The Thirty-three Variations on a Waltz by Diabelli, Op. 120, represent Beethoven's most extraordinary achievement in the art of variation-writing. In their originality and power of invention, they stand beside other late Beethoven masterpieces such as the Ninth Symphony, the Missa Solemnis, and the last quartets. William Kinderman's study of the compositional history of the work includes the first extended investigation and reconstruction of the sketches and drafts, and reveals, contrary to earlier views of its chronology, that it was actually begun in 1819, then put aside, and completed in 1822-3. Kinderman also provides an analytical discussion of the complete work, and he demonstrates how insights derived from a close study of the sketches can illuminate Beethoven's compositional ideas and attitudes and contribute substantially to a better understanding of this massive and complex set of variations.
The book includes complete transcriptions of the two central documents in the genesis of the Diabelli variations - the reconstructed Wittgenstein Sketchbook and the Paris - Landsberg - Montauban Draft.

Combining musical insight with the most recent research, William Kinderman's Beethoven is both a richly drawn portrait of the man and a guide to his music. Kinderman traces the composer's intellectual and musical development from the early works written in Bonn to the Ninth Symphony and the late quartets, looking at compositions from different and original perspectives that show Beethoven's art as a union of sensuous and rational, of expression and structure. In analyses of individual pieces, Kinderman shows that the deepening of Beethoven's musical thought was a continuous process over decades of his life. In this new updated edition, Kinderman gives more attention to the composer's early chamber music, his songs, his opera Fidelio, and to a number of often-neglected works of the composer's later years and fascinating projects left incomplete. A revised view emerges from this of Beethoven's aesthetics and the musical meaning of his works. Rather than the conventional image of a heroic and tormented figure, Kinderman provides a more complex, more fully rounded account of the composer. Although Beethoven's deafness and his other personal crises are addressed, together with this ever-increasing commitment to his art, so too are the lighter aspects of his personality: his humor, his love of puns, his great delight in juxtaposing the exalted and the commonplace.

The first modern biography in English of Russian composer-pianist Anton Rubinstein, this book places Rubinstein within the context of Russian and western European musical culture during the late 19th century, exploring his rise to international fame from humble origins in Bessarabia, as well as his subsequent rapid decline and marginalization in later musical culture. Taylor provides a balanced account of Rubinstein s life and his career as a piano virtuoso, conductor, composer, and as the founder of Russia s first conservatory. Widely considered the virtuosic heir to Liszt, and recognized internationally as an equivalent cultural icon, he performed with most leading musicians of the day, including Liszt himself, Joachim, Clara Schumann, Vieuxtemps, Wieniawski, Saint-Saens, and Ysaye."

David Kopp's book develops a model of chromatic chord relations in nineteenth-century music by composers such as Schubert, Beethoven, Chopin, Schumann and Brahms. The emphasis is on explaining chromatic third relations and the pivotal role they play in theory and practice. The book traces conceptions of harmonic system and of chromatic third relations from Rameau through nineteenth-century theorists such as Marx, Hauptmann and Riemann, to the seminal twentieth-century theorists Schenker and Schoenberg and on to the present day. Drawing on tenets of nineteenth-century harmonic theory, contemporary transformation theory and the author's own approach, the book presents a clear and elegant means for characterizing commonly acknowledged but loosely defined elements of chromatic harmony, and integrates them as fully fledged entities into a chromatically based conception of harmonic system. The historical and theoretical argument is supplemented by plentiful analytic examples.

This is the first book-length study of the rich operatic repertory written and performed in France during the last two decades of the nineteenth century. Steven Huebner gives an accessible and colorful account of such operatic favorites as Manon and Werther by Massenet, Louise by Charpentier, and lesser-known gems such as Chabrier's Le Roi malgr lui and Chausson's Le Roi Arthus.

