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.

Over the years, many examination pieces have captured the imagination of teachers and students, but the stars of past syllabuses are often forgotten. The Best of Grade 4 Violin brings together best-loved pieces from current and past syllabuses, including Hindu Song (Rimsky-Korsakov), Sometime Maybe (Wedgwood) and Fly me to the Moon (Howard). Containing fresh editions of folk and classical masterpieces alongside contemporary favourites, all pieces have been rigorously researched by violin expert Jessica O'Leary. Online audio of performance and accompaniment tracks are available, as are useful practice tips. This book includes pieces from current and past Trinity and ABRSM syllabuses. Jessica O'Leary has a successful career as a teacher, professional violinist, ABRSM examiner and seminar presenter. She has toured and recorded extensively as a member of the Academy of St Martin in the Fields, and has performed with Madonna, Led Zeppelin, the London Symphony Orchestra and the Royal Opera House. She teaches violin and viola and directs string ensembles at St Paul's Girls' School, Eltham College and Junior Guildhall London.

Follows the fascinating story of musical timekeeping, beginning in an age before the existence of external measuring devices and continuing to the present-day use of the Smartphone app. The book opens with an exploration of musical time keeping as expressed in the artwork and musical writing of the Renaissance, sources that inform our early understanding of an age when music making was bound up with motions of the body and the pulsing of the human heart. With the adoption of the simple pendulum and the subsequent incorporation of tempo-related language, musicians gained the ability to communicate concepts of speed and slowness with ever-increasing precision. The seventeenth and eighteenth centuries witnessed the development of a diverse array of musical time-keeping devices, yet it was not until the nineteenth century that a single device combined the critical elements of accuracy, functionality and affordability. Enter the metronome: portable and affordable, a triumph of innovation that enabled musicians to establish and faithfully reproduce musical time with accuracy and ease. From Beethoven to Ligeti, Moskovitz looks to a number of distinguished composers who used or refused this revolutionary machine and explores the complicated relationship that unfolded between the metronome, the musical world and practitioners in other disciplines who sought to exploit its potential. Engagingly written, Measure: In Pursuit of Musical Time will appeal to professionals and amateurs alike.

Music scholarship has been rethinking its understanding of Franz Schubert and his work. How might our modern aesthetic values and historical knowledge of Schubert's life affect how we interpret his music? Schubert's Instrumental Music and Poetics of Interpretation demonstrates how updated analysis of Schubert and his instrumental works reveals expressive meaning. In six chapters, each devoted to one or two of Schubert's pieces, René Rusch explores alternate forms of unity and coherence, offers critical assessments of biographical and intertextual influence, investigates narrative, and addresses the gendering of the composer and his music. Rusch's comparative analyses and interpretations address four significant areas of scholarly focus in Schubert studies, including his use of chromaticism, his unique forms, the impact of events in his own life, and the influence of Beethoven. Drawing from a range of philosophical, hermeneutic, historical, biographical, theoretical, and analytical sources, Schubert's Instrumental Music and Poetics of Interpretation offers readers a unique and innovative foray into the poetics of contemporary analysis of Schubert's instrumental music and develops new ways to engage with his repertoire.