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Books > Music > Western music, periods & styles

Shelley and the Musico-Poetics of Romanticism (Paperback): Jessica K Quillin Shelley and the Musico-Poetics of Romanticism (Paperback)
Jessica K Quillin
R1,645 Discovery Miles 16 450 Ships in 12 - 17 working days

Addressing a gap in Shelley studies, Jessica K. Quillin explores the poet's lifelong interest in music. Quillin connects the trope of music with Shelley's larger formal aesthetic, political, and philosophical concerns, showing that music offers a new critical lens through which to view such familiar Shelleyan concerns as the status of the poetic, figural language, and the philosophical problem posed by idealism versus skepticism. Quillin's book uncovers the implications of Shelley's use of music by means of four musico-poetic concerns: the inherently interdisciplinary nature of musical imagery and figurative language; the rhythmic and sonoric dimensions of poetry; the extension of poetry into the performative realms of the theatre and drawing room through close links between most poetic genres and music; and the transformation of poetry into music through the setting and adaptation of poetic lyrics to music. Ultimately, Quillin argues, Shelley exhibits a fundamental recognition of an interdependence between music and poetry which is expressed in the form and content of his highly sonorous works. Equating music with love allows him to create a radical model in which poetry is the highest form of imaginative expression, one that can affect the mind and the senses at once and potentially bring about the perfectibility of mankind through a unique mode of visionary experience.

Operatic Migrations - Transforming Works and Crossing Boundaries (Paperback): Downing A. Thomas Operatic Migrations - Transforming Works and Crossing Boundaries (Paperback)
Downing A. Thomas
R1,562 Discovery Miles 15 620 Ships in 12 - 17 working days

This volume takes an interdisciplinary approach to studying a wide range of subjects associated with the creation, performance and reception of 'opera' in varying social and historical contexts from the eighteenth to the twentieth centuries. Each essay addresses migrations between genres, cultures, literary and musical works, modes of expression, media of presentation and aesthetics. Although the directions the contributions take are diverse, they converge in significant ways, particularly with the rebuttal of the notion of the singular nature of the operatic work. The volume strongly asserts that works are meaningfully transformed by the manifold circumstances of their creation and reception, and that these circumstances have an impact on the life of those works in their many transformations and on a given audience's experience of them. Topics covered include transformations of literary sources and their migration into the operatic genre; works that move across geographical and social boundaries into different cultural contexts; movements between media and/or genre as well as alterations through interpretation and performance of the composer's creation; the translation of spoken theatre to lyric theatre; the theoretical issues contingent on the rendering of 'speech' into 'song'; and the transforming effects of aesthetic considerations as they bear on opera. Crossing over disciplinary boundaries between music, literary studies, history, cultural studies and art history, the volume enriches our knowledge and understanding of the operatic experience and the works. The book will therefore appeal to those working in the field of music, literary and cultural studies, and to those with a particular interest in opera and musical theatre.

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
R1,577 Discovery Miles 15 770 Ships in 12 - 17 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.

Mendelssohn Perspectives (Paperback): Angela Mace, Nicole Grimes Mendelssohn Perspectives (Paperback)
Angela Mace, Nicole Grimes
R1,562 Discovery Miles 15 620 Ships in 12 - 17 working days

If the invective of Nietzsche and Shaw is to be taken as an endorsement of the lasting quality of an artist, then Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy takes pride of place beside Tennyson and Brahms in the canon of great nineteenth-century artists. Mendelssohn Perspectives presents valuable new insights into Mendelssohn's music, biography and reception. Critically engaging a wide range of source materials, the volume combines traditional musical-analytical studies with those that draw on other humanistic disciplines to shed new light on the composer's life, and on his contemporary and posthumous reputations. Together, these essays bring new historical and interpretive dimensions to Mendelssohn studies. The volume offers essays on Mendelssohn's Jewishness, his vast correspondence, his music for the stage, and his relationship with music of the past and future, as well as the compositional process and handling of form in the music of both Mendelssohn and his sister, the composer Fanny Hensel. German literature and aesthetics, gender and race, philosophy and science, and issues of historicism all come to bear on these new perspectives on Mendelssohn.

