The International Who's Who in Classical Music 2015 is a vast source of biographical and contact information for singers, instrumentalists, composers, conductors, managers and more. Each entrant has been given the opportunity to update his or her information for the new improved 2015 edition. Each biographical entry comprises personal information, principal career details, repertoire, recordings and compositions, and full contact details where available. Appendices provide contact details for national orchestras, opera companies, music festivals, music organizations and major competitions and awards. Entries include individuals involved in all aspects of the world of classical music: composers, instrumentalists, singers, arrangers, writers, musicologists, conductors, directors and managers. Key Features: - over 8,000 detailed biographical entries - covers the classical and light classical fields - includes both up-and-coming musicians and well-established names. This book will prove valuable for anyone in need of reliable, up-to-date information on the individuals and organizations involved in classical music.

Paul Brian Heise's The Wound That Will Never Heal is an original allegorical reading of Richard Wagner's epic music drama The Ring of the Nibelung. Heise challenges the standard view that Wagner merely dramatizes the conflict between love and power and demonstrates instead that his greatest work is an allegory exploring humanity's longing for transcendent value and that quest's paradoxical establishment of a science-based secular society. By employing a more extensive analysis of primary evidence than any prior interpretation, The Wound That Will Never Heal is the first interpretation to propose and sustain a global and conceptually coherent account of the entire Ring.

The first edition of Albert R. Rice's The Baroque Clarinet is widely considered the authoritative text on the European clarinet during the first half of the eighteenth century. Since its publication in 1992, its conclusions have influenced the approaches of musicologists, instrument historians, and clarinet performers. Twenty-eight years later, Rice has updated his renowned study in a second edition, with new chapters on chalumeau and clarinet music, insights on newly found instruments and additional material on the Baroque clarinet in society. Expanding the volume to include the chalumeau, close cousin and predecessor to the clarinet, Rice draws on nearly three decades of new research on the instrument's origins and music. Discoveries include two recently found chalumeaux in a private collection, one by Johann Heinrich Eichentopf of Leipzig, and attributions based on historical evidence for three more chalumeaux. Rice furthers the discussion to recently uncovered early instruments and historical scores, which shed light on the clarinet's evolution. Most essentially, Rice highlights the chalumeau's substantial late-seventeenth and early-eighteenth century repertory, comprising over 330 works by 66 composers, and includes a more expansive list of surviving Baroque clarinet works, organized by date, composer, and tonality/range. The Baroque Clarinet and Chalumeau provides a long-awaited follow-up to Rice's groundbreaking volume, drawing from a variety of sources-including German, Italian, Dutch, Swedish, Norwegian, Danish, Finnish, Flemish, Czech, and Catalan research-to bring this new information to an English-speaking audience. With his dedication to scholarly accuracy, Rice brings the Baroque clarinet into sharper focus than ever before.

The International Who's Who in Classical Music 2014 is a vast source of biographical and contact information for singers, instrumentalists, composers, conductors, managers and more. Each entrant has been given the opportunity to update his or her information for the new improved 2014 edition. Each biographical entry comprises personal information, principal career details, repertoire, recordings and compositions, and full contact details where available. Appendices provide contact details for national orchestras, opera companies, music festivals, music organizations and major competitions and awards. Entries include individuals involved in all aspects of the world of classical music: composers, instrumentalists, singers, arrangers, writers, musicologists, conductors, directors and managers. Key Features: over 8,000 detailed biographical entries covers the classical and light classical fields includes both up-and-coming musicians and well-established names. This book will prove valuable for anyone in need of reliable, up-to-date information on the individuals and organizations involved in classical music.

