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Books > Music > Western music, periods & styles

Ligeti's Laments: Nostalgia, Exoticism, and the Absolute (Paperback): Amy Bauer Ligeti's Laments: Nostalgia, Exoticism, and the Absolute (Paperback)
Amy Bauer
R1,526 Discovery Miles 15 260 Ships in 10 - 15 working days

When the Hungarian composer GyArgy Ligeti passed away in June 2006, he was widely feted as being one of the greatest composers of our time. His complete published works were recorded during his lifetime and his music continues to inspire a steady stream of performances and scholarship. Ligeti's Laments provides a critical analysis of the composer's works, considering both the compositions themselves and the larger cultural implications of their reception. Bauer both synthesizes and challenges the prevailing narratives surrounding the composer's long career and uses the theme of lament to inform a discussion of specific musical topics, including descending melodic motives, passacaglia and the influence of folk music. But Ligeti 'laments' in a larger sense; his music fuses rigour and sensuality, tradition and the new and influences from disparate high and low cultures, with a certain critical and ironic distance, reflected in his spoken commentary as well as in the substance of his music. The notions of nostalgia, exoticism and the absolute are used to relate works of different eras and genres, along with associated concepts of allegory, melancholy, contemporary subjectivity and the voice.

The Figure of Music in Nineteenth-Century British Poetry (Paperback): Phyllis Weliver The Figure of Music in Nineteenth-Century British Poetry (Paperback)
Phyllis Weliver
R1,174 R797 Discovery Miles 7 970 Save R377 (32%) Ships in 10 - 15 working days

How was music depicted in and mediated through Romantic and Victorian poetry? This is the central question that this specially commissioned volume of essays sets out to explore in order to understand better music's place and its significance in nineteenth-century British culture. Analysing how music took part in and commented on a wide range of scientific, literary, and cultural discourses, the book expands our knowledge of how music was central to the nineteenth-century imagination. Like its companion volume, The Idea of Music in Victorian Fiction (Ashgate, 2004) edited by Sophie Fuller and Nicky Losseff, this book provides a meeting place for literary studies and musicology, with contributions by scholars situated in each field. Areas investigated in these essays include the Romantic interest in national musical traditions; the figure of the Eolian harp in the poetry of Coleridge and Shelley; the recurring theme of music in Blake's verse; settings of Tennyson by Parry and Elgar that demonstrate how literary representations of musical ideas are refigured in music; George Eliot's use of music in her poetry to explore literary and philosophical themes; music in the verse of Christina and Dante Gabriel Rossetti; the personification of lyric (Sappho) in a song cycle by Granville and Helen Bantock; and music and sexual identity in the poetry of Wilde, Symons, Michael Field, Beardsley, Gray and Davidson.

Johann Joseph Fux and the Music of the Austro-Italian Baroque (Paperback): Harry White Johann Joseph Fux and the Music of the Austro-Italian Baroque (Paperback)
Harry White
R1,624 Discovery Miles 16 240 Ships in 10 - 15 working days

Johann Joseph Fux's reputation as a theorist and the long-term influence of his theoretical and pedagogical work have ensured that his name is widely known in music circles in the West. His pre-eminence as the foremost native-born composer of the Austrian Baroque has resulted in attention being focused on his work as an exemplum of virtually every genre, sacred or secular of Austro-Italian early eighteenth-century music. The publication of the Fux Gesamtausgabe has greatly enhanced the reputation of his music and the essays in this volume will develop our understanding of Fux, his music, and his place in musical history.

