This book explores the mythology, story, music, characters and language of Wagner's monumental work. At its heart is a concordance of the keywords in the four librettos, a powerful reference tool. The volume also includes a brief synopsis of each of the four operas, a presentation of the 145 principal musical motives in order of appearance, and a discussion of the characters and their relationships, listing their appearances and the musical motives associated with them.

Musical semiotics is a new discipline and paradigm of both semiotics and musicology. In its tradition, the current volume constitutes a radically new solution to the theoretical problem of how musical meanings emerge and how they are transmitted by musical signs even in most "absolute" and abstract musical works of Western classical heritage. Works from symphonies, lied, chamber music to opera are approached and studied here with methods of semiotic inspiration. Its analyses stem from systematic methods in the author's previous work, yet totally new analytic concepts are also launched in order to elucidate profound musical significations verbally. The book reflects the new phase in the author's semiotic approach, the one characterized by the so-called "existential semiotics" elaborated on the basis of philosophers from Kant , Hegel and Kierkegaard to Jaspers, Heidegger, Sartre and Marcel. The key notions like musical subject, Schein, becoming, temporality, modalities, Dasein, transcendence put musical facts in a completely new light and perspectives of interpretation. The volume attempts to make explicit what is implicit in every musical interpretation, intuition and understanding: to explain how compositions and composers "talk" to us. Its analyses are accessible due to the book's universal approach. Music is experienced as a language, communicating from one subject to another.

Music was central to everyday life and expression in late Georgian Britain, and this is the first interdisciplinary study of its impact on Romantic literature. Focusing on the public fascination with virtuoso performance, Gillen D'Arcy Wood documents a struggle between sober literary' virtue and luxurious, effeminate virtuosity that staged deep anxieties over class, cosmopolitanism, machine technology, and the professionalization of culture. A remarkable synthesis of cultural history and literary criticism, this book opens new perspectives on key Romantic authors including Burney, Wordsworth, Austen and Byron and their relationship to definitive debates in late Georgian culture."

This study seeks to explore the role and significance of aria insertion, the practice that allowed singers to introduce music of their own choice into productions of Italian operas. Each chapter investigates the art of aria insertion during the nineteenth century from varying perspectives, beginning with an overview of the changing fortunes of the practice, followed by explorations of individual prima donnas and their relationship with particular insertion arias: Carolina Ungher's difficulties in finding a "perfect" aria to introduce into Donizetti's Marino Faliero; Guiditta Pasta's performance of an aria from Pacini's Niobe in a variety of operas, and the subsequent fortunes of that particular aria; Maria Malibran's interpolation of Vaccai's final scene from Giulietta e Romeo in place of Bellini's original setting in his I Capuleti e i Montecchi; and Adelina Patti's "mini-concerts" in the lesson scene of Il barbiere di Siviglia.
The final chapter provides a treatment of a short story, "Memoir of a Song," narrated by none other than an insertion aria itself, and the volume concludes with an appendix containing the first modern edition of this short story, a narrative that has lain utterly forgotten since its publication in 1849. This book covers a wide variety of material that will be of interest to opera scholars and opera lovers alike, touching on the fluidity of the operatic work, on the reception of the singers, and on the shifting and hardening aesthetics of music criticism through the period.

The Oxford Book of Choral Music by Black Composers is a landmark collection of non-idiomatic compositions from the sixteenth century to the present day, providing a comprehensive introduction to an area of choral music that has been historically under-represented. This unique anthology seeks both to improve representation in the historical canon and to showcase the music of some of the best names in choral music today.

Ludwig van Beethoven: Eine Biographie appeared in Prague a few months after the composer's death, thirteen years before the next biography of Beethoven would appear. Virtually nothing is known about the author, Johann Aloys Schlosser, except that he was born in the small town of Lann, in Bohemia, around 1790 and was a partner in a publishing firm in Prague from 1827-28, at which time he published this first brief biography of Beethoven. Many writers have pointed out the flaws in Schlosser's "biography". The purpose of the present edition is not to provide a clear and vivid picture of Beethoven's life, but to enable English-speaking readers to judge Schlosser's book for themselves rather than relying on secondhand criticisms, and to illuminate what was known and believed in Vienna and Prague in 1827 - not only about Beethoven but about his relationship to Haydn and Mozart, and to the music of Bach and Handel. Copious annotations and an introductory essay by the eminent Beethoven scholar Barry Cooper put Schlosser's text into perspective and clarify inaccuracies in the original text. Available for the first time in English, Schlosser's first biography of Beethoven substantially enriches our understanding of the attitudes of Beethoven's contemporaries and fills an important gap in Beethoven scholarship.