The Music of David Lumsdaine - Kelly Ground to Cambewarra (Paperback): Michael Hooper The Music of David Lumsdaine - Kelly Ground to Cambewarra (Paperback)
Michael Hooper
R1,562 Discovery Miles 15 620 Ships in 12 - 17 working days

Australian by birth but a longtime resident of Great Britain, David Lumsdaine (b.1931) is central to both Australian and British modernism. During the early 1970s Australian musical modernism was at its height. Lumsdaine and his Australian contemporaries were engaged with practices from multiple places, producing music that displays the attributes of their disparate influences; in so doing they formed a new conception of what it meant to be an Australian composer. The period is similarly important in Britain, for it saw the rise to prominence of composers such as Birtwistle, Davies, Goehr, Gilbert, Wood, Cardew and many others who were Lumsdaine's contemporaries, colleagues and friends. Hooper presents here a series of analyses of Lumsdaine's compositions, focusing on works written between 1966 and 1980. At the early end of this period is Kelly Ground, for solo piano. One of Lumsdaine's first acknowledged works, Kelly Ground connects explicitly with the music of high modernism, employing ideas about temporality as espoused by Ligeti, Stockhausen and Boulez, to form a new ritual for the (now mythical) Australian outlaw Ned Kelly. Hooper places Lumsdaine's music in the context of Australian and British avant-gardes, and reveals its elegance, lyricism and technical virtuosity.

The Life and Twelve-Note Music of Nikos Skalkottas (Paperback): Eva Mantzourani The Life and Twelve-Note Music of Nikos Skalkottas (Paperback)
Eva Mantzourani
R1,562 Discovery Miles 15 620 Ships in 12 - 17 working days

Nikos Skalkottas is perhaps the last great 'undiscovered' composer of the twentieth century. In the 1920s he was a promising young violinist and composer in Berlin, and a student of Schoenberg, who included him among his most gifted pupils. It was only after his return to Greece in 1933 that Skalkottas became an anonymous and obscure figure, working in complete isolation until his death in 1949. Most of his works remained unpublished and unperformed during his lifetime, and although he is largely known for his folkloristic tonal pieces, Skalkottas in fact concentrated predominantly on developing an idiosyncratic dodecaphonic musical language. Eva Mantzourani provides here a comprehensive study of this fascinating yet under-researched composer. The book, lavishly illustrated with musical examples, is divided into three parts. Part I comprises a critical biography that, by drawing extensively on his letters and other writings, reappraises the image of Skalkottas with which we are often presented. The main focus of the book, however, is on Skalkottas's twelve-note compositional processes, since these characterize the majority of his output, and are neither well-known nor fully understood. Part II presents the structural and technical features of his twelve-note technique, particularly the different types of sets and their manipulation, and his approach to musical forms. Part III consists of analytical case studies of several works, presented chronologically, which thus provide a diachronic framework within which Skalkottas's dodecaphonic compositional development can be more effectively viewed. This book underlines Nikos Skalkottas's importance as a composer with a distinctive artistic personality, whose work contributed to the development of twelve-note compositional practice, and who deserves a more significant position within the Western art music canon than that to which he is often assigned.

The Sounds and Sights of Performance in Early Music - Essays in Honour of Timothy J. McGee (Paperback): Brian E. Power The Sounds and Sights of Performance in Early Music - Essays in Honour of Timothy J. McGee (Paperback)
Brian E. Power
R1,562 Discovery Miles 15 620 Ships in 12 - 17 working days

