English music studies often apply rigid classifications to musical materials, their uses, their consumers, and performers. The contributors to this volume argue that some performers and manuscripts from the early modern era defy conventional categorization as "amateur" or "professional," "native" or "foreign." These leading scholars explore the circulation of music and performers in early modern England, reconsidering previously held ideas about the boundaries between locations of musical performance and practice.

Nostalgia for the Future is the first collection in English of the writings and interviews of Luigi Nono (1924-1990). One of the most prominent figures in the development of new music after World War II, he is renowned for both his compositions and his utopian views. His many essays and lectures reveal an artist at the center of the analytical, theoretical, critical, and political debates of the time. This selection of Nono's most significant essays, articles, and interviews covers his entire career (1948-1989), faithfully mirroring the interests, orientations, continuities, and fractures of a complex and unique personality. His writings illuminate his intensive involvements with theatre, painting, literature, politics, science, and even mysticism. Nono's words make vividly evident his restless quest for the transformative possibilities of a radical musical experience, one that is at the same time profoundly engaged with its performers and spaces, its audiences, and its human and social motivations and ramifications.

A rare case among history's great music contemporaries, Gustav Mahler (1860-1911) and Richard Strauss (1864-1949) enjoyed a close friendship until Mahler's death in 1911. Unlike similar musical pairs (Bach and Handel, Haydn and Mozart, Schoenberg and Stravinsky), these two composers may have disagreed on the matters of musical taste and social comportment, but deeply respected one another's artistic talents, freely exchanging advice from the earliest days of professional apprenticeship through the security and aggravations of artistic fame. Using a wealth of documentary material, this book reconstructs the 24-year relationship between Mahler and Strauss through collage-"a meaning that arises from fragments," to borrow Adorno's characterization of Mahler's Sixth Symphony. Fourteen different topics, all of central importance to the life and work of the two composers, provide distinct vantage points from which to view both the professional and personal relationships. Some address musical concerns: Wagnerism, program music, intertextuality, and the craft of conducting. Others treat the connection of music to related disciplines (philosophy, literature), or to matters relevant to artists in general (autobiography, irony). And the most intimate dimensions of life-childhood, marriage, personal character-are the most extensively and colorfully documented, offering an abundance of comparative material. This integrated look at Mahler and Strauss discloses provocative revelations about the two greatest western composers at the turn of the 20th century.

This text contains Arnold Schoenberg's thoughts on classical and romantic harmony. It presents a resume of the principles of the "Theory of Harmony", then demonstrates the concept of "monotonality". The music examples range from the entire development sections of classical symphonies. Ninety integrated music examples range fromthe entire development sections of classical symphonies to analyses of the harmonic progressions of Strauss, Debussy, Reger and his own early music.

This is a study of the way in which popular words and music relate to American life. The question of what popular song was, and why it came into existence, as well as how each song fit within the context of the larger 20th Century society are considered and explained clearly and fruitfully. Songs of the Jazz Age and Swing Era are considered primarily in terms of song-types and their relation to the times. Post World War II songs are shown to have splintered into a multitude of different styles and variations within each style. Many 20th Century songs came to be closely identified with particular singers and performance groups, shifting the attention to the styles identified with particular performers and the audiences they reached. Tawa avoids overly-technical vocabulary, making this examination of hundreds of popular songs accessible to a wide variety of readers seeking to better their understanding of the often perplexing musical landscape of the time.

A companion to his The Symphony: A Listener's Guide , Steinberg's new book covers the orchestral concerto repertoire from Bach to the present and featuring all instruments.

This series of 5 book/CD packs is an introduction to art song in English, French, German, Italian and Spanish. Each volume has a different song list, and includes 30 selections in appropriate keys. Beyond art song, each collection includes two carefully chosen opera arias, an oratorio aria, and an operetta aria by Gilbert & Sullivan.

(Boosey & Hawkes Chamber Music). Previously unpublished, Bernstein's Variations on an Octatonic Scale was originally composed for recorder and cello in 1988-89 in Key West. Available in the original version, or in a transcription for clarinet in B-flat and cello.

In The Symphony, renowned critic Michael Steinberg offers music lovers a monumental guide to this most celebrated of musical forms, with perceptive commentaries on some 118 works by 36 major composers.

WE SANG BETTER consists of two volumes of very clear advice about singing from great singers of the past. Volume 2 (ISBN 978-84-940477-9-4) is entitled Why it was better and contains further evidence and reasoning from singers 1800 to 1960. This volume is 260 pages long, and contains 20 illustrations. One very important thing right from the start, said Puccini s star soprano Maria Jeritza, - not to scream and not to force. As Volume 1 made clear, the best singers of this period approached their art and their training gently. They built slowly upon the individual voice granted by nature. Volume 2 gives further proof that many of these singers knew exactly what they were doing and why. They were highly aware that singing can go wrong. But they said if you wanted superlative singing you had to keep approaching it their way. You would never master supreme singing: if you put your trust in scientific discoveries or fixes; if you rushed your training or forced; or if you tried to copy some academic style . The original Italian model for singers was uncomplicated: the aim was to be natural, spontaneous and simple. And, as Puccini added, We Italians love beauty of sound. This volume takes evidence from the singers on dozens of topics such as: pressure, exercises, forward, dans le masque, covering, from the chest, voix sombr e, portamento, attack, vowel modifications, support, golden ages, keeping up with instrumentalists, listening to others, performances of early music, etc - and also on the question of whether singing is a science, an art, or even something more - something spiritual. James Anderson is a musician who has worked for the Arts Council of Great Britain and has run major European Festivals. Regretting the scarcity of supreme singing today, he has spent the last 30 years researching and collating this advice. He now helps young singers through the Singers Legacy website. For your information, the first volume (ISBN 978-84-940477-8-7) is entitled How we sang and contains 250 tips on how to sing from singers 1800 to 1960; the first volume is 490 pages long, and contains 130 illustrations.