Traditional musicology has tended to see the Spanish 18th century as a period of decline, but this volume shows it to be rich in interest and achievement. Covering stage genres, orchestral and instrumental music, and vocal music (both sacred and secular), it brings together the results of much recent research on such topics as opera, musical instruments, the secular cantata and the villancico, and challenges received ideas about how Italian and Austrian music of the period influenced (or was opposed by) Spanish composers and theorists. Two final chapters outline the presence of Spanish musical sources in the New World.

O.E.Deutsch's documentary biography of Mozart, first published in German in 1961 and translated into English in 1965, presented all the contemporary documentation on Mozart then known to scholars. During three decades of research more have come to light, and Dr Eisen himself has substantially augmented their number with a methodical search through contemporary research material - newspapers, diaries, memoirs, books and many others. This new edition presents all the material discovered since the English edition of the Deutsch volume, with full description and documentation. This book is essential reading for anyone concerned with the basic information on Mozart's life, his activities and the reception of his music.

This comprehensive study treats the wind works of Anton Bruckner as a complete genre and uses them to illustrate how the composer evolved in style throughout his career. A major nineteenth-century composer, organist, and church musician, Bruckner's compositional style changed dramatically in the early 1860s, dividing his career into two distinct parts. During his early career he immersed himself in the study of traditional musical principles including form, harmony, counterpoint, and orchestration. The second phase of his career, in which he composed the symphonies upon which much of his current reputation rests, was marked by his experimental approaches to harmony and tonality. Many of his early compositions exhibit landmarks of his later style. The wind instrument pieces incorporate the best aspects of both of Bruckner's styles and reflect the progress of his professional life.

Organized chronologically, the music is studied and classified within set time periods. Each wind work of a particular period is reviewed according to the historical circumstances contributing to its creation, its specific musical content, and its success as a musical work in relation to wind music and specifically to Bruckner's development. The analyses of Bruckner's compositions are enhanced by musical examples throughout the text.

Combining musical insight with the most recent research, William Kinderman's Beethoven is both a richly drawn portrait of the man and a guide to his music. Kinderman traces the composer's intellectual and musical development from the early works written in Bonn to the Ninth Symphony and the late quartets, looking at compositions from different and original perspectives that show Beethoven's art as a union of sensuous and rational, of expression and structure. In analyses of individual pieces, Kinderman shows that the deepening of Beethoven's musical thought was a continuous process over decades of his life. In this new updated edition, Kinderman gives more attention to the composer's early chamber music, his songs, his opera Fidelio, and to a number of often-neglected works of the composer's later years and fascinating projects left incomplete. A revised view emerges from this of Beethoven's aesthetics and the musical meaning of his works. Rather than the conventional image of a heroic and tormented figure, Kinderman provides a more complex, more fully rounded account of the composer. Although Beethoven's deafness and his other personal crises are addressed, together with this ever-increasing commitment to his art, so too are the lighter aspects of his personality: his humor, his love of puns, his great delight in juxtaposing the exalted and the commonplace.

Going to concerts is becoming, for large numbers of Americans, an increasingly frequent pleasure. For those who encounter unfamiliar traditions and terms in the concert hall, here is information and advice which tells all listeners what they need to know to be comfortable at an orchestral concert. Includes background, biographies, and discussions of 200 masterpieces. Drawings.

From the series examining the development of music in specific places during particular times, this book looks at the classical period, in Europe and America, from Vienna and Salzburg to the Iberian courts and Philadelphia.

