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Books > Music > Western music, periods & styles
Often considered Romania's greatest musical force and a significant mind of the 20th century, composer George Enescu (1881-1955) achieved international fame and succeeded in incorporating Romanian spirituality into worldwide culture. Masterworks of George Enescu provides a profound and very detailed analysis of more than 25 of this important composer's most representative works. Translated from musicologist Pascal Bentoiu's Romanian publication, Lory Wallfisch presents this vital work for the first time to English-speaking audiences, providing the worldwide public with the tools to understand and enjoy Enescu's music. Bentoiu presents a kind of travel diary through Enescu's creative legacy, offering a comprehensive, well-documented, knowledgeable, and generously illustrated analytical study of the composer's greatest masterpieces. Works such as the Romanian Rhapsodies, the Second Suite for Orchestra, Vox Maris, Impressions d'Enfance, his opera Oedipe, and several sonatas and quartets are carefully examined and admired for their substance and their ability to add dignity to the musical world. The works are presented chronologically, considering their conceptual realization as well as their inception and completion. Illustrated with more than 400 musical examples, this impressive study is a perfect guide toward the thorough enjoyment of Enescu's masterpieces.
for SSATB and organ This attractive and uplifting anthem sets the text of the Eastertide Vidi aquam antiphon. Different parts of the text are treated to contrasting musical ideas, including extended melismatic upper-voice passages and mainly homophonic full-choir sections, and the undulating organ part represents the flowing water of the text. A welcome addition to a service or concert programme for all fans of Gabriel Jackson's music. Commissioned by the Friends of Lincoln Cathedral for their 75th anniversary and first performed by the Choir of Lincoln Cathedral with Charles Harrison (organ), directed by Aric Prentice, on 25 June 2011.
Examines the decline and resurgence of Haydn's reputation in an effort to better understand the forces that shape critical reception on a broad scale. By the 1840s Joseph Haydn, who died in 1809 as the most celebrated composer of his generation, had degenerated into the bewigged "Papa Haydn," a shallow placeholder in music history who merely invented the forms used by Beethoven.In a remarkable reversal, Haydn swiftly regained his former stature within the opening decades of the twentieth century. Reviving Haydn: New Appreciations in the Twentieth Century examines both the decline and the subsequent resurgence of Haydn's reputation in an effort to better understand the forces that shape critical reception on a broad scale. No single person or event marked the turning point for Haydn's reputation. Instead a broad resurgence reshaped opinion in Europe and the United States in short order. The Haydn revival engaged many of the music world's leading figures -- composers (Vincent d'Indy and Arnold Schoenberg), conductors (Arturo Toscanini), performers (Wanda Landowska), critics (Lawrence Gilman), and scholars (Heinrich Schenker and Donald Tovey) -- each of whom valued Haydn's music for specific reasons and used it to advance particular goals. Yet each advocated for a rehearing and rereading of the composer's works, calling for a new appreciation of Haydn's music. Bryan Proksch is Assistant Professor of Music History at Lamar University.
Peter Maxwell Davies (1934-2016) was one of the leading international composers of the post-war period as well as one of the most productive. Peter Maxwell Davies (1934-2016) was one of the leading international composers of the post-war period as well as one of the most productive. This book provides a global view of his music, integrating a number of resonant themes in the composer's work while covering a representative cross-section of his vast output - his work list encompasses nearly 550 compositions in every established genre. Each chapter focuses on specific major works and offers generaldiscussion of other selected works connected to the main themes. These themes include compositional technique and process; genre; form and architecture; tonality and texture; allusion, quotation and musical critique; and place and landscape. Throughout, the book contends that Davies's works are not created in a vacuum but are intimately connected to, and are a reflection of, 'the past'. This deep engagement occurs on a number of levels, fluctuating and interacting with the composer's own predominantly modernist idiom and evoking a chain of historical resonances. Making sustained reference to Davies's own words, articles and programme notes as well as privileged access to primary source material from his estate, the book illuminates the composer's practices and approaches while shaping a discourse around his music.
