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Books > Arts & Architecture > Music > Western music, periods & styles > General
"Interpreting Music" is a comprehensive essay on understanding
musical meaning and performing music meaningfully - 'interpreting
music' in both senses of the term. Synthesizing and advancing two
decades of highly influential work, Lawrence Kramer fundamentally
rethinks the concepts of work, score, performance, performativity,
interpretation, and meaning - even the very concept of music -
while breaking down conventional wisdom and received ideas. Kramer
argues that music, far from being closed to interpretation, is
ideally open to it, and that musical interpretation is the paradigm
of interpretation in general. The book illustrates the many
dimensions of interpreting music through a series of case studies
drawn from the classical repertoire, but its methods and principles
carry over to other repertoires just as they carry beyond music by
working through music to wider philosophical and cultural
questions.
This volume illuminates musical connections between Britain and the
continent of Europe, and Britain and its Empire. The
seldom-recognized vitality of musical theatre and other kinds of
spectacle in Britain itself, and also the flourishing concert life
of the period, indicates a means of defining tradition and identity
within nineteenth-century British musical culture. The objective of
the volume has been to add significantly to the growing literature
on these topics. It benefits not only from new archival research,
but also from fresh musicological approaches and interdisciplinary
methods that recognize the integral role of music within a wider
culture, including religious, political and social life. The essays
are by scholars from the USA, Britain, and Europe, covering a wide
range of experience. Topics range from the reception of Bach,
Mozart, and Liszt in England, a musical response to Shakespeare,
Italian opera in Dublin, exoticism, gender, black musical
identities, British musicians in Canada, and uses of music in
various theatrical genres and state ceremony, and in articulating
the politics of the Union and Empire.
Women, Music, Culture: An Introduction, Third Edition is the first
undergraduate textbook on the history and contributions of women in
a variety of musical genres and professions, ideal for students in
Music and Gender Studies courses. A compelling narrative,
accompanied by 112 guided listening experiences, brings the world
of women in music to life. The author employs a wide array of
pedagogical aides, including a running glossary and a comprehensive
companion website with links to Spotify playlists and supplementary
videos for each chapter. The musical work of women throughout
history-including that of composers, performers, conductors,
technicians, and music industry personnel-is presented using both
art music and popular music examples. New to this edition: An
expansion from 57 to 112 listening examples conveniently available
on Spotify. Additional focus on intersectionality in art and
popular music. A new segment on Music and #MeToo and increased
coverage of protest music. Additional coverage of global music.
Substantial updates in popular music. Updated companion website
materials designed to engage all learners. Visit the author's
website at www.womenmusicculture.com
Joy H. Calico examines the cultural history of postwar Europe
through the lens of the performance and reception of Arnold
Schoenberg's A Survivor from Warsaw--a short but powerful work, she
argues, capable of irritating every exposed nerve in postwar
Europe. A twelve-tone piece in three languages about the Holocaust,
it was written for an American audience by a Jewish composer whose
oeuvre had been one of the Nazis' prime exemplars of entartete
(degenerate) music. Both admired and reviled as a pioneer of
dodecaphony, Schoenberg had immigrated to the United States and
become an American citizen. This book investigates the meanings
attached to the work as it circulated through Europe during the
early Cold War in a kind of symbolic musical remigration, focusing
on six case studies: West Germany, Austria, Norway, East Germany,
Poland, and Czechoslovakia. Each case is unique, informed by
individual geopolitical concerns, but this analysis also reveals
common themes in anxieties about musical modernism, Holocaust
memory and culpability, the coexistence of Jews and former Nazis,
anti-Semitism, dislocation, and the presence of occupying forces on
both sides of the Cold War divide.
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.
Composed for an Easter Sunday performance in 1715 during Bach's
tenure as court composer at Weimar, this cantata has long been a
favorite among the more than 250 he wrote. Unabridged
electronically enhanced reprint of the vocal score first issued by
C. F. Peters in ca. 1880.
1. Sonata
2. Coro: Die Himmel lacht, die Erde jubilieret
3. Recitativo: Erwunschter Tag Sei, Seele, wieder froh
4. Aria: Furst des Lebens, starker Streiter
5. Recitativo: So stehe denn, du Gott ergebne Seele
6. Aria: Adam muss in uns verwesen
7. Recitativo: Weil denn das Haupt sein Glied, nat rlich nach sich
zieht
8. Aria: Letzte Stunde, brich herein
9. Chorale: So fahr ich hin zu Jesu Christ
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.
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.
In May 1968, France teetered on the brink of revolution as a series
of student protests spiraled into the largest general strike the
country has ever known. In the forty years since, May '68 has come
to occupy a singular place in the modern political imagination, not
just in France but across the world. Eric Drott examines the
social, political, and cultural effects of May '68 on a wide
variety of music in France, from the initial shock of 1968 through
the "long" 1970s and the election of Mitterrand and the socialists
in 1981. Drott's detailed account of how diverse music communities
developed in response to 1968 and his pathbreaking reflections on
the nature and significance of musical genre come together to
provide insights into the relationships that link music, identity,
and politics.
