0
Your cart

Your cart is empty

Browse All Departments
Price
  • R50 - R100 (1)
  • R100 - R250 (206)
  • R250 - R500 (758)
  • R500+ (983)
  • -
Status
Format
Author / Contributor
Publisher

Books > Arts & Architecture > Music > Western music, periods & styles > General

Uncovering Music of Early European Women (1250-1750) (Hardcover): Claire Fontijn Uncovering Music of Early European Women (1250-1750) (Hardcover)
Claire Fontijn
R4,488 Discovery Miles 44 880 Ships in 10 - 15 working days

Uncovering Music of Early European Women (1250 - 1750) brings together nine chapters that investigate aspects of female music-making and musical experience in the medieval and early modern periods. Part I, "Notes from the Underground," treats the spirituality of women in solitude and in community. Parts II and III, "Interlude" and "Music for Royal Rivals," respond to Joan Kelly's famous feminist question and suggest that women of a certain stature did have a Renaissance. Part IV, "Serenissime Sirene," plays with the notion of the allure of music and its risks in Venice during the Baroque. The process of uncovering requires close listening to women's creative endeavors in an ongoing effort to piece together equitably the terrain of early music. Contributors include: Cynthia J. Cyrus, Claire Fontijn, Catherine E. Gordon, Laura Jeppesen, Eva Kuhn, Anne MacNeil, Jason Stoessel, Elizabeth Randell Upton, and Laurence Wuidar. An invaluable book for college students and scholars interested in the social and cultural meanings of women in early music.

German and Song 1740 - 1900 (Hardcover): John Smeed German and Song 1740 - 1900 (Hardcover)
John Smeed
R3,514 Discovery Miles 35 140 Ships in 10 - 15 working days

Originally published in 1987, this volume charts the development of German song across a century and a half, relating it both to poetry and to the cultural scene in Germany. By emphasising genre rather than individual composers and while paying heed to acknowledged masterpieces - by quoting extensively from forgotten composers, the book avoids historical over simplification and arrives at a fuller picture of this rich tradition. In so doing, it uncovers much neglected material. The book investigates the relationship between German poets and composers and their native folk tradition. It further explores the interaction between convention and innovation and demonstrates how one poem can be interpreted quite differently by different composers. The book is accessible both to students of literature and music.

Sing Aloud Harmonious Spheres - Renaissance Conceptions of Cosmic Harmony (Paperback): Jacomien Prins, Maude Vanhaelen Sing Aloud Harmonious Spheres - Renaissance Conceptions of Cosmic Harmony (Paperback)
Jacomien Prins, Maude Vanhaelen
R1,468 Discovery Miles 14 680 Ships in 10 - 15 working days

This is the first volume to explore the reception of the Pythagorean doctrine of cosmic harmony within a variety of contexts, ranging chronologically from Plato to 18th-century England. This original collection of essays engages with contemporary debates concerning the relationship between music, philosophy, and science, and challenges the view that Renaissance discussions on cosmic harmony are either mere repetitions of ancient music theory or pre-figurations of the 'Scientific Revolution'. Utilizing this interdisciplinary approach, Renaissance Conceptions of Cosmic Harmony offers a new perspective on the reception of an important classical theme in various cultural, sequential and geographical contexts, underlying the continuities and changes between Antiquity, the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. This project will be of particular interest within these emerging disciplines as they continue to explore the ideological significance of the various ways in which we appropriate the past.