The Music of Peggy Glanville-Hicks (Paperback): Victoria Rogers The Music of Peggy Glanville-Hicks (Paperback)
Victoria Rogers
R1,610 Discovery Miles 16 100 Ships in 10 - 15 working days

Peggy Glanville-Hicks (1912-1990) is an Australian composer whose full significance has only recently been appreciated. Born in Melbourne, Australia, she transcended the gendered expectations of her upbringing and went on to become a fine composer and a highly influential figure in the vibrant musical life of New York after the Second World War. Following early composition studies with Fritz Hart in Melbourne, Glanville-Hicks moved to London where she studied with Ralph Vaughan Williams, then to Paris where she was taught by the great pedagogue, Nadia Boulanger. Her migration to the USA in 1941 shaped the musical direction of her late works. After a brief neoclassical phase, she joined the small group of American composers who were using non-Western musics as their inspirational well-spring, including Colin McPhee, Alan Hovhaness, Lou Harrison and Paul Bowles. During this period she also forged an illustrious career as a music journalist and arts administrator, working tirelessly to promote new music and the careers of young composers. In the late 1950s she retreated to Greece to write 'the big works', most notably the operas which lie at the heart of her creative output. Her compositional career ended prematurely, and tragically, in 1967 following surgery the previous year for a life-threatening brain tumour. Against all medical expectations she went on to live for a further 24 years, returning to Australia in 1975 amidst a dawning recognition that one of the country's most significant composers had returned. Glanville-Hicks's career as a composer is impressive by any measure. She produced over 70 finely-crafted works, including operas, ballets, concertos, instrumental chamber pieces, songs and choral works. The story of her life has been told in the biographies. This book traces the development of her musical language from the English pastoral style of the early works, through the neoclassicism of the middle period, to the melody-rhythm concept of the late works, at the same time locating her music within the broader context of twentieth-century art music and the problems of form, structure, content and direction that followed the breakdown of tonality at the beginning of the twentieth century.

Nadia and Lili Boulanger (Paperback): Caroline Potter Nadia and Lili Boulanger (Paperback)
Caroline Potter
R1,610 Discovery Miles 16 100 Ships in 10 - 15 working days

Pioneers in their fields and two of the best-known women in music in the twentieth century, Nadia and Lili Boulanger have previously been considered in isolation from one another. Yet, as Caroline Potter's new book demonstrates, their careers were closely linked during Lili Boulanger's short life (1893-1918) and there are several intriguing connections between their musical works. This biography also provides the first full analysis of the Boulanger sisters' musical styles, placing them within the context of French musical history. Their lives are also a case study in the issues of gender which surround music making even to the present day. Despite an unusually privileged upbringing, Nadia and Lili Boulanger exemplify the struggle women experienced when attempting to enter the professional music world. Lili became the first woman to win the Prix de Rome in 1913, and Nadia gained second place in 1908. Yet in spite of this initial success, Nadia Boulanger was to give up composing in her thirties and devoted the remainder of her long life to teaching. Her pupils included several of the great composers of the century, including Aaron Copland and Elliott Carter. This book, focusing on their musical careers, is essential reading for anyone interested in French music of the twentieth century.

Art as Music, Music as Poetry, Poetry as Art, from Whistler to Stravinsky and Beyond (Paperback): Peter Dayan Art as Music, Music as Poetry, Poetry as Art, from Whistler to Stravinsky and Beyond (Paperback)
Peter Dayan
R1,722 Discovery Miles 17 220 Ships in 10 - 15 working days

In 1877, Ruskin accused Whistler of 'flinging a pot of paint in the public's face'. Was he right? After all, Whistler always denied that the true function of art was to represent anything. If a painting does not represent, what is it, other than mere paint, flung in the public's face? Whistler's answer was simple: painting is music - or it is poetry. Georges Braque, half a century later, echoed Whistler's answer. So did Braque's friends Apollinaire and Ponge. They presented their poetry as music too - and as painting. But meanwhile, composers such as Satie and Stravinsky were presenting their own art - music - as if it transposed the values of painting or of poetry. The fundamental principle of this intermedial aesthetic, which bound together an extraordinary fraternity of artists in all media in Paris, from 1885 to 1945, was this: we must always think about the value of a work of art, not within the logic of its own medium, but as if it transposed the value of art in another medium. Peter Dayan traces the history of this principle: how it created our very notion of 'great art', why it declined as a vision from the 1960s and how, in the 21st century, it is fighting back.

