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Books > Arts & Architecture > Music > Other types of music > Vocal music
Choral Monuments provides extensive material about eleven
epoch-making choral masterworks that span the history of Western
culture. Included are: Missa Pange lingua (Josquin Desprez); Missa
Papae Marcelli (G. P. da Palestrina); B Minor Mass (J. S. Bach);
Messiah (G. F. Handel); The Creation (Joseph Haydn); Symphony #9
(Ludwig van Beethoven); St. Paul (Felix Mendelssohn); Ein deutsches
Requiem (Johannes Brahms); Messa da Requiem (Giuseppe Verdi); Mass
(Igor Stravinsky); and War Requiem (Benjamin Britten). The works
are presented in separate chapters, with each chapter divided into
three basic sections-history, analysis, and performance practice.
Discussions of history are focused on relevancies-the genesis of
the designated work in reference to the composer's total choral
output, the work's place within the musical environment and social
climate of its time, and essential features of the work that make
it noteworthy. In addition, the compositional history addresses
three other factors: the work's public reception and critical
response, both at the time of its composition and in ensuing years;
the history of score publications, detailing the various
differences between editions; and the texts of the composition. The
material regarding textual treatment, which often includes the
complete texts of the works being discussed, concentrates on
primary concerns of the text's usage; also included in the
discussion are noteworthy aspects of texts separate from the music
as well as biographical details of librettists and poets, if
appropriate. The analysis section of each chapter outlines and
describes musical forms and other types of compositional
organization, including parody technique, mirror structures, and
motto repetitions, as well as salient compositional characteristics
that directly relate and contribute to the work's artistic stature.
Numerous charts and musical examples illustrate the discussions.
The discussion of performance practices includes primary source
quotations about a wide range of topics, from performing forces,
tempo, and phrasing of each work to specific issues such as tactus,
text underlay, musica ficta, metric accentuation, and
ornamentation.
This book is an ethnographic study of a HIV/AIDS choir who use
music to articulate their individual and collective experiences of
the disease. The study interrogates as to understand the bigger
picture of HIV/AIDS using the approach of microanalysis of music
event. It places the choir, and the cultural and political issues
addressed in their music in the broader context of South Africa's
public health and political history, and the global culture and
politics of AIDS.
In Voice Secrets: 100 Performance Strategies for the Advanced
Singer, Matthew Hoch and Linda Lister create order out of the
chaotic world of singing. They examine all aspects of singing,
including nontechnical matters, such as auditioning, performance
anxiety, score preparation, practice performance tips, business
etiquette, and many other important topics for the advanced singer.
Voice Secrets provides singers with a quick and efficient path to
significant improvement, both technically and musically. It is the
perfect resource for advanced students of singing, professional
performers, music educators, and avid amateur musicians. The Music
Secrets for the Advanced Musician series is designed for
instrumentalists, singers, conductors, composers, and other
instructors and professionals seeking a quick set of pointers to
improve their work as performers and producers of music. Easy to
use and intended for the advanced musician, contributions to Music
Secrets fill a niche for those who have moved beyond what beginners
and intermediate practitioners need.
A History of the Handel Choir of Baltimore (1935-2013): Music,
Spread Thy Voice Around chronicles the history of one of America's
longstanding volunteer choral organizations, one that has followed
in the footsteps of venerable ensembles such as the Handel and
Haydn Society (Boston), the Bethlehem Bach Choir, and the Handel
Society of Dartmouth College. It begins by considering music in the
city of Baltimore, and establishing the reasons surrounding the
choir's formation. Substantial coverage is given to the influence
of Katharine M. Lucke, one of Baltimore's grandes dames-as a
composer, mover, and shaker-and a vital force in Baltimore's
National Music Week from her position on the faculty of the Peabody
Conservatory of Music. Subsequently the book focuses on the
contributions of each of the ten conductor/music directors, the
vicissitudes of funding a volunteer choir, the choir's
contributions to music education in the greater Baltimore
metropolitan area, and the choir's repertoire. The book contains
extensive appendices describing the choir's repertoire, its
presidents, and its unbroken string of Messiah performances.
Throughout more than seventy-five years, the Handel Choir of
Baltimore has remained true to its original charter as an amateur
choral organization that aspires to the highest standards of
artistic excellence. A History of the Handel Choir of Baltimore is
an invaluable resource to those interested in choral music studies,
the running of an amateur, volunteer choir, and other disciplines
of music studies.
This book offers an overview of issues related to the regulated,
formal organization of sound and speech in verse intended for
singing. Particularly, it is concerned with the structural
properties and underlying mechanisms involved in the association of
lyrics and music. While in spoken verse the underlying metrical
scheme is grounded in the prosody of the language in which it is
composed, in sung verse the structure is created by the mapping of
specific prosodic units of the text (syllables, moras, tones, etc.)
onto the rhythmic-melodic structure provided by the tune. Studying
how this mapping procedure takes place across different musical
genres and styles is valuable for what it can add to our knowledge
of language and music in general, and also for what it can teach us
about individual languages and poetic traditions. In terms of
empirical coverage, the collection includes a wide variety of
(Western) languages and metrical/musical forms, ranging from the
Latin hexameter to the Norwegian stev, from the French chant
courtois to the Sardinian mutetu longu. Readers interested in
formal analyses of vocal music, or in metrics and linguistics, will
find useful insights here.
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