Patanjali's Yoga Sutras is the key text of yoga. Yet for many contemporary practitioners, its deeper treasures remain either unknown or mired in obscurity. Ranju Roy and David Charlton focus on 18 of the most important sutras and show how each one illuminates the relationship between the body, the breath and the mind in a practical, clear and contemporary manner. The sutras are carefully deconstructed, put into context and then developed into ideas for practice. They examine the interplay of three key terms: support, direction and space. They suggest that only by taking support on something can you establish a clear direction; and only then can a space open up to grow into. This formula can be applied as successfully to the body (in asana) as to the breath (in pranayama) and the mind (through meditation). With illustrated asana sequences and suggested practices, Embodying the Yoga Sutra is both a practical as well as a deeply philosophical book. Roy and Charlton give readers a whole new vocabulary with which to understand yoga as a living, vibrant and dynamic tradition.

Bringing together well-known writers with composers and performers, this volume gives a complete overview of Holt's creative work up to 2015. British composer Simon Holt (b. 1958) has been a leading presence in contemporary music since the early 1980s and Kites. His output is diverse, comprising chamber music, concertos for diverse instruments, songs, piano musicand opera. Holt is a composer who demands unusual commitment from his interpreters - the intricate sound-worlds he creates often contain complex, rich textures, offset by 'still centres' - for the purpose of making music which speaks with extraordinary power. Bringing together well-known writers with composers and performers, this volume gives a complete overview of Holt's creative work up to 2015 and Fool is hurt. It uses a variety of approaches to help readers, listeners and players to find ways into the pieces and to understand the influence of visual art and poetry on Holt's work. Colour illustrations, music examples, tables and sketch facsimiles offer a rounded impression of Holt's inspiration and thought to date. Also included are a wide-ranging conversation between Simon Holt and the artist Julia Bardsley, and a text by the conductor Thierry Fischer. The volume also offers the first detailed catalogue of Holt's compositions, drawn up together with the composer. It reveals that the last twenty years have seen no slowing-up in his rate of creative production, notwithstanding that the nature of his writing has changed during this time. DAVID CHARLTON is Professor Emeritus of Music History, Royal Holloway, University of London. Contributors: JULIA BARDSLEY, DAVID BEARD, DAVID CHARLTON, THIERRY FISCHER, ANTHONY GILBERT, STEPHEN GUTMAN, MELINDA MAXWELL, RICHARD MCGREGOR, STEPH POWER, PHILIP RUPPRECHT, SIMON SPEARE, REBECCA THUMPSTON, EDWARD VENN

This is the first book for a century to explore the development of French opera with spoken dialogue from its beginnings. Musical comedy in this form came in different styles and formed a distinct genre of opera, whose history has been obscured by neglect. Its songs were performed in private homes, where operas themselves were also given. The subject-matter was far wider in scope than is normally thought, with news stories and political themes finding their way onto the popular stage. In this book, David Charlton describes the comedic and musical nature of eighteenth-century popular French opera, considering topics such as Gherardi's theatre, Fair Theatre and the 'musico-dramatic art' created in the mid-eighteenth century. Performance practices, singers, audience experiences and theatre staging are included, as well as a pioneering account of the formation of a core of 'canonical' popular works.

Originally published in 2000, this book highlights the interst Sedaine's life and work is now, belatedly, provoking in many scholarly disciplines. If Sedaine speaks today to literary history, theatre history and opera studies, it is because he possessed a multivalent vision, one which accounts for both his past neglect and is present rediscovery. Like many others, he believed that the established, 'official' genres needed to be reformed; unlike many, he made it his business to transform the actual language and operation of the theatre arts he practised. Until late eighteenth-century opera and drama in France become better understood, Sedaine's immense importance for the development of Romantic opera and theatre risks remaining generally concealed; to reveal something of this importance is one main reason for publishing the present volume. This book includes chapters on Sedaine and the question of genre, the representation of the female in the dramas of Sedaine, and the words, gestures and other signs in the era of Sedaine.

