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.

Early Keyboard Instruments discusses a variety of issues involved in the performance of keyboard music from the seventeenth to the nineteenth centuries. It brings together a range of topics that have come to the fore in recent decades and forms a useful introduction to historical performance issues for the student performer or amateur, whether playing on period instruments or on the modern piano.

Early Keyboard Instruments discusses a variety of issues involved in the performance of keyboard music from the seventeenth to the nineteenth centuries. It brings together a range of topics that have come to the fore in recent decades and forms a useful introduction to historical performance issues for the student performer or amateur, whether playing on period instruments or on the modern piano.

This volume offers an up-to-date overview of historical performance, surveying the various current issues (such as the influence of recording) and suggesting possible future developments. Its core comprises discussion of the period performer's myriad primary source materials and their interpretation, the various aspects of style and general technique that combine to make up a well-grounded, period interpretation, and a survey of performance conditions and practices, focusing on the period c. 1700-c. 1900. Many of the principles outlined are illustrated in case studies of works by Bach, Mozart, Berlioz and Brahms.

This study is an analysis of the first three of Beethoven's late quartets, Opp. 127, 132, and 130, commissioned by Prince Nikolai Galitzin. The five late quartets, usually considered as a group, were written in the same period as the "Missa solemnis" and the Ninth Symphony, and are among the composer's most profound musical statements. Daniel K. L. Chua believes that of the five quartets the three that he studies trace a process of disintegration, whereas the last two, Opp. 131 and 135, reintegrate the language that Beethoven himself had destabilized.

Through analyses that unearth peculiar features characteristic of the surface and of the deeper structures of the music, Chua interprets the "Galitzin" quartets as radical critiques of both music and society, a view first proposed by Theodore Adorno. From this perspective, the quartets necessarily undo the act of analysis as well, forcing the analytical traditions associated with Schenker and Schoenberg to break up into an eclectic mixture of techniques. Analysis itself thus becomes problematic and has to move in a dialectical and paradoxical fashion in order to trace Beethoven's logic of disintegration. The result is a new way of reading these works that not only reflects the preoccupations of the German Romantics of that time and the poststructuralists of today, but also opens a discussion of cultural, political, and philosophical issues.

Originally published in 1995.

The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These paperback editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

For the beginner or the devotee—it's everything the classical music buff needs to know.

• The major composers from Bach and Bartok to Rachmaninoff and Tchaikovsky
• Significant performers from Maurice Andre and Leornard Bernstein to Georg Solti and Yo Yo Ma
• The landmark works from Appalachian Spring to Don Juan
• A concise history of classical music
• A deconstruction of the art form
• The language of classical music
• Valuable resources for the Curious Listener

What should we consider when thinking about the relationship between an onstage performance and the story the performance tells? A Poetics of Handel's Operas explores this question by analyzing the narratives of Handel's operas in relation to the rich representational fabric of performance used to convey them. Nathan Link notes that in most storytelling genres, the audience can naturally discern between a story and the way that story is represented: with film, for example, the viewer would recognize that a character hears neither her own voiceover nor the ambient music that accompanies it, whereas in discussions of opera, some audiences may be distracted by the seemingly artificial nature of such conventions as characters singing their dialogue. Link proposes that when engaging with opera, distinguishing between the performance we see and hear on the stage and the story represented offers a meaningful approach to engaging with and interpreting the work. Handel's operas are today the most-performed works in the Baroque opera seria tradition. This genre, with its intricate dramaturgy and esoteric conventions, stands to gain much from an investigation into the relationships between the onstage performance and the story to which that performance directs us. In his analysis, Link offers theoretical studies on opera and narratological theories of literature, drama, and film, providing rich engagement with Handel's work and what it conveys about the relationship between text, story, and performance.

Beethoven's String Quartet in C-sharp minor Op. 131 (1826) is not only firmly a part of the scholarly canon, the performing canon, and the pedagogical canon, but also makes its presence felt in popular culture. Yet in recent times, the terms in which the C-sharp minor quartet is discussed and presented tend to undermine the multivalent nature of the work. Although it is held up as a masterpiece, Op. 131 has often been understood in monochrome terms as a work portraying tragedy, struggle, and loss. In Beethoven's String Quartet in C-sharp Minor, Op. 13, author Nancy November takes the modern-day listener well beyond these categories of adversity or deficit. The book goes back to early reception documents, including Beethoven's own writings about the work, to help the listener reinterpret and re-hear it. This book reveals the diverse musical ideas present in Op. 131 and places the work in the context of an emerging ideology of silent or 'serious' listening in Beethoven's Europe. It considers how this particular 'late' quartet could speak with special eloquence to a highly select but passionately enthusiastic audience and examines how and why the reception of Op. 131 has changed so profoundly from Beethoven's time to our own.

(Vocal Score). Italian only, with an introductory plot synopsis in English.