Expression and Truth - On the Music of Knowledge (Paperback): Lawrence Kramer Expression and Truth - On the Music of Knowledge (Paperback)
Lawrence Kramer
R806 Discovery Miles 8 060 Ships in 10 - 15 working days

Expression and truth are traditional opposites in Western thought: expression supposedly refers to states of mind, truth to states of affairs. "Expression and Truth" rejects this opposition and proposes fluid new models of expression, truth, and knowledge with broad application to the humanities. These models derive from five theses that connect expression to description, cognition, the presence and absence of speech, and the conjunction of address and reply. The theses are linked by a concentration on musical expression, regarded as the ideal case of expression in general, and by fresh readings of Ludwig WittgensteinOCOs scattered but important remarks about music. The result is a new conception of expression as a primary means of knowing, acting on, and forming the world.Recent years have seen the return of the claim that musicOCOs power resides in its ineffability. In "Expression and Truth," Lawrence Kramer presents his most elaborate response to this claim. Drawing on philosophers such as Wittgenstein and on close analyses of nineteenth-century compositions, Kramer demonstrates how music operates as a medium for articulating cultural meanings and that music matters too profoundly to be cordoned off from the kinds of critical readings typically brought to the other arts. A tour-de-force by one of musicologyOCOs most influential thinkers.OCoSusan McClary, "Desire and Pleasure in Seventeenth-Century Music."

Voices Found - Free Jazz and Singing (Paperback): Chris Tonelli Voices Found - Free Jazz and Singing (Paperback)
Chris Tonelli
R1,513 Discovery Miles 15 130 Ships in 10 - 15 working days

Voices Found: Free Jazz and Singing contributes to a wave of voice studies scholarship with the first book-length study of free jazz voice. It pieces together a history of free jazz voice that spans from sound poetry and scat in the 1950s to the more recent wave of free jazz choirs. The author traces the developments and offers a theory, derived from interviews with many of the most important singers in the history of free jazz voice, of how listeners have experienced and evaluated the often unconventional vocal sounds these vocalists employed. This theory explains that even audiences willing to enjoy harsh sounds from saxophones or guitars often resist when voices make sounds that audiences understand as not-human. Experimental poetry and scat were combined and transformed in free jazz spaces in the 1960s and 1970s by vocalists like Yoko Ono (in solo work and her work with Ornette Coleman and John Stevens), Jeanne Lee (in her solo work and her work with Archie Shepp and Gunter Hampel), Leon Thomas (in his solo work as well as his work with Pharoah Sanders and Carlos Santana), and Phil Minton and Maggie Nicols (who devoted much of their energy to creating unaccompanied free jazz vocal music). By studying free jazz voice we can learn important lessons about what we expect from the voice and what happens when those expectations are violated. This book doesn't only trace histories of free jazz voice, it makes an attempt to understand why this story hasn't been told before, with an impressive breadth of scope in terms of the artists covered, drawing on research from the US, Canada, Wales, Scotland, France, The Netherlands, and Japan.

William Lawes (1602-1645) - Essays on his Life, Times and Work (Hardcover): Andrew Ashbee William Lawes (1602-1645) - Essays on his Life, Times and Work (Hardcover)
Andrew Ashbee
R4,522 Discovery Miles 45 220 Ships in 10 - 15 working days

First published in 1998, this volume comprises papers given at a conference on Lawes and his music held at Oxford in September 1995 to commemorate the 350th anniversary of his death. They examine not only Lawes's music but the milieu in which he worked. Part One examines the musical life of the English Court in Lawes's day, noting his activities there and his involvement with companies of players. Manuscript studies and a detailed account of the fatal battle are also included. Part Two comprises seven essays exploring the wide range of his instrumental and vocal music. William Lawes is acknowledged as the most exciting and innovative composer working in England during the reign of Charles I. His tragic early death at the Siege of Chester in 1645 only served to heighten his reputation among his contemporaries, lending him also the cloak of martyrdom in the service of his king.

Music and Musicians in Renaissance Rome and Other Courts (Hardcover): Richard Sherr Music and Musicians in Renaissance Rome and Other Courts (Hardcover)
Richard Sherr
R3,666 Discovery Miles 36 660 Ships in 10 - 15 working days

First published in 1999, the essays that follow have been selected from the author's writings to explore musical institutions in 15th and 16th century Italy with a detailed focus on the papal choir, but with additional comments on Mantua (Mantova), Florence and France. Much of the material which formed the basis of those essays was largely drawn from archives. Richard Sherr explores diverse areas including the Medici coat of arms in a motet for Leo X, performance practice in the papal chapel during the 16th century, the publications of Guglielmo Gonzaga, Lorenzo de' Medici as a patron of music and homosexuality in late sixteenth-century Italy.

