"Boland's clear, accessible text reflects years of professional experience as a performer and teacher of the one-key flute. Her book answers all the practical needs of beginners and offers advanced flutists a wealth of useful information. Even players wedded to the Boehm flute will gain fresh musical insights from Boland's comprehensive method."--Laurence Libin, Department of Musical Instruments, Metropolitan Museum of Art

"This is the best introduction to the one-key (baroque) flute for Boehm system flute players available today. With her comprehensive knowledge of the numerous historical treatises and tutors and her extensive practical experience as a player and teacher, Jan Boland has fashioned a guide that is at the same time informative and enjoyable. I only wish it had been available when I set out to learn the one-key flute. It would have saved me much time and led me directly to the most important sources."--John Thow, composer and Professor of Music at the University of California, Berkeley

"An easy-to-read format, clear prose, attractive graphics, and well chosen and very legible music make it an ideal beginner's tutor."--Betty Bang Mather, Professor Emeritus, University of Iowa School of Music

The first volume in Alan Walker's magisterial biography of Franz Liszt.

"You can't help but keep turning the pages, wondering how it will all turn out: and Walker's accumulated readings of Liszt's music have to be taken seriously indeed." D. Kern Holoman, New York Review of Books

"A conscientious scholar passionate about his subject. Mr. Walker makes the man and his age come to life. These three volumes will be the definitive work to which all subsequent Liszt biographies will aspire." Harold C. Schonberg, Wall Street Journal

"What distinguishes Walker from Liszt's dozens of earlier biographers is that he is equally strong on the music and the life. A formidable musicologist with a lively polemical style, he discusses the composer's works with greater understanding and clarity than any previous biographer. And whereas many have recycled the same erroneous, often damaging information, Walker has relied on his own prodigious, globe-trotting research, a project spanning twenty-five years. The result is a textured portrait of Liszt and his times without rival." Elliot Ravetz, Time

"The prose is so lively that the reader is often swept along by the narrative. . . . This three-part work . . . is now the definitive work on Liszt in English and belongs in all music collections." Library Journal"

Music master to Frederick the Great, Quantz was one of the great flute virtuosos of all time. He was also a thorough musician, a fine teacher and an excellent writer. This classic book is ostensibly a flute method, but it goes far beyond that, presenting a complete and detailed picture of musical taste and performance practice in the 18th century. Of special significance is a table relating various tempos to the speed of the pulse, helping modern musicians to solve the difficult question of authentic performance tempos of Baroque music. This reissued edition includes all Quantz's music examples together with an introduction and explanatory notes by the translator, Edward R. Reilly.

Roots of the Classical identifies and traces to their sources the patterns that make Western classical music unique, setting out the fundamental laws of melody and harmony, and sketching the development of tonality between the fifteenth and eighteenth centuries. The author then focuses on the years 1770-1910, treating the Western music of this period - folk, popular, and classical - as a single, organically developing, interconnected unit in which the popular idiom was constantly feeding into 'serious' music, showing how the same patterns underlay music of all kinds.

Following on from James Tyler's The Early Guitar: A History and Handbook(OUP 1980) tthis collaboration with Paul Sparks (their previous book for OUP, The Early Mandolin, appeared in 1989), presents new ideas and research on the history and development of the guitar and its music from the Renaissance to the dawn of the Classical era. Tyler's systematic study of the two main guitar types found between about 1550 and 1750 focuses principally on what the sources of the music (published and manuscript) and the writings of contemporary theorists reveal about the nature of the instruments and their roles in the music making of the period. The annotated lists of primary sources, previously published in The Early Guitar but now revised and expanded, constitute the most comprehensive bibliography of Baroque guitar music to date. His appendices of performance practice information should also prove indispensable to performers and scholars alike. Paul Sparks also breaks new ground, offering an extensive study of a period in the guitar's history-notably c.1759-c.1800-which the standard histories usually dismiss in a few short paragraphs. Far from being a dormant instrument at this time, the guitar is shown to have been central to music-making in France, Italy, the Iberian Peninsula, and South America. Sparks provides a wealth of information about players, composers, instruments, and surviving compositions from this neglected but important period, and he examines how the five-course guitar gradually gave way to the six-string instrument, a process that occurred in very different ways (and at different times) in France, Italy, Spain, Germany, and Britain.

