In The Beat Stops Here: Lessons on and off the Podium for Today's Conductor, master conductor Mark Gibson addresses the technique of conducting as an extension of intimate knowledge of the score to the hands and arms. He employs a variety of everyday activities and motions (brushing the dog, Tinkerbelle, the "door knob") to describe the physical aspects of the role. He advocates a comprehensive, detailed approach to score study, addressing major works bar-by-bar in terms of both musical analysis and conducting method. Finally, Gibson explores the various roles a conductor plays, as a teacher, a scholar and a member of the musical community. His writing is highly focused, with an occasionally tongue-in-cheek, discussing everything from motivic development in Brahms to how to hold a knife and fork in public. In short, The Beat Stops Here is a compendium of style and substance in the real world of today's conductor.

A uniquely illuminating memoir of the making of a musician, in which renowned pianist Jeremy Denk explores what he learned from his teachers about classical music: its forms, its power, its meaning - and what it can teach us about ourselves.

In this searching and funny memoir, based on his popular New Yorker article, renowned pianist Jeremy Denk traces an implausible journey. Life is difficult enough as a precocious, temperamental, and insufferable six-year-old piano prodigy in New Jersey. But then a family meltdown forces a move to New Mexico, far from classical music’s nerve centers, and he has to please a new taskmaster while navigating cacti, and the perils of junior high school. Escaping from New Mexico at last, he meets a bewildering cast of college music teachers, ranging from boring to profound, and experiences a series of humiliations and triumphs, to find his way as one of the world’s greatest living pianists, a MacArthur 'Genius,' and a frequent performer at Carnegie Hall.

There are few writers working today who are willing to eloquently explore both the joys and miseries of artistic practice. Hours of daily repetition, mystifying early advice, pressure from parents and teachers who drove him on – an ongoing battle of talent against two enemies: boredom and insecurity. As we meet various teachers, with cruel and kind streaks, Denk composes a fraught love letter to the act of teaching. He brings you behind the scenes, to look at what motivates both student and teacher, locked in a complicated and psychologically perilous relationship.

In Every Good Boy Does Fine, Denk explores how classical music is relevant to 'real life,' despite its distance in time. He dives into pieces and composers that have shaped him – Bach, Mozart, Schubert, and Brahms, among others – and gives unusual lessons on melody, harmony, and rhythm. Why and how do these fundamental elements have such a visceral effect on us? He tries to sum up many of the lessons he has received, to repay the debt of all his amazing teachers; to remind us that music is our creation, and that we need to keep asking questions about its purpose.

Peter Beaven's tale leads us through the pitfalls and triumphs of a career in choir directing and church music, orchestral conducting, and professional singing in choirs and stage works. His teaching experiences are just as hair-raising as his performing life. Being there at the inception of the GCSE music exam, as a teacher, he felt it wasn't an improvement on the previous exam and became disenchanted with education, in general, and music education in particular. The author maintains that he failed every exam he ever sat, adding much weight to his argument, but also admits to a modicum of success along the way. Despite earlier difficulties with a genetic neuropathy, he conquered the disabilities to regain an organ technique at the age of fifteen, which has served him well for over fifty years. His adventures with the military have been a twenty-year expedition through extraordinary happenings, personalities, and experiences. All worthwhile but in marked contrast to many other facets of his career.

Schubert's Workshop offers a fresh study of the composer's compositional technique and its development, rooted in the author's experience of realising performing versions of Franz Schubert's unfinished works. Through close examination of Schubert's use of technical and structural devices, Brian Newbould demonstrates that Schubert was much more technically innovative than has been supposed, and argues that the composer's technical discoveries constitute a rich legacy of specific influences on later composers. Providing rich new insights into the creative practice of one of the major figures of classical music, this two-volume study reframes our understanding of Schubert as an innovator who constantly pushed at the frontiers of style and expression.

(Amadeus). Arturo Toscanini: The NBC Years details Toscanini's magnificent and heroic 17 years (1937-1954) conducting the NBC Symphony Orchestra. The archival broadcast recordings documented and reassessed in this lively account comprise the most complete recorded legacy of Toscanini's orchestral conducting career. The broadcast recordings include his readings of many scores for which he left no approved recording, and his NBC career included performances of works he never conducted before coming to the network. The concerts and the broadcasts were immensely popular, and for generations Toscanini's name became synonymous with conducting. His legendary art and fiery personality also engendered controversy that has yet to subside, but this account takes on the challengers, accepting neither hero worship nor criticism that ignores the evidence.

A list, with critical notes, of the best recordings of orchestral music.