Gender, Subjectivity, and Cultural Work - The Classical Music Profession (Paperback): Christina Scharff Gender, Subjectivity, and Cultural Work - The Classical Music Profession (Paperback)
Christina Scharff
R1,493 Discovery Miles 14 930 Ships in 10 - 15 working days

What is it like to work as a classical musician today? How can we explain ongoing gender, racial, and class inequalities in the classical music profession? What happens when musicians become entrepreneurial and think of themselves as a product that needs to be sold and marketed? Gender, Subjectivity, and Cultural Work explores these and other questions by drawing on innovative, empirical research on the working lives of classical musicians in Germany and the UK. Indeed, Scharff examines a range of timely issues such as the gender, racial, and class inequalities that characterise the cultural and creative industries; the ways in which entrepreneurialism - as an ethos to work on and improve the self - is lived out; and the subjective experiences of precarious work in so-called 'creative cities'. Thus, this book not only adds to our understanding of the working lives of artists and creatives, but also makes broader contributions by exploring how precarity, neoliberalism, and inequalities shape subjective experiences. Contributing to a range of contemporary debates around cultural work, Gender, Subjectivity, and Cultural Work will be of interest to scholars and students in the fields of Sociology, Gender and Cultural Studies.

Bending the Rules of Music Theory - Lessons from Great Composers (Hardcover): Timothy Cutler Bending the Rules of Music Theory - Lessons from Great Composers (Hardcover)
Timothy Cutler
R4,488 Discovery Miles 44 880 Ships in 10 - 15 working days

For students learning the principles of music theory, it can often seem as though the tradition of tonal harmony is governed by immutable rules that define which chords, tones, and intervals can be used where. Yet even within the classical canon, there are innumerable examples of composers diverging from these foundational "rules." Drawing on examples from composers including J.S. Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, Mendelssohn, Chopin, Brahms, and more, Bending the Rules of Music Theory seeks to take readers beyond the basics of music theory and help them to understand the inherent flexibility in the system of tonal music. Chapters explore the use of different rule-breaking elements in practice and why they work, introducing students to a more nuanced understanding of music theory.

The Castrato - Reflections on Natures and Kinds (Hardcover): Martha Feldman The Castrato - Reflections on Natures and Kinds (Hardcover)
Martha Feldman
R1,551 Discovery Miles 15 510 Ships in 10 - 15 working days

The Castrato is a nuanced exploration of why innumerable boys were castrated for singing between the mid-sixteenth and late-nineteenth centuries. It shows that the entire foundation of Western classical singing, culminating in bel canto, was birthed from an unlikely and historically unique set of desires, public and private, aesthetic, economic, and political. In Italy, castration for singing was understood through the lens of Catholic blood sacrifice as expressed in idioms of offering and renunciation and, paradoxically, in satire, verbal abuse, and even the symbolism of the castrato's comic cousin Pulcinella. Sacrifice in turn was inseparable from the system of patriarchy involving teachers, patrons, colleagues, and relatives whereby castrated males were produced not as nonmen, as often thought nowadays, but as idealized males. Yet what captivated audiences and composers from Cavalli and Pergolesi to Handel, Mozart, and Rossini were the extraordinary capacities of castrato voices, a phenomenon ultimately unsettled by Enlightenment morality. Although the castrati failed to survive, their musicality and vocality have persisted long past their literal demise.