The experience of music performance is always far more than the sum of its sounds, and evidence for playing and singing techniques is not only inscribed in music notation but can also be found in many other types of primary source materials. This volume of essays presents a cross-section of new research on performance issues in music of the Middle Ages and Renaissance. The subject is approached from a broad perspective, drawing on areas such as dance history, art history, music iconography and performance traditions from beyond Western Europe. In doing so, the volume continues some of the many lines of inquiry pursued by its dedicatee, Timothy J. McGee, over a lifetime of scholarship devoted to practical questions of playing and singing early music. Expanding the bases of inquiry to include various social, political, historical or aesthetic backgrounds both broadens our knowledge of the issues pertinent to early music performance and informs our understanding of other cultural activities within which music played an important role. The book is divided into two parts: 'Viewing the Evidence' in which visually based information is used to address particular questions of music performance; and 'Reconsidering Contexts' in which diplomatic, commercial and cultural connections to specific repertories or compositions are considered in detail. This book will be of value not only to specialists in early music but to all scholars of the Middle Ages and Renaissance whose interests intersect with the visual, aural and social aspects of music performance.

Charles Halle: A Musical Life (Paperback): Robert Beale Charles Halle: A Musical Life (Paperback)
Robert Beale
R1,562 Discovery Miles 15 620 Ships in 12 - 17 working days

Charles Halle was one of the leading musicians of the nineteenth century and intimate with almost all of the great composers and performers of his time, as well as a friend of the Royal Family and known as much as a pianist and chamber musician as a conductor, in London, throughout the country and abroad, in addition to Manchester. Robert Beale presents a new perspective on Halle's life and achievement, constructed mainly from primary sources, which serves to dispel many of the inaccuracies and omissions that have stemmed, to a great extent, from Halle's own autobiographical account of 1896. His edited memoirs omit much of the competition and controversy, struggles and disappointments of his career in Manchester, and, indeed, hardly convey the scope of his activities elsewhere. Halle was a key figure in the shift from contemporary to 'classical' repertory in orchestral concerts and piano performance. Not only did he found the Manchester orchestra, in 1862-3 he also gave the first known cycle of Beethoven's piano sonatas. His early annual 'recital' series in London marked a new era in the musical history of his time. The formation of the modern 'symphony orchestra' took place during the period of Halle's professional life, and he was a pioneer in the process, in both artistic and business terms. Having adopted the role of orchestral conductor when it was itself relatively novel, he became one of the acknowledged masters of the craft over four and half decades - as well as continuing to appear as solo pianist and chamber musician, and in addition he was enormously influential as musical pedagogue and educationist.

The Music of Peggy Glanville-Hicks (Paperback): Victoria Rogers The Music of Peggy Glanville-Hicks (Paperback)
Victoria Rogers
R1,562 Discovery Miles 15 620 Ships in 12 - 17 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.

Edvard Grieg - The Choral Music (Paperback): Beryl Foster Edvard Grieg - The Choral Music (Paperback)
Beryl Foster
R1,562 Discovery Miles 15 620 Ships in 12 - 17 working days

Edvard Grieg's choral music has remained little known outside Scandinavia. One of the chief aims of this book is to bring this body of work to the notice of a wider audience, in the hope that it may receive greater prominence in concert programmes. Choral pieces form a relatively small proportion of Grieg's total output, although works such as the Album for Male Voices and the Four Psalms represent significant developments in his compositional career. In this study Beryl Foster not only provides an in-depth examination of this music, but also presents a picture of Norwegian musical life in the second half of the nineteenth century. An overview of Norway's choral tradition from the Middle Ages provides the historical context from which Grieg came to the genre. Subsequent chapters discuss in detail the types of choral works that he wrote, such as occasional and commemorative pieces, dramatic works and solo song arrangements. A set of useful appendices, including a chronological list of works and a discography complete this original survey.