The description for this book, Thayer's Life of Beethoven, Part I, will be forthcoming.

This is the only English translation of this important book by the world's most distinguished Bach scholar. This work is widely regarded as the most authoritative and comprehensive treatment of the Bach cantatas. It begins with a historical survey of the seventeenth-century background to the cantatas, and performance practice issues. The core of the book is a work-by-work study in which each cantata in turn is represented by its libretto, a synopsis of its movements, and a detailed analytical commentary. This format makes it extremely useful as a reference work for anyone listening to, performing in, or studying any of the Bach cantatas. All the cantata librettos are given in German-English parallel text. For the English edition the text has been carefully revised to bring it up to date, taking account of recent Bach scholarship.

The music of early modern Naples and its renowned artistic traditions remain a fruitful area for scholars in eighteenth-century studies. Contemporary social, political, and artistic conditions had stimulated a significant growth of music, musicians and culture in the Kingdom of Naples from the beginning of the seventeenth century. Although eighteenth-century Neapolitan opera is well documented in scholarship, historians have paid much less attention to the simultaneous cultivation of instrumental genres. Yet the culture of instrumental music grew steadily and by its end became an exclusive area of focus for the royal court, a remarkable departure from past norms of patronage. By bridging this gap, Anthony R. DelDonna brings together diverse fields, including historical musicology, music theory, Neapolitan and European history. His book investigates the wide-ranging role of instrumental genres within late eighteenth-century Neapolitan culture and introduces readers to new material, including recently discovered instrumental works of Paisiello, Cimarosa and Pleyel.

How did castrati manage to amaze their eighteenth-century audiences by singing the same aria several times in completely different ways? And how could composers of the time write operas in a matter of days? The secret lies in the solfeggio tradition, a music education method that was fundamental to the training of European musicians between 1680 and 1830 - a time during which professional musicians belonged to the working class. As disadvantaged children in orphanages learned the musical craft through solfeggio lessons, many were lifted from poverty, and the most successful were propelled to extraordinary heights of fame and fortune. In this first book on the solfeggio tradition, author Nicholas Baragwanath draws on over a thousand manuscript sources to reconstruct how professionals became skilled performers and composers who could invent and modify melodies at will. By introducing some of the simplest exercises in scales, leaps, and cadences that apprentices would have encountered, this book allows readers to retrace the steps of solfeggio training and learn to generate melody by 'speaking' it like an eighteenth-century musician. As it takes readers on a fascinating journey through the fundamentals of music education in the eighteenth century, this book uncovers a forgotten art of melody that revolutionizes our understanding of the history of music pedagogy.

Few people these days would question Mozart's rating as the most popular of all classical composers. Yet there exists no substantial, up-to-date English-language study of the man and his works. In this new study of Mozart's early years, Stanley Sadie aims to fill this gap in the form of a traditional biography on a straightforward chronological basis. The volume covers the period up to 1781, the year of Idomeneo and Mozart's settling in Vienna. Individual works are discussed in sequence and related to the events of his life. Stanley Sadie draws substantially on the family correspondence, quoting the letters and discussing what they tell us about Mozart and his world and his relationships with his family and his professional colleagues. Also included is a discussion of all aspects of Mozart's life and his music, relating them to the environment in which he worked, social, economic and cultural as well as musical. Much new material connected with Mozart has come to light in recent years. There have been discoveries of musical sources and new ways of studying known ones. Such finds and methods have changed our view of the chronology of many works and they often have significant biographical ramifications. Understanding of the context for Mozart's music, and indeed his life, has broadened immensely. Stanley Sadie's biography digests and interprets this corpus of new information.