A Wayfaring Stranger - Ernst von Dohnanyi's American Years, 1949-1960 (Hardcover): Veronika Kusz A Wayfaring Stranger - Ernst von Dohnanyi's American Years, 1949-1960 (Hardcover)
Veronika Kusz; Translated by Brian McLean
R1,782 Discovery Miles 17 820 Ships in 10 - 15 working days

On March 10, 1948, world-renowned composer and pianist Ernst von Dohnanyi (1877 1960) embarked for the United States, leaving Europe for good. Only a few years earlier, the seventy-year-old Hungarian had been a triumphant, internationally admired musician and leading figure in Hungarian musical life. Fleeing a political smear campaign that sought to implicate him in intellectual collaboration with fascism, he reached American shores without a job or a home. A Wayfaring Stranger presents the final period in Dohnanyi's exceptional career and uses a range of previously unavailable material to reexamine commonly held beliefs about the musician and his unique oeuvre. Offering insights into his life as a teacher, pianist, and composer, the book also considers the difficulties of emigre life, the political charges made against him, and the compositional and aesthetic dilemmas faced by a conservative artist. To this rich biographical account, Veronika Kusz adds an in-depth examination of Dohnanyi's late works-in most cases the first analyses to appear in musicological literature. This corrective history provides never-before-seen photographs of the musician's life in the United States and skillfully illustrates Dohnanyi's impact on European and American music and the culture of the time.

Neoclassical Music in America - Voices of Clarity and Restraint (Hardcover): R. James Tobin Neoclassical Music in America - Voices of Clarity and Restraint (Hardcover)
R. James Tobin
R2,379 Discovery Miles 23 790 Ships in 10 - 15 working days

From the 1920s to the 1950s, neoclassicism was one of the dominant movements in American music. Today this music is largely in eclipse, mostly absent in performance and even from accounts of music history, in spite of-and initially because of-its adherence to an expanded tonality. No previous book has focused on the nature and scope of this musical tradition. Neoclassicism in American Music: Voices of Clarity and Restraint makes clear what neoclassicism was, how it emerged in America, and what happened to it. Music reviewer and scholar, R. James Tobin argues that efforts to define musical neoclassicism as a style largely fail because of the stylistic diversity of the music that fall within its scope. However, neoclassicists as different from one another as the influential Igor Stravinsky and Paul Hindemith did have a classical aesthetic in common, the basic characteristics of which extend to other neoclassicists This study focuses, in particular, on a group of interrelated neoclassical American composers who came to full maturity in the 1940s.These included Harvard professor Walter Piston, who had studied in France in the 1920s; Harold Shapero, the most traditional of the group; Irving Fine and Arthur Berger, his colleagues at Brandeis; Lukas Foss, later an experimentalist composer whose origins lay in neoclassicism of the 1940s; Alexei Haieff, and Ingolf Dahl, both close associates of Stravinsky; and others. Tobin surveys the careers of these figures, drawing especially on early reviews of performances before offering his own critical assessment of individual works. Adventurous collectors of recordings, performing musicians, concert and broadcasting programmers, as well as music and cultural historians and those interested in musical aesthetics, will find much of interest here. Dates of composition, approximate duration of individual works, and discographies add to the work's reference value.

Hal Leonard Classical Guitar Method - Book 2 - An Intermediate-Level Guide with Step-by-Step Instructions (Book): Paul Henry Hal Leonard Classical Guitar Method - Book 2 - An Intermediate-Level Guide with Step-by-Step Instructions (Book)
Paul Henry
R399 R370 Discovery Miles 3 700 Save R29 (7%) Ships in 18 - 22 working days
The Collected Writings of Franz Liszt - Dramaturgical Leaves: Richard Wagner (Hardcover): Janita R. Hall-Swadley The Collected Writings of Franz Liszt - Dramaturgical Leaves: Richard Wagner (Hardcover)
Janita R. Hall-Swadley
R3,680 Discovery Miles 36 800 Ships in 10 - 15 working days