Georges Barrere (1876-1944) holds a preeminent place in the history of American flute playing. Best known for two of the landmark works that were written for him--the Poem of Charles Tomlinson Griffes and Density 21.5 by Edgard Varese--he was the most prominent early exemplar of the Paris Conservatoire tradition in the United States and set a new standard for American woodwind performance.
Barrere's story is a musical tale of two cities, and this book uses his life as a window onto musical life in Belle Epoque Paris and twentieth-century New York. Recurrent themes are the interactions of composers and performers; the promotion of new music; the management, personnel, and repertoire of symphony orchestras; the economic and social status of the orchestral and solo musician, including the increasing power of musicians' unions; the role of patronage, particularly women patrons; and the growth of chamber music as a professional performance medium.
A student of Paul Taffanel at the Paris Conservatoire, by age eighteen Barrere premiered the landmark Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun. He went on to become solo flutist of the Concerts Colonne and to found the Societe Moderne d'Instruments a Vent, a pioneering woodwind ensemble that premiered 61 works for 40 composers in its first ten years. Invited by Walter Damrosch to become principal flute of the New York Symphony in 1905, he founded the woodwind department at the Institute of Musical Art (later Juilliard). His many ensembles toured the United States, building new audiences for chamber music and promoting French repertoire as well as new American music. Toff narrates Barrere's relationships with the finest musicians and artists ofhis day, among them Isadora Duncan, Yvette Guilbert, Andre Caplet, Paul Hindemith, Albert Roussel, Wallingford Riegger, and Henry Brant. The appendices of the book, which list his 170 premieres and the 50 works dedicated to Barrere, are a resource for a new generation of performers.
Based on extensive archival research and oral histories in both France and the United States, this is the first biography of Barrere. It is being published in conjunction with the centennial of his arrival in the United States in May 1905.

"This book is a substantial and timely contribution to Brahms studies. Its strategy is to focus on a single critical work, the C-Minor Piano Quartet, analyzing and interpreting it in great detail, but also using it as a stepping-stone to connect it to other central Brahms works in order to reach a new understanding of the composer s technical language and expressive intent. It is an original and worthy contribution on the music of a major composer." Patrick McCreless

Expressive Forms in Brahms s Instrumental Music integrates a wide variety of analytical methods into a broader study of theoretical approaches, using a single work by Brahms as a case study. On the basis of his findings, Smith considers how Brahms s approach in this piano quartet informs analyses of similar works by Brahms as well as by Beethoven and Mozart.

Musical Meaning and Interpretation Robert S. Hatten, editor"

"No one knows more about Franz Liszt than Alan Walker." Malcolm Bowie, Times Literary SupplementIn a series of lively essays that tell us much not only about the phenomenon that was Franz Liszt but also about the musical and cultural life of nineteenth-century Europe, Alan Walker muses on aspects of Liszt's life and work that he was unable to explore in his acclaimed three-volume biography of the great composer and pianist. Topics include Liszt's contributions to the Lied, the lifelong impact of his encounter with Beethoven, his influence on students who became famous in their own right, his accomplishments in transcribing and editing the works of other composers, and his innovative piano technique. One chapter is devoted to the Sonata in B Minor, perhaps Liszt's single most celebrated composition.Walker draws heavily on Liszt's astonishingly large personal correspondence with other composers, critics, pianists, and prominent public figures. All the essays reveal Walker's broad and deep knowledge of Liszt and Romantic music generally and, in some cases, his impatience with contemporary performance practice."

Jim Samson interweaves biographical and musical commentary to produce a well-rounded portrait of Chopin the man and the musician. Incorporating the most recent research, Samson addresses such questions as pedagogy, musical influences, and pianistic idiom. He examines the composer's mature musical style, considers his unique approach to the genres of nineteenth-century piano music, and investigates the nature of his compositional process as revealed through manuscripts and early printed scores. In reading the book we begin to understand why this frail and fastidious musician from Warsaw, whose music is so immensely refined and innovatory, has captured the imagination of generations of music lovers the world over.

This multidisciplinary collection addresses Chopin s life and oeuvre in various cultural contexts of his era. Fourteen original essays by internationally-known scholars suggest new connections between his compositions and the intellectual, literary, artistic, and musical environs of Warsaw and Paris. Individual essays consider representations of Chopin in the visual arts; reception in the United States and in Poland; analytical aspects of the mazurkas and waltzes; and political, literary, and gender aspects of Chopin s music and legacy. Several senior scholars represent the fields of American, Western European, and Polish history; Slavic literature; musicology; music theory; and art history."

Central to the repertoire of Western art music since the 18th century, the symphony has come to be regarded as one of the ultimate compositional challenges. Surprisingly, heretofore there has been no truly extensive, broad-based treatment of the genre, and the best of the existing studies are now several decades old. In this five-volume series, A. Peter Brown explores the symphony from its 18th-century beginnings to the end of the 20th century. Synthesizing the enormous scholarly literature, Brown presents up-to-date overviews of the status of research, discusses any important former or remaining problems of attribution, illuminates the style of specific works and their contexts, and samples early writings on their reception. The Symphonic Repertoire provides an unmatched compendium of knowledge for the student, teacher, performer, and sophisticated amateur. The series is being launched with two volumes on the Viennese symphony.

