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Books > Arts & Architecture > Music > Western music, periods & styles
This book introduces every important aspect of the Elizabethan music world. In ten scrupulously researched yet accessible chapters, Lord examines the lives of composers, the evolution of musical instruments, the Elizabethan system of musical notation, and the many textures and traditions of Elizabethan music. Biographical entries introduce the most significant and prolific composers as well as the members of royal society who influenced Elizabethan musical culture. Both familiar and obscure instruments of the era are described with focus on their musical and social contexts. Various types of music are defined and illustrated, along with an explanation of the musical notation used during this era. Chapter bibliographies, glossaries, and an index provide additional tools for both the novice and the experienced student of music and music history. When Elizabeth ascended to the throne in 1558, England was undergoing tremendous upheaval. Power struggles between Protestants and Catholics shaped the English music world as musicians' livelihoods were directly linked to their religious allegiances. Music became a form of strategy within court politics, and secular music evolved through the musical and poetic influences of the Italian Renaissance. Events of the day were told and retold through music, class and social differences were sung with relish, and rituals of love and life were set to story and song. When England defeated the vaunted Spanish Armada in 1588, a victorious nation expressed its jubilance through music.
Mieczyslaw Weinberg left his family behind and fled his native Poland in September 1939. He reached the Soviet Union, where he become one of the most celebrated composers. He counted Shostakovich among his close friends and produced a prolific output of works. Yet he remained mindful of the nation that he had left. This book examines how Weinberg's works written in Soviet Russia compare with those of his Polish contemporaries; how one composer split from his national tradition and how he created a style that embraced the music of a new homeland, while those composers in his native land surged ahead in a more experimental vein. The points of contact between them are enlightening for both sides. This study provides an overview of Weinberg's music through his string quartets, analysing them alongside Polish composers. Composers featured include Bacewicz, Meyer, Lutoslawski, Panufnik, Penderecki, Gorecki, and a younger generation, including Szymanski and Knapik.
for SSAATTBB unaccompanied Ave gloriosa mater salvatoris is a challenging and yet delicate anthem, with subtle key-signature changes, vocal divisions in up to eight parts, and alternating homophonic and polyphonic passages. The text includes excerpts from the synonymous medieval hymn and Wordsworth's poem The Virgin, making the piece suitable for a variety of sacred celebrations and particularly those of the Blessed Virgin Mary.
The Immortal was commissioned by the BBC World Service, and was premiered at the BBC Proms in 2004. This work pays tribute to the influence of Chinese artists and intellectuals in the twentieth century. With an undercurrent of tranquillity and meditation, the work features a powerful and rhythmic introduction, from which emerges a section of sustained high-pitched glissandos, as well as lyrical melodies and expressive glissandos that characterise many of the solo motifs.
An examination of the work and music of the Royalist composer William Lawes. William Lawes is arguably one of the finest English composers of the early seventeenth century. Born in Salisbury in 1602, he rose to prominence in the early 1630s; in 1635 he gained a prestigious post among the elite private musicians of Charles I (the "Lutes, Viols and Voices"). With the outbreak of civil war in 1642, Lawes took arms in support of the king; he died during the Siege of Chester in September 1645. This book is divided into three sections. The first is a contextual examination of music at the court of Charles I, with specific reference to the abovementioned arcane group of musicians; much of Lawes's surviving consort music appears to have been written to be performed by this group. The remainder of the book deals with William Lawes the composer. The second section is a detailed study of Lawes's autograph sources: the first of its kind. It includes 62 black and white facsimile images, and complete inventories of all the autographs, and presents ground-breaking new research into Lawes's scribal hand, the sources and their functions, and new evidence for their chronology. The third section comprises six chapters on Lawes's consort music; in these chapters various topics are examined, such as chronology, Lawes's compositional process, and the relationship between Lawes's music and the court context from which it arose. This book willbe of interest to scholars working on English music in the Early Modern period, but also to those interested in source studies, compositional process and the function of music in the Early Modern court. JOHN CUNNINGHAMis a Senior Lecturer in Music, at Bangor University.