The Collected Writings of Franz Liszt: Dramaturgical Leaves: Richard Wagner completes the second half of Liszt's writings about stage works, its composers, and music drama. In this volume, Liszt focuses on the works of his most controversial devotee and son-in-law, Richard Wagner, whose music dramas Liszt championed as conductor during his tenure in Weimar. Here, we see Liszt prove his skill and expertise as a music critic, as well. He offers a critical analysis of the aesthetic and musical principles that underlie Wagner's operas, Tannhauser, Lohengrin, and The Flying Dutchman, including a thorough discussion of Wagner's Leitmotif system of composition. Additionally, his findings are substantiated with a plethora of music examples, which will satisfy those who wanted greater musical substance from his writings. He also foretells the magnitude of Wagner's influence on prosperity in his pamphlet-length essay, The Rhine's Gold. Finally, the editor and translator of this volume, Janita Hall-Swadley, provides a unique perspective on these same principles, which is based on Wagner's own mysterious diagram of "The Philosopher's Stone," which was supposed to be included in the original 1863 edition of the composer's important writing, Opera and Drama, but never made it to publication.

Music at the Maison royale de Saint-Louis at Saint-Cyr (Hardcover): Deborah Kauffman Music at the Maison royale de Saint-Louis at Saint-Cyr (Hardcover)
Deborah Kauffman
R4,501 Discovery Miles 45 010 Ships in 10 - 15 working days

The history of music at the Maison royale de Saint-Louis at Saint-Cyr - the famous convent school founded by Madame de Maintenon and established by Louis XIV in 1686 as a royal foundation - is both rich and intriguing; its large repertory of music was composed expressly for young female voices by important composers working within significant contemporary musical genres: liturgical chant, sacred motets, theatrical music, and cantiques spirituels. While these genres reflect contemporary styles and trends, at the same time the works themselves were made to conform to the sensibilities and abilities of their intended performers. Even as Jean-Baptiste Moreau's music for Jean Racine's biblical tragedies Esther and Athalie shows a number of similarities to contemporary tragedies lyriques, it departs from that more public genre in its brevity, generally simpler solo writing, and the integral use of the chorus. The musical style of the choral numbers closely parallels that of other choral music in the repertory at Saint-Cyr. The liturgical chant sung in the church was composed by Guillaume-Gabriel Nivers, and is an example of plain-chant musical, a type of new ecclesiastical composition written during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, primarily for female religious communities in France. The large repertory of petits motets (short sacred Latin pieces for solo voice), mostly composed by Nivers and Louis-Nicolas Clerambault, are simpler and more restrained than works by their contemporaries. A close study of the motets reveals much about changes to musical style and performance practices at Saint-Cyr during the eighteenth century. The cantique spirituel, a song with a spiritual text in the vernacular French language, played a significant role in both the education and recreation of the girls at Saint-Cyr. Cantiques composed for the girls vary widely in terms of their style and difficulty, ranging from simple strophic melodies to more sophisticated works in the style of contemporary airs. In all cases, the stylistic features of the music for Saint-Cyr reflect a careful consideration of the needs and capabilities of the young singers of the school, as well as an awareness of the rigorous requirements of Madame de Maintenon, who kept a close watch over the propriety of all things relating to the piety, behavior, and image of her charges.

Dean Dixon - Negro at Home, Maestro Abroad (Hardcover): Rufus Jones Dean Dixon - Negro at Home, Maestro Abroad (Hardcover)
Rufus Jones
R2,855 Discovery Miles 28 550 Ships in 10 - 15 working days

In Dean Dixon: Negro at Home, Maestro Abroad, conductor and scholar Rufus Jones Jr. brings to light a literal treasure trove of unpublished primary sources to tell the compelling story of this great American conductor. A testament to Dixon's resolve, this first-ever full-length biography of this American musical hero chronicles Dixon's musical upbringing, beginnings as a conductor, painful decision to leave his own country, rise to fame in Europe and his triumphant stand twenty-one years later when he returned to the United States to serve as a model for aspiring Black classical musicians. Dean Dixon: Negro at Home, Maestro Abroad will interest anyone who wants to know more about Black American history, American musical culture, and Black American concert music and musicians. More information is available at: www.maestroabroad.com

Virtuoso Pianist in 60 Exercises - Book 2 - Piano Technique (Paperback): Virtuoso Pianist in 60 Exercises - Book 2 - Piano Technique (Paperback)
R185 Discovery Miles 1 850 Ships in 18 - 22 working days

A group of resourceful kids start "solution-seekers.com," a website where "cybervisitors" can get answers to questions that trouble them. But when one questioner asks the true meaning of Christmas, the kids seek to unravel the mystery by journeying back through the prophecies of the Old Testament. What they find is a series of "S" words that reveal a "spectacular story!" With creative characters, humorous dialogue and great music, The "S" Files is a children's Christmas musical your kids will love performing.

