Discussion concerning the 'musicality' of Samuel Beckett's writing now constitutes a familiar critical trope in Beckett Studies, one that continues to be informed by the still-emerging evidence of Beckett's engagement with music throughout his personal and literary life, and by the ongoing interest of musicians in Beckett's work. In Beckett's drama and prose writings, the relationship with music plays out in implicit and explicit ways. Several of his works incorporate canonical music by composers such as Schubert and Beethoven. Other works integrate music as a compositional element, in dialogue or tension with text and image, while others adopt rhythm, repetition and pause to the extent that the texts themselves appear to be 'scored'. But what, precisely, does it mean to say that a piece of prose or writing for theatre, radio or screen, is 'musical'? The essays included in this book explore a number of ways in which Beckett's writings engage with and are engaged by musicality, discussing familiar and less familiar works by Beckett in detail. Ranging from the scholarly to the personal in their respective modes of response, and informed by approaches from performance and musicology, literary studies, philosophy, musical composition and creative practice, these essays provide a critical examination of the ways we might comprehend musicality as a definitive and often overlooked attribute throughout Beckett's work.

The study of music in commercials is well-suited for exploring the persuasive impact that music has beyond the ability to entertain, edify, and purify its audience. This book focuses on music in commercials from an interpretive text analytical perspective, answering hitherto neglected questions: What characterizes music in commercials compared to other commercial music and other music on TV? How does music in commercials relate to music outside the universe of commercials? How and what can music in commercials signify? Author Nicolai Graakjaer sets a new benchmark for the international scholarly study of music on television and its pervading influence on consumer choice.

This is a pioneering attempt to rearticulate the relationship between music and the problems of mimesis, between presentation and re-presentaion. Four "scenes" comprise the book, all four of them responses to Wagner: two by French poets (Baudelaire and Mallarme), two by German philosophers (Heidegger and Adorno).
It is dificult to realize how profoundly Wagner affected the cultural and ideological sensibilities of the nineteenth century. Wagnerism rapidly spread throughout Europe, partly because of Wagner's propagandizing talent and the zeal of his adherents. But the main reason for his ascendance was the sudden appearance of what the century had desperately tried to produce since the beginnings of Romanticism - a work of art on the scale of great Greek and Christian art. At last, here it was: the secret of what Hegel called the "religion of art" rediscovered.
The first two scenes of the book present a historical sequence that is punctuated by the Franco-Prussian War and the Paris Commune, in which the universal unbridling of nations and classes is prefigured. The second two register certain effects of Wagnerism that are not just ideological but make themselves felt in a new political configuration of the "national" and the "social."

When Namibia gained its independence from South Africa in 1990, the new government began dismantling the divisive apartheid state and building a unified nation-state. What does this new nation look like from the perspective of ordinary citizens? In Lyrical Nationalism in Post-Apartheid Namibia, Wendi Haugh provides an ethnographic portrayal of the nation as imagined by people living in the former ethnic homeland of Ovamboland, with a particular focus on the lyrics of songs composed and performed by Catholic youth. The author argues that these youth draw on conflicting ideologies-hierarchical and egalitarian, nationalist and cosmopolitan-from multiple sources to construct a multi-faceted sense of national identity. She reveals how their vision of the nation-framed as neutrally national-is deeply rooted in specific local histories and cultures.

John Wallis (1616-1703), was one of the foremost British mathematicians of the seventeenth century, and is also remembered for his important writings on grammar and logic. An interest in music theory led him to produce translations into Latin of three ancient Greek texts - those of Ptolemy, Porphyry and Bryennius - and involved him in discussions with Henry Oldenburg, the Secretary of the Royal Society, Thomas Salmon and other individuals as his ideas developed. The texts presented in this volume cover the relationship of ancient and modern tuning theory, the building of organs, the phenomena of resonance, and other musical topics.

Western opera is a globalized and globalizing phenomenon and affords us a unique opportunity for exploring the concept of "orientalism," the subject of literary scholar Edward Said's modern classic on the topic. Nicholas Tarling's Orientalism and the Operatic World places opera in the context of its steady globalization over the past two centuries. In this important survey, Tarling first considers how the Orient appears on the operatic stage in Britain, France, Germany, Russia, and the United States before exploring individual operas according to the region of the "Orient" in which the work is set. Throughout, Tarling offers key insights into such notable operas as George Frideric Handel's Berenice, Giuseppe Verdi's Aida, Giacomo Puccini's Madama Butterfly, Pietro Mascagni's Iris, and others. Orientalism and the Operatic World argues that any close study of the history of Western opera, in the end, fails to support the notion propounded by Said that Westerners inevitably stereotyped, dehumanized, and ultimately sought only to dominate the East through art. Instead, Tarling argues that opera is a humanizing art, one that emphasizes what humanity has in common by epic depictions of passion through the vehicle of song. Orientalism and the Operatic World is not merely for opera buffs or even first-time listeners. It should also interest historians of both the East and West, scholars of international relations, and cultural theorists.

