Wilfrid Mellers is a composer, musician and author. Honorary Fellow of Downing College, Cambridge. This is his classic book on Beethoven.

Wilfrid Mellers is a composer, musician and author. Honorary Fellow of Downing College, Cambridge. This is his classic book on Bach.

This, the second edition, was significantly revised and expanded. It incorporates a substantial amount of new material - notably three sections on the operas Hugh the Drover, Sir John in Love and The Poisoned Kiss. Also Wilfrid inserted into the final chapter A Double Man's Last Harvest, an account of the late A minor sonata for violin and piano.

The subject of this book is accurately defined by its subtitle. Music in a New Found Land does not pretend to be a comprehensive history of American music. Nor does Mellers strive to catalog what he considers to be authentic American music. Instead, he deals, in some detail, with comparatively few composers, most of whom have wellestablished reputations. It has always been difficult to separate American music from its immediate relevance to the twentieth century. Mellers' theme involves the relationship between "art" music, jazz and pop music; he sees the segregation of these genres as both illogical and artifi cial. If the pop music of Tin Pan Alley may be anti-art, it has also produced Gershwin, Ellington, and composing improvisers such as Louis Armstrong, Charlie Parker, and Miles Davis. The study of American music is as relevant into any inquiry into a national culture as the study of American literature and painting. This book contains a large number of quotations from American writers, because Mellers thought American sensibility should parallel, reinforce, and comment on American music. In sum, this is the closest available one-volume history of American music, and a window into American culture.

Most books on the American musical are little more than exercises in nostalgia. The specially commissioned essays that make up Approaches to the American Musical take a different view of the form. Going beyond the common assertion that musicals are simply escapist; these examinations of American stage and film musicals argue that Porgy and Bess, Top Hat, Kiss Me Kate and All That Jazz were popular precisely because they engaged with such important American issues as ethnicity, commerce and international relations.

The subject of this book is accurately defined by its subtitle. "Music in a New Found Land" does not pretend to be a comprehensive history of American music. Nor does Mellers strive to catalog what he considers to be authentic American music. Instead, he deals, in some detail, with comparatively few composers, most of whom have wellestablished reputations.

It has always been difficult to separate American music from its immediate relevance to the twentieth century. Mellers' theme involves the relationship between "art" music, jazz and pop music; he sees the segregation of these genres as both illogical and artifi cial. If the pop music of Tin Pan Alley may be anti-art, it has also produced Gershwin, Ellington, and composing improvisers such as Louis Armstrong, Charlie Parker, and Miles Davis.

The study of American music is as relevant into any inquiry into a national culture as the study of American literature and painting. Th is book contains a large number of quotations from American writers, because Mellers thought American sensibility should parallel, reinforce, and comment on American music. In sum, this is the closest available one-volume history of American music, and a window into American culture.

Wilfrid Mellers is a composer, musician and author. Honorary Fellow of Downing College, Cambridge. This is his classic work on Mompou.

Articles on masterpieces of European religious music, from the middle ages to Stravinsky and Tavener. The late Wilfrid Mellers, who occupies a special place among music critics, described himself as a non-believer; but his preference for music that "displays a sense of the numinous" (in his words) will strike a chord with many wholisten to religious music nowadays, and who share his view that music that confronts first and last things is likely to offer more than music that evades them. The essays form five groups, which together offer a survey of religious music from around the first millennium to the beginning of the second, in the context of the difficult issues of what religious music is, and, for good measure, what is religion? The parts are: The Ages of Christian Faith; The Re-birth of a Re-birth: From Renaissance to High Baroque; From Enlightenment to Doubt; From "the Death of God" to "the Unanswered Question"; and The Ancient Law and the Modern Mind. Musical discussion, with copious examples, is conducted throughout the book in a context that is also religious - and indeed philosophical, social, and political, with the open-endedness that such an approach demands in the presentation of ideas aboutmusic's most fundamental nature and purposes. COMPOSERS: Hildegard of Bingen; Perotin; Machaut; Dunstable, Dufay; William Corniyshes father and son; Tallis; Byrd; Monteverdi; Schutz; J.S. Bach; Couperin; Handel; Haydn;Mozart; Beethoven; Schubert; Bruckner; Berlioz, Faure; Verdi, Brahms; Elgar, Delius; Holst, Vaughan Williams, Howells; Britten; Janacek; Messiaen, Poulenc; Rachmaninov; Stravinsky; Part, Tavener, Gorecki, Macmillan, Finnissy; Copland.