A musical phrase, or, for that matter, a musical unit of any size or shape, becomes an image whenever we imagine it to be invested with a content whose origins lie outside music. Such a content, according to the theory developed here, constitutes the image's conventional significance; it accounts for whatever strikes us about the image as having a common and familiar ring. That being so, the origins in question must be coincident with the fundamental ideas--the archetypes--that have been traditionally represented as underlying and unifying Western culture. As the theoretical constructs they are, arehctypes are never encountered directly. It is in the form of their local variants that we make contact with the archetypes, and it is at this local level that the present book sets its sights: style, the typical or shared element in the musical imagery of a time and place, is studies as a function of Zeitgeist, the complex of beliefs, values, and ideals of a community. The approach is both thematic and historical, in keeping with a key objective of archetypal criticism. Far from repudiating the popular notion that music expresses the human emotions, this study attempts to recast emotion theory by examining musical images for kinds of behavior from which we may infer not only emotion (pathos, effectus) but also personality (ethos). Ethical and affective distinctions are very sharply drawn, in an effort to clarify and widen the vocabulary of musical commentary, as well as to provide cultural and historical backing for contents long considered the cliches of musical expression.

Closely associated with the social elite, the lute occupied a central place in the culture of the Dutch Golden Age. In this first comprehensive study of the instrument's role in seventeenth-century Netherlands, Jan W. J. Burgers explores how it functioned as the universal means of solo music making, group performance, and accompaniment. He showcases famous and obscure musicians; lute music in books and manuscripts; lute makers and the international lute trade; and the instrument's place in Dutch literature and art of the period.
Enhanced by beautiful illustrations, this study constitutes an important contribution to our knowledge about the lute and its Golden Age heyday.

Wagner's Ring addresses fundamental concerns that have faced humanity down the centuries, such as power and violence, love and death, freedom and fate. Further, the work seems particularly relevant today, addressing as it does the fresh debates around the created order, politics, gender, and sexuality. In this second of two volumes on the theology of the Ring, Richard Bell argues that Wagner's approach to these issues may open up new ways forward and offer a fresh perspective on some of the traditional questions of theology, such as sacrifice, redemption, and fundamental questions about God. A linchpin for Bell's approach is viewing the Ring in the light of the Jesus of Nazareth sketches, which, he argues, confirms that the artwork does indeed address questions of Christian theology, for those inside and outside the church.

No index can claim to be complete, but this one covers the major works of 220 composers from the Middle Ages to the present, listing each composition under its variant names, and giving the composer's last name. Some 6,000 entries are included in this compact volume. A list of the principal sources consulted will help users locate printed editions, recordings of a work, and bibliographical and biographical information about the composers. Music Educators Journal This comprehensive reference guide will serve as a much-needed companion volume to music dictionaries, to the literature of music history, and to composer monographs. Concentrating on major composers from the Middle Ages to the twentieth century, it contains over 6,000 entries, listing each composition under its variant names, and giving the composer's last name. A section listing the principal sources consulted will aid the user in locating printed editions, recordings of a work, and biographical and bibliographical information about the composers. Compiled with both the professional and the amateur in mind, this guide will be found useful to an ever-increasing number of music devotees.

The International Who's Who in Classical Music 2008 is an unparalleled source of biographical information on singers, instrumentalists, composers, conductors and managers. The directory section lists orchestras, opera companies and other institutions connected with the classical music world. Each biographical entry comprises personal information, principal career details, repertoire, recordings and compositions, and full contact details where available. Appendices provide contact details for national orchestras, opera companies, music festivals, music organizations and major competitions and awards. Entries include individuals involved in all aspects of the world of classical music: composers, instrumentalists, singers, arrangers, writers, musicologists, conductors, directors and managers. Among those listed in this new edition are Philip Glass, Lang Lang, George Crumb, Evelyn Glennie, Yo-Yo Ma and Inga Nielsen. Key features: over 8,000 detailed biographical entries covers the classical and light classical fields includes both up-and-coming musicians and well-established names. This book will prove invaluable for anyone in need of reliable, up-to-date information on the individuals and organizations involved in classical music.

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.

During the ongoing process of European integration in 1957, Western European societies have undergone a rapid process of secularization. The eastward expansion of the European Union and the drafting of a European constitution, however, have triggered fundamental questions concerning the role of Christianity in European identity. The most anxiety-producing issues are the potential integration of Turkey and the non-European immigrants, who in most European countries are overwhelmingly Muslim.