This is the story of the orchestra, from 16th-century string bands to the "classical" orchestra of Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven. Spitzer and Zaslaw document orchestral organization, instrumentation, social roles, repertories, and performance practices in Europe and the American colonies, concluding around 1800 with the widespread awareness of the orchestra as a central institution in European life.

This is the story of the orchestra, from 16th-century string bands to the "classical" orchestra of Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven. Spitzer and Zaslaw document orchestral organization, instrumentation, social roles, repertories, and performance practices in Europe and the American colonies, concluding around 1800 with the widespread awareness of the orchestra as a central institution in European life.

Who "speaks" to us in "The Sorcerer's Apprentice, " in Wagner's operas, in a Mahler symphony? In asking this question, Carolyn Abbate opens nineteenth-century operas and instrumental works to new interpretations as she explores the voices projected by music. The nineteenth-century metaphor of music that "sings" is thus reanimated in a new context, and Abbate proposes interpretive strategies that "de-center" music criticism, that seek the polyphony and dialogism of music, and that celebrate musical gestures often marginalized by conventional music analysis.

Joseph Haydn is one of the greatest and most innovative of all composers, yet in some ways he is still curiously misunderstood. This engaging new Pocket Guide assesses what Haydn's music means to us today, and challenges some of the myths that have grown up around the composer. With suggestions for further reading and recommended CD recordings, Richard Wigmore's crisp and concise guide presents you with all you need to listen to and enjoy Haydn's music. It explores each of his key works, from his symphonies to his quartets, from his choral works to his sonatas, and invites a new generation of listeners to discover the depth and dazzling ingenuity of this most humane and life-affirming of composers.

This volume focuses on the core composers of the 18th-century repertoire. It begins with an overview of the keyboard instruments that were in use during the 18th century and a chapter on performance practice. The book proceeds through each major composer, beginning with Bach, and then progressing through the French masters, Scarlatti, C.P.E. and J.C. Bach, Haydn, Mozart and early Beethoven. Each chapter is written by a well-known scholar in the field and includes history, musical examples and analysis.

Following James Tyler's earlier introduction to the history, repertory, and playing techniques of the four- and five-course guitar (The Early Guitar, OUP 1980), which performers and scholars of Renaissance and Baroque guitar and lute music and classical guitarists found valuable and enlightening, this new book, written in collaboration with Paul Sparks and incorporating the latest ideas and research, is an authoritative guide to the history and repertory of the guitar from the Renaissance to the dawn of the Classical era.

In the early eighteenth century, the benefit performance became an essential component of commercial music-making in Britain. Benefits, adapted from the spoken theatre, provided a new model from which instrumentalists, singers, and composers could reap financial and professional rewards. Benefits could be given as theatre pieces, concerts, or opera performances for the benefit of individual performers; or in aid of specific organizations. The benefit changed Britain's musico-theatrical landscape during this time and these special performances became a prototype for similar types of events in other European and American cities. Indeed, the charity benefit became a musical phenomenon in its own right, leading, for example, to the lasting success of Handel's Messiah. By examining benefits from a musical perspective - including performers, audiences, and institutions - the twelve chapters in this collection present the first study of the various ways in which music became associated with the benefit system in eighteenth-century Britain.

This book shows how music was used and valued by different types of British people in the 19th century - from London composers, Manchester players, and Belfast concert managers to Welsh choral singers and Calcutta pianists. The essays are arranged chronologically, and demonstrate how particular geographic, social, economic, and political conditions in Britain affected the music that was heard and appreciated.

This book establishes the principles of interpretation that singers active in England during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries - both foreign and English - applied to recitatives, arias, and songs. It is the first single guide to historical performance of one of today's most popular repertoires.