The Best Of Singing Grades 1-3 (High Voice) celebrates the wealth of exciting repertoire featured on the current ABRSM and Trinity College London singing syllabuses. As well as carefully selected range of classical, contemporary and folk songs, these books bring together some of the greatest jazz standards and Broadway hits ever written, all edited to the highest standard and with online audio .

This series was designed to supplement traditional vocal instruction and works perfectly as preparatory literature for The First Book of Solos and The First Book of Solos Part II. Each piece is in English and has a limited vocal range as well as a piano accompaniment that is playable by a student pianist. The pieces include art songs, folksongs, humorous songs, and suitable vintage popular songs and are all appropriate for contest solos. The accompanying CD includes professionally-recorded accompaniments. Soprano Contents: Alice Blue Gown * April Showers * Butterflies (Schulz) * Cradle Song (Brahms) * Evening Prayer from Hansel and Gretel (Humperdinck) * The False Prophet (Scott) * Florian's Song (Godard) * Golden Slumbers (English folksong) * It Was a Lover and His Lass (Austin) * Ladybird (Schumann) * The Lilac Tree (Gartlin) * The Little Sandman (arr. Brahms) * My Little Heart (Weckerlin) * The Nightingale (Alabieff) * Oh! Dear, What Can the Matter Be? (16th Century) * Oh, Pretty Birds (Rigel) * The Rosebush (Himmel) * The Sweetest Flower that Blows (Hawley) * Two Marionettes (Cooke) * The Willow Song (16th Century) * The Willow Tree (arr. Reimann) * The Winter It Is Past (arr. Hopekirk).

Music lovers of all ages are drawn to the pure melodies of classical music. Now aficionados of this timeless genre can learn something about classical music every day of the year Readers will find everything from brief biographies of their favorite composers to summaries of the most revered operas. Interesting facts about the world's most celebrated songs and discussions of classical music-meets-pop culture make this book as fun as it is informative. Ten categories of discussion rotate throughout the year: Classical Music Periods, Compositional Forms, Great Composers, Celebrated Works, Basic Instruments, Famous Operas, Music Theory, Venues of the World, Museums & Festivals, and Pop Culture Medley.

The decades from 1900 to 1920 saw important changes in the very language of music. Traditional tonal organization gave way to new forms of musical expression and many of the foundations of modern music were laid. Samson first explores tonal expansion in the music of such nineteenth-century composers as Liszt and Wagner and its reinterpretation in the music of Debussy, Busoni, Bartok, and Stravinsky. He then traces the atonal revolution, revealing the various paths taken by Schoenberg and his followers and describing their very different stylistic development.

(Schott). Again, playing by ear, inventing accompaniments, experimenting with timbres and chords, and composing little pieces should constantly supplement lessons. In the appendix of Volume 2, the author offers some ideas, though he has consciously left much to the individual approach of the teacher.

Today, poetry and art music occupy similar cultural positions: each has a tendency to be regarded as problematic, `difficult' and therefore `elitist'. Despite this, the audiences and numbers of participants for each are substantial: yet they tend not to overlap. This is odd, because the forms share early history in song and saga, and have some striking similarities, often summed up in the word 'lyric'. These similarities include much that is most significant to the experience of each, and so of most interest to practitioners and audiences. They encompass, at the very least: the way each art-form is aural, and takes place in time; a shared reliance on temporal, rather than spatial, forms; an engagement with sensory experience and pleasure; availability for both shared public performance and private reading, sight-reading and hearing in memory; and scope for non-denotative meaning. In other words, looking at these elements in music is a way to look at them in poetry, and vice versa. This is a study of these two formal craft traditions that is concerned with the similarities in their roles, structures, projects and capacities.

The greatest of the heroic epics to emerge from medieval Germany, the Nibelungenlied is a revenge saga of sweeping dimensions. It tells of the dragon-slayer Sivrit, the mysterious kingdom of the Nibelungs, a priceless treasure guarded by dwarves and giants, an Amazonian queen, fortune-telling water-sprites, and a cloak of invisibility. Driven by the conflict between Kriemhilt, the innocent maiden turned she-devil, and her antagonist, the stoic, indomitable Hagen, the story is one of love, jealousy, murder, and revenge, ending in slaughter on a horrific scale. Since its rediscovery in the eighteenth century, the Nibelungenlied has come to be regarded as the national epic of the Germans, and has inspired countless adaptations, including Richard Wagner's Ring cycle. Cyril Edwards' prose translation, the first in forty years, is more accurate and accessible and captures the poem's epic qualities. Edwards also provides an introduction that discusses the poem's historical background and its status as German national epic. The volume includes an up-to-date bibliography, invaluable notes, a map, and a list of people and places.
About the Series: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the broadest spectrum of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, voluminous notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.

50 Great Classics is a collection of pieces selected from works by some of the finest composers. The difficulty of the pieces varies considerably. This is quite deliberate - it is hoped that everyone will find something they have already mastered and many more pieces they would like to learn. The collection also includes a few works of particular difficulty!