"Blues: The Basics" gives a brief introduction to a century of the blues; it is ideal for students and interested listeners who want to learn more about this treasured American artform. The book is organized chronologically, focusing on the major eras in blues's growth and development. It opens with a chapter defining the blues form and detailing the major genres within it. Next, the author gives the beginning blues fan points on how to listen to and truly enjoy the music. The heart of the book traces blues's growth from its folk origins through early recordings of city blues singers like Ma Rainey and Bessie Smith and country blues stars like Robert Johnson and Blind Lemon Jefferson. Finally, the author gives an overview of the blues scene today. The book concludes with lists of key recordings, books, and videos.
"Blues: The" "Basics "serves as an excellent introduction to the players, the music, and the styles that make blues an enduring and well-loved musical style.

How was large-scale music directed or conducted in Britain before baton conducting took hold in the 1830s? This book investigates the ways large-scale music was directed or conducted in Britain before baton conducting took hold in the 1830s. After surveying practice in Italy, Germany and France from Antiquity to the eighteenth century,the focus is on direction in two strands of music making in Stuart and Georgian Britain: choral music from Restoration cathedrals to the oratorio tradition deriving from Handel, and music in the theatre from the Jacobean masque to nineteenth-century opera, ending with an account of how modern baton conducting spread in the 1830s from the pit of the Haymarket Theatre to the Philharmonic Society and to large-scale choral music. Part social and musical history based on new research into surviving performing material, documentary sources and visual evidence, and part polemic intended to question the use of modern baton conducting in pre-nineteenth-century music, Before the Baton throws new light on many hitherto dark areas, though the heart of the book is an extended discussion of the evidence relating to Handel's operas, oratorios and choral music. Contrary to near-universal modern practice, he mostly preferred to play rather than beat time.

A captivating and heartfelt memoir from a true music aficionado, a senior British diplomat and a nuclear environmental expert in Russia. Hearing Yehudi Menuhin play solo Bach and Bartok in Oxford's Sheldonian Theatre in 1959 would prove an epiphany for the seventeen-year-old Desmond Cecil. Already an advanced oboe student of Joy Boughton, he decided there and then, against all the odds, to become a violinist. This delightful autobiography tells the remarkable journey its author took in his quest to follow his passion to perform music. He decided, after Chemistry and PPE at Oxford, to move in 1965 to Switzerland for full-time violin study with the illustrious Max Rostal, staying there for five years as a professional violinist. Eventually realising he had started the violin too late to become a top soloist, he returned to the UK to join HM Diplomatic Service in 1970. A fluent linguist, he spent the next twenty-five years serving in embassies abroad and was eventually appointed CMG by HM The Queen. He took early retirement in 1995 to work as an international political/funding adviser for the UK and then the French state nuclear energy industries, with extensive experience of nuclear environmental clean-up in Russia after the dismantling of the Soviet Union. Along with fascinating insights into his musical, diplomatic and energy callings and sharp anecdotes of some of the important European and British politicians of the past forty years, Cecil also renders tender and charming stories of the many famous musicians he has known and performed with - nowadays on his own authentic Stradivari violin, formally entitled the '1724 Cecil'.

A complete chronology of western classical music, covering the musically fruitful period 1751 to 2000. Entries are arranged by year and include historical highlights, art and literature highlights, births and deaths of pivotal composers, singers, performers, craftsmen, publishers, musical debuts, new positions, prizes and honours awarded, biographical highlights, cultural beginnings, musical literature and compositions.
Whether you are looking for information on Bach, Haydn, Mozart, the New York Harmonic Society, Berlioz, Beethoven, Mendelssohn, Wagner, the Toronto Musical Society, Humperdink, Souza or a host of others, this two-volume set will be the first and last place you look.