"Because many readers may simply wish to browse the book or enjoy individual profiles, the volume may be useful in a variety of libraries serving both general users and researchers." Reference Books Bulletin

Worldwide in scope and covering the second half of the 20th century, this work provides biographies and discographies of some 500 conductors and composers in many aspects of light and popular orchestral music, including film, show, theatre, and mood music. This is the first time the lives and recordings of such artists as Kostelanetz, Faith, Gould, as well as the orchestral recordings of such great popular composers as Gershwin, Kern, Porter, Rodgers, Berlin, and Coward, have been adequately documented and consolidated in an encyclopedic fashion. Almost 5,000 records and CDs are listed. Of interest to scholars, students, disc jockeys, record and CD collectors, film music buffs, and mood and production music enthusiasts. Popular orchestral music has been a neglected and often erroneously perceived and misunderstood genre in the 20th century. It has certainly not received the attention that it deserves and seems to be viewed as a "Cinderella" in relation to classical music and jazz. The genre, especially in the last 50 years, has been graced by exceptionally fine and highly esteemed conductors and arrangers, and also by a large number of highly regarded composers.

During the nineteenth century, nearly one hundred symphonies were written by over fifty composers living in the United States. With few exceptions, this repertoire is virtually forgotten today. In Orchestrating the Nation: The Nineteenth-Century American Symphonic Enterprise, author Douglas W. Shadle explores the stunning stylistic diversity of this substantial repertoire and uncovers why it failed to enter the musical mainstream. Throughout the century, Americans longed for a distinct national musical identity. As the most prestigious of all instrumental genres, the symphony proved to be a potent vehicle in this project as composers found inspiration for their works in a dazzling array of subjects, including Niagara Falls, Hiawatha, and Western pioneers. With a wealth of musical sources at his disposal, including never-before-examined manuscripts, Shadle reveals how each component of the symphonic enterprise-from its composition, to its performance, to its immediate and continued reception by listeners and critics-contributed to competing visions of American identity. Employing an innovative transnational historical framework, Shadle's narrative covers three continents and shows how the music of major European figures such as Beethoven, Schumann, Wagner, Liszt, Brahms, and Dvorak exerted significant influence over dialogues about the future of American musical culture. Shadle demonstrates that the perceived authority of these figures allowed snobby conductors, capricious critics, and even orchestral musicians themselves to thwart the efforts of American symphonists despite widespread public support of their music. Consequently, these works never entered the performing canons of American orchestras. An engagingly written account of a largely unknown repertoire, Orchestrating the Nation shows how artistic and ideological debates from the nineteenth century continue to shape the culture of American orchestral music today.

Music-Dance explores the identity of choreomusical work, its complex authorship and its modes of reception as well as the cognitive processes involved in the reception of dance performance. Scholars of dance and music analyse the ways in which a musical score changes its prescriptive status when it becomes part of a choreographic project, the encounter between sound and motion on stage, and the intersection of listening and seeing. As well as being of interest to musicologists and choreologists considering issues such as notation, multimedia and the analysis of performance, this volume will appeal to scholars interested in applied research in the fields of cognition and neuroscience. The line-up of authors comprises representative figures of today's choreomusicology, dance historians, scholars of twentieth-century composition and specialists in cognitive science and performance studies. Among the topics covered are multimedia and the analysis of performance; the notational practice of choreographers and the parallel attempts of composers to find a graphic representation for musical gestures; and the experience of dance as a paradigm for a multimodal perception, which is investigated in terms of how the association of sound and movement triggers emotions and specific forms of cognition.

for SATB and orchestra Setting a well-loved medieval text, this effective piece paints the story of Jesus through lyrical melodies and beautiful harmonic surprises. The vocal lines offer both powerful intensity and skilful dialogue, and are supported by a pulsing orchestral accompaniment.

The symphonic orchestra is intriguingly considered in essays by 23 leading music authors and thinkers. The topics include historical beginnings, the role of the conductor, the orchestral audience, the nature of the repertoire, and how recordings have affected the modern orchestra. It comes with a new editor's introduction for this 2006 edition and a glossary of terms.