The 20th century, especially the latter decades, was a time of explosive growth and importance in hymnody, and yet published material about the hymnody of this period has been scattered and difficult to come by. The present volume catalogues and categorizes the available writings to guide students and scholars in their research. Furthermore, this reference does not depend primarily on the view of the author/compiler, but guides users toward a broad spectrum of viewpoints about 20th-century hymnody. Listing the principal writings on the repertory, language, practice, and people of hymnody during the last century, this annotated bibliography offers students and researchers alike a handy reference for a vast and varied field. Beginning with a unique introduction to and summary of hymnody in the 20th century, Music arranges the entries by topic, dividing each chapter by helpful subject headings. The repertory of the twentieth century, and language issues are discussed. Practical elements of hymnody are covered, while the final chapter lists writings about individual hymn writers and other influential persons in the field. Music provides a brief annotation for each entry and uses numerous cross-references, guiding the reader to relevant material in other sections of the book. A comprehensive index concludes this essential reference.
Elvis Presley was never accused of a crime, but for years the FBI kept a file on Presley because of the crimes that went on in the background of his world: death threats made against him; a major extortion attempt while he was in the Army in Germany; complaints about his public performances, a mention of a paternity suit; the theft by larceny of an executive jet which he owned and the alleged fraud surrounding a 1955 Corvette which he owned. These formerly Top Secret Files show dramatically how the FBI and other law enforcement agencies had to react to crimes in Presley's world.
Professionalisation was a key feature of the changing nature of work and society in the nineteenth century, with formal accreditation, registration and organisation becoming increasingly common. Trades and occupations sought protection and improved status via alignment with the professions: an attempt to impose order and standards amid rapid social change, urbanisation and technological development. The structures and expectations governing the music profession were no exception, and were central to changing perceptions of musicians and music itself during the long nineteenth century. The central themes of status and identity run throughout this book, charting ways in which the music profession engaged with its place in society. Contributors investigate the ways in which musicians viewed their own identities, public perceptions of the working musician, the statuses of different sectors of the profession and attempts to manipulate both status and identity. Ten chapters examine a range of sectors of the music profession, from publishers and performers to teachers and military musicians, and overall themes include class, gender and formal accreditation. The chapters demonstrate the wide range of sectors within the music profession, the different ways in which these took on status and identity, and the unique position of professional musicians both to adopt and to challenge social norms.
American composer George Gershwin, an icon of the American Jazz Age, indelibly marked 20th-century music, with many of his works becoming standards in the popular and jazz music repertory, not to mention his world-famous classical works such as Rhapsody in Blue (1924) and Porgy and Bess (1935). This major bibliography includes a brief biography, which examines Gershwin's influence and situates him within the cultural context of his time, a complete cross-reference list of all his compositions, a discography of more than 1,150 items, and a descriptive filmography. The extensive bibliography includes writings by both George and his brother Ira, and more than 2,100 entries about George's compositions. As an exhaustive research tool, this up-to-date bibliographic reference compiles information on George Gershwin from numerous, disparate sources and should appeal to music and theater scholars, cultural historians, and Gershwin enthusiasts alike. The work is divided among seven sections that cross-reference one another. A separate appendix lists itineraries for the Paul Whiteman tours of 1924-1925, and the Leo Reisman tour of 1934, at which Gershwin's music figured prominently, and a comprehensive index completes the volume.
After Robert Armin joined the Chamberlain's Men, singing in Shakespeare's dramas catapulted from 1.25 songs and 9.95 lines of singing per play to 3.44 songs and 29.75 lines of singing, a virtually unnoticed phenomenon. In addition, many of the songs became seemingly improvisatory-similar to Armin's personal style as an author and solo comedian. In order to study Armin's collaborative impact, this interdisciplinary book investigates the songs that have Renaissance music that could have been heard on Shakespeare's stage. They occur in some of Shakespeare's most famous plays, including Much Ado About Nothing, Twelfth Night, Hamlet, and The Tempest. In fact, Shakespeare's plays, as we have them, are not complete. They are missing the music that could have accompanied the plays' songs. Significantly, Renaissance vocal music, far beyond just providing entertainment, was believed to alter the bodies and souls of both performers and auditors to agree with its characteristics, directly inciting passions from love to melancholy. By collaborating with early modern music editor and performing artist Lawrence Lipnik, Catherine Henze is able to provide new performance editions of seventeen songs, including spoken interruptions and cuts and rearrangement of the music to accommodate the dramatist's words. Next, Henze analyzes the complete songs, words and music, according to Renaissance literary and music primary sources, and applies the new information to interpretations of characters and scenes, frequently challenging commonly held literary assessments. The book is organized according to Armin's involvement with the plays, before, during, and after the comic actor joined Shakespeare's company. It offers readers the tools to interpret not only these songs, but also vocal music in dramas by other Renaissance playwrights. Moreover, Robert Armin and Shakespeare's Performed Songs, written with non-specialized terminology, provides a
This is the first volume to explore the reception of the Pythagorean doctrine of cosmic harmony within a variety of contexts, ranging chronologically from Plato to 18th-century England. This original collection of essays engages with contemporary debates concerning the relationship between music, philosophy, and science, and challenges the view that Renaissance discussions on cosmic harmony are either mere repetitions of ancient music theory or pre-figurations of the 'Scientific Revolution'. Utilizing this interdisciplinary approach, Renaissance Conceptions of Cosmic Harmony offers a new perspective on the reception of an important classical theme in various cultural, sequential and geographical contexts, underlying the continuities and changes between Antiquity, the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. This project will be of particular interest within these emerging disciplines as they continue to explore the ideological significance of the various ways in which we appropriate the past.
