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Books > Arts & Architecture > Music > Western music, periods & styles
Chronologically following Nicholas Tawa's The Coming of Age of American Art Music, this new study stands on its own in examining the music of the most prominent American composers active in the first three decades of the twentieth century. Among them are Edgar Stillman Kelley, Frederick Shepherd Converse, Daniel Gregory Mason, Edgar Burlingame Hill, Mabel Daniels, Henry Hadley, Deems Taylor, Charles Wakefield Cadman, Henry Gilbert, Arthur Farwell, John Powell, Arthur Shepherd, Scott Joplin, Charles Tomlinson Griffes, Marion Bauer, and John Alden Carpenter. Unjustly neglected by a later generation of critics interested in the avant-garde, this music deserves a hearing today and, in fact, increasingly is the subject of new recordings. Professor Tawa puts his exemplary research and analytical skills to work to determine what these composers accomplished, not what latter-day critics felt they should have accomplished. The attitudes, styles, and compositions are analyzed in cultural context. The period of 1900-1930 witnessed an intense debate on what constituted an American identity in music. Was it Anglo-Celtic, Amerindian, African-American, jazz, or the individual unconsciously expressing the American society he or she lived in? The changing world of music, the clash of beliefs and values, and the attempts at a musical reconciliation between old and new approaches to composition figure prominently in the discussion. Tawa concludes that if the present-day listener does not reject romantic music out of hand, he or she will find delight in much of this large body of skillful, meaningful compositions.
This collection is a tribute to the talent, teaching, and humanism of Alfred Einstein, whose scholarship and criticisms affirm his position as one of the foremost musicologists of the twentieth century. Written by a former student of Einstein's, this portrait draws on the influences and events that shaped his life and work as a Jewish scholar in pre-Nazi Germany and that necessitated his emigration to the United States. Dower provides more than one hundred examples of his criticisms that document the music of Germany and the United States in the second quarter of this century and that demonstrate the art of music criticism at its best. Included is a chronology that is based on information provided by Einstein's daughter, Eva. Her insight into her father's personal life is combined with Catherine Dower's careful chronological documentation of Einstein's professional endeavors, provide a unique evaluation of a critic whose research produced valuable musical discoveries and whose writings always recognized the important relationship between music and its cultural background. The study affords further access to Einstein's writings by identifying the locations of Einstein collections in numerous libraries throughout the United States.
This annotated chronology of western music is the third in a series of outlines on the history of music in western civilization. It contains a 120-page annotated bibliography, followed by a detailed, documented outline that is divided into ten chapters. Each chapter is written in chronological order with every line being documented by means of abbreviations that refer to the annotated bibliography. There are short biographies of the theorists and detailed discussions of their works. The information on music is organized by classes of music rather than by composer. Also included are lists of manuscripts with descriptions of their contents and notations as to where they may be found. The material for the outline has been taken from primary and secondary sources along with articles from periodicals. Like the other two volumes in this series, Music History from the Late Roman through the Gothic Periods, 313-1425 and Music History During the Renaissance Period, 1425-1520, this volume will be an important research tool for anyone interested in music history.
The Divine Office--or, the cycle of daily worship services other than the Mass--constitutes the most important body of liturgical texts and music for medieval studies. It is a collection of spiritual works that is central to the culture of the Middle Ages. This volume addresses the Office from a variety of points of view, allowing the reader to grasp the current state of research and to make connections.
This book is the first full-length study of the courtly love songs of the trouvere to address the central musical problems of the repertoire as a whole, embracing source studies, interpretation, historiography, and analysis. The argument of the book revolves around three axes, each of which is essential to the appreciation of the others: problems concerning the extant manuscript tradition; the crucial role of orality; and stylistic changes and plurality in the reperotire. For the first time, a full overview of the sources and notation is undertaken. This reveals the idiosyncrasies of individual manuscripts but, more importantly, it identifies two basic phases in the manuscript tradition. The study of melodic variants reveals the performance art that lies at the heart of the courtly grand chant; processes and techniques of variation are examined, bringing us to a closer understanding of the tenets of the melodic art of the early trouveres. A close study of select trouveres from the different generation reveals stylstic change and plurality, particularly in the melodic art which in some respects was less prescribed than the poetic texts. Consequently the courtly songs of the trouveres truly come alive in this book.