Music and Orientalism in the British Empire, 1780s-1940s - Portrayal of the East (Paperback): Bennett Zon Music and Orientalism in the British Empire, 1780s-1940s - Portrayal of the East (Paperback)
Bennett Zon
R1,722 Discovery Miles 17 220 Ships in 10 - 15 working days

Filling a significant gap in current scholarship, the fourteen original essays that make up this volume individually and collectively reflect on the relationship between music and Orientalism in the British Empire over the course of the long nineteenth century. The book is in four themed sections. 'Portrayal of the East' traces the routes from encounter to representation and restores the Orient to its rightful place in histories of Orientalism. 'Interpreting Concert Music' looks at one of the principal forms in which Orientalism could be brought to an eager and largely receptive - yet sometimes resistant - mass market. 'Words and Music' investigates the confluence of musical and Orientalist themes in different genres of writing, including criticism, fiction and travel writing. Finally, 'The Orientalist Stage' discusses crucial sites of Orientalist representation - music theatre and opera - as well as tracing similar phenomena in twentieth-century Hindi cinema. These final chapters examine the rendering of the East as 'unachievable and unrecognizable' for the consuming gaze of the western spectator.

Nicholas Lanier - Master of the King's Musick (Paperback): Michael I. Wilson Nicholas Lanier - Master of the King's Musick (Paperback)
Michael I. Wilson
R1,734 Discovery Miles 17 340 Ships in 10 - 15 working days

Nicholas Lanier (1588-1666) was not only the first person to hold the office of Master of the Music to King Charles I, he was also a practising painter, a friend of Rubens, Van Dyck and many other artists of his time, and one of the very first great art collectors and connoisseurs. He is especially remembered for the part he played in acquiring, on behalf of Charles I, the famous collection of paintings belonging to the Gonzaga family of Mantua. Many of these paintings still form an important part of the Royal Collection today. In this book the different strands of Lanier's colourful life are for the first time drawn together and presented in a single compelling narrative.

A Soviet Credo: Shostakovich's Fourth Symphony (Paperback): Pauline Fairclough A Soviet Credo: Shostakovich's Fourth Symphony (Paperback)
Pauline Fairclough
R1,722 Discovery Miles 17 220 Ships in 10 - 15 working days

Composed in 1935-36 and intended to be his artistic 'credo', Shostakovich's Fourth Symphony was not performed publicly until 1961. Here, Dr Pauline Fairclough tackles head-on one of the most significant and least understood of Shostakovich's major works. She argues that the Fourth Symphony was radically different from its Soviet contemporaries in terms of its structure, dramaturgy, tone and even language, and therefore challenged the norms of Soviet symphonism at a crucial stage of its development. With the backing of prominent musicologists such as Ivan Sollertinsky, the composer could realistically have expected the premiere to have taken place, and may even have intended the symphony to be a model for a new kind of 'democratic' Soviet symphonism. Fairclough meticulously examines the score to inform a discussion of tonal and thematic processes, allusion, paraphrase and reference to musical types, or intonations. Such analysis is set deeply in the context of Soviet musical culture during the period 1932-36, involving Shostakovich's contemporaries Shebalin, Myaskovsky, Kabalevsky and Popov. A new method of analysis is also advanced here, where a range of Soviet and Western analytical methods are informed by the theoretical work of Shostakovich's contemporaries Viktor Shklovsky, Boris Tomashevsky, Mikhail Bakhtin and Ivan Sollertinsky, together with Theodor Adorno's late study of Mahler. In this way, the book will significantly increase an understanding of the symphony and its context.

