History of music Books

Book SynopsisPractical suggestions, and documentary evidence, for performers wishing to understand the gestures and nuances embedded in eighteenth-century musical notation. There are, of course, no commas, periods, or question marks in music of the Baroque and Classic eras. Nonetheless, the concept of "punctuating" music into longer and shorter units of expression was richly explored by many of the era's leading composers, theorists, and performers. The Art of Musical Phrasing in the Eighteenth Century gathers and discusses, for the first time, an extensive collection of quotations and musical illustrations relevant tophrase articulation and written and unwritten rests. Among the notable authors cited and discussed are Muffat, Telemann, C. P. E. Bach, Mattheson, Marpurg, Tartini, and Mozart's father Leopold (author of the most important eighteenth-century treatise on string playing). On a larger scale, The Art of Musical Phrasing demonstrates the role of punctuation within the history of rhetoric during the Age of Enlightenment. From this, the performer of todaycan gain a greater appreciation for both the strengths and shortcomings of the analogy that writers of the day drew between punctuation in written language and in music. Modern performers, argues Vial, have the challenge andresponsibility of understanding and conveying the nuances, inflections, and rhythmic gestures deeply embedded in eighteenth-century musical notation. The Art of Musical Phrasing, the fruit of Vial's rich experience as a cellist performing on both period and modern instruments, lays out long-needed practical suggestions for achieving this goal. Stephanie D. Vial performs and records widely as a cellist and has taught at the University ofNorth Carolina at Chapel Hill and Duke University.Trade ReviewAn elegantly collected set of historical texts with the evaluation of their application to real problems in musical performance. But by considering what we used to call 'purely musical' problems in wider philosophical and cultural contexts, the author also raises a number of important and fascinating questions of relevance to more than just performers with an interest in historical approaches. . . . Affords us [the opportunity] to reread -- and rehear -- familiar music in the light of these [eighteenth-century] writings. . . . The delicate web of connections Vial draws . . . [between the details of musical performance and] the female-dominated world of the salon is a real scholarly coup. . . The University of Rochester Press . . . [has] produced a book that is elegant, well indexed and easy to read. -- Thomas Irvine * EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY MUSIC *Student of all music in the Classical style should find useful [Vial's] explanations on how to decipher . . . musical notation. -- Patricia Stroh * BEETHOVEN JOURNAL *The Art of Musical Phrasing in the Eighteenth Century: Punctuating the Classical 'Period' goes right to the heart of one of the thorniest issues of eighteenth-century performance practice: articulated musical language. Vial beautifully disentangles the confusion regarding notions of articulation, pauses, rests, and phrase marks, tying them all together in an all-embracing, brilliant manner. This is inspired scholarship, essential reading. --Malcolm Bilson, Cornell University * . *What exactly is the connection between punctuation, slurring and phrasing? What difference did the Classical period's domination by the two- and four-bar phrase make to performance practices that had once varied more between the genres?. . . Ms Vial touches in a lively manner on such topics, scattering her net wide. . . Certain details important for performers. . . are better discussed in a masterclass than a book, but the rest is amply covered [here]. -- Peter Williams * MUSICAL TIMES *Provides the reader with insights into how eighteenth-century artists may have approached their performances. . . . Vial's imaginative discussions . . . are inspired and will be of interest to any performer of the music of this era . . . [and to] musicologists, theorists, and cultural historians. -- Donald R. Boomgaarden * JOURNAL OF MUSICOLOGICAL RESEARCH *Table of ContentsMusical Punctuation, the Analogy A Surprisingly Complex and Lively Picture of Pointing Theory Musical "Resting points of the Spirit" Written and Unwritten Rests Punctuation vs. Articulation Affective Punctuation Musical Prose-F.W. Marpurg's Essay on the Punctuation of Recitative Musical Verse-Johann Mattheson's "Curious Specimen" of a Punctuated Minuet

Read more less

Book SynopsisA collection of essays commemorating Hector Berlioz's life and work on the 200th anniversary of his birth. This far-reaching collection of heretofore unpublished studies ushers in the two-hundredth anniversary of the birth of Hector Berlioz [1803-1869]. The contributors include leading music historians and two prominent historians of culture, Peter Gay and Jacques Barzun. The essays discuss Berlioz's views of the music of the "past," Berlioz's interactions with music and musicians of his "present," and views of Berlioz during the several generations after his death [the "future"]. A long-awaited piece by Richard Macnutt meticulously inventories and investigates more than two hundred letters and documents that are now known to have been forged but that have sometimes been accepted as authentic. Further contributions, from David Charlton, Heather Hadlock, Sylvia L'Ecuyer, Katherine Kolb, Catherine Massip, Kerry Murphy, Jean-Michel Nectoux, Cecile Reynaud, and Lesley Wright, consider specific aspects of Berlioz's creative work and critical reception. The editor, Peter Bloom, is Grace Jarcho Ross 1933 Professor of Humanities in the Department of Music at Smith College. His scholarly work has focused primarily on the life and workof Berlioz. He is a member of the Panel of Advisors of the New Berlioz Edition and the author of The Life of Berlioz.Trade ReviewAll in all, a wonderful book to mark the birthday anniversary of a composer whose life and works deserve to be celebrated most noisily! * OPERA QUARTERLY *A compendium of first-rate musicological research and reportage that easily lives up to its ambitious title. * CHOICE *New and uncommon perspectives on Berlioz research . . . [including on] Berlioz's political consciousness and contemporary awareness of his political attitudes. . . . [Barzun] reveal[s] misunderstandings and clichéd opinions that still exist today about Berlioz. -- Frank Heidlberger * MUSIC LIBRARY ASSOCIATION NOTES *Excellent volume. * GRAMOPHONE *Brilliant discussion...extremely pertinent yet diverse analyses....This work, in its very diversity, has the clear advantage of the universality of Berlioz's genius. * AD PARNASSUM *Well-written and impeccably edited. . . . An outstanding Afterword by Jacques Barzun. -- Laurence M. Porter * FRENCH REVIEW *Table of ContentsBerlioz's Berlioz - Peter Gay Catherine Massip, "Berlioz and Early Music" David Charlton, "Learning the Past" Sylvia L'Ecuyer, "Joseph d'Origue's 'Autopsy' of Benvenuto Cellini"Cellini" Katherine Kolb, "Plots and Politics: Berlioz's Tales of Sound and Fury"and Fury" Kerry Murphy, "Berlioz, Meyerbeer, and the Place of Jewishness in Criticism"Criticism" Cecile Reynaud, "Berlioz, Liszt, Virtuosity" Heather Hadlock, "Berlioz, Ophelia, and Feminist Hermeneutics" Jean-Michel Nectoux, "Berlioz in 1900: Between Fervor and Fear" Lesley Wright, "Berlioz in the Fin-de-siècle Press" "Berlioz Forgeries" Richard Macnutt Fourteen Points about Berlioz and the Public,or Why There Is Still a Berlioz Problem - Jacques Barzun

Read more less

Book SynopsisServing a Great and Noble Art is the second volume of the history of the Eastman School of Music, beginning in 1932 after George Eastman's death, and ending in 1972 with the resignation of the school's third director, Walter Hendl. This book is very much about Howard Hanson, director of the school from 1924 until his retirement in 1964.