Volume IV
The Second Golden Age of the Viennese Symphony
Brahms, Bruckner, Dvorak, Mahler,
and Selected Contemporaries

Although during the mid-19th century the geographic center of the symphony in the Germanic territories moved west and north from Vienna to Leipzig, during the last third of the century it returned to the old Austrian lands with the works of Brahms, Bruckner, Dvorak, and Mahler. After nearly a half century in hibernation, the sleeping Viennese giant awoke to what some viewed as a reincarnation of Beethoven with the first hearing of Brahms s Symphony No. 1, which was premiered at Vienna in December 1876. Even though Bruckner had composed some gigantic symphonies prior to Brahms s first contribution, their full impact was not felt until the composer s complete texts became available after World War II. Although Dvorak was often viewed as a nationalist composer, in his symphonic writing his primary influences were Beethoven, Schubert, and Brahms. For both Bruckner and Mahler, the symphony constituted the heart of their output; for Brahms and Dvorak, it occupied a less central place. Yet for all of them, the key figure of the past remained Beethoven. The symphonies of these four composers, together with the works of Goldmark, Zemlinsky, Schoenberg, Berg, Smetana, Fibich, Janacek, and others are treated in Volume IV, The Second Golden Age of the Viennese Symphony, covering the period from roughly 1860 to 1930."

Johannes Brahms (1833-1897) was prominent not only as a composer but as a pianist, conductor, editor, scholar, collector, and friend of many notables. He was also, in private, an articulate critic, connoisseur of other arts, and traveler. In this enlightening book, the eminent Brahms scholar Michael Musgrave presents a comprehensive and original account of the composer's private and professional lives. Drawing on an array of documentary materials, Musgrave weaves together diverse strands to illuminate Brahms's character and personality; his outlook as a composer; his attitudes toward other composers; his activities as pianist and conductor; his scholarly and cultural interests; his friendships with Robert and Clara Schumann and others; his social life and travel; and critical attitudes toward his music from his own time to the present. The book quotes extensively from Brahms's own words and those of his circle. Musgrave mines the composer's letters, reminiscences of his contemporaries, early biographies, reviews, and commentary by friends, critics, and scholars to create an unparalleled source of information about Brahms. The author sets the materials in context, identifies sources in detail, includes a glossary of information on principal individuals, and notes recent research on the composer. This engaging biographical work, with a gallery of illustrations, will appeal to general music lovers as well as to scholars with a special interest in Brahms.

This absorbing and award-winning biography tells the story of the tragedies and triumphs of Clara Wieck Schumann (1819 1896), a musician of remarkable achievements. At once artist, composer, editor, teacher, wife, and mother of eight children, she was an important force in the musical world of her time. To show how Schumann surmounted the obstacles facing female artists in the nineteenth century, Nancy B. Reich has drawn on previously unexplored primary sources: unpublished diaries, letters, and family papers, as well as concert programs. Going beyond the familiar legends of the Schumann literature, she applies the tools of musicological scholarship and the insights of psychology to provide a new, full-scale portrait.

The book is divided into two parts. In Part One, Reich follows Clara Schumann's life from her early years as a child prodigy through her marriage to Robert Schumann and into the forty years after his death, when she established and maintained an extraordinary European career while supporting and supervising a household and seven children. Part Two covers four major themes in Schumann's life: her relationship with Johannes Brahms and other friends and contemporaries; her creative work; her life on the concert stage; and her success as a teacher.

Throughout, excerpts from diaries and letters in Reich's own translations clear up misconceptions about her life and achievements and her partnership with Robert Schumann. Highlighting aspects of Clara Schumann's personality and character that have been neglected by earlier biographers, this candid and eminently readable account adds appreciably to our understanding of a fascinating artist and woman.

For this revised edition, Reich has added several photographs and updated the text to include recent discoveries. She has also prepared a Catalogue of Works that includes all of Clara Schumann's known published and unpublished compositions and works she edited, as well as descriptions of the autographs, the first editions, the modern editions, and recent literature on each piece. The Catalogue also notes Schumann's performances of her own music and provides pertinent quotations from letters, diaries, and contemporary reviews."

The Essays Before a Sonata was conceived by Ives as a preface of sorts to the composition. Ives's musings also explore the nature of music, discuss the source of a composer's impulses and inspiration, and offer some biting comments on celebrated masters. The writings in this collection now featuring a comprehensive index-allow readers entry into the brilliant mind that produced some of America's most innovative musical works."