The Bible in Music - A Dictionary of Songs, Works, and More (Hardcover): Siobhan Dowling Long, John F. A. Sawyer The Bible in Music - A Dictionary of Songs, Works, and More (Hardcover)
Siobhan Dowling Long, John F. A. Sawyer
R3,678 Discovery Miles 36 780 Ships in 10 - 15 working days

There have been numerous publications in the last decades on the Bible in literature, film, and art. But until now, no reference work has yet appeared on the Bible as it appears in Western music. In The Bible in Music: A Dictionary of Songs, Works, and More, scholars Siobhan Dowling Long and John F. A. Sawyer correct this gap in Biblical reference literature, providing for the first time a convenient guide to musical interpretations of the Bible. Alongside examples of classical music from the Middle Ages through modern times, Dowling Long and Sawyer also bring attention to the Bible's impact on popular culture with numerous entries on hymns, spirituals, musicals, film music, and contemporary popular music. Each entry contains essential information about the original context of the work (date, composer, etc.) and, where relevant, its afterlife in literature, film, politics, and liturgy. It includes an index of biblical references and an index of biblical names, as well as a detailed timeline that brings to the fore key events, works, and publications, placing them in their historical context. There is also a bibliography, a glossary of technical terms, and an index of artists, authors, and composers. The Bible in Music will fascinate anyone familiar with the Bible, but it is also designed to encourage choirs, musicians, musicologists, lecturers, teachers, and students of music and religious education to discover and perform some less well-known pieces, as well as helping them to listen to familiar music with a fresh awareness of what it is about.

Come Day, Go Day, God Send Sunday - The songs and life story, told in his own words, of John Maguire, traditional singer and... Come Day, Go Day, God Send Sunday - The songs and life story, told in his own words, of John Maguire, traditional singer and farmer from Co. Fermanagh. (Paperback)
Robin Morton
R1,096 Discovery Miles 10 960 Ships in 10 - 15 working days

Originally published in 1973. Folk-life and folk-culture, usually the preserve of the scholar, have been brought vividly and entertainingly to life in these recollections and stories of one man's life in the Irish countryside. This book tells the life story of John Maguire, who died in 1975, including over 50 of the songs he sang, with full musical transcriptions. He was a fine singer, firmly within the Irish tradition, and his songs are the record of a people, their history and traditions, their joys and sufferings, their comedies and tragedies. John Maguire's fascinating story, skilfully and unobtrusively collated by Robin Morton, is full of material that will interest singers and students of folksongs. His songs and music will be of value to all those interested in traditional music and song.

Travellers' Songs from England and Scotland (Paperback): Ewan MacColl, Peggy Seeger Travellers' Songs from England and Scotland (Paperback)
Ewan MacColl, Peggy Seeger
R1,122 Discovery Miles 11 220 Ships in 10 - 15 working days

Originally published in 1977. The Travellers, from those living in bow-tents and horse-drawn caravans to those dwelling in motor caravans and permanent homes, are an important source of traditional music. Their society means that songs that have died out in more settled communities are preserved among them. Ewan MacColl and Peggy Seeger, widely known as two of the founding singers of the British and American folk revivals, here display a vast fund of folklore scholarship around the songs of British travelling people. Resulting from extensive collecting in southern and southeastern England and central and northeastern Scotland in the 1960s and 70s, this book contains 130 songs with music and comprehensive notes relating them to folkloristic and historical points of interest. It includes traditional ballads and ballads of broadside origin, bawdy, tragic and humorous songs about love, work and death. Most are in English or in Scots dialect with four in Anglo-Romani.