Read more less

Book SynopsisInterdisciplinary articles bridge the gulf between classical and popular music. Modern musical-analytical techniques are applied to a wide range of Western music, disregarding barriers between different kinds of music. Topics discussed fall into three sections: compositional poietics (poietics being the pre-compositional activities of composer theorists); structuralist approaches, extending musical-theoretical research to new repertoires; and musical-analysis employing techniques from other disciplines. The essays in this volume present current research into a wide range of Western music, disregarding barriers between different kinds of music, and drawing on modern musical-analytical techniques to draw together the varied subjects they explore. Contributors: Jonathan D. Kramer, Robert Cogan, Robert D. Morris, Andrew Mead, Cynthia Folio, Elizabeth West Marvin, Walter Everett, Jane Piper Clendenning, Jonathan W. Bernard, Ellie M. Hisama, Dave Headlam, Richard Hermann, John Covach, Nicholas J. Cook. Elizabeth West Marvin is associate professor of music theory at the Eastman School of Music. Richard Hermann is assistant professor of music, University of New Mexico.Table of ContentsBeyond Unity: Toward an Understanding of Musical Postmodernism The Art-Science of Music after Two Millennia Aspects of Confluence between Western Art Music and Ethnomusicoloy Twelve-Tone Composition and the Music of Elliott Carter An Analysis of Polyrhythm in Selected Improvisd Jazz Solos A Generalization of Contour Theory to Diverse Musical Spaces: Analytical Applications to the Music of Dallapiccola and StockhausenStockhausen A Generalization of Contour Theory to diverse Musical Spaces: Analytical Applications to the Music ofDdallapiccola and StockhausenStockhausen The Beatles as Composers: The Genesis of Abbey Road, Side Two Structural Factors in the Microcanonic Compositions of Gyorgy Ligeti Theory, Analysis, and the "Problem" of Minimal Music The Question of Climax in Ruth Crawford's String Quartet, Mvt. 3 Does the Song Remain the Same? Questions of Authorship and Identification in the Music of Led Zeppelin Theories of Chordal Shape, Aspects of Linguistics, and their Roles in Structuring Berio's Sequenza IV for Piano Stylistic Competencies, Musical Satire, and "This is Spinal Tap" Music Theory and the Postmodern Muse: An Afterword

Read more less

Book SynopsisAn examination of the role of the pedal clavichord in understanding the work of J. S. Bach, as well as its relevance to contemporary organ performances. Friederich Griepenkerl, in his 1844 introduction to Volume 1 of the first complete edition of J. S. Bach's organ works, wrote: "Actually the six Sonatas and the Passacaglia were written for a clavichord with two manuals and pedal,an instrument that, in those days, every beginning organist possessed, which they used beforehand, to practice playing with hands and feet in order to make effective use of them at the organ. It would be a good thing to let suchinstruments be made again, because actually no one who wants to study to be an organist can really do without one." What was the role of the pedal clavichord in music history? Was it a cheap practice instrument for organistsor was Griepenkerl right? Was it a teaching tool that helped contribute to the quality of organ playing in its golden age? Most twentieth-century commentary on the pedal clavichord as an historical phenomenon was written in a kindof vacuum, since there were no playable historical models with which to experiment and from which to make an informed judgment. At the heart of Bach and the Pedal Clavichord: An Organist's Guide are some extraordinary recentexperiments from the Göteborg Organ Art Center [GOArt] at Göteborg University. The Johan David Gerstenberg pedal clavichord from 1766, now in the Leipzig University museum, was documented and reconstructed; the new copy was thenused for several years as a living instrument for organ students and teachers to experience. On the basis of these experiments and experiences, the book explores, in new and artful ways, Bach's keyboard technique, a technique preserved by his first biographer, J. N. Forkel [1802], and by Forkel's own student, Griepenkerl.Trade ReviewThis is an extremely important study which brings together valuable musicological research and practical experimentation in a unique way -- every organist should read it! * CHOIR & ORGAN, September 2004 *Synthesizing a wealth of historical documentation along with the results of new, experimental studies, Speerstra [Eastman School of Music] has written a thorough analysis of the musicological and performance issues that surround the ambigious history and usage of the pedal clavichord. Despite its subtitle, this book should prove valuable for a broad audience not limited to organists; it speaks to all keyboardists interested in expanding their interpretation of Baroque literature. Highly recommended. * CHOICE *Joel Speerstra's work presents a fascinating paradigm for the study of J.S. Bach's organ music that leads performance practice research in a new direction . . . [Speerstra] lays a path for a living performance practice that promotes an integral relationship between the organ and the pedal clavichord. * NOTES, March 2005 *There is much of brilliance in this book. * EARLY MUSIC, January 2005 *Joel Speerstra's book is a wide-ranging study of the pedal clavichord's role in the interpretation of Bach's organ music. Whether one accepts the author's premise or not, organists and clavichordists without access to such a rare instrument may discover new insights into baroque performance practice that can be applied to more readily available instruments. EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY MUSIC, 2005 [Stewart Pollens] Original and brilliant study . . . Anyone interested in keyboard instruments of any kind will find in it a great fund of information and insight into matters of general musical interest, especially the performance of Bach's music. * EARLY MUSIC TODAY *Table of ContentsThe Historical Pedal Clavichord J.S. Bach's Trip Sonatas: A Reception History of a Rumor Reconstructing the Gerstenberg Pedal Clavichord J.S. Bach and the Clavichord: A Reception History of a Technique Performance Practice at the Pedal Clavichord Musica Poetica and Figural Notation J.S. Bach's Passacaglia in C Minor, BWV 582: A Case Study The Pedal Clavichord and the Organ in Dialogue