Spiritual Dimensions in the Music of Edmund Rubbra (Hardcover): Lucinda Cradduck Spiritual Dimensions in the Music of Edmund Rubbra (Hardcover)
Lucinda Cradduck
R3,801 Discovery Miles 38 010 Ships in 10 - 15 working days

Edmund Rubbra's music has given him a reputation as a 'spiritual' composer, who had an interest in Eastern thought, and a mid-life conversion to Roman Catholicism. This book takes a wide and detailed view of 'spiritual' dimensions or strands that were important in his life, positioning them both biographically and within the context of contemporaneous English culture. It proceeds to interpret through detailed analysis the ways these spiritual aspects are reflected in specific compositions. Thematical treatment of these spiritual issues, touching on Theosophy, dance, Eastern religions and thought, nature, the evolutionary theory of Teilhard de Chardin and the Christ figure, presents a multi-faceted view of Rubbra's life and music. Its contribution to a scholarly re-evaluation of his place within twentieth-century British music and culture engages and meshes with several areas of current scholarly research in the arts and humanities, including academic interest in Theosophy, modernism and the arts, experimental dance and the Indian cultural renaissance and East-West musical interactions of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. It also adds to a burgeoning body of writings on music and spirituality, fuelled by the popularity of later twentieth-century and contemporary composers who make more overt spiritual references in their music.

Expanding the Canon - Black Composers in the Music Theory Classroom (Hardcover): Melissa Hoag Expanding the Canon - Black Composers in the Music Theory Classroom (Hardcover)
Melissa Hoag
R3,800 Discovery Miles 38 000 Ships in 10 - 15 working days

Provides examples that instructors can readily apply in their teaching, enabling deeper inclusion of Black composers in the music theory curriculum on a practical level This book includes discussion of a wide variety of genres, including: jazz and popular music (including R&B, funk, and pop), string quartets, piano pieces, concertos, symphonies, and art songs Addresses Black composers and musicians working in a wide range of musical styles, including classical and popular works

Hearing Form - Musical Analysis With and Without the Score (Hardcover, 3rd edition): Matthew Santa Hearing Form - Musical Analysis With and Without the Score (Hardcover, 3rd edition)
Matthew Santa
R3,797 Discovery Miles 37 970 Ships in 10 - 15 working days

- Emphasis on hearing musical forms is pedagogically effective and unique among form textbooks - Offers a complete course package, with workbook pages included in the Textbook, while the accompanying Anthology makes full scores of pieces covered in the book easily available - Offers clear and accessible explanations that are up to date with current scholarship

The Stylus Phantasticus and Free Keyboard Music of the North German Baroque (Paperback): Paul Collins The Stylus Phantasticus and Free Keyboard Music of the North German Baroque (Paperback)
Paul Collins
R1,610 Discovery Miles 16 100 Ships in 10 - 15 working days

The concept of stylus phantasticus (or 'fantastic style') as it was expressed in free keyboard music of the north German Baroque forms the focus of this book. Exploring both the theoretical background to the style and its application by composers and performers, Paul Collins surveys the development of Athanasius Kircher's original concept and its influence on music theorists such as Brossard, Janovka, Mattheson, and Walther. Turning specifically to fantasist composers of keyboard works, the book examines the keyboard toccatas of Merulo, Fresobaldi, Rossi and Froberger and their influence on north German organists Tunder, Weckmann, Reincken, Buxtehude, Bruhns, Lubeck, Bohm, and Leyding. The free keyboard music of this distinguished group highlights the intriguing relationship at this time between composition and performance, the concept of fantasy, and the understanding of originality and individuality in seventeenth-century culture.