An intelligent survey of Poulenc's music, based on a careful selection of works, and written by an authoritative guide. Adopting a broadly chronological approach, Mellers is able to trace Poulenc's development as a composer from enfant terrible to mature `society' composer.

This, the second edition, was significantly revised and expanded. It incorporates a substantial amount of new material - notably three sections on the operas Hugh the Drover, Sir John in Love and The Poisoned Kiss. Also Wilfrid inserted into the final chapter A Double Man's Last Harvest, an account of the late A minor sonata for violin and piano.

Wilfrid Mellers Francois Couperin and die French Classical Tradition ROY PUBLISHERS - NEW YORK Frangois Couperin le Grand Copyright 1951, by Wilfrid Mellers PRINTED AND MANUFACTURED IN GREAT BRITAIN Contents PART I LIFE AND TIMES CHAPTER PAGE I The Life 17 II Values and Standards in the Grand Siecle 28 III Taste during the Grand Sicle 49 IV Music, the Court, and the Theatre 59 PART n THE WORK V The Organ Masses 83 VI The Two-violin Sonatas 97 VII The Secular Vocal Works 128 VIII The Church Music 146 IX The Clavecin Works 188 X The Concerts Royaux and Suites for Viols 234 XI Chronology, Influence, and Conclusions 272 PART in THEORY AND PRACTICE XII Couperins Theoretical Work, with Comments on Rhythm, Ornamentation, and Phrasing 291 XIII Couperins Resources and his use of them, with Comments on the Modern Performance of his Work 3 22 CONTENTS XIV Editions of Works by Couperin 337 Appendix A The Authorship of the Organ Masses 341 Appendix B The Organists of St Gervais 344 Appendix C Lord Fitzwilliam and the French Clavecin Composers 345 Appendix D On the Tempo of the Eighteenth-century Dance Movements 347 Appendix E Georg Muffat on Bowing, Phrasing and Ornamentation 350 Appendix F Notes on the titles of Couperins clavecin pieces 356 Appendix G Biographical Notes on the principal per sons mentioned in the text 363 Catalogue Raisonn 374 Gramophone Records of Works by Couperin 390 Bibliography 395 Index 401 Illustrations I Portrait of Francois Couperin le Grand by Andre Bouys, engraved by Filbert 1735 Frontispiece II The Church of St Gervais Topographia facing page Galliae Vol. I, 1655 2 4 HI Veue de la Grande et Petite Escurie et des deux Cours La Description de Versailles 48 IV Gardens ofthe Due dOrleans Topographia Galliae, 1655 74 V Dans le Gout Pastoral Cours de la Reine Mere Topographia Galliae, 1655 145 VI Dans le Gout burlesque Watteau, Portrait of Gilles Louvre 227 VII Watteau, Les Charmes de la Vie Wallace Collection 271 VIII The Organ of St Gervais 330 DC The Organ of the Chapelle Royale 330 The design on the tide page is Couperins coat-of-arms To and to the illustrious memory of Francois Couperin le Grand Preface So FAR AS I am aware, this is the first book on Couperin le Grand in English indeed it is possibly the first comprehensive study of his work in any language, for of die three French books on him known to me, that of Bouvet is purely biographical while those of Tessier and Tiersot do not claim to be more than introductory monographs. As such, they are both admirable. I have divided this study of Couperin into three sections. The first gives the facts of his life and some account of the nature, values, and standards of his community. Of the facts of his life, little is known, and I have not indulged in speculation. For most of the information contained in my introductory chapter I am indebted to the bio graphical sections of the previous books on Couperin referred to above, with the addition of some documentary evidence more recently published by M. Paul Brunold. The chapters on the values and standards of the grand siecle do not pretend to offer a revolutionary approach. My general attitude to the period is influenced by the miscellaneous writings of Mr Martin Turnell, published in Horizon, Scrutiny, and elsewhere 1 especially those on Racine, Moliere, Corneille, and La Princesse de Cleves, and by a most interesting essay by Mr R. C. Knight alsopublished in Scrutiny, which was in part a criticism of TurnelTs account of Racine. I have also found many hints worth following up, and much useful information, in Mr Arthur Tifleys two books, From Montaigne to Moliere and The Decline of the Age of Louis XIV. Most of the information in my chapter on the court theatre music is derived from the writings of the recognized authority on the period, M. Henri Prunieres. These books are listed in the bibliography...