Volume II of The Viola da Gamba Society Index of Manuscripts Containing Consort Music includes manuscripts associated with John Browne (Clerk of the Parliaments), Philip Falle (prebendary at Durham), Sir Gabriel Roberts, John St Barbe of Broadlands, the Withy family of Worcester and Oxford and an anonymous late-seventeenth century scribe. As well as a detailed inventory of every manuscript (with anonymous works identified where possible), the descriptions include information on date, size, binding, paper, rastra, watermarks, collations, scripts, inscriptions and provenance, together with bibliographical references. Brief notes on the owners and copyists are provided. Of particular importance is the inclusion of facsimiles of all hands.
Alban Berg: A Research and Information Guide, Third Edition is an annotated bibliography highlighting both the nature of primary sources related to the composer and the scope and significance of the secondary sources that deal with Berg, his compositions, and his influence as a composer. It is a reliable, complete, and useful resource and a starting point for anyone-performer, teacher, student, or scholar-wanting to learn about Berg's life, works, and cultural milieu. The third edition has 162 additional citations since the publication of the second edition, many arising after the expiration of copyright of Berg's musical and archival works 2005. Many important new, primary sources of information have appeared, most notably the letter exchanges with his wife, recently published in a three-volume critical edition (in German), as well as letter exchanges with Alma Mahler and Erich Kleiber, and later correspondences with Anton Webern. There has also been a notable increase in the availability of commercial video recordings of Berg's operas, Wozzeck and Lulu.
Hans Keller's text and Milein Cosman's vibrant illustrations combine to produce a unique and enlightening book on Stravinsky. Stravinsky the Music-Maker is the third incarnation of a book that has been greeted with superlatives on each previous appearance. Hans Keller and Milein Cosman collaborated down the decades of their married life, Keller'spen analysing music, Cosman's catching its makers at work. Stravinsky was a source of fascination for them both, and their Stravinsky at Rehearsal appeared in 1962, to be expanded, two decades later, as Stravinsky Seen and Heard. Stravinsky the Music-Maker offers the most generous compilation of their work yet: it includes Keller's complete articles on Stravinsky, written between 1954 and 1980, and augments Cosman's celebrated prints and drawings with a number not previously published. The introduction, by the composer Hugh Wood, sites the Keller-Cosman partnership in the framework of the British musical life they enriched. HANS KELLER (1919-85) fled Austria in1938 and became a commanding critical voice in British music journalism and on the BBC from the end of the war until his death. He is the author of numerous books, many illustrated by his wife Milein Cosman, including Criticism (Faber), The Great Haydn String Quartets (Dent), Essays on Music (CUP), Jerusalem Diary, Film Music and Beyond and Music and Psychology (all Plumbago). A critic of insight and integrity throughout his life, he remains a powerful influence to this day.