The Baroque Clarinet and Chalumeau (Hardcover, 2nd Revised edition): Albert R Rice The Baroque Clarinet and Chalumeau (Hardcover, 2nd Revised edition)
Albert R Rice
R2,462 Discovery Miles 24 620 Ships in 10 - 15 working days

The first edition of Albert R. Rice's The Baroque Clarinet is widely considered the authoritative text on the European clarinet during the first half of the eighteenth century. Since its publication in 1992, its conclusions have influenced the approaches of musicologists, instrument historians, and clarinet performers. Twenty-eight years later, Rice has updated his renowned study in a second edition, with new chapters on chalumeau and clarinet music, insights on newly found instruments and additional material on the Baroque clarinet in society. Expanding the volume to include the chalumeau, close cousin and predecessor to the clarinet, Rice draws on nearly three decades of new research on the instrument's origins and music. Discoveries include two recently found chalumeaux in a private collection, one by Johann Heinrich Eichentopf of Leipzig, and attributions based on historical evidence for three more chalumeaux. Rice furthers the discussion to recently uncovered early instruments and historical scores, which shed light on the clarinet's evolution. Most essentially, Rice highlights the chalumeau's substantial late-seventeenth and early-eighteenth century repertory, comprising over 330 works by 66 composers, and includes a more expansive list of surviving Baroque clarinet works, organized by date, composer, and tonality/range. The Baroque Clarinet and Chalumeau provides a long-awaited follow-up to Rice's groundbreaking volume, drawing from a variety of sources-including German, Italian, Dutch, Swedish, Norwegian, Danish, Finnish, Flemish, Czech, and Catalan research-to bring this new information to an English-speaking audience. With his dedication to scholarly accuracy, Rice brings the Baroque clarinet into sharper focus than ever before.

Interpreting Chopin: Analysis and Performance (Paperback): Alison Hood Interpreting Chopin: Analysis and Performance (Paperback)
Alison Hood
R1,603 Discovery Miles 16 030 Ships in 10 - 15 working days

Music theory is often seen as independent from - even antithetical to - performance. While music theory is an intellectual enterprise, performance requires an intuitive response to the music. But this binary opposition is a false one, which serves neither the theorist nor the performer. In Interpreting Chopin Alison Hood brings her experience as a performer to bear on contemporary analytical models. She combines significant aspects of current analytical approaches and applies that unique synthetic method to selected works by Chopin, casting new light on the composer's preludes, nocturnes and barcarolle. An extension of Schenkerian analysis, the specific combination of five aspects distinguishes Hood's method from previous analytical approaches. These five methods are: attention to the rhythms created by pitch events on all structural levels; a detailed accounting of the musical surface; 'strict use' of analytical notation, following guidelines offered by Steve Larson; a continual concern with what have been called 'strategies' or 'premises'; and an exploration of how recorded performances might be viewed in terms of analytical decisions, or might even shape those decisions. Building on the work of such authors as William Rothstein, Carl Schachter and John Rink, Hood's approach to Chopin's oeuvre raises interpretive questions of central interest to performers.

Messiaen the Theologian (Paperback): Andrew Shenton Messiaen the Theologian (Paperback)
Andrew Shenton
R1,722 Discovery Miles 17 220 Ships in 10 - 15 working days

For Olivier Messiaen, music was a way of expressing his faith. He considered it his good fortune to have been born a Catholic and declared that 'the illumination of the theological truths of the Catholic faith is the first aspect of my work, the noblest and no doubt the most useful'. Messiaen is one of the most widely performed and recorded composers of the twentieth-century and his popularity is increasing, but the theological component of his music has so far largely been neglected, or dealt with superficially, and continues to provide a serious impediment to understanding and appreciating his music for some of his audience. Messiaen the Theologian makes a significant contribution to Messiaen studies by providing cultural and historical context to Messiaen's theology. An international array of Messiaen scholars cover a wide variety of topics including Messiaen's personal spirituality, the context of Catholicism in France in the twentieth century, and comparisons between Messiaen and other artists such as Dante and T.S. Eliot. Interdisciplinary methodologies such as exegesis, theological studies and analysis are used to contribute to the understanding of several major works including A0/00clairs sur l'au-delA!..., Sept HaA-kaA- and Saint FranAois d'Assise. By approaching Messiaen and his music from such important and original perspectives, this book will be of interest not only to musicians and theologians, but also to readers interested in the connection between spirituality and the arts.