Read more less

Book SynopsisThis is the first complete publication of the late composer and scholar Ruth Crawford Seeger's major work on American folksongs. It preserves them as well as demonstrates how they should be played so that they remain a living partof the American musical tradition. This is the first publication of an annotated monograph by the noted composer and folksong scholar Ruth Crawford Seeger. Originally written as a foreword for the 1940 book Our Singing Country, it was considered too longand was replaced by a much shorter version. According to her stepson, Pete Seeger, when the original was not included "Ruth suffered one of the biggest disappointments of the last ten years of her life. It just killed her . . .She was trying to analyze the whole style and problem of performing this music." Along with her children Mike and Peggy Seeger, he has long desired to see this work in print as it was meant to be read. The manuscript hasbeen edited from several varying sources by Larry Polansky, with the assistance of Seeger's biographer Judith Tick. It is divided into two sections: I. "A Note on Transcription" and II. "Notes on the Songs and on Manners of Singing." Seeger examines all aspects of the relationship between singer, song, notation, the eventual performer, and the transcriber. In Section I, Seeger develops a complex and well-organized system of notation for these songs which is meant to be both descritive [transcription as cultural preservation] and prescriptive [she intended that others would be able to perform these songs]. In Section II, she provides an interpretive theory for performance of this music, and suggests how performers might make the songs "their own" through a deep knowledge of the original styles. Ruth Crawford Seeger considered this work to be both a major accomplishment and a central statement of herownideas on the topic. Larry Polansky is Associate Professor of Music at Dartmouth College, and a well-known composer and theorist on American music. Judith Tick is Professor of Music at Northeastern University and author of the first major biography of Ruth Crawford Seeger.Trade ReviewThis volume should find a place in every serious folk music fan's library. It's certainly a fitting legacy from so gifted and encompassing an intelligence as Ruth Crawford Seeger's. * SING OUT, Winter 2004 *Table of ContentsA Note on Transcription Notes on the Songs and on Manners of Singing

Read more less

Book SynopsisFew bodies of Western music are as widely respected, studied, and emulated as the fugues of Johann Sebastian Bach. Despite the esteem which Bach's contributions brought to the genre, however, the origin and early history of the fugue remain poorly understood. Theories of Fugue from the Age of Josquin to the Age of Bach addresses both the history and methodology of the pre-Bach fugue (from roughly 1500 to 1700), and, of greatest significance to the literature, it seeks to present a way out of the methodological dilemma of uncertainty which has plagued previous scholarly attempts by considering what musicians of the time had to say about the fugue: what it was, what it was not, how important it was, and where and how a composer should (or shouldn't) use it. Paul Mark Walker is director of the Early Music Ensemble at the University of Virginia and an expert on the history of the fugue.Trade ReviewWinner of the 2002 William H. Scheide Prize, from the American Bach Society, for a publication of exceptional merit on Bach or figures in his circle. * . *Significant contribution to our better understanding of the history of fugues. * BACH BIBLIOGRAPHY *An important addition to the literature on the history of musical forms. * CHOICE *This is a fine and valuable book, encyclopaedic in its coverage of the subject, and the only treatment (in any language) of the entire field. It is an extraordinary achievement. * MUSIC & LETTERS *Lucidly and engagingly written...this book is an outstanding contribution to scholarship and a definitive work, indispensable for the historical study of fugue. * THE AMERICAN ORGANIST *Anyone interested in the fascinating topic of the emergence of the Baroque will find this book a wlecome addition to the overall picture of that important period of musical history. * AMERICAN RECORDER *Table of ContentsFugue in the High Renaissance Fugue at the End of the Renaissance, Part I: Italy and the Netherlands Fugue at the End of the Renaissance, Part II: Germany German Theory During the Thirty Years War: Fugue in Latin School Music Texts Italian Influence on German Fugal Theory, 1640-1680 Instrumental Fugue and the Emergence of Fugal Structure in the Third Quarter of the Seventeenth Century Invertible Counterpoint and the Hamburg Circle of Theorists Fugal Theory, 1680-1710 Fugal Theory in German Lexicographic Texts Fugal Theory, 1710-1740; Mattheson and Fux

Read more less

Book SynopsisA volume of collected essays which engage Wagner's Die Meistersinger von Nurnberg from the perspective of both active performers and academics in a wide range of disciplines. Richard Wagner's Die Meistersinger von Nurnberg has been one of the most performed operas ever since its premiere in 1868. It was adopted as Germany's national opera ("Nationaloper"), not least because of its historical coincidence with the unification of Germany under Bismarck in 1871. The first section of this volume, "Performing Meistersinger," contains three commissioned articles from internationally respected artists - a conductor (Peter Schneider), a stage director (Harry Kupfer) and a singer (Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau), all experienced in the performance of this unusually demanding 5-hour work. The second section, "Meistersinger and History," examines both the representation of German history in the opera and the way the opera has functioned in history through political appropriation and staging practice. The third section, "Representations," is the most eclectic, exploring in the first place the problematic question of genre from the perspective of a theatrical historian. The chronic issue of Wagner's chief opponent, Eduard Hanslick, and his musical and dramatic representation in the opera as Beckmesser, is then addressed, as are gender issues, and Wagner's own utterances concerning the opera. Contributors: Nicholas Vazsonyi, Peter Schneider, Harry Kupfer, Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, Hans Rudolf Vaget, Lutz Koepnick, David B. Dennis, Klaus Van Den Berg, Thomas S. Grey, Lydia Goehr, Eva Rieger, Peter Höyng. Nicholas Vazsonyi is associate professor of German and comparative literature, University of South Carolina.Trade ReviewIntellectually speaking, this is a delicious tome . . . an indispensable book. Vazsonyi, Rochester University Press, and the individual essayists are to be roundly congratulated on an outstanding contribution to Wagnerian scholarship. WAGNER NOTES, Wagner Society of NY * . *This superb volume of essays . . . [is] the best ever published on 'Die Meistersinger' . . . a book that demands to be read by anyone interested in the politics of opera. -- Barry Millington * BBC MUSIC MAGAZINE *A wonderfully wide-reaching introduction to the extensive field of 'Meistersinger' scholarship. * CHOICE *Nicholas Vazsonyi has organized a collection of new writings whose eleven authors keep the reader up to date with this abundant literature. More than that, the diverse contributors he has chosen complement one another . . . what results is a book that fulfills its underlying interdisciplinary aim. For readers seriously interested in Wagner it will be both instructive and absorbing. * THE OPERA *Nicholas Vazsonyi has assembled a collection of essays that deal with aspects of the opera not necessarily addressed elsewhere, affirming the continuing relevance of the work. This book offers a collection of interdisciplinary studies that should supplement some of the more traditional literature on this seminal work by Wagner. * MONATSHEFTE, 2006 *Table of Contents"Climbing Mount Everest": On Conducting Die Meistersinger - Peter Schneider "We Must Finally Stop Apologizing for Die Meistersinger!": A Conversation with Harry Kupfer - Harry Kupfer Richard Wagner's Cobbler Poet - Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau The Dangers of Satisfaction: On Songs, Rehearsals, and Repetition in Die Meistersinger - Stereoscopic Vision: Sight and Community in Die Meistersinger - Lutz Koepnick "The Most German of All German Operas": Die Meistersinger through the Lens of the Third Reich - David B. Dennis http://worldwidewagner.richard.de: An Interview with the Composer concerning History, Nation, and Die Meistersinger - Peter Höyng Die Meistersinger as Comedy: The Performative and Social Signification of Genre - Klaus van den Berg Masters and Their Critics: Wagner, Hanslick, Beckmesser, and Die Meistersinger - Thomas Grey "Du warst mein Feind von je": The Beckmesser Controversy Revisited - Hans Rudolf Vaget "I Married Eva": Gender Construction and Die Meistersinger - Eva Rieger