Known for his orchestral, operatic and choral works, James MacMillan (b. 1959) appeals across the spectrum of contemporary music making. James MacMillan appeals across the spectrum of contemporary music making and is particularly celebrated for his orchestral, operatic and choral pieces. This book, published in time to mark the composer's sixtieth birthday, is thefirst in-depth look at his life, work and aesthetic. From his beginnings in rural Ayrshire and his early work with Sir Peter Maxwell Davies, through the international breakthrough success of The Confession of Isobel Gowdie,the continuing success of works such as the percussion concerto Veni, Veni, Emmaneul and his choral pieces, to his current position as one of the most prominent British composers of his generation, the book explores MacMillan's compositional influences over time. It looks closely at his most significant works and sets them in a wider context defined by contemporary composition, culture and the arts in general. The book also considers MacMillan's strong Catholic faith and how this has influenced his work, along with his politics and his on-going relationship with Scottish nationalism. With the support of the composer and his publisher and unprecedented access to interviews and previously unpublished materials, the book not only provides an appraisal of MacMillan's work but also insights into what it means to be a prominent composer and artist in the twenty-first century. PHILLIP A. COOKE is a Composer and Senior Lecturer and Head of Music at the University of Aberdeen. He has previously co-edited The Music of Herbert Howells for Boydell.
Uncovering Music of Early European Women (1250 - 1750) brings together nine chapters that investigate aspects of female music-making and musical experience in the medieval and early modern periods. Part I, "Notes from the Underground," treats the spirituality of women in solitude and in community. Parts II and III, "Interlude" and "Music for Royal Rivals," respond to Joan Kelly's famous feminist question and suggest that women of a certain stature did have a Renaissance. Part IV, "Serenissime Sirene," plays with the notion of the allure of music and its risks in Venice during the Baroque. The process of uncovering requires close listening to women's creative endeavors in an ongoing effort to piece together equitably the terrain of early music. Contributors include: Cynthia J. Cyrus, Claire Fontijn, Catherine E. Gordon, Laura Jeppesen, Eva Kuhn, Anne MacNeil, Jason Stoessel, Elizabeth Randell Upton, and Laurence Wuidar. An invaluable book for college students and scholars interested in the social and cultural meanings of women in early music.
Originally published in 1987, this volume charts the development of German song across a century and a half, relating it both to poetry and to the cultural scene in Germany. By emphasising genre rather than individual composers and while paying heed to acknowledged masterpieces - by quoting extensively from forgotten composers, the book avoids historical over simplification and arrives at a fuller picture of this rich tradition. In so doing, it uncovers much neglected material. The book investigates the relationship between German poets and composers and their native folk tradition. It further explores the interaction between convention and innovation and demonstrates how one poem can be interpreted quite differently by different composers. The book is accessible both to students of literature and music.
Dmitri Shostakovich (1906-75) was one of the greatest composers of the 20th century, as well as the first major Soviet composer. In the fourth edition of Dmitri Shostakovich Catalogue: The First Hundred Years and Beyond, Derek C. Hulme names and describes all known musical compositions of the Russian composer. More than 175 major works are annotated and discussed, including such comprehensive details as titles and subtitles, dates of composition, instrumentation, and duration; information on dedications and premieres; arrangements by the composer and others; publication details; notes on bibliographical references and the location of the autograph score; and comprehensive chronological lists of vinyl, compact disc, and visual recordings. The entries are presented chronologically and by opus number, while indexes of names and compositions provide full accessibility. Several appendixes supplement the volume, guiding readers to further information in published sources and providing information on the composer's film, radio, television, and theatre productions; his abandoned projects and obscure works; and his recordings, including box sets and special USSR recordings. An appendix also discusses the monogram DSCH, a musical motif based on his name that permeates his compositions. This new edition also includes a comprehensive chronological chart of Shostakovich's works and historical events and several plates of memorabilia.
The Keyboard Music of J.S. Bach provides an introduction to and
comprehensive discussion of all the music for harpsichord and other
stringed keyboard instruments by Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750).
Often played today on the modern piano, these works are central not
only to the Western concert repertory but to musical pedagogy and
study throughout the world.
