Composers and songwriters Books

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Book SynopsisBy examining theoretical debates about the nature of nineteenth-century German opera and analyzing the genre’s development and its international dissemination, this book shows German opera’s entanglement with national identity formation. The thorough study of German opera debates in the first half of the nineteenth century highlights the esthetic and ideological significance of this relatively neglected repertoire, and helps to contextualize Richard Wagner’s attempts to define German opera and to gain a reputation as the German opera composer par excellence. By interpreting Wagner’s esthetic endeavors as a continuation of previous campaigns for the emancipation of German opera, this book adds an original and significant perspective to discussions about Wagner’s relation to German nationalism.

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Book SynopsisIn Musical Culture in the World of Adam de la Halle, contributors from musicology, literary studies, history, and art history provide an account of the works of 13th-century composer Adam de la Halle, one of the first named authors of medieval vernacular music for whom a complete works manuscript survives. The essays illuminate Adam’s generic transformations in polyphony, drama, debate poetry, and other genres, while also emphasizing his place in a large community of trouvères active in the bustling urban environment of Arras. Exploring issues of authorship and authority, tradition and innovation, the material contexts of his works, and his influence on later generations, this book provides the most complete and up-to-date picture available in English of Adam’s œuvre. Contributors are Alain Corbellari, Mark Everist, Anna Kathryn Grau, John Haines, Anne Ibos-Augé, Daniel E. O’Sullivan, Judith A. Peraino, Isabelle Ragnard, Jennifer Saltzstein, Alison Stones, Carol Symes, and Eliza Zingesser.Table of ContentsContents Acknowledgements List of Figures List of Tables List of Music Examples Notes on Contributors A Note on Manuscript Sigla Introduction  Jennifer Saltzstein part 1 The Northern Milieu  1 The “School of Arras” and the Career of Adam  Carol Symes  2 The Poets of the North: Economies of Literature and Love  Eliza Zingesser part 2 Material Contexts of Arrageois Song  3 Another Note on fr. 25566 and Its Illustrations  Alison Stones  4 Aristocratic Patronage and the Cosmopolitan Vernacular Songbook: the Chansonnier du Roi (M-trouv.) and the French Mediterranean  John Haines  5 Taking Notae on King and Cleric: Thibaut, Adam, and the Medieval Readers of Chansonnier de Noailles (T-trouv.)  Judith A. Peraino part 3 Genres in Context  6 The Northern Jeu-parti  Daniel E. O’Sullivan  7 The Songs of Adam de la Halle  Isabelle Ragnard part 4 Traditions and Transformations  8 Adam de la Halle: Cleric and Busker  Alain Corbellari  9 Refrain Quotations in Adam’s Rondeaux, Motets and Plays  Anne Ibos-Augé  10 The Pastourelle and the Jeu de Robin et Marion  Anna Kathryn Grau  11 Friends and Foals: The Polyphonic Music of Adam de la Halle  Mark Everist  12 Adam de la Halle’s Fourteenth-Century Musical and Poetic Legacies  Jennifer Saltzstein Annex I – Refrains in Rondeaux and Chansons  Anne Ibos-Augé Annex II – The Refrains and Citations in the Motets  Anne Ibos-Augé Annex III – Lyrical Citations in the Plays  Anne Ibos-Augé Annex IV – Musical Transcriptions  Anne Ibos-Augé Bibliography Index