The central point of this book is the realization that the creative work of Alban Berg, which in recent years has moved to the forefront of scholarly interest, is largely rooted in autobiography, so that therefore one can gain access to the music by studying the inner biography of its creator. Accordingly, the first of the three parts of this volume outlines a character portrait of this great composer. Part two considers the conditions relevant to a deeper understanding of Berg and of the Second Viennese School generally. In part three, then, Berg's key works will be analyzed and semantically deciphered in terms of his inner biography. The study is based not only on the sources in print but also on the rich unpublished material. Alban Berg was incapable of composing without a program. He needed an extra-musical stimulus. With him, personal experience was the indispensable condition of the creative process: the autobiographic reference was all-important for composing.

Unsayable Music presents theoretical, critical and analytical reflections on key topics of contemporary music including acoustic, electroacoustic, and digital music and audiovisual and multimedia composition. Six essays by Paulo C. Chagas approach music from different perspectives such as philosophy, sociology, cybernetics, musical semiotics, media, and critical studies.

Chagas's practical experience, both as a composer of contemporary music and sound director of the Electronic Music Studio of Cologne, nourishes his observations on the specific creativity that emerges with the use of the technical apparatus, the development of the electronic music studio, the different aesthetics of electroacoustic music, and the forms of audiovisual and multimedia composition.

The title Unsayable Music is a reference to Wittgenstein, who suggested that sound is only the surface of music and that the musical work conceals something more profound that can hardly be described by philosophical models or scientific theories."

This book explores the alliance of theology and music in the Christian liturgical tradition, interrogating the challenges posed by the gendered nature of church leadership in many areas of its life. It examines the relationship between theology, spirituality and music, concentrating on women's perceptions of these. The title draws on the Report of the Archbishop's Commission on Church Music from 1992 which was entitled In Tune with Heaven. It questions the absence of women's voices and experiences from the literature and attempts to redress this. It sets out the values that underpin Christian musical liturgical traditions primarily in Europe and the USA with a view to understanding where women are situated within or outside these traditions. It draws on material from many interviews with contemporary practitioners from a variety of contexts. It does not set out to be a definitive history of women in these traditions but simply to give some small vignettes that illustrate a variety of positions that they have occupied in various denominations - and thus make their often hidden contributions more visible.

Why are so few women composers known to the general public and even fewer of their works studied and performed? More than one musicologist told the author that they are not "famous" enough to be considered! So then, can a woman who studied with Boulanger and Messiaen, who won the coveted Paris Conservatory Prize in Composition, who received the highest awards her country can bestow, and who produced some of the finest teaching musicians on the globe qualify as "famous"? This book is about one who can and does: Erzsebet Szonyi, a Hungarian "Renaissance woman", who, in spite of a repressive regime's attempts to contain her, ended up wielding an international artistic and pedagogical influence. Readers interested in music education, women's and family studies, Kodaly studies, Classical education, theory and composition, musicology, creative processes, educational psychology, and the history and sociology of pre- and postwar Central Europe will find A Tear in the Curtain: The Musical Diplomacy of Erzsebet Szonyi: Musician, Composer, Teacher of Teachers to be a compelling read. One is left to contemplate what society should actually expect from the education of its citizens. In this book, readers clearly hear Erzsebet Szonyi's own voice as she describes her journey through unimaginable joys, sorrows, and personal challenges to emerge as a muse for our age. More like her are needed; perhaps through her life story we can learn how to raise them. The message is clear: Fame is a life lived in the service of others.

A riveting look at the transformative year in the lives and careers of the legendary group whose groundbreaking legacy would forever change music and popular culture. They started off as hysteria-inducing pop stars playing to audiences of screaming teenage fans and ended up as musical sages considered responsible for ushering in a new era. The year that changed everything for the Beatles was 1966-the year of their last concert and their first album, Revolver, that was created to be listened to rather than performed. This was the year the Beatles risked their popularity by retiring from live performances, recording songs that explored alternative states of consciousness, experimenting with avant-garde ideas, and speaking their minds on issues of politics, war, and religion. It was the year their records were burned in America after John's explosive claim that the group was "more popular than Jesus," the year they were hounded out of the Philippines for "snubbing" its First Lady, the year John met Yoko Ono, and the year Paul conceived the idea for Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. On the fiftieth anniversary of this seminal year, music journalist and Beatles expert Steve Turner slows down the action to investigate in detail the enormous changes that took place in the Beatles' lives and work during 1966. He looks at the historical events that had an impact on the group, the music they made that in turn profoundly affected the culture around them, and the vision that allowed four young men from Liverpool to transform popular music and serve as pioneers for artists from Coldplay to David Bowie, Jay-Z to U2. By talking to those close to the group and by drawing on his past interviews with key figures such as George Martin, Timothy Leary, and Ravi Shankar-and the Beatles themselves-Turner gives us the compelling, definitive account of the twelve months that contained everything the Beatles had been and anticipated everything they would still become.