Thomas Tomkins: The Last Elizabethan (Paperback): Anthony Boden Thomas Tomkins: The Last Elizabethan (Paperback)
Anthony Boden
R1,742 Discovery Miles 17 420 Ships in 10 - 15 working days

Thomas Tomkins (1572-1656), a major figure of the Golden Age of British music, was arguably the greatest of all Welsh-born composers. Living through one of the most revolutionary periods in British history, his professional life was spent in the service of the Crown and the Church at both the Chapel Royal and Worcester Cathedral. Surviving the Civil War, the suppression of the music of the English Church, the closure of the Chapel Royal, the destruction of his organ at Worcester and the devastation of the city, Tomkins was able to find the strength and inspiration to continue composing secular music of fine quality. Much of Tomkins's output has survived, including his collection of music for the Anglican rite, Musica Deo Sacra, published posthumously in 1668. His work embraced both sacred and secular vocal music, pieces for keyboard and for viol consort, thereby proving him to be one of the most versatile figures of English Renaissance music. The first part of the book provides an absorbing biography of Tomkins, setting his life into fascinating historical context. The second and third parts include major essays on Tomkins by Denis Stevens, Bernard Rose, Peter James and David Evans, all authorities on the music of the period with each providing perceptive insights into Tomkins's music. The result is a successful piece of collective work that properly places Tomkins and his achievements in his time and enables readers to reassess him properly in relation to his elders and contemporaries. Tomkins has still not reached the 'household name' status of his great teacher, William Byrd, or of his close friend and colleague, Orlando Gibbons, but he is undoubtedly worthy of much greater recognition. The book complements the increasing number of live performances and recordings of Tomkins's music, both sacred and secular, and such a comprehensive account of the man and his work should appeal to early music scholars, performers and music lovers alike.

Salons, Singers and Songs - A Background to Romantic French Song 1830-1870 (Paperback): David Tunley Salons, Singers and Songs - A Background to Romantic French Song 1830-1870 (Paperback)
David Tunley
R1,610 Discovery Miles 16 100 Ships in 10 - 15 working days

Music! It is the great pleasure of this city, the great occupation of the drawing-rooms, which have banished politics, and which have renounced literature, from ennui. Jules Janin, An American in Paris, 1843 Afternoon and evening entertainments in the drawing rooms of the aristocracy and upper middle classes were a staple of cultural life in nineteenth-century Paris. Music was often a feature of these occasions and private salons provided important opportunities for musicians, especially singers, to develop their careers. Such recitals included excerpts from favourite operas, but also the more traditional forms of French song, the romance and its successor the melodie. Drawing on extensive research into the musical press of the period, David Tunley paints a vivid portrait of the nineteenth-century Parisien salons and the performers who sang in them. Against this colourful backdrop, he discusses the development of French romantic song, with its hallmarks of simplicity and clarity of diction. Combined with Italian influences and the impression made by Schubert's songs, the French romance developed into a form with greater complexity - the melodie. Salons, Singers and Songs describes this transformation and the seeds it sowed for music by later composers such as Faure, Duparc and Debussy.

Schubert's Lieder and the Philosophy of Early German Romanticism (Paperback): Lisa Feurzeig Schubert's Lieder and the Philosophy of Early German Romanticism (Paperback)
Lisa Feurzeig
R1,713 Discovery Miles 17 130 Ships in 10 - 15 working days

