Commissioned by Serge Diaghilev, the director of the Ballets Russes, this dazzling piece brought overnight success to its composer. Based on a series of Russian fairy tales, Stravinsky's modern masterpiece is greatly admired for its brilliant orchestration and harmony, and it remains as popular today as at its 1910 premiere.

Brilliantly orchestrated, filled with Russian folksong as well as new and striking harmonies, this score is one the most popular and acclaimed musical works of the 20th century. General Note. Stage Directions. Instrumentation. All materials in English and French, newly translated for this edition.

One of the seminal works of the 20th century, The Rite of Spring famously caused a riot at it's first performance in Paris in 1913. Since then, this revolutionary masterpiece has found its place as one of the most performed and admired scores of the 20th century.

Carlo Gesualdo, Prince of Venosa, is equally celebrated as the composer of madrigals of great power and tortured complexity and as the murderer of his wife and her lover in flagrante delicto. His life and compositions are not unconnected. His neurotic sensibility found an ideal outlet in the mannerist tendencies of late Renaissance music, and his works are the most extreme examples of those tendencies. Watkins's extended study of Gesualdo's life and works was originally published in 1973. Alongside detailed analysis of Gesualdo's remarkable madrigals and of the few works in other genres, it contained much new biographical material, particularly on the latter part of the composer's life. This new edition has been extensively updated, and contains a new chapter covering the research of recent years. The preface to the first edition, by Igor Stravinsky is reprinted.

One of the greatest of contemporary composers has here set down in delightfully personal fashion his general ideas about music and some accounts of his own experience as a composer. Every concert-goer and lover of music will take keen pleasure in his notes about the essential features of music, the process of musical composition, inspiration, musical types, and musical execution. Throughout the volume are to he found trenchant comments on such subjects as Wagnerism, the operas of Verdi, musical taste, musical snobbery, the influence of political ideas on Russian music under the Soviets, musical improvisation as opposed to musical construction, the nature of melody, and the function of the critic of music. Musical people of every sort will welcome this first presentation in English of an unusually interesting book.

An Autobiography chronicles the first half-century of Stravinsky's life, all the while offering his opinions and "abhorrences." A Parsifal performance at Bayreuth? "At the end of a quarter of an hour I could bear no more." Nijinsky? "The poor boy knew nothing of music." Spanish folk music? "Endless preliminary chords of guitar playing."

This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press's mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1962.

This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press's mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1962.

En septiembre de 1939, poco despus de que estalle la segunda Guerra Mundial, gor Stravinski se embarca rumbo a Amrica, donde ocupar la ctedra de Potica de la Universidad de Harvard y dar las seis conferencias que recoge este volumen. En la Potica musical, que es una de las mejores introducciones a la esttica de la msica que se han escrito jams, hallar el lector las ideas de Stravinski sobre la creacin (la propia y la ajena), la composicin, la tipologa y la ejecucin musicales en un lenguaje preciso e incisivo, que hace de la lectura de este libro un autntico placer. Asimismo, a medida que avanza en su anlisis de los conceptos musicales, Stravinski no puede evitar trazar la imagen de lo que fueron su vida y su carrera como artista. En palabras de Iorgos Seferis, autor de la presentacin, lo que distingue a un hombre de la envergadura de Stravinski es una palabra o una slaba o un solo sonido. Esa meta a la que uno intenta llegar y no llega. Sin embargo, el camino que hay en medio, ese largo camino ciego que con dificultad encontramos, es lo que nos conmueve en la vida de un creador.