Read more less

Book SynopsisUnlocks the secrets behind the images and music of an important Spanish musical manuscript compiled for a brotherhood of suspected heretics ca. 1500. The Rosary Cantoral is a rare and beautifully decorated manuscript of Latin plainchant for the Catholic Mass compiled in Toledo, Spain, around the year 1500. In an engaging and richly interdisciplinary essay, Lorenzo Candelaria approaches the Rosary Cantoral as a cultural artifact, unlocking the secrets behind its images and music to reveal the social history and rituals of an elite brotherhood dedicated to the rosary and aspects of the religious communityit served: the Dominicans of San Pedro Mártir de Toledo. The Rosary Cantoral: Ritual and Social Design in a Chantbook from Early Renaissance Toledo presents a model for realizing the fuller significance of illuminatedmusic manuscripts as cultural artifacts and offers unprecedented insights into the social and devotional life of Toledo, Spain, around the turn of the sixteenth century. After solving the mystery of the Rosary Cantoral's origins,subsequent essays probe the meaning and cultural significance of the manuscript's iconography (including a border decoration after Albrecht Dürer), its rare Spanish chants for the Mass, and two striking musical works for multiplevoices (one by Josquin Desprez and another on "L'homme armé"). Ultimately, this book focuses on the extraordinary circumstances that engendered the compilation of the Rosary Cantoral around 1500: a system of patronage between a brotherhood of suspected heretics and a religious house that was a key supporter of the Inquisition in Toledo. Lorenzo Candelaria (University of Texas at Austin) is co-author of American Music: A Panorama.Trade ReviewWinner of the American Musicological Society's Robert M. Stevenson Award for Outstanding Scholarship in Iberian Music, 2009 * . *A real page-turner. . . Illustrates how an interdisciplinary approach is essential if we are to take our understanding of the randomly preserved remnants of cultural history to a new and higher level. -- Tess Knighton * MUSIC & LETTERS *Scholars such as [Candelaria], informed, analytical and well-balanced, deserve to reach as large a number of the interested academic world as possible. -- Leonard R. N. Ashley * BIBLIOTHEQUE D'HUMANISME ET RENAISSANCE *[An] impressive piece of historical detection...which successfully straddles the concerns of liturgy, polyphony, and manuscript illumination. [It] will stand as an intriguing contribution to a much-overlooked field. -- Iain Fenlon * AMERICAN HISTORICAL REVIEW *The scope of the book. . . . makes this valuable reading for scholars in a wide variety of disciplines, while its lucid and clear writing style makes it accessible to anyone interested in Spanish cultural history, liturgy, or medieval and early-modern studies. -- James Boyce O.Carm. * SPECULUM *The author is to be applauded for shining a much-needed spotlight on the vast corpus of similar Spanish and New World cantorales that until very recently have been regarded as 'of very little interest'. -- Michael Noone * MUSIC LIBRARY ASSOCIATION NOTES *Few [interdisciplinary] studies have been more compelling. . . . [Candelaria] is equally at home when dealing with the finer points of art history or the sometimes murky nature of the antiquities market. . . . [He] crafts a story that rivals good detective fiction. It even has a surprise at the end that involves the dark halls of the Spanish Inqusition. -- Michael B. O'Connor * RENAISSANCE QUARTERLY *The book is in many ways a detective story which identifies the MS's provenance and function by fascinating and devious approaches: I won't try to summarise it and spoil the story. . . . This study throws light not only on this particular MS but on the usage of the Rosary in Spanish politics and history. And there is a moral for art historians studying MSS with music and vice-versa: see beyond your own discipline. -- Clifford Bartlett * EARLY MUSIC REVIEW *. . . one of the most attractive and intriguing books on Spanish music history to reach the market. . . It is thoroughly to be recommended. -- Bernadette Nelson * EARLY MUSIC *Table of ContentsThe Mystery of the Rosary Cantoral San Pedro Mártir de Toledo "El Cavaller de Colunya": A Legend of the Rosary The Emblem of the Five Wounds Hercules and Albrecht Dürer's Das Meerwunder Roses for the Blessed Virgin: The Music The Confraternity of Toledo and Its Patronage