Philip J. Lang, Jonathan Tunick - are names well known to musical theatre fans, but few people understand precisely what the orchestrator does. The Sound of Broadway Music is the first book ever written about these unsung stars of the Broadway musical whose work is so vital to each show's success. The book examines the careers of Broadway's major orchestrators and follows the song as it travels from the composer's piano to the orchestra pit. Steven Suskin has meticulously tracked down thousands of original orchestral scores, piecing together enigmatic notes and notations with long-forgotten documents and current interviews with dozens of composers, producers, conductors and arrangers. The information is separated into three main parts: a biographical section which gives a sense of the life and world of twelve major theatre orchestrators, as well as incorporating briefer sections on another thirty arrangers and conductors; a lively discussion of the art of orchestration, written for musical theatre enthusiasts (including those who do not read music); a biographical section which gives a sense of the life and world of twelve major theatre orchestrators, as well as incorporating briefer sections on another thirty arrangers and conductors; and an impressive show-by-show listing of more than six hundred musicals, in many cases including a song-by-song listing of precisely who orchestrated what along with relevant comments from people involved with the productions. Stocked with intriguing facts and juicy anecdotes, many of which have never before appeared in print, The Sound of Broadway Music brings fascinating and often surprising new insight into the world of musical theatre.

This book starts at the very beginning and ends with some remarkably profound insights on conductorial subtleties. An experienced conductor is one in whom detection, diagnosis, and remedy take place simultaneously; as he hears the error, he realizes where the fault lies and what to do about it. This book gives valuable hints about these three basic conductorial functions from the viewpoint of chorus and orchestra alike. McElheran leads the student toward mastery of the problems at hand, with firmness and gentle humour.

Maestros in America: Conductors in the 21st Century provides short biographical and critical essays of over 100 American conductors-and conductors in America-in the twenty-first century. Roderick L. Sharpe and Jeanne Koekkoek Stierman made their selections based on three categories of persons: American-born; naturalized US citizens; and foreign conductors holding a permanent appointment in the US. In addition, all individuals included had to have been active as conductors at the start of the new millennium. These criteria allowed the authors to incorporate up-and-comers as well as those more established, offering an extensive cross-section of the upper echelons of the conducting profession focused on the present, recent past, and future. Each entry is a biographical essay containing essential facts of the conductor's life and work, as well as assessment and commentary gleaned from articles, interviews, reviews, and, in some cases, personal observation. The entries conclude with the conductor's website, a list of further reading, and selected recordings. These sketches of currently or recently practicing conductors provide insight into the state of orchestral music-making in the US as it is, has been, and may become, highlighting the efforts these conductors made to ensure its survival. Complete with two appendixes and an index, this important reference will be beneficial to music students and faculty, reference librarians, orchestral administrators, and music lovers alike.

In The Score, The Orchestra, and the Conductor, internationally-renowned conducting instructor Gustav Meier presents his practical approach to preparing an orchestral score for rehearsal and performance. Well-illustrated with numerous music examples, charts, figures, and tables, Meier's methods, grounded in the rich body of his collected experience as a music director and teacher of conducting students, are explained in great detail. Meier covers all aspects of conducting from experimenting without the orchestra to creating signals that produce the desired sound. The methods he describes offer specific and readily applicable advice for virtually every musical and technical decision that occurs in the important phase between when a conductor first decides upon a specific score and the first rehearsal with an orchestra. And from ear training to working with musicians to programming, he also offers his expertise on the day-to-day aspects of conducting and musical performance. The Score, The Orchestra, and the Conductor will be an indispensable and often-read contribution to the library of every music director and conducting student.

for SATB and piano/small orchestra Christmas Lullaby was commissioned in 1989 by the Bach Choir in celebration of the seventieth birthday of its conductor, Sir David Willcocks. The haunting melody of the verses and the reflective refrain of 'Ave Maria' have made this an immensely popular carol.

for SATB wordless chorus, viola solo, and orchestra A suite for solo viola, wordless chorus (SATB), and small orchestra, Flos Campi is one of Vaughan Williams's most enigmatic pieces. Although the six movements all borrow their titles from the Old Testament's Song of Solomon, the chorus never articulates a single word. Instead, it serves as a section of the orchestra, creating an elegant vocal texture and backdrop to the viola's haunting solo lines. The work was premiered in October 1925 by the violist Lionel Tertis, singers from the RCM, and the Queen's Hall Orchestra, directed by Sir Henry Wood.

What is the role of classical music in the 21st Century? How will classical musicians maintain their relevance and purpose? This book follows the working activities of professional orchestral musicians and opera singers as they move off stage into schools, community centres, prisons, libraries and corporations, engaging with their communities in new, rich ways through education and community engagement programmes. Key examples of collaborative partnership between orchestras, opera companies, schools and music services in the delivery of music education are investigated, with a focus on the UK's Music Hub system. The impact of these partnerships is examined, both in terms of how they inspire and foster the next generation of musicians as well as the extent to which they broaden access to quality music education. Detailed case studies are provided on the impact of classical music education programmes on social cohesion, health and wellbeing and education outcomes for students from low socio-economic communities. The implications for the future training of classical musicians are analysed, as are the new career paths for orchestral musicians and composers straddling performance and education. Opening Doors: Orchestras, Opera Companies and Community Engagement investigates the ways in which the classical music industry is reinventing its sense of purpose, never a more important or urgent pursuit than in the present decade.