One of the most original and insightful surveys of American music is now available in a revised edition. Published to wide acclaim in 1965, Music in a New Found Land, in its original edition, selectively reviewed the development of American musical traditions from the 1600s to the early 1960s. With the addition of a new afterword and a revised bibliography, Wilfrid Mellers brings his book up to date, discussing the important developments in American music in the past 20 years.
A British musical scholar and composer, Wilfrid Mellers brings to this work not only his musical scholarship but the objectivity of a European writing about American music. "As an outsider," he writes, "I may see and hear things that cannot be experienced from within the American context." Mellers explores the development of unique musical traditions within the confines of America's shores, dividing his work into two parts, the first concentrating on "serious" art-music, the second on "popular" music, jazz, and show tunes.
Beginning with the "primitives" (the New England hymnodists), the section on "serious" music shows how the styles of all the great American classical composers developed. Mellers uses as examples only those composers whose work he considers to have had a lasting effect on the history of American music. Among these are Charles Ives, "the first authentic American composer"; Carl Ruggles; Aaron Copland, "the first artist to define precisely, in sound, an aspect of our urban experience"; Charles Griffes; and John Cage, who took abstraction to an extreme, considering each sound an audible event, with no past and no future. He also examines the importance of Samuel Barber and Virgil Thomson, decidedly non-avant-garde 20th-century composers, whose works are popular, he claims, because they appeal to Americans' regressive tendencies.
The second section charts the development of "pop" music, jazz, and musicals from parlor songs, work songs, and spirituals. Here, Mellers examines the appeal of Stephen Foster, Louis Moreau Gottschalk, and John Philip Sousa; tells the fascinating story of Tin Pan Alley; and traces the development of jazz from its beginnings in the smoke-filled bars of Storeytown to a music that encompassed barrelhouse piano, piano rag, and blues and was played in Chicago, New York, and the Far West. George Gershwin, Mark Blitzstein, and Leonard Gernstein all receive their due, as do the jazz greats, band leaders, and showmen.
Mellers weaves into his study of American music discussion of American intellectual traditions, including Puritanism, transcendentalism, abstraction, and Dadaism--so that we have a history not only of American music, but of the way that music has fit into the intellectual preoccupations of the country. Also included are excerpts from American literature, samples of musical scores, references to specific recordings, and a selected bibliography. Updated through the 1980s, Music in a New Found Land now offers a new generation of scholars and music lovers an absorbing and authoritative study of the development of American music.

Angels of the Night falls into three parts. From the Jazz explosion ignited by Black Musicians in the early years of the 1900s, in the Reliious context of Gospel Music and in the Secular context of the Blues.

Wilfrid Mellers is a composer, musician and author. Honorary Fellow of Downing College, Cambridge. This is his classic book on Beethoven.

Wilfrid Mellers is a composer, musician and author. Honorary Fellow of Downing College, Cambridge. This is his classic book on Bach.