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Books > Music > Western music, periods & styles > General
If everybody were to play first violin, we could not have an
orchestra. Therefore respect each musician in his own place. There
is no end to learning. Originally published in1850, Advice to Young
Musicians: Musical Rules for Home and in Life offered composer
Robert Schumann's (1810-56) combination of practical advice and
poetic words of wisdom for young people beginning their musical
education. Presented in aphorisms and short paragraphs, the book's
insights remain as valuable today as when it was written.
Recognizing the continued resonance of Schumann's words,
world-renowned cellist Steven Isserlis, himself a writer of
children's books and many articles for young musicians, set out to
rescue the work from history. Here, in this beautiful gift edition,
he revisits Schumann's work and contributes his own contemporary
counsel for musicians and music lovers. For this edition, Isserlis
retranslated Schumann's text and arranged it into four thematic
sections: "On being a musician," "Playing," "Practicing," and
"Composing." Each page is decoratively designed, and accompanying
Schumann's original quotation are Isserlis's thoughtful and often
humorous glosses. The book concludes with Isserlis's own
reflections on his life as a musician and performer: "My Own Bits
of Advice (For What They're Worth)." The result is a unique and
thought-provoking book that will be treasured by aspiring musicians
of any age.
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.
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.
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