Gender, Subjectivity, and Cultural Work - The Classical Music Profession (Hardcover): Christina Scharff Gender, Subjectivity, and Cultural Work - The Classical Music Profession (Hardcover)
Christina Scharff
R4,476 Discovery Miles 44 760 Ships in 10 - 15 working days

What is it like to work as a classical musician today? How can we explain ongoing gender, racial, and class inequalities in the classical music profession? What happens when musicians become entrepreneurial and think of themselves as a product that needs to be sold and marketed? Gender, Subjectivity, and Cultural Work explores these and other questions by drawing on innovative, empirical research on the working lives of classical musicians in Germany and the UK. Indeed, Scharff examines a range of timely issues such as the gender, racial, and class inequalities that characterise the cultural and creative industries; the ways in which entrepreneurialism - as an ethos to work on and improve the self - is lived out; and the subjective experiences of precarious work in so-called 'creative cities'. Thus, this book not only adds to our understanding of the working lives of artists and creatives, but also makes broader contributions by exploring how precarity, neoliberalism, and inequalities shape subjective experiences. Contributing to a range of contemporary debates around cultural work, Gender, Subjectivity, and Cultural Work will be of interest to scholars and students in the fields of Sociology, Gender and Cultural Studies.

Sing Aloud Harmonious Spheres - Renaissance Conceptions of Cosmic Harmony (Hardcover): Jacomien Prins, Maude Vanhaelen Sing Aloud Harmonious Spheres - Renaissance Conceptions of Cosmic Harmony (Hardcover)
Jacomien Prins, Maude Vanhaelen
R4,496 Discovery Miles 44 960 Ships in 10 - 15 working days

This is the first volume to explore the reception of the Pythagorean doctrine of cosmic harmony within a variety of contexts, ranging chronologically from Plato to 18th-century England. This original collection of essays engages with contemporary debates concerning the relationship between music, philosophy, and science, and challenges the view that Renaissance discussions on cosmic harmony are either mere repetitions of ancient music theory or pre-figurations of the 'Scientific Revolution'. Utilizing this interdisciplinary approach, Renaissance Conceptions of Cosmic Harmony offers a new perspective on the reception of an important classical theme in various cultural, sequential and geographical contexts, underlying the continuities and changes between Antiquity, the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. This project will be of particular interest within these emerging disciplines as they continue to explore the ideological significance of the various ways in which we appropriate the past.

The Faure Song Cycles - Poetry and Music, 1861-1921 (Hardcover): Stephen Rumph The Faure Song Cycles - Poetry and Music, 1861-1921 (Hardcover)
Stephen Rumph
R1,785 Discovery Miles 17 850 Ships in 10 - 15 working days

Gabriel Faure's melodies offer an inexhaustible variety of style and expression that have made them the foundation of the French art song repertoire. During the second half of his long career, Faure composed all but a handful of his songs within six carefully integrated cycles. Faure moved systematically through his poetic contemporaries, exhausting Baudelaire's Les fleurs du mal before immersing himself in the Parnassian poets. He would set nine poems by Armand Silvestre in swift succession (1878-84), seventeen by Paul Verlaine (1887-94), and eighteen by Charles Van Lerberghe (1906-14). As an artist deeply engaged with some of the most important cultural issues of the period, Faure reimagined his musical idiom with each new poet and school, and his song cycles show the same sensitivity to the poetic material. Far more than Debussy, Ravel, or Poulenc, he crafted his song cycles as integrated works, reordering poems freely and using narratives, key schemes, and even leitmotifs to unify the individual songs. The Faure Song Cycles explores the peculiar vision behind each synthesis of music and verse, revealing the astonishing imagination and insight of Faure's musical readings. This book offers not only close readings of Faure's musical works but an interdisciplinary study of how he responded to the changing schools and aesthetic currents of French poetry.