The gayat al-matlub fi 'ilm al-adwar wa-'l-durub by Ibn Kurr is the only theoretical text of any substance that can be considered representative of musicological discourse in Cairo during the first half of the fourteenth century CE. Indeed, nothing comparable survives from the whole Mamluk period, which extends from 1260 until the Ottoman invasion and conquest of Egypt in 1516. But its value does not derive merely from its fortuitous isolation: it is important, rather, because of the richness of the information it provides with regard to modal and rhythmic structures, and also because of the extent to which the definitions it offers differ from those set forth in an interrelated series of major theoretical works in both Arabic and Persian that span the period from the middle of the thirteenth century to the late fifteenth. Alongside the presumption of transregional uniformity these texts suggest, it consequently asserts the significance of local particularism. Owen Wright provides a critical edition of the text itself, together with a glossary, prefaced by an introduction and a detailed commentary and analysis. The introduction provides immediate context, situating the work in relation to the dominant theoretical tradition of the period and providing biographical information about the author, active in Cairo during the first half of the fourteenth century.

As perhaps the most studied film movement in cinematic history, the French New Wave has been analysed and criticised, romanticised and mythologised, raising the question of whether it is possible to write anything new about this period. Yet there are still gaps in the scholarship, and the study of music in New Wave films is one of the most striking. Listening to the French New Wave offers the first detailed study of the music and composers of French New Wave cinema, arguing for the need to re-hear and thus reassess this important period in film history. Combining an ethnographic approach with textual and score-based analysis, the author challenges the idea of the New Wave as revolutionary in all its facets by revealing traditional approaches to music in many canonical New Wave films. However, musical innovation does have its place in the New Wave, particularly in the films of the marginalised Left Bank group. The author ultimately brings to light those few collaborations that engaged with the ideology of adopting contemporary music practices for a contemporary medium. Drawing on archival material and interviews with New Wave composers, this book re-tells the story of the French New Wave from the perspective of its music.

A vivid (and startling) example of the "new musicology", Beethoven's Kiss is an interdisciplinary study of romantic pianism in relation to gender and sexuality, ultimately underscoring the extent to which the piano resonates with intimations of both homosexuality and mortality. The first chapter, on the amateur pianist, scrutinizes the way Andre Gide and Roland Barthes discuss piano playing, their favorite composers - and their homosexuality. Situating these discussions within the histories of sexuality and amateur pianism, the author argues that connections between musical and sexual mastery are shaped by the "performance" of class and gender. The second chapter examines the homoerotic basis of the creation of nineteenth-century piano music and the equally homoerotic basis of the twentieth-century recreation of this music. The title of the third chapter, "Beethoven's Kiss", refers to the apocryphal story that Beethoven kissed Liszt, then eleven, in public. The author recounts other quasi-sexual myths about nineteenth-century child prodigies, examining how and why these stories used to circulate and why they no longer do so. The next chapter examines the different ways nineteenth- and twentieth-century audiences sexualize famous pianists and polarize them along gender and sexual lines. The fifth chapter describes the gender, sexual, and class positioning of the "maiden" piano teacher in a variety of texts - interviews, memoirs, short stories, novels, and films. The book concludes with a far-ranging analysis of Liberace, who (with his silver candelabra) tried to perform upper-class status, who (with his devotion to Chopin) tried to perform highbrow taste, and who (with his closetedlifestyle) tried to perform heterosexuality.

The book defines and describes the relationships between Chopin's music and one of the oldest but still used monastic rules, the Rule of Saint Benedict. Its goal is to construct bridges between music and spirituality. Since these two realms both refer to human life, the chapters of the book deal with current and existential issues such as beginnings, authority, weakness, interactions, emotions and others. The Rule of Saint Benedict and Chopin's music appear to belong to the same stylistic category of human culture, characterized by nobleness, moderation and high sensibility. In this way two seemingly incompatible realities reveal their affinity to each other, and the one may explain the other. The book is situated at the boundary of musicology and theology. Its discourse is illustrated by many examples, carefully chosen from Chopin's music.