Despite having been composed in the years 1938-43 when Europe was ravaged by war, this work radiates peace and serenity. It marks the peak of the lyrical modalism of works such as the Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis (1910), Flos Campi (1925), and Job (1931). Although it is not a programme symphony, it draws heavily on John Bunyan's The Pilgrim's Progress for inspiration, featuring several themes that were sketched for (and eventually used in) Vaughan Williamsas 1951 opera. In addition, Bunyan's words 'He hath given me rest by his sorrow and life by his death' were originally inscribed over the third movement. This idea of strength drawn from religion must have been especially potent when Vaughan Williams conducted the premiere of the work at the Proms in 1943, during the dark days of the Second World War. The ending in particular has a sense of rising above all worldly concerns into a higher spiritual plane. This edition contains a preface on the history of the work by Michael Kennedy. Orchestral parts are available on hire.

Conducting is not simply the act of marking beats; it is the much more rich art of communicating emotion, character, and mood through movement to a large group of performers in order to inspire them to create music together. Baton Basics is based on the premise that the most effective and musical forms of conducting are about conveying energy, and that doing so is a fundamentally physical activity. In Baton Basics, conductor Diane Wittry offers a unique approach to teaching conducting through familiar gestures: weight, resistance, and energy, combined with size, beat placement. The end goal is the ability to communicate a better concept of musical sound to the musicians. Wittry demonstrates how conductors can communicate through gestures, by training the muscles of their fingers, hands, wrists, forearms, and full arms. She also provides techniques for releasing body tension, improving posture, and developing a deeper sense of calm on the podium through overall body and breathing exercises. Additionally, she guides the reader on an exploration of the concepts and diagrams of the Musin and Saito conducting methods, and providing innovative suggestions on how to best incorporate these other styles into his or her own technique.
Featuring many detailed drawings and access to over 60 video examples on the companion website, Baton Basics guides conductors away from simply marking beat patterns, and towards a nuanced and phrased musicality that can be communicated to a group of musicians. Baton Basics is a key foundational text for the student and experienced conductor alike, and is must for anyone interested in improving and expanding their vocabulary of conducting gestures.

Schubert's Workshop offers a fresh study of the composer's compositional technique and its development, rooted in the author's experience of realising performing versions of Franz Schubert's unfinished works. Through close examination of Schubert's use of technical and structural devices, Brian Newbould demonstrates that Schubert was much more technically innovative than has been supposed, and argues that the composer's technical discoveries constitute a rich legacy of specific influences on later composers. Providing rich new insights into the creative practice of one of the major figures of classical music, this two-volume study reframes our understanding of Schubert as an innovator who constantly pushed at the frontiers of style and expression.

While interpretation of musical scores is amongst the most frequent of musical activities, it is also, strangely, one of the least researched. This collection of essays seeks to remedy this deficit by illuminating ways in which today's curious musician - interested in probing beyond the dictates of a faintly understood score - can engage more deeply and thoughtfully with the act of interpretation. Skilful musical interpretation draws on a vast range of knowledges. The chapters of this collection accordingly address a similarly broad set of issues, including notation, rhetoric, theory, historiography, performers past and present, instrument builders, concert presenters, reception history, and more. Written by leading experts from a variety of musical subdisciplines, these essays are designed to be accessible and practically relevant for musical performance. Many of the chapters utilize case studies and, as such, will be useful for university and conservatory level students as well as music scholars. The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of the Journal of Musicological Research.

Every orchestra in the world oscillates between crisis and survival. This perpetual movement makes innovation, both in organizational form and in artistic product, vital to the sustainability of the symphony orchestra. Based on case study research in Flanders, Amsterdam and London, this book reflects on the sustainability crisis of the orchestra by framing it as a legitimacy crisis that affects both the orchestra's artistic and organizational identity. The aim of this book is to explore the dynamics between various and often conflicting factors in the orchestra's quest for survival, and to show how these organizational dynamics relate to the orchestra's repertoire. By highlighting the importance of every organization's specific environment to which it needs to adapt, this book illustrates that the orchestra field is not a field that relies on best practices. The book reflects on conventional as well as innovative orchestra models, making the comparative point of view relevant for academic or practice-based researchers, orchestra managers, policymakers and subsidizing bodies interested in sustainable and future-oriented orchestra management.