Covering a period from the Ancient World to the present day, the book suggests that until very recently, falsettists and counter-tenors have been distinct vocal genres. `The use of high male voices in the past has long been one of the most seriously misunderstood areas of musical scholarship and practice. In opening up this rich subject (to readers of all sorts) with refreshingly clear perspectives and plenty of new material, Simon Ravens' well-researched book goes a very long way to rectifying matters. Ravens writes damnably well, and if the story that emerges is necessarily a complex one, his treatment of it is always engagingly comprehensible.' ANDREW PARROTT Tracing the origins, influences and development of falsetto singing in Western music, Simon Ravens offers a revisionist history of high male singing from the Ancient Greeks to Michael Jackson. This history embraces not just singers of counter-tenor and alto parts up to and including our own time but the castrati of the Ancient world, the male sopranists of late Medieval and Renaissance Europe, and the dual-register tenors of the Baroque and Classical periods. Musical aesthetics aside, to understand the changing ways men have sung high, it is also vital to address extra-musical factors - which are themselves in a state of flux. Tothis end, Ravens illuminates his chronological survey by exploring topics as diverse as human physiology, the stereotyping of national characters, gender identity, and the changing of boys' voices. The result is a complex and fascinating history sure to appeal not only to music scholars but to performers and all those with an interest particularly in early music. Simon Ravens is a performer, writer, and director of Musica Contexta, with whom hehas performed in Britain and Europe, regularly broadcast, and made numerous acclaimed recordings. Ravens had previously founded and directed Australasia's foremost early music choir, the Tudor Consort. Between 2002 and 2007 his regular monthly column Ravens View appeared in the Early Music Review, to which he still regularly contributes.
Voices Found: Free Jazz and Singing contributes to a wave of voice studies scholarship with the first book-length study of free jazz voice. It pieces together a history of free jazz voice that spans from sound poetry and scat in the 1950s to the more recent wave of free jazz choirs. The author traces the developments and offers a theory, derived from interviews with many of the most important singers in the history of free jazz voice, of how listeners have experienced and evaluated the often unconventional vocal sounds these vocalists employed. This theory explains that even audiences willing to enjoy harsh sounds from saxophones or guitars often resist when voices make sounds that audiences understand as not-human. Experimental poetry and scat were combined and transformed in free jazz spaces in the 1960s and 1970s by vocalists like Yoko Ono (in solo work and her work with Ornette Coleman and John Stevens), Jeanne Lee (in her solo work and her work with Archie Shepp and Gunter Hampel), Leon Thomas (in his solo work as well as his work with Pharoah Sanders and Carlos Santana), and Phil Minton and Maggie Nicols (who devoted much of their energy to creating unaccompanied free jazz vocal music). By studying free jazz voice we can learn important lessons about what we expect from the voice and what happens when those expectations are violated. This book doesn't only trace histories of free jazz voice, it makes an attempt to understand why this story hasn't been told before, with an impressive breadth of scope in terms of the artists covered, drawing on research from the US, Canada, Wales, Scotland, France, The Netherlands, and Japan.
Musical semiotics is a new discipline and paradigm of both semiotics and musicology. In its tradition, the current volume constitutes a radically new solution to the theoretical problem of how musical meanings emerge and how they are transmitted by musical signs even in most "absolute" and abstract musical works of Western classical heritage. Works from symphonies, lied, chamber music to opera are approached and studied here with methods of semiotic inspiration. Its analyses stem from systematic methods in the author's previous work, yet totally new analytic concepts are also launched in order to elucidate profound musical significations verbally. The book reflects the new phase in the author's semiotic approach, the one characterized by the so-called "existential semiotics" elaborated on the basis of philosophers from Kant , Hegel and Kierkegaard to Jaspers, Heidegger, Sartre and Marcel. The key notions like musical subject, Schein, becoming, temporality, modalities, Dasein, transcendence put musical facts in a completely new light and perspectives of interpretation. The volume attempts to make explicit what is implicit in every musical interpretation, intuition and understanding: to explain how compositions and composers "talk" to us. Its analyses are accessible due to the book's universal approach. Music is experienced as a language, communicating from one subject to another.
This title was first published in 2003. From 1821 until his death, Schubert compiled or specially composed for publication 42 song sets, yet during his own lifetime, and until now, their integrity and importance as sets have been virtually ignored. In this book, Michael Hall asserts that these songs sets are not arbitrary collections, as so often assumed, but highly integrated works in their own right. Approaching these songs as sets the book throws light on Schubert's largely undiscussed intellectual preoccupations. They reveal that he was au fait with most of the philosophical concerns of his time, especially those which touched on Romanticism. But although the sets reflect Romanticism in their topics, Hall maintains that they are the epitome of classical balance. In encouraging students and performers to approach these songs as sets, this study aims to alter perceptions of this important repertory. |
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