This book presents a theory of metrical conflict and applies it to the music of Robert Schumann, thereby placing that composer's distinctive metrical style in focus. Krebs describes various categories of metrical conflict that characterize the music of Schumann, investigates how states of conflict arise and are manipulated and resolved in the course of compositions, and studies the interaction of metrical conflict with form, pitch structure, and text. The theoretical material is fancifully interwoven with commentary by Florestan and Eusebius, fictional characters based on Schumann's names for contrasting aspects of his own personality, who provide numerous illustrations from "their" compositions. Rich in allusions to Schumann's titles, his writings, and his life, Fantasy Pieces will appeal to all who are fond of this composer's music as well as to theorists.

The question whether the text, music, singers, or setting is the most important feature of an opera has long been debated. At one time, the courts of Vienna and Munich imported Italian opera before the German language gained acceptance. Once established, German opera, from Mozart to Schoenberg, reached the highest peak--as seen in the libretti of this volume.

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 the award-winning 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.

The difficulties of interpreting Berlioz are interestingly explained by a conductor of legendary knowledge and understanding. For the students of conducting this book is nothing short of invaluable, being a guide to technique as well as to the confusions arising from Berlioz's imaginative orchestration.

Fanny Hensel created some of the most imaginative and original music of her era, making her arguably the most gifted female composer of the nineteenth century. While Hensel has finally stepped out of the shadow of her famous brother, Felix Mendelssohn, as scholars have begun to study her life and writings, her music has remained surprisingly underexamined. This collection places Hensel's music at the center, focusing on the genre that not only made up more than half of her creative output but also, as Hensel herself put it, "suits her best": song. In eleven new essays, leading scholars in the fields of music theory and musicology consider Hensel's songs from a wide range of angles, covering topics such as Hensel's fascination with particular poets and poetic themes; her innovative harmonic, melodic, rhythmic, and textual strategies; and her connection to larger literary and musical trends. The chapters also provide insight into Hensel's efforts to break free from the constraints placed on her as a woman and her place in the larger history of the nineteenth-century Lied. Drawing on diverse biographical, historical, cultural, and musical contexts for their detailed discussions of Hensel's songs, the authors underline Hensel's historical importance and deepen our understanding and appreciation of her compositions. This volume, in short, finally gives Fanny Hensel and her songs the stage that they deserve.

A reference book containing information about Beethoven's life and times. Features include a chronology of Beethoven's life and works, a list of works with commentaries, a who's who of contemporaries, historical and musical background and accounts of daily life from diaries and documents.

This book examines two notable forms of chamber music involving piano and strings. Smallman surveys the development of these genres from their origins in the mid-eighteenth century to the present day.

In this book, Warren Darcy traces the compositional genesis of Richard Wagner's opera Das Rheingold, the first opera of his great operatic tetralogy Der Ring des Nibelungen. He also attempts a comprehensive formal and tonal analysis of the piece. Basing his work upon Wagner's textual and musical manuscripts, he employs the most up-to-date analytical techniques.

Taken from Africa into slavery by the Portuguese, kidnapped by the British Navy and held captive aboard ship during the French wars of the 1790s before being abandoned in Falmouth, the stranger-than-fiction story of Joseph Emidy deserves telling in its own right. What makes it more remarkable is that Emidy - a violinist and composer - became a prominent figure in the musical scene in Cornwall for the remaining thirty years of his life. This account sets his life against the musical activities of the assemblies, harmonic societies, theatre, church and chapel. By producing comic operas and introducing novelty acts professional theatre companies offered musical entertainment as an integral part of their activities, amateur orchestras flourished, and militia bands became a regular feature of the life of several communities. There were even attempts to create a regular pattern of tours by national and international figures, especially the stars of Italian opera and the London stage. Through the installation of organs and by the work of locally-based composers the Anglican church sought to raise standards of music in services. The richly varied pattern of local activity is illustrated by accounts in local newspapers, as well as by personal memoirs; many of the anecdotes are amusing and always enlightening in the view they offer of a provincial society at a time of great and hitherto unsuspected activity and change.

Looks at how Romanticism differs from Classicism, and discusses the works of Paganini, Donizetti, Berlioz, Chopin, Liszt, Wagner, Verdi, Grieg, Brahms, Bruckner, Mahler, Puccini, and Rakhmaninov.