Read more less

Book SynopsisInterdisciplinary perspectives on the life and work of the esteemed "ultra-modern" American composer and pioneering folk music activist, Ruth Crawford Seeger (1901-1953). Ruth Crawford Seeger's Worlds offers new perspectives on the life and pioneering musical activities of American composer and folk music activist Ruth Crawford Seeger (1901-1953). Ruth Crawford developed a unique modernist style with such now-esteemed works as her String Quartet 1931. In 1933, after marrying Charles Seeger, she turned to the work of teaching music to children and of transcribing, arranging, and publishing folk songs. Thiscollection of studies by musicologists, music theorists, folklorists, historians, music educators, and women's studies scholars reveals how innovation and tradition have intertwined in surprising ways to shape the cultural landscape of twentieth-century America. Contributors: Lyn Ellen Burkett, Melissa J. De Graaf, Taylor A. Greer, Lydia Hamessley, Bess Lomax Hawes, Jerrold Hirsch, Roberta Lamb, Carol J. Oja, Nancy Yunhwa Rao, Joseph N. Straus,Judith Tick. Ray Allen (Brooklyn College) is author of Singing in the Spirit: African-American Sacred Quartets in New York City. Ellie M. Hisama (Columbia University) is author of Gendering Musical Modernism: The Music of Ruth Crawford Seeger, Marion Bauer, and Miriam Gideon.Trade ReviewBroad intellectual sweep. . . . Raises questions of great importance to folklorists. . . . Fine scholarship and often elegant writing -- a model of verbal clarity and intellectual complexity. I would recommend this book to anyone interested in twentieth-century American music. -- Jean R. Freedman * JOURNAL OF AMERICAN FOLKLORE *Fresh and perceptive. . . . These important chapters [i.e., the whole book] advance feminist musicology by venturing into the lion's den of binary thinking that seems to have shaped Ruth Crawford Seeger's life and work so fundamentally. -- Beverley Diamond * WOMEN & MUSIC *Hisama, Tick, Straus, and Rao. . . address reception and performance history and offer detailed analysis that points toward a clearer assessment of compositional innovations and Seeger's independent and creative brilliance. . . . Chapters about Mike Seeger and Peggy Seeger are especially welcome. -- J. Michele Edwards * CHOICE *The level of scholarship is impeccable with solid writing throughout. . . . Those interested in American musical culture, feminism, modernist composition, or folk music will greatly appreciate its multiple perspectives and sophistication. -- Sharon Mirchandani * NOTES, March 2008 *This collection does full justice to the breadth of Crawford Seeger's accomplishments. Writers with backgrounds in music theory, education, folklore, history, and women's studies take various viewpoints. . . . There are thorough notes, score samples, a discography and a detailed index. The beautiful jacket, binding and endpapers seem fitting. -- Pamela Margles * WHOLENOTE *Well-written and insightful. * SING OUT *Pursues in depth the documentary context relevant to Crawford Seeger. . . . Salutary and poignant reading. -- Arnold Whittall * MUSIC & LETTERS *What a joy to finally be able to read a set of intelligent essays about Ruth Crawford Seeger's pieces, theoretical ideas, and folk music scholarship. It might be said that all scholarship on Ruth Crawford is, by definition, too late. But with this collection we are a bit closer to catching up. --Larry Polansky, Jacob H. Strauss Professor of Music, Dartmouth College, and editor of Ruth Crawford Seeger's 'The Music of American Folk Song' and Selected Other Writings on American Folk Music * . *Table of ContentsWriting the Music of Ruth Crawford into Mainstream Music History - Judith Tick Ruth Crawford's Precompositional Strategies - Joseph N. Straus Linear Aggregates and Proportional Design in Ruth Crawford's Piano Study in Mixed Accents - Lyn Burkett In Pursuit of a Proletarian Music: Ruth Crawford's "Sacco, Vanzetti" - Ellie M. Hisama The Receptioin of an Ultramodernist: Ruth Crawford in the Composers' Forum - Melissa J. de Graaf Ruth Crawford's Imprint on Contemporary Composition - Nancy Yunhwa Rao Reminiscences on Our Singing Country: The Crawford Seeger/ Lomax Alliance - Bess Lomax Hawes Philosophical Counterpoint: A Comparison of Charles Seeger's Compositioin Treatise and Ruth Crawford Seeger's Folk Song AppendixAppendix - Taylor A. Greer Composing and Teaching as Dissonant Counterpoint - Roberta Lamb "Cultural Strategy": The Seegers and B.A. Botkin as Friends and Allies - Jerrold Hirsch Performing Dio's Legacy: Mike Seeger and the Urban Folk Music Revival - Ray Allen, Book Reviews Peggy Seeger: From Traditional Folksinger to Contemporary Songwriter - Lydia Hamessley

Read more less

Book SynopsisAn engaging, practical, sometimes poetic account of the new world of percussion music -- from the 1930s (Varese, Cage) to today -- by one of its leading practitioners. In the beginning there was noise. Drumming, the world's most ancient instrumental tradition, re-emerged explosively in the concert music of the twentieth century as music for percussion, involving drums and many other kinds of noisemakers. The music that resulted has spanned an expressive and intellectual gamut: from Cage, Varèse, and Cowell came the first ear-splitting sounds of an American percussion revolution that began in the 1930s; from Stockhausen,Ferneyhough, and Xenakis we have music whose intellectual demands are matched by a vibrant physicality; Feldman gave us gently unfolding structures; John Luther Adams finds music within the earth itself. The Percussionist's Art: Same Bed, Different Dreams examines this music through the eyes of a performer. The book is a practical philosophy, looking not just at the big ideas behind these and other pieces, but also at how those ideas find expressionin sound. Foreword written by Paul Griffiths. Contains a Compact Disc of Steven Schick performing eight musical works that he discusses in detail in the book. Composers include John Luther Adams, Brian Ferneyhough, Michael Gordon, David Lang, Edgard Varèse, Charles Wuorinen, and Iannis Xenakis. Steven Schick is the world's leading exponent of solo percussion music involving multiple instruments. He has commissioned more than one hundred piecesfrom renowned composers including David Lang, Brian Ferneyhough, and Roger Reynolds. He was a founding member of the Bang on a Can All-Stars (1992-2002) and Artistic Director of the Centre International de Percussion de Genève (Switzerland, 2002-4). He teaches at the University of California, San Diego, where he directs the percussion group "red fish blue fish."Trade ReviewA thoroughly impressive endeavour by master percussionist Steven Schick, The Percussionist's Art: Same Bed, Different Dreams is hugely informative and entertaining. Based entirely on Schick's first-hand experiences as a musician, The Percussionist's Art encompasses great insight into some of the great music written for solo percussion. A 'must read' for every breathing musician, The Percussionist's Art will also fascinate those curious to know more about the current explosion of interest in the percussion world. -- -- Dr. Evelyn Glennie, OBE, world-renowned solo percussionistThis is a really well-written, extremely knowledgeable, and thoroughly enjoyable book. . . . Incredible insights into and analysis of a huge array of important percussion music by one of our finest players. Highly recommended! -- -- Steve Reich, composer, and author of Writings on Music (1965-2000)Life-affirming. . . The 'Art' in the title is a massive understatement, it should ideally be 'The Percussionist's Philosophy, Psychology, Physiology, Theatricality, Choreography, Memory, Learning Process and Freedom of Choice' . . . Handsomely presented with copious score excerpts throughout and a CD of Schick's performances of seven of the pieces examined. -- Paul Sarcich, Music and Vision The full review can be consulted at http://www.mvdaily.com/articles/2006/12/schick1.htmThis book gives scholars, composers, aficionados of percussion music, and percussion students and teachers an invaluable resource that can be considered the definitive source of information about the major works in the solo repertoire and the art of multiple percussion performance. One can scarcely turn the page without finding observations by the author that will help percussionists develop musically, intellectually, emotionally, physically, and spiritually. , 2006 * PERCUSSIVE NOTES *A magnificent work and indispensable book! [Magnifique ouvrage! Indispensable bouquin!] The production aspects (typography, page layout, readability of music examples) match the high standard of the writing. . . . A study written with rigor, but a rigor that leaves room for poetry. -- Michel Faligand * PERCU_INFOS 271 *Steven Schick's recent book The Percussionist's Art: Same Bed, Different Dreams is an extraordinary example of musical writing that comes from inside the action. -- -- Paul GriffithsTable of ContentsForeword by Paul Griffiths Preface Because the World is Round Learning Bone Alphabet The Affliction of memory Face the Music: A look at Percussion Playing Selected Discography This Is Not a Drum: Manipulating the Material of Percussion Music Same Bed, Different Dreams: A Personal Epilogue Bibliography Index

