sacrifice * Lily's Lullaby * Lily's Theme * Severus and Lily * Statues.