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Books > Music > Western music, periods & styles > General
In conversation with Professor Raymond Holden of the Royal Academy
of Music, Sir Mark talks about some of the major issues facing
music, musicians and audiences today. From his first musical
experiences as a boy treble in Canterbury Cathedral to his current
roles, he discusses the music that has marked his distinguished
career. Whether you're interested in the performance, social and
economic histories of music over the last 50 years, or simply
fascinated by the life and times of Sir Mark Elder, this book is
essential reading.
An "Economist "Best Book of the Year
A" Christian Science Monitor" Best Book of the Year
A "Financial Times" Best Book of the Year
Johann Sebastian Bach is one of the most unfathomable composers in
the history of music. How can such sublime work have been produced
by a man who (when we can discern his personality at all) seems so
ordinary, so opaque--and occasionally so intemperate?
John Eliot Gardiner grew up passing one of the only two authentic
portraits of Bach every morning and evening on the stairs of his
parents' house, where it hung for safety during World War II. He
has been studying and performing Bach ever since, and is now
regarded as one of the composer's greatest living interpreters. The
fruits of this lifetime's immersion are distilled in this
remarkable book, grounded in the most recent Bach scholarship but
moving far beyond it, and explaining in wonderful detail the ideas
on which Bach drew, how he worked, how his music is constructed,
how it achieves its effects--and what it can tell us about Bach the
man.
Gardiner's background as a historian has encouraged him to search
for ways in which scholarship and performance can cooperate and
fruitfully coalesce. This has entailed piecing together the few
biographical shards, scrutinizing the music, and watching for those
instances when Bach's personality seems to penetrate the fabric of
his notation. Gardiner's aim is "to give the reader a sense of
inhabiting the same experiences and sensations that Bach might have
had in the act of music-making. This, I try to show, can help us
arrive at a more human likeness discernible in the closely related
processes of composing and performing his music."
It is very rare that such an accomplished performer of music should
also be a considerable writer and thinker about it. John Eliot
Gardiner takes us as deeply into Bach's works and mind as perhaps
words can. The result is a unique book about one of the greatest of
all creative artists.
In 1893 the composer Antonin Dvorak prophesied a "great and noble"
school of American classical music based on the searing "negro
melodies" he had excitedly discovered since arriving in the United
States a year before. But while Black music would found popular
genres known the world over, it never gained a foothold in the
concert hall. Joseph Horowitz ranges throughout American cultural
history, from Frederick Douglass and Huckleberry Finn to Gershwin's
Porgy and Bess and the work of Ralph Ellison, searching for
explanations. Challenging the standard narrative for American
classical music fashioned by Leonard Bernstein and Aaron Copland,
he looks back to literary figures-Emerson, Melville and Twain-to
ponder how American music can connect with a "usable past". The
result is a new paradigm, that makes room for Black composers,
including Harry Burleigh, Nathaniel Dett, William Dawson and
Florence Price, to redefine the classical canon.
A new, complete method of instruction for the Recorder. Includes
exercises, revisions, trill charts, ornaments and embellishments,
duets, trios, and quartets.
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.
Essays by prominent scholars and organists examine the music of
Franck and other nineteenth-century French organist-composers
through stylistic analysis, study of compositional process, and
exploration of how ideas about organ technique and
performance-practice traditions developed and became codified.
Nineteenth-century French organ music attracts an ever-increasing
number of performers and devotees. The music of Cesar Franck and
other distinguished composers-Boely, Guilmant, Widor-and the impact
upon this repertoire of the organ-building achievements of Aristide
Cavaille-Coll, are here explored through stylistic analysis, the
study of the compositional process, and the exploration of how
ideas about organ technique and performance practice traditions
developed and became codified. New consideration is also given to
the political and cultural contexts within which Franck and other
French organist-composers worked. Contributors: Kimberley Marshall,
William J. Peterson,Benjamin van Wye, Craig Cramer, Jesse E.
Eschbach, Karen Hastings-Deans, Marie-Louise Jaquet-Langlasi,
Daniel Roth, Edward Zimmerman, Lawrence Archbold, Rollin Smith
Where previous accounts of the Renaissance have not fully
acknowledged the role that music played in this decisive period of
cultural history, Laurenz Lutteken merges historical music analysis
with the analysis of the other arts to provide a richer context for
the emergence and evolution of creative cultures across
civilizations. This fascinating panorama foregrounds music as a
substantial component of the era and considers musical works and
practices in a wider cultural-historical context. Among the topics
surveyed are music's relationship to antiquity, the position of
music within systems of the arts, the emergence of the concept of
the musical work, as well as music's relationship to the theory and
practice of painting, literature, and architecture. What becomes
clear is that the Renaissance gave rise to many musical concepts
and practices that persist to this day, whether the figure of the
composer, musical institutions, and modes of musical writing and
memory.
Dangerous Melodies vividly evokes a time when classical music stood
at the center of twentieth-century American life, occupying a
prominent place in the nation's culture and politics. The work of
renowned conductors, instrumentalists, and singers-and the
activities of orchestras and opera companies-were intertwined with
momentous international events, especially the two world wars and
the long Cold War. Jonathan Rosenberg exposes the politics behind
classical music, showing how German musicians were dismissed or
imprisoned during World War I, while numerous German compositions
were swept from American auditoriums. He writes of the accompanying
impassioned protests, some of which verged on riots, by soldiers
and ordinary citizens. Yet, during World War II, those same
compositions were no longer part of the political discussion, while
Russian music, especially Shostakovich's, was used as a tool to
strengthen the US-Soviet alliance. During the Cold War, accusations
of communism were leveled against members of the American music
community, while the State Department sent symphony orchestras to
play around the world, even performing behind the Iron Curtain.
Rich with a stunning array of composers and musicians, including
Karl Muck, Arturo Toscanini, Wilhelm Furtwangler, Kirsten Flagstad,
Aaron Copland, Van Cliburn, and Leonard Bernstein, Dangerous
Melodies delves into the volatile intersection of classical music
and world politics to reveal a tumultuous history of
twentieth-century America.
Complete, authoritative scores of two Romantic symphonic masterpieces show extra-musical themes of "program music"-and intuitive genius, Shakespearean passion of Berlioz. Includes Symphonie Fantastique "program." Breitkopf & Härtel, Leipzig, 1900-1910 edition.
Can the fascination for music also be expressed in words and
pictures? The lyricist Nora Gomringer and the documentary
photographer Andreas Herzau pursue this question within the scope
of an innovative test arrangement. They plunge into the cosmos of
the Bamberg Symphony: at home in Bamberg, on international
tours-this is the daily routine of this extraordinary orchestra.
While Herzau assumes the role of the participant observer, with her
overall lyrical approach 2015 winner of the Ingeborg Bachmann Prize
coaxes the necessary voice from the orchestra. They capture what is
being played both on as well as behind the stage, and shine a light
on individual musicians as well as their place within the group.The
result is a book in which lyric poetry and photography act in
concert for the purpose of making the invisible, the music,
visible! For more information about the tour dates of the Bamberger
Symphoniker pleaseclick here
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