Classical Recording: A Practical Guide in the Decca Tradition is the authoritative guide to all aspects of recording acoustic classical music. Offering detailed descriptions, diagrams, and photographs of fundamental recording techniques such as the Decca tree, this book offers a comprehensive overview of the essential skills involved in successfully producing a classical recording. Written by engineers with years of experience working for Decca and Abbey Road Studios and as freelancers, Classical Recording equips the student, the interested amateur, and the practising professional with the required knowledge and confidence to tackle everything from solo piano to opera.
This book (hardcover) is part of the TREDITION CLASSICS. It contains classical literature works from over two thousand years. Most of these titles have been out of print and off the bookstore shelves for decades. The book series is intended to preserve the cultural legacy and to promote the timeless works of classical literature. Readers of a TREDITION CLASSICS book support the mission to save many of the amazing works of world literature from oblivion. With this series, tredition intends to make thousands of international literature classics available in printed format again - worldwide.
Collected Writings of the Orpheus Institute 6"We have developed a tremendous amount of what might best be referred to as journalistic knowledge concerning the ways that musicians of earlier periods thought about musical structures. Now that we have that knowledge, what might we do with it?" Joel LesterThe often complex connections and intersections between modal and tonal idioms and contrapuntal and harmonic organization during the transition from the Renaissance to the Baroque era are considered from various perspectives in Towards Tonality. Prominent musicians and scholars from a wide range of fields testify here to their personal understanding of this significant time of shifts in musical taste. This collection of essays is based on lectures presented during the conference "Historical Theory, Performance, and Meaning in Baroque Music," organized by the International Orpheus Academy for Music and Theory in Ghent, Belgium."
"Francis Poulenc: A Bio-Bibliography" is a thorough presentation of the works of this often performed and critically appreciated 20th-century composer. George R. Keck traces events in Poulenc's life and offers a list of works and performances with the primary focus on those facts and influences which contributed to the development of the composer's distinctive musical style. Included in the text is a substantial discography as well as annotated entries by and about the composer which cover every phase of his career and affirm Poulenc's place in 20th-century music. The highly selective annotated bibliography comprises the major portion of the text. Since Keck's documentation of the development of Poulenc's style covers only representative works, he includes a list of all of Poulenc's compositions, arranged both alphabetically and chronologically, in the two appendixes. A complete index of names, places, and titles concludes the book.
From the end of the Second World War through the U.S. Bicentennial, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Rockefeller Foundation, and the Ford Foundation granted close to $300 million (approximately $2.3 billion in 2017 dollars) in the field of music alone. In deciding what to fund, these three grantmaking institutions decided to "ask the experts," adopting seemingly objective, scientific models of peer review and specialist evaluation. They recruited music composers at elite institutions, professors from prestigious universities, and leaders of performing arts organizations. Among the most influential expert-consultants were Leonard Bernstein, Aaron Copland, Lukas Foss, and Milton Babbitt. The significance was two-fold: not only were male, Western art composers put in charge of directing large and unprecedented channels of public and private funds, but in doing so they also determined and defined what was meant by artistic excellence. They decided the fate of their peers and shaped the direction of music-making in this country. By asking the experts, the grantmaking institutions produced a concentrated and interconnected field of artists and musicians. Officers and directors utilized ostensibly objective financial tools like matching grants and endowments in an attempt to diversify and stabilize applicants' sources of funding, as well as the number of applicants they funded. Such economics-based strategies, however, relied more on personal connections among the wealthy and elite, rather than local community citizens. Ultimately, this history demonstrates how "expertise" served as an exclusionary form of cultural and social capital that prevented racial minorities and non-dominant groups from fully participating.