In this groundbreaking study, D. R. M. Irving reconnects the
Philippines to current musicological discourse on the early modern
Hispanic world. For some two and a half centuries, the Philippine
Islands were firmly interlinked to Latin America and Spain through
transoceanic relationships of politics, religion, trade, and
culture. The city of Manila, founded in 1571, represented a vital
intercultural nexus and a significant conduit for the regional
diffusion of Western music. Within its ethnically diverse society,
imported and local musics played a crucial role in the
establishment of ecclesiastical hierarchies in the Philippines and
in propelling the work of Roman Catholic missionaries in
neighboring territories. Manila's religious institutions resounded
with sumptuous vocal and instrumental performances, while an annual
calendar of festivities brought together many musical traditions of
the indigenous and immigrant populations in complex forms of
artistic interaction and opposition.
for SATB double choir, children's choir, and piano Setting a text by Charles Bennett, The White Field presents a dreamlike scene in which blackbirds plant songs in the cold earth and await the growth of their music. Chilcott's melodies echo through the voices, before a climactic tutti central section giving full voice to the idea of renewal and hope in the depth of winter. A wistful coda completes the reverie as the blackbirds settle to await the return of the sun. The piano part provides harmonic support and rhythmic energy to the voice parts with chordal and semiquaver figurations throughout the work. The White Field was commissioned by the Barbican Centre for London Symphony Chorus and BBC Symphony Chorus for Sound Unbound, November 2015.
"Music and the Making of the Middle Class" explores the making of middle-class culture by analyzing and comparing the ethos and organization of Leipzig's Gewandhaus and Birmingham's Triennial Festival. It employs a multidisciplinary approach to identify the social processes which formed the cultural configurations and meanings of art.
for SATB (with divisions) and soprano saxophone Setting the original Latin text of the hymn better known as 'Hark! a thrilling voice is sounding', Jackson creates an Advent piece of beautiful stillness. The largely homophonic choral parts, with a soloist supplying a gentle contrapuntal line, are contrasted with light and graceful interjections from the saxophone. The result is a quietly moving piece ideally suited for a reflective moment during an Advent service.
for SSATB and cello Night Flight was written to mark the centenary of Harriet Quimby's pioneering flight across the English channel. Setting texts by Sheila Bryer on the mysterious powers of the sea, earth, and air, McDowall uses vocal clusters and haunting solo cello lines to highlight the sense of fear, awe, and majesty experienced by an individual pitted against the elements. Cecilia McDowall was awarded the 2014 British Composer Award in the Choral category for Night Flight. The solo cello part is available for sale separately.
This book explores the transformation of ideas of the material in late twentieth- and early twenty-first-century musical composition. New music of this era is argued to reflect a historical moment when the idea of materiality itself is in flux. Engaging with thinkers such as Theodor Adorno, Sara Ahmed, Zygmunt Bauman, Rosi Braidotti, and Timothy Morton, the author considers music's relationship with changing material conditions, from the rise of neo-liberalisms and information technologies to new concepts of the natural world. Drawing on musicology, cultural theory, and philosophy, the author develops a critical understanding of musical bodies, objects, and the environments of their interaction. Music is grasped as something that both registers material changes in society whilst also enabling us to practice materiality differently.
The transition from the valveless natural horn to the modern valved horn in 19th-century Paris was different from similar transitions in other countries. While valve technology was received happily by players of other members of the brass family, strong support for the natural horn, with its varied color palette and virtuoso performance traditions, slowed the reception and application of the valve to the horn. Using primary sources including Conservatoire method books, accounts of performances and technological advances, and other evidence, this book tells the story of the transition from natural horn to valved horn at the Conservatoire, from 1792 to 1903, including close examination of horn teaching before the arrival of valved brass in Paris, the initial reception and application of this technology to the horn, the persistence of the natural horn, and the progression of acceptance, use, controversies, and eventual adoption of the valved instrument in the Parisian community and at the Conservatoire. Active scholars, performers, and students interested in the horn, 19th-century brass instruments, teaching methods associated with the Conservatoire, and the intersection of technology and performing practice will find this book useful in its details and conclusions, including ramifications on historically-informed performance today.