This book represents the volume of the International Musicological Conference "Musical Romania and Neighbouring Cultures. Traditions, Influences, Identities", which took place in Iasi (Romania) and was organised by the George Enescu University of Arts Iasi in collaboration with the International Musicological Society. The volume includes 35 papers of 38 authors who represent academic centres in Croatia, Bulgaria, Serbia, Greece and Romania. The diverse topics include ancient Romanian, Balkan or East-European music, music iconography, Byzantine and folkloristic traditions, as well as modern and contemporary music. The articles propose theoretical and methodological documentation on the interactions between liturgical, folkloric and academic works within this multicultural space.

Felix Mendelssohn is one of the most celebrated figures of the early Romantic period. As a composer of sacred texts, he is chiefly remembered today for the oratorios Paulus (1836) and Elijah (1846). In this groundbreaking study, Siegwart Reichwald offers a meticulous analysis of Paulus, beginning with a general overview of the oratorio traditions of the early nineteenth century. He details the phases of the compositional process of Paulus as well as principles governing its development. Numerous musical examples, figures, and tables accompany the text. This thorough treatment of Paulus, while shedding light on Mendelssohn's approach to the oratorio and to sacred music in general, will be of interest to students of musicology.

Listening is a social process. Even apparently trivial acts of listening are expert performances of acquired cognitive and bodily habits. Contemporary scholars acknowledge this fact with the notion that there are "auditory cultures." In the fourth century BCE, Greek philosophers recognized a similar phenomenon in music, which they treated as a privileged site for the cultural manufacture of sensory capabilities, and proof that in a traditional culture perception could be ordered, regular, and reliable. This approachable and elegantly written book tells the story of how music became a vital topic for understanding the senses and their role in the creation of knowledge. Focussing in particular on discussions of music and sensation in Plato and Aristoxenus, Sean Gurd explores a crucial early chapter in the history of hearing and gently raises critical questions about how aesthetic traditionalism and sensory certainty can be joined together in a mutually reinforcing symbiosis.

Music theory is often seen as independent from - even antithetical to - performance. While music theory is an intellectual enterprise, performance requires an intuitive response to the music. But this binary opposition is a false one, which serves neither the theorist nor the performer. In Interpreting Chopin Alison Hood brings her experience as a performer to bear on contemporary analytical models. She combines significant aspects of current analytical approaches and applies that unique synthetic method to selected works by Chopin, casting new light on the composer's preludes, nocturnes and barcarolle. An extension of Schenkerian analysis, the specific combination of five aspects distinguishes Hood's method from previous analytical approaches. These five methods are: attention to the rhythms created by pitch events on all structural levels; a detailed accounting of the musical surface; 'strict use' of analytical notation, following guidelines offered by Steve Larson; a continual concern with what have been called 'strategies' or 'premises'; and an exploration of how recorded performances might be viewed in terms of analytical decisions, or might even shape those decisions. Building on the work of such authors as William Rothstein, Carl Schachter and John Rink, Hood's approach to Chopin's oeuvre raises interpretive questions of central interest to performers.

More than eighty years have passed since Edgard Varese s catalytic work for percussion ensemble, "Ionisation," was heard in its New York premiere. A flurry of pieces for this new medium dawned soon after, challenging the established truths and preferences of the European musical tradition while setting the stage for percussion to become one of the most significant musical advances of the twentieth century. This 'revolution', as John Cage termed it, was a quintessentially modernist movement - an exploration of previously undiscovered sounds, forms, textures, and styles. However, as percussion music has progressed and become woven into the fabric of Western musical culture, several divergent paths, comprised of various traditions and a multiplicity of aesthetic sensibilities, have since emerged for the percussionist to pursue.

This edited collection highlights the progressive developments that continue to investigate uncharted musical grounds. Using historical studies, philosophical insights, analyses of performance practice, and anecdotal reflections authored by some of today's most engaged performers, composers, and scholars, this book aims to illuminate the unique destinations found in the artistic journey of the modern percussionist."

This book studies the different roles that jazz played in Poland in the course of the 20th century, from its implementation in the 1920s, through World War II to the Third Polish Republic. The author, sociologist and jazz musician, depicts how jazz was forbidden under Stalin, accepted and even supported in the Polish People's Republic and then welcomed in the open market of the Third Republic. The discussion of jazz in this work covers several levels: political, symbolic, cultural, and economic. The main point of the presented analysis are changes within jazz music itself, within the community of jazz musicians and relations between the field of jazz and the field of politics.