Malcolm Arnold's music encompassed a variety of forms from opera and ballet through orchestral and chamber music to film scores. His most famous film score, for which he won an Oscar award in 1957, is The Bridge on the River Kwai. In 1953 he was commissioned to compose Homage to the Queen, a ballet to celebrate the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II. Arnold was knighted by the Queen in 1993 in honor of his contributions to English music. As with the other volumes in the Greenwood Bio-Bibliographies in Music series, this work includes a brief biography, discography, complete list of works and performances, and an annotated bibliography. Music scholars, musicians, and those with an interest in the music of Malcolm Arnold will appreciate the extensive information gathered in this one volume. Since Malcolm Arnold has retired from composing, this book features the most complete list of his compositions, including some of his newly discovered early works. The works are listed alphabetically within genre. The author also provides a chronological listing of the works through which trends and developments in Arnold's compositions may be traced. Sir Malcolm Arnold's input with the project assures the accuracy and completeness of this bio-bibliography.
This generously illustrated selection of fifty reviews and essays, written between 1914 and 1962 by thirty American critics, draws together some of the best, most influential, and most interesting writing on Montemezzi, revealing for the first time the full depth of his impact in the United States, the country to which he moved in 1939.
For many reasons Hans Pfitzner was and remains controversial. This stems partly from his difficult personality, and partly from the nationalistic context in which are set his cultural beliefs. His music has also tended to be coloured by such labels as conservative and romantic. Yet he actually has a wide reputation for his `musical legend' Palestrina, and there is much in his output which sets him as the true heir of Wagner and Schumann. This is the first study in English of Pfitzner's output. It sets his music in the context of his cultural opinions, which, though conceived as reflections on music, have acquired a more political status to which the history of Pfitzner's times has contributed. It offers a revaluation of his music, partly in order to reveal the innate value of his stage works, chamber music, and songs, and also to illustrate the historical importance of his ideas, which reflect a German conservative tradition which was taken over and nearly destroyed by the Third Reich.
Carl Ruggles (1876-1971) was the epitome of the New England iconoclast. A composer of the American avant-garde movement, he wrote, in a very concise and dissonant style, a small body of truly unique musical works. He lived to be 95, composing to the very end of his life, but left behind a mere eight sanctioned works which he had rewritten and refined over decades. In the 1920s, he was at the focal point of ultra-modern music-making. Since there is currently a renewed interest in his work, this bio-bibliography is timely and needed, and of interest to scholars, students, and performers. During the 1920s, had Edgard Varese or Charles Ives been asked to name America's greatest living composer, the response would have been Carl Ruggles. Forty years later, such eminent experts on American music as Nicolas Slonimsky, Virgil Thomson, and Aaron Copland would each describe Ruggles as our most technically refined composer. Ruggles, with Varese and Ives, was the standard-bearer of the atonal movement in this century's third decade. With the rise of American realism, he slipped out of the public eye. Recent years have seen a resurgence of performances of his works and research on his music; consequently, there is a need for this timely bio-bibliography.
Dramma per musica-the most usual term for Italian serious opera from the seventeenth to the early nineteenth century-was a modern, enlightened form of theater that presented a unified, artistically designed, dramatic enactment of human stories, expressed by the voice and underscored by the orchestra. This book by one of the world's most eminent musicologists illustrates the diversity of this baroque art form and explains how it has given us opera as we know it. Reinhard Strohm introduces the concept and history of dramma per musica and then examines the contemporary reception and environment of this operatic tradition, analyzing its social and repertorial patterns and comparing it to theories on the roles of French spoken drama and Italian libretto reform. In describing the principles observed by poets, composers, and performers, Strohm discusses such central concepts of theory and practice as verisimilitude, decorum, gesture, and rhetoric. He also decodes various works, including Handel's Ariodante, operas by Hasse, and stage works featuring the Earl of Essex. Throughout the book, Strohm surveys the traditions of the spoken theater and pays special attention to the subject matter of the librettos, as well as to drama theory, stage action, patronage, political history, and ideology. His account covers opera houses in Rome, Naples, Venice, Hamburg, Dresden, Vienna, Madrid, London, and Warsaw, as he follows one character of the dramatic tradition across the European stages for more than two centuries. Authoritative and enlightening, this book reveals how dramma per musica forms a vital part of our theatrical and musical heritage.