First published in 1999, this volume is the first full-length study to deal with the life and music of Orlando Gibbons since E.H. Fellowes's short book, originally published in 1923. John Harley investigates in detail the family and musical background from which Orlando Gibbons emerged, and gives a fascinating account of the activities of his father, William Gibbons, as a wait in Oxford and Cambridge. He traces, too, the activities of Orlando's brothers - Edward, who was the master of the choristers at King's College, Cambridge and later at Exeter Cathedral; Ferdinando, who may have taken over from his father as head of the Cambridge waits, and who became a wait in Lincoln; and Ellis, who contributed two madrigals to Thomas Morley's collection of 1601, The Triumphs of Oriana. Attention naturally focuses principally on Orlando Gibbons. A full record is given of his remarkably youthful appointment as an organist of the Chapel Royal (he was probably less than twenty at the time) and of his life at court. His additional appointments as one of Prince Charles's musicians and as organist of Westminster Abbey are also described, as is his sudden and premature death in his early forties. Gibbons's music is carefully examined in a series of chapters dealing with his pieces for keyboard and for viols, his songs, his full and verse anthems, and his works for the Anglican liturgy. His development as a composer within these genres is followed, and the character of particular pieces is considered. John Harley concludes that whereas, at one time, Gibbons 'tended to be admired as a successor to Tallis and Byrd, working in a style not essentially different from theirs', it is now 'easier to view him as a pioneer, whose work was cut short by his untimely death'. Orlando Gibbons's son Christopher was only a child when his father died, but he became one of the foremost composers and keyboard players of his generation, writing and performing chamber works and music for the stage during the Commonwealth. Following the Restoration of King Charles II, Christopher Gibbons gained his father's former posts at the Chapel Royal and Westminster Abbey, for which establishments he wrote a number of anthems. His importance is recognized by the inclusion of a long chapter on his life and works.
Nicole Grimes provides a compellingly fresh perspective on a series of Brahms's elegiac works by bringing together the disciplines of historical musicology, German studies, and cultural history. Her exploration of the expressive potential of Schicksalslied, Nanie, Gesang der Parzen, and the Vier ernste Gesange reveals the philosophical weight of this music. She considers the German tradition of the poetics of loss that extends from the late-eighteenth-century texts by Hoelderlin, Schiller and Goethe set by Brahms, and includes other philosophical and poetic works present in his library, to the mid-twentieth-century aesthetics of Adorno, who was preoccupied as much by Brahms as by their shared literary heritage. Her multifaceted focus on endings - the end of tonality, the end of the nineteenth century, and themes of loss in the music - illuminates our understanding of Brahms and lateness, and the place of Brahms in the fabric of modernist culture.
for SSATB and organ The hymn Come, Holy Ghost lies at the heart of Celestial Fire. Here, McDowall has woven the exquisite poetry of Denise Levertov into this expressive and uplifting piece. At times quietly meditative, Celestial Fire unfolds to a most joyous, affirmative conclusion. Celestial Fire was commissioned as part of a trilogy suitable for significant occasions during the church calendar year by Oakham School; the two other Oakham anthems for organ and mixed chorus are Light Eternal and Candlemas.
Music, Place, and Identity in Italian Urban Soundscapes circa 1550-1860 presents new perspectives on the role music played in the physical, cultural, and civic spaces of Italian cities from the sixteenth to the nineteenth century. Across thirteen chapters, contributors explore the complex connections between sound and space within these urban contexts, demonstrating how music and sound were intimately connected to changing social and political practices. The volume offers a critical redefinition of the core concept of soundscape, considering musical practices through the lenses of territory, space, representation, and identity, in five parts: Soundscape, Phonosphere, and Urban History Urban Soundscapes across Time Urban Soundscapes and Acoustic Communities Urban Soundscapes in Literary Sources Reconstructing Urban Soundscapes in the Digital Era Music, Place, and Identity in Italian Urban Soundscapes circa 1550-1860 reframes our understanding of Italian music history beyond models of patronage, investigating how sounds and musics have contributed to the construction of human identities and communities.