Orientalism and Representations of Music in the Nineteenth-Century British Popular Arts (Paperback): Claire Mabilat Orientalism and Representations of Music in the Nineteenth-Century British Popular Arts (Paperback)
Claire Mabilat
R1,562 Discovery Miles 15 620 Ships in 12 - 17 working days

Representations of music were employed to create a wider 'Orient' on the pages, stages and walls of nineteenth-century Britain. This book explores issues of orientalism, otherness, gender and sexuality that arise in artistic British representations of non-European musicians during this time, by utilizing recent theories of orientalism, and the subsidiary (particularly aesthetic and literary) theories both on which these theories were based and on which they have been influential. The author uses this theoretical framework of orientalism as a form of othering in order to analyse primary source materials, and in conjunction with musicological, literary and art theories, thus explores ways in which ideas of the Other were transformed over time and between different genres and artists. Part I, The Musical Stage, discusses elements of the libretti of popular musical stage works in this period, and the occasionally contradictory ways in which 'racial' Others was represented through text and music; a particular focus is the depiction of 'Oriental' women and ideas of sexuality. Through examination of this collection of libretti, the ways in which the writers of these works filter and romanticize the changing intellectual ideas of this era are explored. Part II, Works of Fiction, is a close study of the works of Sir Henry Rider Haggard, using other examples of popular fiction by his contemporary writers as contextualizing material, with the primary concern being to investigate how music is utilized in popular fiction to represent Other non-Europeans and in the creation of orientalized gender constructions. Part III, Visual Culture, is an analysis of images of music and the 'Orient' in examples of British 'high art', illustration and photography, investigating how the musical Other was visualized.

Music and the Middle Class - The Social Structure of Concert Life in London, Paris and Vienna between 1830 and 1848... Music and the Middle Class - The Social Structure of Concert Life in London, Paris and Vienna between 1830 and 1848 (Paperback)
William Weber
R1,711 Discovery Miles 17 110 Ships in 12 - 17 working days

First published in 1975, Music and the Middle Class made a trail-blazing contribution to the social history of music, bringing together sociological and historical methods that have subsequently become accepted as central to the discipline of musicology. Moreover, the major themes of the book are ones which scholars today continue to grapple with: the nature of the middle class(es) and their role in cultural definition; the concept of taste publics distinct from social status; and the establishment of the musical canon. This classic text is reissued here in Ashgate's Music in Nineteenth-Century Britain series, though of course the book ranges beyond its study of London to discuss in detail the contrasting concert life of Paris and Vienna. This edition features a substantial new preface which takes into account the significant work that has been done in this field since the book first appeared, and provides a unique opportunity to assess the impact the book has had on our thinking about the European middle class and its role in musical life.

Tchaikovsky's Pathetique and Russian Culture (Paperback): Marina Ritzarev Tchaikovsky's Pathetique and Russian Culture (Paperback)
Marina Ritzarev
R1,652 Discovery Miles 16 520 Ships in 12 - 17 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.

There's a Place For Us: The Musical Theatre Works of Leonard Bernstein (Paperback): Helen Smith There's a Place For Us: The Musical Theatre Works of Leonard Bernstein (Paperback)
Helen Smith
R1,652 Discovery Miles 16 520 Ships in 12 - 17 working days

Leonard Bernstein was the quintessential American musician. Through his careers as conductor, pianist, teacher and television personality he became known across the US and the world, his flamboyance and theatricality making him a favourite with audiences, if not with critics. However, he is perhaps best remembered as a composer, particularly of the musical West Side Story, and for songs such as 'America', 'Tonight' and 'Somewhere'. Dr Helen Smith takes an in-depth look at all eight of Bernstein's musical theatre works, from the early On the Town written by the 26-year-old composer at the start of his career, to his second and last opera A Quiet Place in 1983; in between these two pieces he composed music for Trouble in Tahiti, Wonderful Town, Candide, West Side Story, Mass and 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. These works are analysed and considered against a background of musical and social context, as well as looking at Bernstein's other orchestral, choral and chamber works. One important aspect examined is Bernstein's use of motifs in his theatre compositions, which takes them out of the realms of Broadway and into the sphere of symphonic writing. Smith provides an indispensable overview of the musical theatre works of an eclectic composer, and shows what it is that constitutes the Bernstein 'sound'.