Read more less

Book SynopsisA history -- the first ever -- of the abundant traditions of German-American musical theater in New York, and a treasure trove of songs and information. Nineteenth-century New York was, after Berlin and Vienna, the third largest German-populated city in the world. German-language musical plays and light operas held an important niche in the lives of German immigrants and their families. John Koegel's Music in German Immigrant Theater: New York City, 1840-1940, tells, for the first time, the engrossing story of these theater works, and the many musical numbers from them that became popular as separate songs. Koegel documents performances, in German, of plays by Shakespeare and Goethe and operas by Offenbach, Verdi, and Johann Strauss. And he draws long-needed attention to German-American musical comedies written, beginning in the 1890s, by ethnic parodist Adolf Philipp. As their titles suggest -- Der Corner Grocer aus der Avenue A and Der Pawnbroker von der Eastside -- these musicals related directly to the daily experiences of theimmigrant population. Music in German Immigrant Theater is enriched by copious photographs, sheet-music title pages, and musical examples, as well as numerous sets of song lyrics -- some uproarious, others touching --in German and in English translation. The accompanying CD includes recordings of many of the songs discussed in the book. John Koegel is Professor of Musicology at California State University, Fullerton. WINNER - 2009 ForeWord Reviews' Book of the Year Award, music category. This book is also included in the AAUP's 2010 University Press Books Selected for Public and Secondary School Libraries along with a number of other URP books.Trade Review[M]agnificent and substantial . . . reveals long-forgotten legacies of shows, theaters, impresarios, composers, conductors, and performers. . . . The prose is lively, and many well-produced illustrations [including portraits, production photos, images of theaters, and sheet-music covers] add to the book's charm. . . . A twenty-track CD made expressly for the book allows the reader to hear gems from the repertory described in the prose. . . . Will be of interest to musicologists, theater, cultural, and immigrant historians, . . . German-studies scholars [and] a broader readership. -- William K. Kearns * AMERICAN MUSIC *A stunning model of empirical research. . . . Its wealth of detail will offer scholars an invaluable resource for many years to come. -- Nancy Newman * MUSIC LIBRARY ASSOCIATION NOTES *Broadly conceived, superbly researched, and elegantly written. . . . Beautifully produced, with over ninety illustrations. . . . The fundamental explication of a particularly long-lasting and influential tradition in our theatrical history. -- Stephen Ledbetter * JOURNAL OF THE SOCIETY FOR AMERICAN MUSIC *Thanks to John Koegel's magnificent and substantial tome, long-overdue light is shed on . . . long-forgotten legacies of shows, theaters, impresarios, composers, conductors, and performers. . . . The prose is lively, and many well-produced illustrations . . . add to the book's charm. . . . [The CD] allows the reader to hear gems from the repertory described in the prose. . . -- William A. Everett * AMERICAN MUSIC *Deep-delving. . . . Readable and entertaining. . . . A tour guide down a forgotten byway of the American immigrant experience, where life, at least sometimes, really was a cabaret. -- John W. Freeman * OPERA NEWS *From the foreword: Koegel's palette is rich, his canvas, huge: the reader will see both the forest and its trees. -- Peter Conolly-Smith, Queens College, City University of New YorkKoegel's book, with its numerous illustrations, takes its place in the pantheon of basic literature about the wondrous history of New York theatre. -- Miles Kreuger, president, The Institute of the American MusicalPacked with information. . . . The research that has gone into this volume is formidable. . . . Lively and elegant excerpts from these musical plays that are featured on a CD accompanying this volume [make one] wish that such works . . . still had a stage life. -- Simon Williams * JOURNAL OF MUSICOLOGICAL RESEARCH *Table of ContentsGerman American Theater and Society Early Struggles, Operatic Beginnings, and the Development of the German Theater in New York City, 1840-1872 Musical Farce and Folk Play at the Germania Theater, 1872-1883 Ethnic Spaces: Theatrical Entertainments in German Beer Gardens and Concert Halls An Orgy of Operetta: The Thalia and Amberg Theaters, 1879-1893 Drama on a Higher Plane: The Irving Place Theater, 1893-1918 German American Performers The "Dutch" Act: German American Theatrical and Literary Representations Philipp's Germania Theater Musical Comedies, 1893-1902 The German American Musical Abroad: Philipp in Berlin, 1903-1907 From Klein Deutschland to Broadway: Philipp's Works, 1907-1914 Divided Loyalties: World War I and Its Aftermath The Decline of the German American Stage in the 1920s and 1930s Appendixes Archives and Collections Consulted Key to Abbreviations Notes Bibliography Index