Music, Theatre and Politics in Germany - 1848 to the Third Reich (Paperback): Nikolaus Bacht Music, Theatre and Politics in Germany - 1848 to the Third Reich (Paperback)
Nikolaus Bacht
R1,694 Discovery Miles 16 940 Ships in 10 - 15 working days

Music, theatre and politics have maintained a long-standing, if varying and problematic, relationship. In the Ancient World, the relationship used to be a harmonious one, scholars have us believe, glorifying the moment at the beginning of Western history when a political community, or polis, affirmed itself in a practice that purportedly achieved the perfect integration of music and theatre. To revive this original harmony was, of course, one of the main impulses that engendered the genre of opera. However, while it is widely recognized that the political represented a prius in the Ancient triangle of music, theatre and politics, there has been little attention to the status of the political in the triangle's modern variety. Nonetheless, the relationship between the three continues to be strong. In many contexts, the political still takes priority, encouraging or curbing artistic creativity. The contributions in this volume bridge the conventional chronological division between 'late Romantic' and 'modern' music to thematize a wide array of issues in the context of Germany. The contributors focus on a national tradition and period in which the friction between music, theatre and politics grew particularly intense. Major themes include: reception history; the entwining of aesthetic and political intentions on the part of composers, critics and historians; and the construction and/or critique of collective political identities in and through music theatre.

Eighteenth-Century Russian Music (Paperback): Marina Ritzarev Eighteenth-Century Russian Music (Paperback)
Marina Ritzarev
R1,797 Discovery Miles 17 970 Ships in 9 - 17 working days

Little is known outside of Russia about the nation's musical heritage prior to the nineteenth century. Western scholarship has tended to view the history of Russian music as not beginning until the end of the eighteenth century. Marina Ritzarev's work shows this interpretation to be misguided. Starting from an examination of the rich legacy of Russian music up to 1700, she explores the development of music over the course of the eighteenth century, a period of especially intense Westernization and secularization. The book focuses on what is characteristic and crucial to Russian music during this period, rather than seeking to provide a comprehensive survey. The musical culture of the time is discussed against the rich background of social, political and cultural life, tying together many of the phenomena that used to be viewed separately. The book highlights the importance of previously marginalized sectors - serf culture, choral sacred culture, the contribution of foreign musicians, the significant influence of Freemasonry, the role of Ukrainian and West-European cultures and so on - as well as casting new light on the well-researched topic of Russian opera. Much new archival material is introduced, and revised biographies of the two leading eighteenth-century Russian composers, Maxim Berezovsky and Dmitry Bortniansky, are provided, as well as those of the serf composer Stepan Degtyarev and the Italian Giuseppe Sarti. The book places eighteenth-century Russian music on the European map, and will be of particular importance for the study of European musical cultures remote from such centres as Italy, Germany-Austria and France. Eighteenth-century Russian music is organically linked with its past and future and its contributory role in forming the Russian national identity and developing the Russian idiom is clarified.

Free Delivery
Pinterest Twitter Facebook Google+
You may like...
Tonality and Transformation
Steven Rings Hardcover R1,497 Discovery Miles 14 970
The Present State of Music in France and…
Charles Burney Paperback R606 Discovery Miles 6 060
The Baroque Violin & Viola, vol. II - A…
Walter S Reiter Hardcover R3,103 Discovery Miles 31 030
Schubert's Instrumental Music and…
René Rusch Hardcover R2,048 Discovery Miles 20 480
Tristan Und Isolde - (tristan And…
Richard Wagner Hardcover R732 Discovery Miles 7 320
Jon W. Bauman - Nocturnes for Piano…
Jon Bauman Hardcover R615 Discovery Miles 6 150
The Dream of Gerontius
Edward Elgar, John Henry Newman Hardcover R803 Discovery Miles 8 030
Puccini's La Boheme
Alexandra Wilson Hardcover R2,317 Discovery Miles 23 170
Music in Evolution and Evolution in…
Steven Jan Hardcover R1,981 Discovery Miles 19 810
In Search of Real Music - The Story of…
Clive Bate Paperback R389 Discovery Miles 3 890

 

Partners