This study of Franz Schubert's settings of poetry by Friedrich Schlegel and Novalis introduces the fascinating world of early German Romanticism in the 1790s, when an energetic group of bold young thinkers radically changed the landscape of European thought. Schubert's encounters with early Romantic poetry some twenty years later reanimated some of the movement's central ideas. Schubert set eleven texts from Schlegel's AbendrAte poetic cycle and six poems drawn from Novalis' religious and erotic poetry. Through detailed analyses of how various musical structures in these songs mirror and sometimes even explicate the central ideas of the poems, this book argues that Schubert was an abstract thinker who used his medium of music to diagram the complex ideas of a highly intellectual movement. A comparison is made to the hermeneutic theory of that time, primarily that of Schleiermacher, who was himself linked to the early Romantics. Through exploration of ideas such as Schlegel's representation of the necessary interdependence of part and whole and Novalis' strong association of religious and erotic experience, along with their musical representations by Schubert, this book opens an intriguing world of thought for modern readers. At the same time, Feurzeig explores some of Schubert's little-known songs, which range from quirky to charming to exquisite.

Vaughan Williams Essays (Paperback): Robin Wells Vaughan Williams Essays (Paperback)
Robin Wells
R1,610 Discovery Miles 16 100 Ships in 10 - 15 working days

Serious scholarship on the music of Ralph Vaughan Williams is currently enjoying a lively revival after a period of relative quiescence, and is only beginning to address the enduring affection of concert audiences for his music. The essays that comprise this volume extend the study of Vaughan Williams's music in new directions that will be of interest to scholars, performers and listeners alike. This volume contains the work of eleven North American scholars who have been recipients of the Ralph Vaughan Williams Fellowship based at the composer's own school, Charterhouse, which was created and has been supported by the Carthusian Trust since 1985. This wide-ranging and detailed collection of essays covers the spectrum of genres in which Vaughan Williams wrote, including dance, symphony, opera, song, hymnody and film music. The contributors also employ a range of analytical and historical methods of investigation to illuminate aspects of Vaughan Williams's compositional techniques and influences, musical, literary and visual.

Tchaikovsky's Pathetique and Russian Culture (Paperback): Marina Ritzarev Tchaikovsky's Pathetique and Russian Culture (Paperback)
Marina Ritzarev
R1,722 Discovery Miles 17 220 Ships in 10 - 15 working days

TchaikovskyE1/4s Sixth Symphony (1893), widely recognized as one of the worldE1/4s most deeply tragic compositions, is also known for the mystery surrounding its hidden programme and for TchaikovskyE1/4s unexpected death nine days after its premiere. While the sensational speculations about the composerE1/4s possible planned suicide and the suggestion that the symphony was intended as his own requiem have long been discarded, the question of its programme remains.

Metrical Psalmody in Print and Practice - English 'Singing Psalms' and Scottish 'Psalm Buiks', c. 1547-1640... Metrical Psalmody in Print and Practice - English 'Singing Psalms' and Scottish 'Psalm Buiks', c. 1547-1640 (Paperback)
Timothy Duguid
R1,733 Discovery Miles 17 330 Ships in 10 - 15 working days

During the Reformation, the Book of Psalms became one of the most well-known books of the Bible. This was particularly true in Britain, where people of all ages, social classes and educational abilities memorized and sang poetic versifications of the psalms. Those written by Thomas Sternhold and John Hopkins became the most popular, and the simple tunes developed and used by English and Scottish churches to accompany these texts were carried by soldiers, sailors and colonists throughout the English-speaking world. Among these tunes were a number that are still used today, including 'Old Hundredth', 'Martyrs', and 'French'. This book is the first to consider both English and Scottish metrical psalmody, comparing the two traditions in print and practice. It combines theological literary and musical analysis to reveal new and ground-breaking connections between the psalm texts and their tunes, which it traces in the English and Scottish psalters printed through 1640. Using this new analysis in combination with a more thorough evaluation of extant church records, Duguid contends that Britain developed and maintained two distinct psalm cultures, one in England and the other in Scotland.