Irwin Bazelon, one of the most original figures in American music in the second half of the 20th century, devoted his life to the art of composition. He was also well known for his musical compositions for films, television, commercials, and documentaries. His music was inspired by his experiences in the fast-paced environments of Chicago and New York. This major bibliography presents a biographical sketch, which details the influence of city life on the composer's artistic creativity, a catalogue of his compositions and performances, and a discography. A bibliography includes excerpts from the composer's lectures and other unpublished writings. This thorough research tool will appeal to scholars of 20th-century music and to Bazelon fans. An archive of the composer's collections is included, and the separate book sections are cross-referenced throughout.
This annotated chronology of western music from 313-1425 is the first in a series of outlines covering the history of music in western civilization. The present volume covers the background, philosophy, theory, notation, style, and forms or classes of music of the periods stated and also the works of theorists or composers. Sources, facsimiles, and transcriptions of musical manuscripts and sources of treatises by musical theorists, in the original language and in English translation, are indicated where possible. The instruments of each historical period are listed and described. Musical terms are defined at the end of each chapter. Foreign words, parts of the liturgy of the Roman Catholic church, musical terms, titles of theoretical works and musical manuscripts, and names of composers, theorists, and places of interest are defined in the section entitled Definition and Pronunciation. This section also includes the translation and pronunciation of words in Classical and Ecclesiastical Latin, French, German, Italian, Spanish, Old English, and Old French. At the end of each section of the book are maps that show pertinent Empires and Kingdoms, and the areas of musical development and activity of each historical period. Appendices have been added in order to discuss notation and rhythm in greater depth and to divulge some different theories concerning the material found in the text. Supplemental sources for further study are found at the end of each historical period.
Rufus Hallmark's book explores Robert Schumann's beloved yet controversial song cycle Frauenliebe und Leben and the poems of Adelbert von Chamisso on which it is based, setting them in the context of the challenges and social expectations faced by women in early nineteenth-century Germany. Hallmark provides the most extensive English-language study of Chamisso, a poet little known today outside Germany, including a biographical sketch and excerpts from his other poetry. He examines a range of poems about women, by Chamisso and others, and discusses the reception of the poetic and musical cycles, including illustrated editions, contemporary reviews, and other musical settings. Based on new studies of Schumann's manuscript sources and on comparative analyses of his songs and settings by Carl Loewe, Heinrich Marschner, Franz Lachner and others, Hallmark provides fresh musical and interpretive insights into each song.
Passionate and intense in one moment, ironic or brash in the next,
Mahler's music speaks with a diversity of voices that often
undermine its own ideals of unity, narrative struggle and
transcendent affirmation. The composer plays constantly with
musical genres and styles, moving between them without warning in a
way that often bewildered his contemporaries. Ranging freely across
Mahler's symphonies and songs in a thoughtful and thorough study of
his musical speech, Julian Johnson considers how this body of music
foregrounds the idea of artifice, construction and musical
convention while at the same time presenting itself as act of
authentic expression and disclosure. Mahler's Voices explores the
shaping of this music through strategies of calling forth its own
mysterious voice--as if from nature or the Unconscious--while at
other times revealing itself as a made object, often
self-consciously assembled from familiar and well-worn materials.
New York City witnessed a dazzling burst of creativity in the 1920s. In this pathbreaking study, Carol J. Oja explores this artistic renaissance from the perspective of composers of classical and modern music, who along with writers, painters, and jazz musicians, were at the heart of early modernism in America. She also illustrates how the aesthetic attitudes and institutional structures from the 1920s left a deep imprint on the arts over the 20th century.
Aaron Copland, George Gershwin, Ruth Crawford Seeger, Virgil Thomson, William Grant Still, Edgard Varèse, Henry Cowell, Carl Ruggles, Marion Bauer, Dane Rudhyar--these were the leaders of a talented new generation of American composers whose efforts made New York City the center of new music in the country. They founded composer societies--such as the International Composers' Guild, the League of Composers, the Pan American Association, and the Copland-Sessions Concerts--to promote the performance of their music, and they nimbly negotiated cultural boundaries, aiming for recognition in Western Europe as much as at home. They showed exceptional skill at marketing their work. Drawing on extensive archival material--including interviews, correspondence, popular periodicals, and little-known music manuscripts--Oja provides a new perspective on the period and a compelling collective portrait of the figures, puncturing many longstanding myths.