The first posthumous collection from the writings of Stanley Cavell, shedding new light on the distinctive vision and intellectual trajectory of an influential American philosopher. For Stanley Cavell, philosophy was a matter of responding to the voices of others. Throughout his career, he articulated the belief that words spring to life in concrete circumstances of speech: the significance and power of language depend on the occasions that elicit it. When Cavell died in 2018, he left behind some of his own most powerful language-a plan for a book collecting numerous unpublished essays and lectures, as well as papers printed in niche journals. Here and There presents this manuscript, with thematically relevant additions, for the first time. These writings, composed between the 1980s and the 2000s, reflect Cavell's expansive interests and distinctive philosophical method. The collection traverses all the major themes of his immense body of work: modernity, psychoanalysis, the human voice, moral perfectionism, tragedy, skepticism. Cavell's rich and cohesive philosophical vision unites his wide-ranging engagement with poets, critics, psychoanalysts, social scientists, and fellow philosophers. In Here and There, readers will find dialogues with Shakespeare, Thoreau, Wittgenstein, Freud, Heidegger, Walter Benjamin, Wallace Stevens, Veena Das, and Peter Kivy, among others. One of the collection's most striking features is an ensemble of five pieces on music, constituting Cavell's first discussion of the subject since the mid-1960s. Edited by philosophers who have been invested in Cavell's work for decades, Here and There not only gathers the strands of a writing life but also maps its author's intellectual journeys. In these works, Cavell models what it looks like to examine seriously one's own passions and to forge new communities through unexpected conversations.

Long a taboo subject among critics, rhythm finally takes center stage in this book's dazzling, wide-ranging examination of diverse black cultures across the New World. Martin MunroOCOs groundbreaking work traces the centralOCoand contestedOCorole of music in shaping identities, politics, social history, and artistic expression. Starting with enslaved African musicians, Munro takes us to Haiti, Trinidad, the French Caribbean, and to the civil rights era in the United States. Along the way, he highlights such figures as Toussaint Louverture, Jacques Roumain, Jean Price-Mars, The Mighty Sparrow, Aim(r) C(r)saire, Edouard Glissant, Joseph Zobel, Daniel Maximin, James Brown, and Amiri Baraka. Bringing to light new connections among black cultures, Munro shows how rhythm has been both a persistent marker of race as well as a dynamic force for change at virtually every major turning point in black New World hist

Little is known about the ways in which early modern musical cultures were integrated within their broader urban environments. Building on recent trends within urban musicology, the authors of this volume aim to transcend descriptive overviews of institutions and actors involved with music within a given city. Instead, they consider the urban environment as the constitutive context for the making of music as a significant aspect of urban society and identity.

Through selected case studies and by focusing on three musical circuits opera and theater music, sacred music, and secular songs this book contributes to a more effective understanding of music in late seventeenth- and eighteenth-century urban societies in the southern Netherlands and beyond. Musicological and historical research perspectives are fruitfully integrated, as well as insights from theater scholarship and literary criticism. With attention to the musical life behind the traditional institutions, the circulation of repertoires, and musical cultures in peripheral urban environments or in cities in decay, Music and the City reveals the societal dimension of music in urban life."

The first study to explore the crucial influence of Kurt Weill on operas and musicals by Marc Blitzstein and Leonard Bernstein. Theodor Adorno famously proclaimed that the model of Kurt Weill could not be repeated. Yet Weill's stage works set an inescapable precedent for composers on both sides of the Atlantic. Rebecca Schmid explores how Weill's formal innovations in particular laid the groundwork for operas and musicals by Marc Blitzstein and Leonard Bernstein, although both composers resisted or downplayed his aesthetic contribution to American tradition. Comparative analysis based on Harold Bloom's Anxiety of Influence and other modes of intertextuality reveals that the principles of Weill's opera reform would catalyze an indigenous movement in sophisticated, socially engaged music theatre. Weill, Blitzstein, and Bernstein: A Study of Influence focuses on works that represent different phases of Weill's mission to renew the genre of opera, evolving from Die Dreigroschenoper to the musical play Lady in the Dark and the Broadway Opera Street Scene. Blitzstein and Bernstein in turn defied formal boundaries with The Cradle Will Rock, Regina, Trouble in Tahiti, Candide, and West Side Story - part of a short-lived movement in mid-twentieth century America that coincided with a renaissance for Weill's German-period works following the premiere of Blitzstein's translation, The Threepenny Opera, under Bernstein's baton. The unpublished A Pray by Blecht, for which Bernstein rejoined Stephen Sondheim and Jerome Robbins, his collaborators on West Side Story, deepens the connection of Bernstein's aesthetic to Weill.