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.
Both a defence of research aiming to recover how music sounded in
the past and an argument for the application of such historical
research to performance. The legitimacy of applying historical
research to musical performance has been much argued about in
recent years. Those advocating historical authenticity have been
attacked on philosophical, aesthetic, and even practical
grounds.This book both defends the practical value of trying to
determine how music sounded in the past and develops an
intellectual and musical justification for relating historical
research to performance. From the outset Peter Walls stresses the
need for research driven by curiosity rather than by the desire to
justify a particular approach. Arguing that a performance
determined entirely by historical rules is an impossibility, he
asserts that the imaginationis inevitably involved. His book
envisages a relationship between historical knowledge and
imagination that is dynamic and stimulating. Case studies range
from printing formats and performance in seventeenth-century violin
music,to tracking composer intention through the rehearsal and
production phases of nineteenth and twentieth century operas. PETER
WALLS is professor of music at Victoria University of Wellington,
and chief executive of the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra.
James Hogg's "Jacobite Relics"--originally commissioned by the
Highland Society of London in 1817--is an important addition to
"The Collected Works of James Hogg." It created a canon for the
Jacobite song which had an enormous influence on subsequent
collections, and was of great importance in defining the
relationship between the Scottish song tradition and its Romantic
editors and collectors. From the first publication of the Relics in
1819, there has been speculation about how many of them were
authored or at least substantially altered by Hogg. Murray Pittock
has conducted extensive research in this area since 1987, and has
identified several previously unknown sources from which Hogg would
have worked as he developed his collection. The introduction to
volume one includes the crucial issue of Hogg's relationship to the
Jacobite song tradition, and the place of the Relics within Hogg's
career and personal context, facilitating further interpretations
of Hogg's range of creative strategies. Both volumes one and two
provide considerable annotation to accurately communicate the
context of the songs and Hogg's relationship to the textuality of
Jacobite culture. Volume one also includes a bibliography and
glossary. The introduction to volume two deals with the genesis of
the text and Hogg's relationship with the Highland Society.
The Piano Player: British Classics presents 20 iconic pieces of
British classical music, specially arranged for intermediate piano
solo. The collection includes the theme from Enigma Variations by
Edward Elgar and Vaughan Williams' Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas
Tallis alongside music by Rachel Portman, Benjamin Britten, Howard
Goodall and more, as well as traditional classics from across the
British Isles. All the books in The Piano Player series feature a
collectible pull-out print of the stunning cover artwork by the
20th century British painter Edward Bawden, alongside some of the
greatest classical music ever written, specially arranged for the
intermediate pianist.
Classical Concert Studies: A Companion to Contemporary Research and
Performance is a landmark publication that maps out a new
interdisciplinary field of Concert Studies, offering fresh ways of
understanding the classical music concert in the twenty-first
century. It brings together essays, research articles, and case
studies from scholars and music professionals including musicians,
music managers, and concert designers. Gathering both historical
and contemporary cases, the contributors draw on approaches from
sociology, ethnology, musicology, cultural studies, and other
disciplines to create a rich portrait of the classical concert's
past, present, and future. Based on two earlier volumes published
in German under the title Das Konzert (The Concert), and with a
selection of new chapters written for the English edition, this
companion enables students, researchers, and practitioners in the
classical and contemporary music fields to understand this emerging
field of research, go beyond traditional disciplinary boundaries
and methodologies, and spark a renaissance for the classical
concert.
'In this highly readable biography of Nellie Melba...Robert
Wainwright tells the story of the girl with the incredible voice
who, by sheer force of her personality and power of her decibels,
took the operatic world by storm and managed to escape from her
violent husband' Ysenda Maxtone Graham, DAILY MAIL Nellie Melba is
remembered as a squarish, late middle-aged woman dressed in furs
and large hats, an imperious Dame whose voice ruled the world for
three decades and inspired a peach and raspberry dessert. But to
succeed, she had to battle social expectations and misogyny that
would have preferred she stay a housewife in outback Queensland
rather than parade herself on stage. She endured the violence of a
bad marriage, was denied by scandal a true love with the would-be
King of France, and suffered for more than a decade the loss of her
only son - stolen by his angry, vengeful father. Despite these
obstacles, she built and maintained a career as an opera singer and
businesswoman on three continents which made her one of the first
international superstars. Award-winning biographer Robert
Wainwright presents a very different portrait of this great diva,
one that celebrates both her musical contributions and her rich and
colourful personal life.
James Hogg's Jacobite Relics - originally commissioned by the
Highland Society of London in 1817 - is an important addition to
The Collected Works of James Hogg. It created a canon for the
Jacobite song which had an enormous influence on subsequent
collections, and was of great importance in defining the
relationship between the Scottish song tradition and its Romantic
editors and collectors. From the first publication of the Relics in
1819 the majority of scholars have argued about how many of them
were authored or at least substantially altered by Hogg. Professor
Murray Pittock has conducted extensive research in this area since
1987, and has identified many previously neglected or unknown
sources from which Hogg would have worked as he developed his
collection. He has identified contemporary 17th- and 18th-century
sources for the majority of the songs in the edition. This has
implications not only for Hogg's integrity as a writer, but for our
understanding of the history of the Scottish song as a whole. The
introduction to volume one includes the crucial issue of Hogg's
relationship to the Jacobite song tradition, and the place of the
Relics within Hogg's career and personal context, facilitating
further interpretations of Hogg's range of creative strategies.