The majority of these collected essays date from 1992 onwards, three of them having been specially expanded for this volume. Drawing on recent archival research and new musicological theory, they investigate distinctive qualities in French opera from early opera comique to early grand opera. 'Media' is interpreted in terms of both narrative systems and practical theatre resources. One group of essays identifies narrative systems in 'minuet-scenes', in the diegetic romance, and in special uses of musical motives. Another group concerns the theory and A|sthetics of opera, in which uses of metaphor help us interpret audience reception. A third group focuses on orchestral and staging practices, brought together in a new theory of the 'melodrama model' linking various genres from the 1780s with the world of the 1820s. French opera's relation with literature and politics is a continuing theme, explored in writings on prison scenes, Ossian, and public-private dramaturgy in grand opera. David Charlton has written widely on French music and opera topics for over 25 years. The selection of his articles presented here focuses on the period 1730-1830 when Paris was a hotbed of influential ideas in music and music theatre, with many of these ideas taken up by foreign composers. This volume assesses the French contribution to the development of Classical and Romantic styles and genres which has hitherto not received the attention it deserves.

Historians of French politics, art, philosophy and literature have long known the tensions and fascinations of Louis XV's reign, the 1750s in particular. David Charlton's study comprehensively re-examines this period, from Rameau to Gluck and elucidates the long-term issues surrounding opera. Taking Rousseau's Le Devin du Village as one narrative centrepiece, Charlton investigates this opera's origins and influences in the 1740s and goes on to use past and present research to create a new structural model that explains the elements of reform in Gluck's tragedies for Paris. Charlton's book opens many new perspectives on the musical practices and politics of the period, including the Querelle des Bouffons. It gives the first detailed account of intermezzi and opere buffe performed by Eustachio Bambini's troupe at the Paris Opera from August 1752 to February 1754 and discusses Rameau's comedies Platee and Les Paladins and their origins.

Historians of French politics, art, philosophy and literature have long known the tensions and fascinations of Louis XV's reign, the 1750s in particular. David Charlton's study comprehensively re-examines this period, from Rameau to Gluck and elucidates the long-term issues surrounding opera. Taking Rousseau's Le Devin du Village as one narrative centrepiece, Charlton investigates this opera's origins and influences in the 1740s and goes on to use past and present research to create a new structural model that explains the elements of reform in Gluck's tragedies for Paris. Charlton's book opens many new perspectives on the musical practices and politics of the period, including the Querelle des Bouffons. It gives the first detailed account of intermezzi and opere buffe performed by Eustachio Bambini's troupe at the Paris Opera from August 1752 to February 1754 and discusses Rameau's comedies Platee and Les Paladins and their origins.

Originally published in 1986, this book is a major study in English on Gretry and opera-comique. Opera-comique is the operatic genre that lies behind The Magic Flute and Fidelio. David Charlton's important study examines the genre in the period before the French Revolution, considering the literary sources, performance conditions, contemporary aesthetic criteria and statistics which reveal the popularity of such works at that time. Dr Charlton takes Gretry, composer of some thirty-four operas-comiques, and a fascinating personality of his day, as the central figure of his study, drawing on Gretry's extensive Memoires and other writing, not available in English translation, for the biographical sections. Twenty-four of Gretry's operas-comiques are given a chapter each, with plot summary, critical discussion, summary of different versions and history of performance in Paris. The book can thus be used as a reference tool or read as a comprehensive survey of opera-comique between 1768 and 1791.

This book contains the first complete translation in English of E. T. A. Hoffmann’s major musical writings, complementing the well-known Tales. It offers, therefore, a long-awaited opportunity to assess the thought and influence of one of the most famous of all writers on music and the musical links with his fiction. Containing the first complete appearance in English of Kreisleriana, it reveals a masterpiece of imaginative writing whose title is familiar to musicians (from Robert Schumann’s piano cycle) and whose profound humour and irony can now be fully appreciated. This volume offers translations aiming at the greatest fidelity to Hoffmann, as well as musical accuracy in the reviews. David Charlton’s three introductory essays provide extensive information on the background to Romantic music criticism; on the origins and internal structure of Kreisleriana; and on Hoffmann and opera. A concluding essay by the late Friedrich Schnapp lists Hoffmann’s planned reviews and those mistakenly attributed to him.

A team of scholars and writers examines important Romantic operas and traces the origins and development of a style created during an increasingly technical age. The volume analyzes grand operas by Rossini, Auber, Meyerbeer and Halévy and discusses grand opera in Russia and Germany, and the Czechoslovakian territories, Italy, Britain and the Americas. The volume includes an essay by the renowned opera director David Pountney.