Moira Bennett casts her perceptive, wry and amused eye over a childhood and adolescence in South Africa and her years raising sponsorship for the Aldeburgh Festival, the Barbican Centre and the London Symphony Orchestra. In her early fifties, Moira Bennett was widowed with a school-age son and in need of a job. With virtually no previous working experience but full of energy and determination, she found herself working at the Britten-Pears Schoolat Snape, helping to run masterclasses for young professional musicians studying with artists such as Peter Pears, Galina Vishnevskaya, Mstislav Rostropovich, Hugues Cuenod and William Pleeth. Her gift for arts administration - understanding the needs of performers and audiences - was soon to become highly valued at Aldeburgh, as she became the Registrar at the Britten-Pears School and went on to create the post of Development Director in the early days ofcommercial sponsorship of the arts. She was later invited to take on a similar role at the Barbican Centre, supporting a series of international arts festivals, before going on to work with the London Symphony Orchestra. In 2012 the Bittern Press published Moira Bennett's history of the Britten-Pears School, Making Musicians, which Classical Music magazine made one its Books of the Year. Now in her early nineties, Moira Bennett has written an extraordinary autobiography, casting an astute eye over her childhood and adolescence in South Africa, the impact of the Second World War and the Apartheid years on the country, and her second, 'unexpected', life in the arts.
In the early seventeenth century, enthusiasm for the violin swept across Europe-this was an instrument capable of bewitching virtuosity, with the power to express emotions in a way only before achieved with the human voice. With this new guide to the Baroque violin, and its close cousin, the Baroque viola, distinguished performer and pedagogue Walter Reiter puts this power into the hands of today's players. Through fifty lessons based on the Reiter's own highly-renowned course at The Royal Conservatory of the Hague, The Baroque Violin & Viola, Volume II provides a comprehensive exploration of the period's rich and varied repertoire. The lessons in Volume II cover the early seventeenth-century Italian sonata, music of the French Baroque, the Galant style, and the sonatas of composers like Schmelzer, Biber, and Bach. Practical exercises are integrated into each lesson, and accompanied by rich video demonstrations on the book's companion website. Brought to life by Reiter's deep insight into key repertoire based on a lifetime of playing and teaching, The Baroque Violin & Viola, Volume II: A Fifty-Lesson Course will enhance performances of professional and amateur musicians alike.
This book, first published in 1934, contains the recollections of the varied and coloured life of a great pianist and composer, who is one of the most striking figures of the musical world. Rachmaninoff dictated his memoires to the author of this book, and much of the story is therefore told in the first person. The final chapter is Riesemann's own contribution. It is an estimate of Rachmaninoff's qualities as composer; it shows knowledge of all his more important works; and it shows discrimination. The whole book is an authoritative and interesting study of a popular artist.
Kenneth Hamilton's book engagingly and lucidly dissects the oft-invoked myth of a Great Tradition, or Golden Age of Pianism. It is written both for players and for members of their audiences by a pianist who believes that scholarship and readability can go hand-in-hand. Hamilton discusses in meticulous yet lively detail the performance-style of great pianists from Liszt to Paderewski, and delves into the far-from-inevitable development of the piano recital. He entertainingly recounts how classical concerts evolved from exuberant, sometimes riotous events into the formal, funereal trotting out of predictable pieces they can be today, how an often unhistorical "respect for the score" began to replace pianists' improvisations and adaptations, and how the clinical custom arose that an audience should be seen and not heard. Pianists will find food for thought here on their repertoire and the traditions of its performance. Hamilton chronicles why pianists of the past did not always begin a piece with the first note of the score, nor end with the last. He emphasizes that anxiety over wrong notes is a relatively recent psychosis, and playing entirely from memory a relatively recent requirement. Audiences will encounter a vivid account of how drastically different are the recitals they attend compared to concerts of the past, and how their own role has diminished from noisily active participants in the concert experience to passive recipients of artistic benediction from the stage. They will discover when cowed listeners eventually stopped applauding between movements, and why they stopped talking loudly during them. The book's broad message proclaims that there is nothing divinely ordained about our own concert-practices, programming and piano-performance styles. Many aspects of the modern approach are unhistorical-some laudable, some merely ludicrous. They are also far removed from those fondly, if deceptively, remembered as constituting a Golden Age.