Considerable annotation accurately communicates the context of the
songs and Hogg's relationship to the textuality of Jacobite
culture. The introduction to volume two deals with the genesis of
the text and Hogg's relationship with the Highland Society. This
volume will be available from November 2002.
'A magnificent treasury . . . a fascinating tour de force.'
Observer 'Year of Wonder is an absolute treat - the most
enlightening way to be guided through the year.' Eddie Redmayne
Classical music for everyone - an inspirational piece of music for
every day of the year, celebrating composers from the medieval era
to the present day, written by award-winning violinist and BBC
Radio 3 presenter Clemency Burton-Hill. Have you ever heard a piece
of music so beautiful it stops you in your tracks? Or wanted to
discover more about classical music but had no idea where to begin?
Year of Wonder is a unique celebration of classical music by an
author who wants to share its diverse wonders with others and to
encourage a love for this genre in all readers, whether complete
novices or lifetime enthusiasts. Clemency chooses one piece of
music for each day of the year, with a short explanation about the
composer to put it into context, and brings the music alive in a
modern and playful way, while also extolling the positive
mindfulness element of giving yourself some time every day to
listen to something uplifting or beautiful. Thoughtfully curated
and expertly researched, this is a book of classical music to keep
you company: whoever you are, wherever you're from. 'The only
requirements for enjoying classical music are open ears and an open
mind.' Clemency Burton-Hill Playlists are available on most
streaming music platforms including Apple Music and Spotify.
The Bolsheviks' 1917 political coup caused a seismic disruption in
Russian culture. Carried by the first wave of emigrants, Russian
culture migrated West, transforming itself as it interacted with
the new cultural environment and clashed with exported Soviet
trends. In this book, Klara Moricz explores the transnational
emigrant space of Russian composers Igor Stravinsky, Vladimir
Dukelsky, Sergey Prokofiev, Nicolas Nabokov, and Arthur Lourie in
interwar Paris. Their music reflected the conflict between a
modernist narrative demanding innovation and a narrative of exile
wedded to the preservation of prerevolutionary Russian culture. The
emigrants' and the Bolsheviks' contrasting visions of Russia and
its past collided frequently in the French capital, where the
Soviets displayed their political and artistic products. Russian
composers in Paris also had to reckon with Stravinsky's
disproportionate influence: if they succumbed to fashions dictated
by their famous compatriot, they risked becoming epigones; if they
kept to their old ways, they quickly became irrelevant. Although
Stravinsky's neoclassicism provided a seemingly neutral middle
ground between innovation and nostalgia, it was also marked by the
exilic experience. Moricz offers this unexplored context for
Stravinsky's neoclassicism, shedding new light on this infinitely
elusive term.
The importance of nineteenth-century writing about culture has long
been accepted by scholars, yet so far as music criticism is
concerned, Victorian England has been an area of scholarly neglect.
This state of affairs is all the more surprising given that the
quantity of such criticism in the Victorian and Edwardian press was
vast, much of it displaying a richness and diversity of critical
perspectives. Through the study of music criticism from several key
newspapers and journals (specifically The Times, Daily Telegraph,
Athenaeum and The Musical Times), this book examines the reception
history of new English music in the period surveyed and assesses
its cultural, social and political, importance. Music critics
projected and promoted English composers to create a national music
of which England could be proud. J A Fuller Maitland, critic on The
Times, described music journalists as 'watchmen on the walls of
music', and Meirion Hughes extends this metaphor to explore their
crucial role in building and safeguarding what came to be known as
the English Musical Renaissance. Part One of the book looks at the
critics in the context of the publications for which they worked,
while Part Two focuses on the relationship between the
watchmen-critics and three composers: Arthur Sullivan, Hubert Parry
and Edward Elgar. Hughes argues that the English Musical
Renaissance was ultimately a success thanks largely to the work of
the critics. In so doing, he provides a major re-evaluation of the
impact of journalism on British music history.
In many ways the history of British light music knits together the
social and economic history of the country with that of its general
musical heritage. Numerous 'serious' composers from Elgar to
Britten composed light music, and the genre adapted itself to
incorporate the changing fashions heralded by the rise and fall of
music hall, the drawing room ballad, ragtime, jazz and the revue.
From the 1950s the recording and broadcasting industries provided a
new home for light music as an accompaniment to radio programmes
and films. Geoffrey Self deftly handles a wealth of information to
illustrate the immense role that light music has played in British
culture over the last 130 years. His insightful assessments of the
best and the most shameful examples of the genre help to pinpoint
its enduring qualities; qualities which enable it to maintain a
presence in the face of today's domination by commercial popular
music.
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