Warrior, Courtier, Singer - Giulio Cesare Brancaccio and the Performance of Identity in the Late Renaissance (Paperback):... Warrior, Courtier, Singer - Giulio Cesare Brancaccio and the Performance of Identity in the Late Renaissance (Paperback)
Richard Wistreich
R1,576 Discovery Miles 15 760 Ships in 12 - 17 working days

Giulio Cesare Brancaccio was a Neapolitan nobleman with long practical experience of military life, first in the service of Charles V and later as both soldier and courtier in France and then at the court of Alfonso II d'Este at Ferrara. He was also a virtuoso bass singer whose performances were praised by both Tasso and Guarini - he was even for a while the only male member of the famous Ferrarese court Concerto delle dame, who established a legendary reputation during the 1580s. Richard Wistreich examines Brancaccio's life in detail and from this it becomes possible to consider the mental and social world of a warrior and courtier with musical skills in a broader context. A wide-ranging study of bass singing in sixteenth- and early seventeenth-century Italy provides a contextual basis from which to consider Brancaccio's reputation as a performer. Wistreich illustrates the use of music in the process of 'self-fashioning' and the role of performance of all kinds in the construction of male noble identity within court culture, including the nature and currency of honour, chivalric virtA(1) and sixteenth-century notions of gender and virility in relation to musical performance. This fascinating examination of Brancaccio's social world significantly expands our understanding of noble culture in both France and Italy during the sixteenth century, and the place of music-making within it.

Music of the Soviet Era: 1917-1991 (Hardcover, 2nd edition): Levon Hakobian Music of the Soviet Era: 1917-1991 (Hardcover, 2nd edition)
Levon Hakobian
R5,364 Discovery Miles 53 640 Ships in 12 - 17 working days

This volume is a comprehensive and detailed survey of music and musical life of the entire Soviet era, from 1917 to 1991, which takes into account the extensive body of scholarly literature in Russian and other major European languages. In this considerably updated and revised edition of his 1998 publication, Hakobian traces the strikingly dramatic development of the music created by outstanding and less well-known, 'modernist' and 'conservative', 'nationalist' and 'cosmopolitan' composers of the Soviet era. The book's three parts explore, respectively, the musical trends of the 1920s, music and musical life under Stalin, and the so-called 'Bronze Age' of Soviet music after Stalin's death. Music of the Soviet Era: 1917-1991 considers the privileged position of music in the USSR in comparison to the written and visual arts. Through his examination of the history of the arts in the Soviet state, Hakobian's work celebrates the human spirit's wonderful capacity to derive advantage even from the most inauspicious conditions.

The Australian Symphony from Federation to 1960 (Paperback): Rhoderick Mcneill The Australian Symphony from Federation to 1960 (Paperback)
Rhoderick Mcneill
R1,562 Discovery Miles 15 620 Ships in 12 - 17 working days

The symphony retained its primacy as the most prestigious large-scale orchestral form throughout the first half of the twentieth century, particularly in Britain, Russia and the United States. Likewise, Australian composers produced a steady stream of symphonies throughout the period from Federation (1901) through to the end of the 1950s. Stylistically, these works ranged from essays in late nineteenth-century romanticism, twentieth-century nationalism, neo-classicism and near-atonality. Australian symphonies were most prolific during the 1950s, with 36 local entries in the 1951 Commonwealth Jubilee Symphony competition. This extensive repertoire was overshadowed by the emergence of a new generation of composers and critics during the 1960s who tended to regard older Australian music as old-fashioned and derivative. The Australian Symphony from Federation to 1960 is the first study of this neglected genre and has four aims: firstly, to show the development of symphonic composition in Australia from Federation to 1960; secondly, to highlight the achievement of the main composers who wrote symphonies; thirdly, to advocate the restoration and revival of this repertory; and, lastly, to take a step towards a recasting of the narrative of Australian concert music from Federation to the present. In particular, symphonies by Marshall-Hall, Hart, Bainton, Hughes, Le Gallienne and Morgan emerge as works of particular note.

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
R1,592 Discovery Miles 15 920 Ships in 12 - 17 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.