for SATB, organ, and optional handbells Through luminous choral harmonies, images of a winter night, and echoes of scripture, Advent Moon evokes deep human longing as well as the promise of the coming of light. The delicate organ accompaniment and optional handbells underscore both the haunting opening and the radiant conclusion of this piece.
The lives, loves, adventures and trailblazing musical careers of four extraordinary women from a stunning debut biographer. 'Magnificent.' Kate Mosse 'Riveting.' Antonia Fraser 'A breath of fresh air.' Kate Molleson 'Fascinating.' Alexandra Harris 'Wonderful.' Claire Tomalin 'Splendid.' Miranda Seymour 'Remarkable.' Fiona Maddocks 'Pioneering.' Andrew Motion Ethel Smyth (b.1858): Famed for her operas, this trailblazing queer Victorian composer was a larger-than-life socialite, intrepid traveller and committed Suffragette. Rebecca Clarke (b.1886): This talented violist and Pre-Raphaelite beauty was one of the first women ever hired by a professional orchestra, later celebrated for her modernist experimentation. Dorothy Howell (b.1898): A prodigy who shot to fame at the 1919 Proms, her reputation as the 'English Strauss' never dented her modesty; on retirement, she tended Elgar's grave alone. Doreen Carwithen (b.1922): One of Britain's first woman film composers who scored Elizabeth II's coronation film, her success hid a 20-year affair with her married composition tutor. In their time, these women were celebrities. They composed some of the century's most popular music and pioneered creative careers; but today, they are ghostly presences, surviving only as muses and footnotes to male contemporaries like Elgar, Vaughan Williams and Britten - until now. Leah Broad's magnificent group biography resurrects these forgotten voices, recounting lives of rebellion, heartbreak and ambition, and celebrating their musical masterpieces. Lighting up a panoramic sweep of British history over two World Wars, Quartet revolutionises the canon forever.
for SSAA unaccompanied Originally written for SATB, this hymn to the 'Queen of the Heavens' is a glorious work, replete with dramatic changes of mood and texture. The majestic chords of the opening bars quickly give way to a spirited exchange between the voices. This pattern of contrasts is repeated throughout the piece before the final jubilant chords fade away to pianissimo. This is an approachable and rewarding motet, appropriate for any time of the year and in particular, the Feast of the Blessed Virgin Mary and Eastertide. The original SATB version of Regina Caeli has also been recorded by the renowned American choir, the Phoenix Chorale, and released on a Grammy award-winning CD by Chandos (Spotless Rose CHSA 5066).
Jan Swafford's biographies of composers Charles Ives and Johannes Brahms have established him as a revered music historian, capable of bringing his subjects vibrantly to life. His magnificent new biography of Ludwig van Beethoven peels away layers of legend to get to the living, breathing human being who composed some of the world's most iconic music. Swafford mines sources never before used in English-language biographies to reanimate the revolutionary ferment of Enlightenment-era Bonn, where Beethoven grew up and imbibed the ideas that would shape all of his future work. Swafford then tracks his subject to Vienna, capital of European music, where Beethoven built his career in the face of critical incomprehension, crippling ill health, romantic rejection, and 'fate's hammer', his ever-encroaching deafness. At the time of his death he was so widely celebrated that over ten thousand people attended his funeral. This book is a biography of Beethoven the man and musician, not the myth, and throughout, Swafford - himself a composer - offers insightful readings of Beethoven's key works. More than a decade in the making, this will be the standard Beethoven biography for years to come. |
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