Vanishing Sensibilities examines once passionate cultural concerns that shaped music of Schubert, Beethoven, Schumann, and works of their contemporaries in drama or poetry. Music, especially music with text, was a powerful force in lively ongoing conversations about the nature of liberty, which included such topics as the role of consent in marriage, same-sex relationships, freedom of the press, and the freedom to worship (or not). Among the most common vehicles for stimulating debate about pressing social concerns were the genres of historical drama, and legend or myth, whose stories became inflected in fascinating ways during the Age of Metternich. Interior and imagined worlds, memories and fantasies, were called up in purely instrumental music, and music was privately celebrated for its ability to circumvent the restrictions that were choking the verbal arts.
Author Kristina Muxfeldt invites us to listen in on these cultural conversations, dating from a time when the climate of censorship made the tone of what was said every bit as important as its literal content. At this critical moment in European history such things as a performer's delivery, spontaneous improvisation, or the demeanor of the music could carry forbidden messages of hope and political resistance--flying under the censor's radar like a carrier pigeon. Rather than trying to decode or fix meanings, Muxfeldt concerns herself with the very mechanisms of their communication, and she confronts distortions to meaning that form over time as the cultural or political pressures shaping the original expression fade and are eventually forgotten. In these pages are accounts of works successful in their own time alongside others that failed to achieve more than a liminal presence, among them Schubert's Alfonso und Estrella and his last opera project Der Graf von Gleichen, whose libretto was banned even before Schubert set to work composing it. Enlivening the narrative are generous music examples, reproductions of artwork, and facsimiles of autograph material.

Music aesthetics in late eighteenth-century Germany has always been problematic because there was no aesthetic theory to evaluate the enormous amount of high-quality instrumental music produced by composers like Haydn and Mozart. This book derives a practical aesthetic for German instrumental music during the late eighteenth century from a previously neglected source, reviews of printed instrumental works. At a time when the theory of mimesis dominated aesthetic thought, leaving sonatas and symphonies at the very bottom of the aesthetic hierarchy, a group of reviewers were quietly setting about the task of evaluating instrumental music on its own terms. The reviews document an intersection with trends in literature and philosophy, and reveal interest in criteria like genius, the expressive power of music, and the necessity of unity, several decades earlier than has previously been supposed.

The International Who s Who in Classical Music 2009 is an unparalleled source of biographical information on singers, instrumentalists, composers, conductors and managers. The directory section lists orchestras, opera companies and other institutions connected with the classical music world.

Each biographical entry comprises personal information, principal career details, repertoire, recordings and compositions, and full contact details where available. Appendices provide contact details for national orchestras, opera companies, music festivals, music organizations and major competitions and awards.

Entries include individuals involved in all aspects of the world of classical music: composers, instrumentalists, singers, arrangers, writers, musicologists, conductors, directors and managers.

Key features:

• over 8,000 detailed biographical entries
• covers the classical and light classical fields
• includes both up-and-coming musicians and well-established names.

This book will prove invaluable for anyone in need of reliable, up-to-date information on the individuals and organizations involved in classical music.