Read more less

Book SynopsisLeading authorities explore, in direct and accessible language, chamber-music masterpieces by twenty-one prominent composers since 1900. Modern composers as diverse as Béla Bartók, Maurice Ravel, Benjamin Britten, and John Cage have confided some of their most personal and intense thoughts to the medium of the string quartet. The resulting repertoire has won the allegiance of string players-and of listeners in the concert hall and at home. Yet, until now, no book has addressed the language of these remarkable works, their interactions with the masterpieces of Beethoven and others, and theirnew approaches to musical expression. Intimate Voices, organized in rough chronological order, offers the observations and intuitions of leading authorities on quartets by twenty-one composers from eleven countries. Its two volumes-available separately or together-comprise an indispensable guide to amateur and professional chamber musicians, scholars, students, and anyone seeking a deeper acquaintance with the great achievements of twentieth-century music. Edited by Evan Jones, Associate Professor of Music Theory, Florida State University College of Music.Trade ReviewIn November 2010 Intimate Voices won the Society for Music Theory's Citation of Special Merit. This citation is awarded to 'editions, translations, reference works, or edited volumes of extraordinary value to the discipline.' The citation states: '[Intimate Voices] examines the string quartets of composers from Claude Debussy through Shulamit Ran, and including those of Berg, Bartok, Schoenberg, Prokofiev, Ligeti, Cage, Britten, Carter, Berio, and others. The twenty different contributing authors provide multiple analytical voices, resulting in a contrapuntal conversation much like the string quartet medium under review. * . *Superb. . . . A unified and eminently readable narrative. . . . The most thorough, authoritative and comprehensive study of modern chamber music. . . . Standards of production are up to the publisher's usual high standards. . . . Each contributor skilfully, sensitively and intelligently . . . sets the music s/he is considering in the widest historical and musical context. . . . Useful reading for players as well as listeners, composers and others. CLASSICALNET [Mark Sealey] Read the complete review at . * . *A magnificent sweep through many key works in twentieth-century musical history. -- Michael Russ, See full review at http://www.music.ucc.ie/jsmi/index.php/jsmi/article/view/84/93 * JOURNAL OF THE SOCIETY FOR MUSIC IN IRELAND *Intimate Voices takes us on a kaleidoscopic ride through a century of string quartets. Players, historians, and theorists alike will appreciate the deeply musical commitment of twenty major writers exploring this medium, from Debussy to modern American, with composers such as Bartók and Scelsi in the same optic, through evidence-based music analysis in a social context. It is a Herculean project, superbly executed by editor Evan Jones. -, professor of music theory, Eastman School of Music -- Jonathan DunsbyA broad collection of serious essays about music in a medium that is very much alive. . . . There is something here for everyone, not just specialists in musical analysis. . . . It is also good that the work of several composers whose quartets are not often heard-Carter's, Scelsi's, Powell's, and Ran's-are brought to our attention. . . . Each [essay] has something interesting to say about the medium and the music and how we can talk about it. * FANFARE *Table of ContentsThe String Quartets of Debussy and Ravel - Marianne Wheeldon Sibelius's "Internal Voices": Structure and Process in the Quartet in D Minor (Voces Intimae), Op. 56 - Joseph C. Kraus The Pitch Language of the Bartók Quartets - Joseph N. Straus The String Quartet in the Music of Paul Hindemith - David Neumeyer Comprehensibility, Variation, and the String Quartet Tradition: The Second Movement of Arnold Schoenberg's Third Quartet, Op. 30 - Matthew R. Shaftel Process in the String Quartets of Alban Berg - David Headlam Webern's Music for String Quartet - David Clampitt Villa-Lobos's String Quartets - Eero Tarasti Appropriate Tradition: The String Quartets of Sergei Prokofiev, Opp. 50 and 92 - Neil Minturn

Read more less

Book SynopsisHow Franz Schubert and his compositions were viewed in nineteenth-century European criticism, literature, and the visual arts, from Schumann to George Eliot to Whistler. In Schubert in the European Imagination, Volume 1: The Romantic and Victorian Eras, Scott Messing examines the historical reception of Franz Schubert as conveyed through the gendered imagery and language of nineteenth- and early twentieth-century European culture. The concept of Schubert as a feminine type vaulted into prominence in 1838 when Robert Schumann described the composer's Mädchencharakter ("girlish" character), by contrast to the purportedly more masculine, more heroic Beethoven. What attracted Schumann to Schubert's music and marked it as feminine is evident in some of Schumann's own works that echo those of Schubert's in intriguing ways. Schubert's supposedly feminine quality acted upon the popular consciousness also through the writers and artists -- in German-speaking Europe but also in France and England -- whose fictional characters perform and hear Schubert'smusic. The figures discussed include Musset, Sand, Nerval, Maupassant, George Eliot, Henry James, Beardsley, Whistler, Storm, Fontane, and Heinrich and Thomas Mann. Over time, Schubert's stature became inextricably entwinedwith concepts of the distinct social roles of men and women, especially in domestic settings. For a composer whose reputation was principally founded upon musical genres that both the public and professionals construed as most suitable for private performance, the lure to locate Schubert within domestic spaces and to attach to him the attributes of its female occupants must have been irresistible. The story told is not without its complications, as this book reveals in an analysis of the response to Schubert in England, where the composer's eminence was questioned by critics whose arguments sometimes hinged on the more problematic aspects of gender in Victorian culture. Scott Messing is Charles A. Dana Professor of Music at Alma College, and author of Neoclassicism in Music (University of Rochester Press, 1996).Trade ReviewThis [two-volume] book is not only a model of work in its field, but a stimulating and timely reminder of what we [scholars] should all aspire towards. . . . A monumental monograph that transforms our view of its subject. . . . . A formidable achievement. . . . The publication of this monograph offers yet more evidence that the University of Rochester Press has become a highly significant player in the field. -- -- James Garratt * MUSIC AND LETTERS *This book impresses both by the prodigiousness of its scholarship -- Scott Messing seems to have tracked down every nineteenth-century word, daub, and note inspired by Schubert -- and by the fascination of the materials it collects. Better yet, it puts these materials to excellent use, demonstrating beyond question the extraordinary depth to which Schubert penetrated nineteenth-century consciousness and culture and the extraordinary degree to which Schubert was perceived as feminine. -- -- Lawrence Kramer, Professor of English and Music, Fordham University, and author of Franz Schubert: Sexuality, Subjectivity, SongOriginal, engaging, and compellingly written, Scott Messing's Schubert in the European Imagination makes an enormous contribution to our understanding of the evolving image of Franz Schubert, one of the most elusive of all composers. The interdisciplinary breadth of Messing's project, drawing on political and cultural history, art, and literature, is a model for musical scholarship. -- -- Christopher H. Gibbs, James H. Ottaway, Jr. Professor of Music at Bard College, and author of The Life of SchubertAn unparalleled depth of available material about an indisputably great composer. -- -- Benjamin Ivry * NEW YORK SUN *Important and distinctive. . . . Impressive musical scholarship, rich in insights and covering ground that has not been adequately researched hitherto. -- -- C. Crawford Howie * THE SCHUBERTIAN *Table of ContentsRobert Schumann's Schubert: Inventing a Mädchencharakter Disseminating a Mädchencharakter: Gendered Concepts of Schubert in German-Speaking Europe Performing Schubert's Music in Nineteenth-Century Literature Performing Schubert's Music in Nineteenth-Century Art A "Slipper-and-Dressing-Gown style": Schubert in Victorian England