Beethoven - Anguish and Triumph (Paperback, Main): Jan Swafford Beethoven - Anguish and Triumph (Paperback, Main)
Jan Swafford 1
R892 R762 Discovery Miles 7 620 Save R130 (15%) Ships in 9 - 17 working days

Jan Swafford's biographies of composers Charles Ives and Johannes Brahms have established him as a revered music historian, capable of bringing his subjects vibrantly to life. His magnificent new biography of Ludwig van Beethoven peels away layers of legend to get to the living, breathing human being who composed some of the world's most iconic music. Swafford mines sources never before used in English-language biographies to reanimate the revolutionary ferment of Enlightenment-era Bonn, where Beethoven grew up and imbibed the ideas that would shape all of his future work. Swafford then tracks his subject to Vienna, capital of European music, where Beethoven built his career in the face of critical incomprehension, crippling ill health, romantic rejection, and 'fate's hammer', his ever-encroaching deafness. At the time of his death he was so widely celebrated that over ten thousand people attended his funeral. This book is a biography of Beethoven the man and musician, not the myth, and throughout, Swafford - himself a composer - offers insightful readings of Beethoven's key works. More than a decade in the making, this will be the standard Beethoven biography for years to come.

British Women Composers and Instrumental Chamber Music in the Early Twentieth Century (Paperback): Laura Seddon British Women Composers and Instrumental Chamber Music in the Early Twentieth Century (Paperback)
Laura Seddon
R1,722 Discovery Miles 17 220 Ships in 10 - 15 working days

This is the first full-length study of British women's instrumental chamber music in the early twentieth century. Laura Seddon argues that the Cobbett competitions, instigated by Walter Willson Cobbett in 1905, and the formation of the Society of Women Musicians in 1911 contributed to the explosion of instrumental music written by women in this period and highlighted women's place in British musical society in the years leading up to and during the First World War. Seddon investigates the relationship between Cobbett, the Society of Women Musicians and women composers themselves. The book's six case studies - of Adela Maddison (1866-1929), Ethel Smyth (1858-1944), Morfydd Owen (1891-1918), Ethel Barns (1880-1948), Alice Verne-Bredt (1868-1958) and Susan Spain-Dunk (1880-1962) - offer valuable insight into the women's musical education and compositional careers. Seddon's discussion of their chamber works for differing instrumental combinations includes an exploration of formal procedures, an issue much discussed by contemporary sources. The individual composers' reactions to the debate instigated by the Society of Women Musicians, on the future of women's music, is considered in relation to their lives, careers and the chamber music itself. As the composers in this study were not a cohesive group, creatively or ideologically, the book draws on primary sources, as well as the writings of contemporary commentators, to assess the legacy of the chamber works produced.

The Performance of Italian Basso Continuo - Style in Keyboard Accompaniment in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries... The Performance of Italian Basso Continuo - Style in Keyboard Accompaniment in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries (Paperback)
Giulia Nuti
R1,610 Discovery Miles 16 100 Ships in 10 - 15 working days

Basso continuo accompaniment calls upon a complex tapestry of harmonic, rhythmic, compositional, analytical and improvisational skills. The evolving knowledge that underpinned the performance of basso continuo was built up and transmitted from the late 1500s to the second half of the eighteenth century, when changes in instruments together with the assertion of control by composers over their works brought about its demise. By tracing the development of basso continuo over time and across the regions of Italy where differing practices emerged, Giulia Nuti accesses this body of musical usage. Sources include the music itself, introductions and specific instructions and requirements in song books and operas, contemporary accounts of performances and, in the later period of basso continuo, description and instruction offered in theoretical treatises. Changes in instruments and instrumental usage and the resulting sounds available to composers and performers are considered, as well as the altering relationship between the improvising continuo player and the composer. Extensive documentation from both manuscript and printed sources, some very rare and others better known, in the original language, followed by a precise English translation, is offered in support of the arguments. There are also many musical examples, transcribed and in facsimile. Giulia Nuti provides both a scholarly account of the history of basso continuo and a performance-driven interpretation of how this music might be played.

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