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Book SynopsisIf, as Robert Craft remarked, ‘religious beliefs were at the core of Stravinsky’s life and work’, why have they not figured more prominently in discussions of his works? Stravinsky’s coordination of the listener with time is central to the unity of his compositional style. This ground-breaking study looks at his background in Russian Orthodoxy, at less well-known writings of Arthur Lourié and Pierre Souvtchinsky and at the Catholic philosophy of Jacques Maritain, that shed light on the crucial link between Stravinsky’s spirituality and his restoration of time in music. Recent neuroscience research supports Stravinsky’s eventual adoption of serialism as the natural and logical outcome of his spiritual and musical quest.Table of ContentsAcknowledgements List of Tables and Illustrations Notes on Previously Published Material Prologue 1 The Stravinsky Legacy?  1 ‘Time’ for a New Legacy? 2 Being and Time: A Nightingale Sings …  1 Stravinsky’s Spirituality …  2 … and Musical Inheritance  3 Temporality in Znamenny Chant  4 Resonance  5 Le Rossignol (1908–14) 3 From Now to Eternity  1 Petrushka (1911)  2 Zvezdoliki (1911)  2.1 Stravinsky and the Old Believers  2.2 Time Qualities in Zvezdoliki 4 A Russian Spring  1 Time as a Mental Construct  2 The Rite of Spring  3 Time Qualities in The Rite of Spring 5 A Japanese Spring 6 Heaven and Earth  1 The 025 Motif and Changing Time Qualities 7 New Patterns for Old  1 Cortical Patterning  2 Three Pieces for String Quartet (1914)  3 Chant Dissident (1919)  4 Pulcinella (1919–20)  5 Symphonies of Wind Instruments (1920) and Cubism  6 Symphonies of Wind Instruments (1920): Temporal Form  7 Time and Form: Jacques Maritain 8 Time for Pushkin 9 The Object Is Time  1 Mental Imaging  2 Octet (1923)  3 Oedipus Rex (1926)  4 Apollo (1928)  5 Lourié’s Understanding of Stravinsky 10 A Journey to Hyperspace  1 1st Movement  2 2nd Movement  3 3rd Movement  4 Music as a Higher Brain Function 11 Faith Matters  1 Pater Noster (1926)  2 Russian Credo (1932)  3 Ave Maria (1934)  4 Tests of Faith  5 Perséphone (1933)  6 Darker Times  7 Babel (1944)  8 Mass (1944–48)  8.1 Kyrie  8.2 Gloria  8.3 Credo  8.4 Sanctus  8.5 Agnus Dei  9 The Poetics of Stravinsky and Maritain 12 A Matter of Time 13 Stravinsky, Schoenberg and God  1 Belief in Divine Authority  2 Belief in the Hebrew God  3 Belief in Biblical Mythology  4 Belief in Catholic Culture  5 Devotion to the Word  6 Synthesis 14 New Wine  1 Cantata (1952)  2 Stravinsky, Webern and God  3 Canticum Sacrum (1955)  4 Threni (1958)  4.1 De Elegia Prima  4.2 De Elegia Tertia  4.3 De Elegia Quinta 15 Late Harvest  1 A Sermon, A Narrative and A Prayer (1961)  1.1 A Sermon  1.2 A Narrative  1.3 A Prayer  2 Two Bible Stories: The Flood (1962) and Abraham and Isaac (1963)  3 The Flood (1962)  4 Abraham and Isaac (1962–3)  5 Requiem Canticles (1966)  5.1 Prelude  5.2 Exaudi  5.3 Dies Irae  5.4 Tuba Mirum  5.5 Interlude  5.6 Rex Tremendae  5.7 Lacrimosa  5.8 Libera Me  5.9 Postlude Epilogue  Appendix 1 Victor Ivanovitch Nesmelov: The Science of Man  Appendix 2 Gisèle Brelet Bibliography Index

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Book SynopsisHow does a Romantic composer approach the poetry he sets: as raw material to be remade, a pretext for self-expression, a sanctified artefact, or a message to be illustrated with music? In my book, I examine Franz Liszt’s songs for voice and piano, which remain little known to scholars, artists, and music lovers alike. The objective is to present Liszt’s songs in all their complexity and diversity as well as identifying the key elements of the composer’s broadly understood song-writing technique – both those that make him unique and those that relate him to the European tradition. This approach also makes it possible to shed light on a major though previously neglected aspect of the composer’s workshop, namely, his work with the poetic text, which to Liszt was just as important as the musical setting.

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Book SynopsisMozart’s Piano Concertos, especially those composed during the years 1784-’91, are still held in high esteem, two centuries later, by both amateur music-lovers and professional musicians. Strangely enough, only very few comprehensive studies exist on this remarkable section of Mozart’s output. The present study, first published in German in a slightly abridged form, deals with Mozart’s evolution as a composer of piano concertos; sheds light on the connections between the concertos and other fields of creative activity, as well as on those with other composers of his time. Finally, attention is paid to problems of performance practice. The author, born in 1914, emeritus professor of Utrecht University and former chairman of the Zentralinstitut für Mozart-Forschung, Salzburg, has been involved with the subject of Mozart’s concertos for about 60 years.

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