American composers active in New York during the 1920s are explored in relation to the "Machine Age" and American Dada; the impact of spirituality on American dissonance; the crucial, behind-the-scenes role of women as patrons and promoters of modernist music; cross-currents between jazz and concert music; the critical reception of modernist music (especially in the writings of Carl Van Vechten and Paul Rosenfeld); and the international impulse behind neoclassicism. The book also examines the persistent biases of the time, particularly anti-Semitisim, gender stereotyping, and longstanding racial attitudes.
Environmental Sound Artists: In Their Own Words is an incisive and imaginative look at the international environmental sound art movement, which emerged in the late 1960s. The term environmental sound art is generally applied to the work of sound artists who incorporate processes in which the artist actively engages with the environment. While the field of environmental sound art is diverse and includes a variety of approaches, the art form diverges from traditional contemporary music by the conscious and strategic integration of environmental impulses and natural processes. This book presents a current perspective on the environmental sound art movement through a collection of personal writings by important environmental sound artists. Dismayed by the limitations and gradual breakdown of contemporary compositional strategies, environmental sound artists have sought alternate venues, genres, technologies, and delivery methods for their creative expression. Environmental sound art is especially relevant because it addresses political, social, economic, scientific, and aesthetic issues. As a result, it has attracted the participation of artists internationally. Awareness and concern for the environment has connected and unified artists across the globe and has achieved a solidarity and clarity of purpose that is singularly unique and optimistic. The environmental sound art movement is borderless and thriving.
In 1714, the 29 year-old Johann Sebastian Bach was promoted to the position of concertmaster at the ducal court of Weimar. This post required him for the first time in his already established career to produce a regular stream of church cantatas-one cantata every four weeks. Among the most significant works of this period is Ich hatte viel Bekummernis in meinem Herzen (Cantata 21). Generally known in English as "I had much affliction," Cantata 21 draws from several psalms and the Book of Revelations and offers a depiction of the spiritual ascent of the soul from intense tribulation to joy and exaltation. Although widely performed and loved by musicians, Cantata 21 has endured much criticism from scholars and critics who claim that the piece lacks organizational clarity and stylistic coherence. In Tears into Wine, renowned Bach scholar Eric Chafe challenges the scholarly consensus, arguing that Cantata 21 is an exceptionally carefully designed work, and that it displays a convergence of musical structure and theological purpose that is paradigmatic of Bach's sacred work as a whole. Drawing on a wide range of Lutheran theological writing, Chafe shows that Cantata 21 reaches beyond the scope of the individual liturgical occasion to voice a breadth of meaning that encompasses much of the core of Lutheran thought. Chafe artfully demonstrates that instead of simply presenting a musical depiction of the soul's journey from sorrow to bliss, Cantata 21 expresses the various stages of God's revelation and their impact on the believing soul. As a result, Chafe reveals that Cantata 21 has a formal design that mirrors Lutheran belief in unfolding revelation, with the final movement representing the work's "crown"-the goal toward which all of the earlier movements are directed. Complete with full text translations of the cantata and the liturgical readings that would have accompanied it at the first performance, Tears into Wine is a monumental book that is ideally suited for Bach scholars and students, as well as those generally interested in the relationship between theology and music.
Traces the life and career of the great Czech composer, examines the influence of Bohemian music on Dvorak's works, and assesses his contributions to modern music.
A few weeks after the reunification of Germany, Leonard Bernstein
raised his baton above the ruins of the Berlin Wall and conducted a
special arrangement of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony. The central
statement of the work, that "all men will be brothers," captured
the sentiment of those who saw a brighter future for the newly
reunited nation. This now-iconic performance is a palpable example
of "musical monumentality" - a significant concept which underlies
our cultural and ideological understanding of Western art music
since the nineteenth-century. Although the concept was first raised
in the earliest years of musicological study in the 1930s, a
satisfying exploration of the "monumental" in music has not yet
been made. Alexander Rehding, one of the brightest young stars in
the field, takes on the task in Music and Monumentality, an
elegant, thorough treatment that will serve as a foundation for all
future discussion in this area. |
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