Twentieth-Century Music and Politics - Essays in Memory of Neil Edmunds (Paperback): Pauline Fairclough Twentieth-Century Music and Politics - Essays in Memory of Neil Edmunds (Paperback)
Pauline Fairclough
R1,572 Discovery Miles 15 720 Ships in 12 - 17 working days

When considering the role music played in the major totalitarian regimes of the century it is music's usefulness as propaganda that leaps first to mind. But as a number of the chapters in this volume demonstrate, there is a complex relationship both between art music and politicised mass culture, and between entertainment and propaganda. Nationality, self/other, power and ideology are the dominant themes of this book, whilst key topics include: music in totalitarian regimes; music as propaganda; music and national identity; emigre communities and composers; music's role in shaping identities of 'self' and 'other' and music as both resistance to and instrument of oppression. Taking the contributions together it becomes clear that shared experiences such as war, dictatorship, colonialism, exile and emigration produced different, yet clearly inter-related musical consequences.

Heinrich Scheidemann's Keyboard Music - Transmission, Style and Chronology (Paperback): Pieter Dirksen Heinrich Scheidemann's Keyboard Music - Transmission, Style and Chronology (Paperback)
Pieter Dirksen
R1,562 Discovery Miles 15 620 Ships in 9 - 15 working days

One of the most remarkable tales of recent resurrections in the field of early keyboard music concerns the music of Heinrich Scheidemann (c. 1595-1663). Long considered a minor master overshadowed by such figures as his teacher Jan Pieterszoon Sweelinck or his fellow student Samuel Scheidt, a number of major source discoveries made in the second half of the twentieth century - the most important one being the discovery of the Zellerfield tablatures - have gradually raised his stature towards what it should now be, namely that of the paramount figure in North German organ music of the first half of the seventeenth century, equalled only by Buxtehude in the second half. Pieter Dirksen, one of the leading scholars on early German keyboard music, shows how Scheidemann was a central personality in the rich musical life of Hamburg and stood on friendly terms with colleagues such as Jacob and Johannes Praetorius, Ulrich Cernitz, Thomas Selle, Johann Schop and Johann Rist. The sources for Scheidemann are for the most part contemporary and stem from all periods of his career, and beyond that until one or two decades after his death. His keyboard music was never published in his lifetime but circulated widely within professional circles. Dirksen considers the transmission of Scheidemann's music as a whole in Part One, where each source is analyzed individually, and the repertoire itself is examined in Part Two. A number of specialized studies, including a detailed investigation into the background of one of the sources as well as adressing questions of organology (an account of the famous Catharinen organ as it was during Scheidemann's era) and performance practice (a study of the fingering indications and observations on registration practice) form Part Three. A wealth of appendices also detail a relative chronology of the music; a geographic overview of the transmission and two hitherto unpublished, fragmentarily transmitted Scheidemann pieces. The book will therefore a

Music in Seventeenth-Century Naples - Francesco Provenzale (1624-1704) (Paperback): Dinko Fabris Music in Seventeenth-Century Naples - Francesco Provenzale (1624-1704) (Paperback)
Dinko Fabris
R1,725 Discovery Miles 17 250 Ships in 12 - 17 working days

The most important figure of seventeenth-century Neapolitan music, Francesco Provenzale (1624-1704) spent his long life in the service of a number of Neapolitan conservatories and churches, culminating in his appointment as maestro of the Tesoro di S. Gennaro and the Real Cappella. Provenzale was successful in generating significant profit from a range of musical activities promoted by him with the participation of his pupils and trusted collaborators. Dinko Fabris draws on newly discovered archival documents to reconstruct the career of a musician who became the leader of his musical world, despite his relatively small musical output. The book examines Provenzale's surviving works alongside those of his most important Neapolitan contemporaries (Raimo Di Bartolo, Sabino, Salvatore and Caresana) and pupils (Fago, Greco, Veneziano and many others), revealing both stylistic similarities and differences, particularly in terms of new harmonic practices and the use of Neapolitan language in opera. Fabris provides both a life and works study of Provenzale and a conspectus of Neapolitan musical life of the seventeenth century which so clearly laid the groundwork for Naples' later status as one of the great musical capitals of Europe.