The complex relationship between Mozart and his father has fascinated music lovers for centuries, and much effort has been spent examining the letters exchanged by the two men. This provocative book offers a new reading of these letters, placing them in the context of the stylized strategies of the eighteenth-century epistolary tradition and arguing that they reveal a rebelliousness deep within Mozart's life and work. David Schroeder contends that Mozart's father, Leopold, intended to write a biography of his son and designed his correspondence to be published as a type of moral biography. He bombarded his son with letters that often began with amusing anecdotes and then offered a torrent of advice on every imaginable subject. Dealing with these often biting letters presented Mozart with a challenge. He could react with anger, but that type of revolt only fired Leopold's criticism, and it proved much more effective to be evasive or dissimulating. Mozart's letters, in contrast to the moral German-styled letters he received, came closer to the more wily French letters of the philosophes, Voltaire especially, whose style he would have discovered while living in Paris. Like Voltaire, Mozart wore different epistolary masks, playing the comedian, moralist, intimate friend, or even, with scatological outbursts, protester against the sanitized moral and enlightened world of authority. Eventually Mozart turned the correspondence into an epistolary game, willfully making his letters unprintable and deliberately subverting his father's plans.

The Pianoforte in the Classical Era is an important and radically new history, detailing the nature of the early piano and related instruments during the lifetimes of Mozart, Haydn, and Beethoven. It promises to be a standard reference on the subject for many years to come.

William Ashton Ellis (1852-1919) abandoned his medical career in order to devote himself to his Wagner studies. Best known for his translations of Wagner's prose works and of Carl Friedrich Glasenapp's multi-volume biography of the composer, Ellis published in 1911 this English translation of Wagner's Familienbriefe, spanning the years 1832-74. An inveterate letter writer, Wagner was the youngest-but-one of ten children and Ellis describes the character of these letters to his sisters, his mother, his brother-in-law and his nieces as a reflection of the composer in the 'driest and most neutral of lights', claiming that within the family it is impossible to be pretentious. An appendix by Glasenapp, giving brief biographical details of family members, is also included. Despite the stylistic idiosyncrasies of the translations, these letters remain of importance, capturing something of the tone of Wagner's prose style and shedding light on his extraordinary life.

Published to complement Mozart Studies (published in 1991), Mozart Studies 2 offers a forum for the most important trends in recent Mozart scholarship including gender and genre studies, close readings of individual works, textual and contextual research and new directions in analysis, both for the operas and instrumental music.

The German actress Minna Planer (1809-66) was Wagner's first wife. Though it lasted until her death, their marriage, never an easy one, was punctuated by long periods of separation, and during its early years Minna was the main breadwinner. William Ashton Ellis (1852-1919) abandoned his medical career to devote himself to his Wagner studies. Best known for his translations of Wagner's prose works, he published in 1909 this collection of letters from the composer, translated from the originals in Baron Hans von Wolzogen's Richard Wagner an Minna Wagner (1908). Concerned predominantly with domestic and business affairs, many of them complaining at Minna's lack of support, the letters offer an intriguing and intimate view of this larger-than-life composer. Spanning the period 1858-63, Volume 2 covers their uneasy, brief reconciliation in Paris, Wagner's concerns over Minna's failing health, and her return to Dresden in 1862, which marked their final separation.

The Piano Player: Classical Favourites presents 20 of the most popular pieces of classical music, specially arranged for intermediate solo piano. Contents include Eine Kleine Nachtmusik by Mozart, Fantasia on Greensleeves by Ralph Vaughan Williams and Un bel di, vedremo by Giacomo Puccini. The striking cover features Edward Bawden's colour linocut Aesop's Fables: Daw in Borrowed Feathers, 1970, and a double-side colour print provides the full artwork as a beautiful collectible. The Piano Player series includes six wonderful collections of some of the greatest classical music ever written, specially arranged for the intermediate pianist, each with its own collectible pull-out poster of the stunning Edward Bawden cover artwork.