MUSIC in the BAROQUE ERA FROM Monteverdi TO Bach By MANFRED R BUKOFZER PROFESSOR OF MUSIC, THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA. New York NORTON tf COMPANY INO COPYRIGHT, 1947, BY W. W. NORTON COMPANY, INC. NEW YORK, N. Y. IN THE tmiTED STATES OB AMERICA FOR THE PUBLISHERS BY THE VAIL-BALLOXJ PRESS MCE IVEO R. Y CMF 1869 1943 . A. I ion. eer o CONTENTS PREFACE xiii Chapter One RENAISSANCE versus BAROQUE MUSIC i Disintegration of Stylistic Unity i Stylistic Comparison between Renaissance and Baroque Music 9 The Phases of Baroque Music 16 Chapter Two EARLY BAROQUE IN ITALY 20 The Beginnings of the Concertato Style Gabriel 20 The Monody Peri and Caccini 25 Transformation of the Madrigal Monteverdi 33 The Influence of the Dance on Vocal Music 38 Emancipation of Instrumental Music Frcscobaldi 43 The Rise of the Opera Monteverdi 55 Tradition and Progress in Sacred Music 64 Chapter Three EARLY AND MIDDLE BAROQUE IN THE NORTHERN COUNTRIES 71 The Netherlands School and Its English Background 71 English Antecedents the Abstract Instrumental Style 72 The Netherlands Sweelinck 74 Germany and Austria in the 17th Century 78 Chorale and Devotional Song 79 Chorale Motet and Chorale Concertato Schein 83 The Dramatic Concertato Schiitz 88 Continue Lied, Opera, and Oratorio 97 Instrumental Music Scheldt, Froberger, and Biber 104 Chapter Four ITALIAN MUSIC OF THE MIDDLE BAROQUE 118 The Bel-Canto Style 118 The Chamber Cantata Luigi Rossi and Carissimi 120 vii viii Contents The Oratorio Carissimi and Stradella 123 The Venetian Opera School 128 Instrumental Music the Bologna School 136 Chapter Five FRENCH MUSIC UNDER THE ABSOLUTISM 141 The Ballet de Cour 141 French Reactions to Italian Opera 147 Comedie-Ballet andTragedie Lyrique Lully 151 Cantata, Oratorio, and Church Music 161 Lute Miniatures and Keyboard Music Gaultier and Chambon niires 164 Music in the Iberian Peninsula, New Spain, and Colonial America 174 Chapter Six ENGLISH MUSIC DURING THE COM MONWEALTH AND RESTORATION 180 The Masque and the English Opera Lawes and Blow 180 Consort Music Jenkins and Simpson 190 Anglican Church Music Porter, Humfrcy, and Blow 198 Henry Purcell, the Restoration Genius 203 Chapter Seven LATE BAROQUE LUXURIANT COUN TERPOINT AND CONCERTO STYLE 219 The Culmination of Late Baroque Music in Italy 219 The Rise of Tonality 219 Concerto Grosso and Solo Concerto 222 Ensemble Sonata and Solo Sonata 232 Opera Seria and Opera B Cantata and Sacred Music 239 Late Baroque and Rococo Style in France 247 Ensemble and Clavecin Music 247 Opera and Cantata in France 253 Chapter Eight FUSION OF NATIONAL STYLES BACH 260 The State of Instrumental Music in Germany before Bach 260 The State of Protestant Church Music before Bach 268 Bach The Early Period 270 Bach the Organist Weimar 275 Bach the Mentor C5then 282 Contents ix Bach the Cantor Leipzig 291 Bach, the Past Master 300 Chapter Nine COORDINATION OF NATIONAL STYLES HANDEL 306 The State of Secular Vocal Music in Germany before Handel 306 Handel German Apprentice Period 314 Italian Journeyman Period 318 English Master Period Operas Oratorios Instrumental Music 3 2 4 Bach and Handel, a Comparison 345 Chapter Ten FORM IN BAROQUE MUSIC 35 Formal Principles and Formal Schemes 350 Style and Form 362 Audible Form and Inaudible Order 365 Chapter Eleven MUSICAL THOUGHT OF THE BAROQUE ERA 37 Code of Performance Composer and Performer 371 Theory and Practice of Composition 382 MusicalSpeculation 39 Chapter Twelve SOCIOLOGY OF BAROQUE MUSIC 394 Courtly Musical Institutions of State and Church Private Patronage 394 Civic Musical Institutions Collective Patronage 401 Social and Economic Aspects of Music and Musicians 404 APPENDICES List of Abbreviations 4 5 Checklist of Baroque Books on Music 4 X 7 Bibliography 433 List of Editions 4 i List of Musical Examples 47 1 INDEX 475 ILLUSTRATIONS Facing page PLATE i. Claudio Monteverdi 80 PLATE 2. Schutz among his Choristers 81 PLATE 3. Carissimis The Deluge 112 PLATE 4...

William Billings (1746-1800) was the most important native-born composer of the American colonial and Federal eras. He wrote hundreds of choral compositions, which were set to sacred or devotional texts for use by church choirs, singing schools, and musical societies. Extremely popular in his own time, Billings's music was denigrated during the nineteenth century when European styles governed American musical tastes. In the twentieth century his genius was recognized, and his music is widely sung and studied. Originally published in six tunebooks, the 338 extant pieces were issued in a scholarly edition by the American Musicological Society and The Colonial Society of Massachusetts as The Complete Works of William Billings (4 vols., 1977-1990). The present catalog complements the Complete Works by serving as a guide to its contents and providing a wealth of additional data. Included for each composition are exact title; text source; first line; technical information on length, meter, key, and melody; manuscript sources and contemporaneous reprints; bibliography and modern recordings. An extensive list of works cited is followed by five indexes providing access to the material in the catalog by first line of text, Billings's anthem titles, text sources, musical form (tune types), and musical incipits. The catalog provides for Billings's music information similar to that found in Schmeider's listings for Bach and Koechel's listings for Mozart.