Representations of the Orient in Western Music - Violence and Sensuality (Paperback): Nasser Al-Taee Representations of the Orient in Western Music - Violence and Sensuality (Paperback)
Nasser Al-Taee
R1,652 Discovery Miles 16 520 Ships in 12 - 17 working days

This book focuses on the cultural, political and religious representations of the Orient in Western music. Dr Nasser Al-Taee traces several threads in a vast repertoire of musical representations, concentrating primarily on the images of violence and sensuality. Al-Taee argues that these prevailing traits are not only the residual manifestation of the Ottoman threat to Western Europe, but also the continuation of a long and complex history of fear and fascination towards the Orient and its Islamic religion. In addition to analyses of musical works, Al-Taee draws on travel accounts, paintings, biographies, and political events to engage with important issues such as gender, race, and religious differences that may have contributed to the variously complex images of the Orient in Western music. The study extends the range of Orientalism to cover eighteenth-century Austria, nineteenth-century Russia, and twentieth-century America. The book challenges those scholars who do not see Orientalism as problematic and tend to ignore the role of musical representations in shaping the image of the Other within a wider interdisciplinary study of knowledge and power.

Schubert's Goethe Settings (Paperback): Lorraine Byrne Bodley Schubert's Goethe Settings (Paperback)
Lorraine Byrne Bodley
R1,723 Discovery Miles 17 230 Ships in 12 - 17 working days

The traditional approach to the study of Goethe and Schubert is to place them in opposition to one another, both in terms of their life experiences and in relation to the nineteenth-century Lied. In her introduction to this book, Lorraine Byrne examines the myths that have evolved around these artists and challenges the view that Goethe was unmusical and conservative in his musical tastes. She also considers Schubert's life in relation to his obvious affinity with the poet and links the composer's Goethe settings with the poet's perception of the Lied. Goethe judged the success of a setting by whether the meaning of the text had been realised in musical form. In his Goethe settings Schubert translates the poet's meaning into musical terms and his rendition attains the classical unity of words and music that Goethe sought. The core of this volume is the series of individual analyses of all of Schubert's solo, dramatic and multi-voice settings of Goethe texts. These explore in detail both the literary and the musical dimensions of each work, and Schubert's reading and interpretation of Goethe's writings. This is the first study in English to treat both artists with equal attention and insight. This, together with its encyclopaedic coverage of this important corpus of works, makes this volume an essential reference tool for all those who study Schubert and Goethe.

Nadia and Lili Boulanger (Paperback): Caroline Potter Nadia and Lili Boulanger (Paperback)
Caroline Potter
R1,592 Discovery Miles 15 920 Ships in 12 - 17 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.

The Performing Style of Alexander Scriabin (Paperback): Anatole Leikin The Performing Style of Alexander Scriabin (Paperback)
Anatole Leikin
R1,711 Discovery Miles 17 110 Ships in 12 - 17 working days

When Alexander Nikolayevich Scriabin's music was performed during his lifetime, it always elicited ecstatic responses from the listeners. Wilhelm Gericke, conductor of the Vienna opera, rushed backstage after one of Scriabin's concerts and fell on his knees crying, 'It's genius, it's genius...'. After the composer's death in 1915, however, his music steadily lost the captivating appeal it once held. The main reason for this drastic change in the listeners' attitude is an enormous gap existing between the printed scores of Scriabin's music and the way the composer himself played his works. Apparently, what Scriabin's audiences heard at the time was significantly different from, and vastly superior to, modern performances that are based primarily on published scores. Scriabin recorded nineteen of his compositions on the Hupfeld and Welte-Mignon reproducing pianos in 1908 and 1910, respectively. Full score transcriptions of the piano rolls, which are included in the book, provide many substantial features of Scriabin's performance: exact pitches and their timing against each other, rhythms, tempo fluctuations, articulation, dynamics and essential pedal application. Using these transcriptions and other historical documents as the groundwork for his research, Anatole Leikin explores Scriabin's performing style within the broader context of Romantic performance practice.

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