What makes a classical song a song? In a wide-ranging 2004 discussion, covering such contrasting composers as Brahms and Berberian, Schubert and Kurtag, Jonathan Dunsby considers the nature of vocality in songs of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The essence and scope of poetic and literary meaning in the Lied tradition is subjected to close scrutiny against the backdrop of 'new musicological' thinking and music-theoretical orthodoxies. The reader is thus offered the best insights available within an evidence-based approach to musical discourse. Schoenberg figures conspicuously as both songsmith and theorist, and some easily comprehensible Schenkerian approaches are used to convey ideas of musical time and expressive focus. In this work of scholarship and theoretical depth, Professor Dunsby's highly original approach and engaging style will ensure its appeal to all practising musicians and students of Romantic and modern music.

A new and wide-ranging collection of essays by leading international scholars, exploring the concept and practices of virtuosity in Franz Liszt and his contemporaries. In the annals of music history, few figures have dominated the discussion of virtuosity as much as Franz Liszt. A flamboyant performer whose hair-raising technical feats at the piano created a sense of awe-inspiring excitement andan icon whose star power radiated far beyond the realm of music, Liszt was, along with his early model, Paganini, among the first major performer-composers to define himself principally by virtuosity. Featuring new essays by an international group of preeminent scholars, Liszt and Virtuosity offers a reevaluation of the concept and practices of virtuosity as shaped and defined in Liszt's multifaceted oeuvre, as well as a reconsiderationof Liszt's relation to other major and lesser-known musical figures, including Czerny, Schubert, Chopin, Brahms, Debussy, and Marie Jaëll. Set in the context of larger trends within the fields of music history, musicanalysis, intellectual history, and performance studies, these capacious explorations demonstrate that Liszt's uniqueness and significance resided in his ability to transform virtuosity into a revolutionary musical force, pushingthe piano aesthetic to the limits of sound and poetic meaning.

Pierre Boulez was appointed to the College de France in 1976, with the chair devoted to 'Invention, technique and language in Music', and he held his position until 1995. The publication of his extraordinary College de France lectures, his most significant writings from the 1970s to the 1990s, will make a major contribution to the discussion in English about Boulez's aesthetic legacy. His goal in Lecons de musique is to express his conception of musical language, laid out over the course of nearly twenty years of lecturing. He is thinking about the possible paths musical thought could take, as well as the musical legacy of the past In addition to composers, music historians, theorists, and music students, this book will be invaluable to those interested in the history and aesthetics of 20th century music, musical manifestations of artistic modernism, the history of ideas, and French intellectual and cultural history. Faber have been Pierre Boulez's publisher since 1986 - previous books include Orientations, Boulez on Music Today and Boulez on Conducting. 'Boulez's achievements in changing every part of the fabric of classical musical culture all over the world are indelible.' Tom Service, Guardian

What makes a classical song a song? In a wide-ranging 2004 discussion, covering such contrasting composers as Brahms and Berberian, Schubert and Kurtag, Jonathan Dunsby considers the nature of vocality in songs of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The essence and scope of poetic and literary meaning in the Lied tradition is subjected to close scrutiny against the backdrop of 'new musicological' thinking and music-theoretical orthodoxies. The reader is thus offered the best insights available within an evidence-based approach to musical discourse. Schoenberg figures conspicuously as both songsmith and theorist, and some easily comprehensible Schenkerian approaches are used to convey ideas of musical time and expressive focus. In this work of scholarship and theoretical depth, Professor Dunsby's highly original approach and engaging style will ensure its appeal to all practising musicians and students of Romantic and modern music.

Pierrot lunaire (1912) is one of the most important music theater works ever written. This is the first guide in English to a work that continues to be performed, broadcast, and recorded worldwide. The book describes the artistic environment around the turn of the century from which Pierrot emerged, and discusses Schoenberg's working methods and intentions in composition. In a clear and imaginative description of the work itself, the author takes each of the twenty-one melodramas in turn, considering both the music and the narrative. The text of all twenty-one poems is provided in German and in a new English translation by Andrew Porter.

Performing Music unravels some of the mysteries of musical performance. It discusses in a non-technical language the knowledge and attitudes that performers need. The lay reader gains a unique insight into how performers think, and what they think about. The book offers a sustained but compact argument in a rich and entertaining narrative.

Order and Disorder is the result of the first International Orpheus Academy for Music Theory, held in 2003. Its theme was 20th century music and theory, especially after the 1950s. Five guest lecturers discussed theoretical, historical and philosophical aspects of this theme in six articles. In "Music-Analytical Trends of the Twentieth Century," Jonathan Dunsby discusses key features in the development of music analysis from prestructuralist to postmodern times. Joseph N. Straus describes different ways in which intervallic and motivic ideas of the musical surface in atonal music are projected over larger spans. Yves Knockaert investigates the controllability of non-intention in Cage's work, the compositional approach of Morton Feldman's "floating thoughts" and the "raw state" of Wolfgang Rihm's music of the 1980s. In "Nature and the Sublime: the Politics of Order and Disorder in Twentieth-Century Music," Max Paddison exposes a history of the concept of nature in relation to music with some references to literature and the visual arts. Konrad Boehmer analyses several aspects of the political economy of music in "Music and Politics." In "Towards a Terza Prattica," he focuses on the perspectives of the paradigmatic change which electric music has caused.