Brings new insights to the music of well-known European composers by telling a fascinating, little-known story about French music publishing, specifically through the lens of Jacques Durand's Édition Classique. French composers, performers and musicologists acted as editors of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century European 'classics', primarily for piano. Among these editors were Fauré, Saint-Saëns, Debussy, Ravel and Dukas; the objects of their enquiries included core works by Rameau, Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Mendelssohn, Schumann and Chopin. Presenting six composer-editor case studies, the volume shows that the French 'accent', both musical and cultural, upon this predominantly Austro-German music was highly varied. Editorial responses range from scholarly approaches to those directed by performance or compositional agendas, and from pan-European to strongly patriotic stances. Intriguing intersections are revealed between old and new, and between French and cross-European canons. Beyond editing, the book explores the Édition's role in pedagogy and performance, including by pianists Robert Casadesus and Yvonne Loriod, and in the reassertion of contemporary French composition, especially regarding innovation around neoclassicism. It will interest a wide readership, including musicologists, performers and concert-goers, cultural historians and other humanities scholars.

Easy to intermediate pieces by J.S. Bach including Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring, BourrA(c)e and more. Musical and technical information accompany each piece, and helpful fingering suggestions are also included.

"International Whos Who in Classical Music 2006" is an unparalleled source of biographical information on singers, instrumentalists, composers, conductors and managers. The directory section lists orchestras, opera companies and other institutions connected with the classical music world.
Each biographical entry comprises personal information, principal career details, repertoire, recordings and compositions, and full contact details where available. The directory gives contact details for orchestras, opera companies, festivals, music libraries and conservatories, major competitions and awards, and other music organizations in classical music.
Entries include individuals involved in all aspects of the world of classical music: composers, instrumentalists, singers, arrangers, writers, musicologists, conductors, directors and managers. Among those listed in this new edition are Philip Glass, Lang Lang, George Crumb, Evelyn Glennie, Yo-Yo Ma and Inga Nielsen.
Over 8,000 detailed biographical entries
Covers the Classical and Light Classical fields
Includes both up-and-coming musicians and well-established names
This book will prove invaluable for anyone in need of reliable, up-to-date information on the individuals and organizations involved in classical music.

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.

Exploring the personal and cultural experiences that have shaped the creative output of one of Australia's foremost composers, this fascinating study begins in a Russian enclave in northern China, progresses through student days in Sydney and San Francisco, and culminates with Sitsky's present position as Professor of Composition at The Australian National University in Canberra. The many influences on his work, including important professional and personal relationships with such eminent persons as the poet Gwen Harwood and the violinist Jan Sedivka, are discussed in detail as are the sources of much of the inspiration for Sitsky's compositions, now numbering close to 200. Of interest to scholars, students, and anyone interested in 20th-century music. In addition to presenting Sitsky's fascinating life story and expounding on the central position he has occupied for the past 40 years in Australia's musical culture, this important work provides for the first time comprehensive bibliographic references to all of Sitsky's compositions, his writing, his recordings, and his appearances as a pianist and lecturer on music. The book is a most valuable addition to any collection, for it is both a work of reference and a compelling story of the development of one of the most eclectic, visionary, and confronting artists of his generation.

First published in 1994. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Adorno's aesthetics are one of the most important philosophical analyses of the 20th century, but their development remains unclear. Adorno, Aesthetics, Dissonance is the first book to provide a detailed study of how Adorno's thinking of aesthetics developed and to show the different dimensions that came together to make it uniquely powerful. Principal among these dimensions are his intense interest in music and his historical and materialist approach. In addition, by studying how Adorno's aesthetics arose through interactions with different thinkers, particularly Kracauer, Horkheimer, and Schoenberg, it becomes clear that his thought changes in its relation to dialectics. As a result, Adorno's thinking comes to broaden the understanding of aesthetics to include the sphere of sensuality, and in doing so transforms both aesthetics and dialectics through a notion of dissonance, which in turn has substantial implications for the relation of his thinking to praxis.