Over sixty years after his death in 1931, Vincent d'Indy is still a much misunderstood and maligned figure in French music. Previous biographers have left a portrait of the academic figure par excellence, who turned the seemingly inspired and selfless inspiration of his master Cesar Franck into a cold and authoritarian pedagogical system. This new study re-examines the evidence, reveals a much more psychologically complex and turbulent character, and finds that d'Indy was a tireless propagandist for a spiritual revival of French musical civilization. Yet he was fully aware of the social and intellectual problems of the secular Third Republic which militated against his Dante-inspired Catholic humanism, embodied in the work of the Schola Cantorum, the Paris institution founded by d'Indy to reform the practice of sacred music. Far from being a pure reactionary, his outlook was in reality remarkably progressive, manifest in his revivals of early music, notably Monteverdi's Orfeo, his encouragement of Debussy, and his willingness to engage - often pugnaciously - with the latest musical manifestations of Richard Strauss, Stravinsky, Schoenberg, and Varese. His own compositions likewise contain passages of astonishingly bold invention and modernistic effects, all too easily overlooked.

Awarded the legion d'Honneur by the French government in 2006 for his services to French culture, acclaimed writer and broadcaster Roger Nichols invites the reader to accompany him on his journey through the century-and-a-half turbulent and fertile period in the history of French music from Berlioz to Boulez. In compiling his collection of articles, interviews, radio plays and talks, Nichols begins with Berlioz's Symphonie Fantastique and ends with his obituary of Pierre Boulez. Along the way, he includes in-depth studies of Debussy and Ravel, connecting the two by a comparison of their operatic masterpieces, Pelleas et Melisande and l'Enfant et les sortileges. Twenty other significant composers from this fascinating period come in for Nichols' hallmark combination of erudition and wit.

Goethe's Faust, a work which has attracted the attention of composers since the late eighteenth century and played a vital role in the evolution of vocal, operatic and instrumental repertoire in the nineteenth century, hashad a seminal impact in musical realms. That Goethe's poetry has proved pivotal for the development of the nineteenth-century Lied has long been acknowledged. Less acknowledged is the seminal impact in musical realms of Goethe's Faust, a work which has attractedthe attention of composers since the late eighteenth century and played a vital role in the evolution of vocal, operatic and instrumental repertoire in the nineteenth century. While Goethe longed to have Faust set to musicand considered only Mozart and perhaps Meyerbeer as being equal to the task, by the end of his life he had abandoned hope that he would live to witness a musical setting of his text. Despite this, a floodtide of musical interpretations of Goethe's Faust came into existence from Beethoven to Schubert, Schumann to Wagner and Mahler, and Gounod to Berlioz; and a broad trajectory can be traced from Zelter's colourful description of the first setting ofGoethe's Faust to Alfred Schnittke's Faust opera (1993). This book explores the musical origins of Goethe's Faust and the musical dimensions of its legacy. It uncovers the musical furore caused by Goethe's Faust and considers why his polemical text has resonated so strongly with composers. Bringing together leading musicologists and Germanists, the book addresses a wide range of issues including reception history, the performative challenges of writing music for Faust, the impact of the legend on composers' conceptual thinking, and the ways in which it has been used by composers to engage with other contemporary intellectual concepts. Constituting the richest examination to date of the musicality of language and form in Goethe's Faust and its musical rendering from the eighteenth to twenty-first centuries, the book will appeal to music, literary and Goethe scholars and students alike. LORRAINE BYRNE BODLEY is Senior Lecturer in Musicology at Maynooth University and President of the Society for Musicology in Ireland. Contributors: Mark Austin, Lorraine Byrne Bodley, NicholasBoyle, John Michael Cooper, Siobhan Donovan, Osman Durrani, Mark Fitzgerald, John Guthrie, Heather Hadlock, Julian Horton, Ursula Kramer, Waltraud Meierhofer, Eftychia Papanikolaou, David Robb, Christopher Ruth, Glenn Stanley, Martin Swales, J. M. Tudor

Commissioned for the 40th birthday of the organist Paul Walton, Walton's Paean is a work of great verve, with compelling rhythms, exciting harmonies, and catchy melodies propelling the celebratory music forward. Through the boisterous excitement, legato passages emerge as the piece hurtles towards the resounding finale. There is also a little joke in the occasional references to the music of Paul Walton's namesake, William.