Read more less

Book SynopsisCombining cultural analysis with historical and personal accounts of a century of musical life at the American Academy in Rome, this volume provides a history of the AAR's Rome Prize in Composition. The American Academy in Rome launched its Rome Prize in Musical Composition in 1921, a time in the United States of rapidly changing ideas about national identity, musical values, and the significance of international artistic exchange. Music and Musical Composition at the American Academy in Rome tells the story of this prestigious fellowship. Combining cultural analysis with historical and personal accounts of a century of musical life at the American Academy in Rome, the book offers new perspectives on a wide range of critical topics: patronage and urban culture, institutions and professional networks, musical aesthetics, American cultural diplomacy, and the maturation ofa concert-music repertory in the United States during the twentieth century. Contributors: Martin Brody, Elliott Carter, John Harbison, Christina Huemer, Carol J. Oja, Andrea Olmstead, Vivian Perlis, Judith Tick, Richard Trythall Martin Brody is the Catherine Mills Davis Professor of Music at Wellesley College, and served as the Andrew Heiskell Arts Director at the American Academy in Rome from 2007 to 2010.Table of ContentsIntroduction The Rome Prize from Leo Sowerby to David Diamond A History of the Rome Prize in Music Composition, 1947-2006 The Classicist Origins of the Rome Prize in Music Composition, 1890-1920 "Picked Young Men," Facilitating Women, and Emerging Composers: Establishing an American Prix de Rome Forging an International Alliance: Leo Sowerby, Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge, and the Impact of a Rome Prize Class of '54: Friendship and Ideology at the American Academy in Rome What They Said: American Composers on Rome The New Music Scene in Rome and the American Presence since World War II: Excerpts from a Roundtable, Moderated by Richard Trythall For the Academy Two Visits in 1981 Music Resources at the American Academy in Rome Appendix: Composers at the American Academy in Rome, 1921-40 Selected Bibliography List of Contributors Index

Read more less

Book SynopsisEssays in diatonic set theory, transformation theory, and neo-Riemannian theory -- the newest and most exciting fields in music theory today. The essays in Music Theory and Mathematics: Chords, Collections, and Transformations define the state of mathematically oriented music theory at the beginning of the twenty-first century. The volume includes essays in diatonic set theory, transformation theory, and neo-Riemannian theory -- the newest and most exciting fields in music theory today. The essays constitute a close-knit body of work -- a family in the sense of tracing their descentfrom a few key breakthroughs by John Clough, David Lewin, and Richard Cohn in the 1980s and 1990s. They are integrated by the ongoing dialogue they conduct with one another. The editors are Jack Douthett, a mathematician and music theorist who collaborated extensively with Clough; Martha M. Hyde, a distinguished scholar of twentieth-century music; and Charles J. Smith, a specialist in tonal theory. The contributors are all prominent scholars, teaching at institutions such as Harvard, Yale, Indiana University, and the University at Buffalo. Six of them (Clampitt, Clough, Cohn, Douthett, Hook, and Smith) have received the Society for Music Theory's prestigious PublicationAward, and one (Hyde) has received the ASCAP Deems Taylor Award. The collection includes the last paper written by Clough before his death, as well as the last paper written by David Lewin, an important music theorist also recently deceased. Contributors: David Clampitt, John Clough, Richard Cohn, Jack Douthett, Nora Engebretsen, Julian Hook, Martha Hyde, Timothy Johnson, Jon Kochavi, David Lewin, Charles J. Smith, and Stephen Soderberg.Trade ReviewThese essays, by leading American music theorists, continue the development of some of the most important research of the last twenty years into mathematical models of basic musical structures. These models are elegant in the abstract, but they are also shown to have many practical applications in explaining a wide range of art music. Several of the contributions are bound to be classics in this literature. --John Roeder, Professor of Music Theory, University of British Columbia * . *Music Theory and Mathematics is a fitting memorial to John Clough, one of music theory's great pioneers. Clough was among the first scholars to introduce non-trivial mathematics into what has emerged as diatonic set theory or scale theory. This volume consists of essays by important theorists on a variety of topics ranging from scale and Riemannian theory to analysis of works by Bartók and Schoenberg. Building on Clough's research, Music Theory and Mathematics poses new questions and approaches to what are perhaps the most exciting directions in music theory today. --Robert Morris, Professor of Composition, Eastman School of Music, University of Rochester * . *Table of ContentsIntroduction by Normal Carey, Jack Douthett, and Martha M. Hyde Preface by Charles J. Smith "Cardinality Equals Variety for Chords" in Well-Formed Scales, with a Note on the Twin Primes Conjecture - David Clampitt Flip-Flop Circles and Their Groups - John Clough Pitch-Time Analogies and Transformations in Bartók's Sonata for Two Pianos and Percussion - Richard Cohn Filtered Point-Symmetry and Dynamical Voice-Leading - Jack Douthett The "Over-Determined" Triad as a Source of Discord: Nascent Groups and the Emergent Chromatic Tonality in Nineteenth-Century German Harmonic Theory Nineteenth-Century German Harmonic Theory - Nora Engebretsen Signature Transformations - Julian Hook Some Pedagogical Implications of Diatonic and Neo-Riemannian Theory - Timothy Johnson A Parsimony Metric for Diatonic Sequences - Jonathan Kochavi Transformational Considerations in Schoenberg's Opus 23, Number 3 - David Lewin Transformational Etudes: Basic Principles and Applications of Interval String Theory - Stephen Soderberg

Read more less

Book SynopsisMasterful essays honoring the great pianist and critic Charles Rosen, on masterpieces from Bach and Beethoven to Chopin, Verdi, and Stockhausen. Charles Rosen, the pianist and man of letters, is perhaps the single most influential writer on music of the past half-century. While Rosen's vast range as a writer and performer is encyclopedic, it has focused particularly on theliving "canonical" repertory extending from Bach to Boulez. Inspired in its liveliness and variety of critical approaches by Charles Rosen's challenging work, Variations on the Canon offers original essays by some of the world's most eminent musical scholars. Contributors address such issues as style and compositional technique, genre, influence and modeling, and reception history; develop insights afforded by close examination of compositional sketches; and consider what language and metaphors might most meaningfully convey insights into music. However diverse the modes of inquiry, each essay sheds new light on the works of those composers posterity has deemed central to the modern Western musical tradition. Contributors: Pierre Boulez, Scott Burnham, Elliott Carter, Robert Curry, Walter Frisch, David Gable, Philip Gossett, Jeffrey Kallberg, Joseph Kerman, Richard Kramer, William Kinderman, Lewis Lockwood, Sir Charles Mackerras, Robert L. Marshall, Robert P. Morgan, Charles Rosen, Julian Rushton, David Schulenberg, László Somfai, Leo Treitler, James Webster, and Robert Winter. Robert Curry is principalof the Conservatorium High School and honorary senior lecturer in the Centre for Medieval Studies, University of Sydney; David Gable is Assistant Professor of Music at Clark-Atlanta University; Robert L. Marshall is Louis, Frances, and Jeffrey Sachar Professor Emeritus of Music at Brandeis University.Trade Review[Charles Rosen's] reviews show him tackling some of the major issues and names in musicology with an authority that few could muster and in a style that is compulsively readable, a combination of acid and elegance. . . . A series of essays by well-established scholars covering subject areas associated with the honoree [and] three short tributes from Pierre Boulez, Elliot Carter, and Charles Mackerras. -- W. Dean Sutcliffe * MUSIC & LETTERS *When it comes to superlatives, . . . [pianist and author] Charles Rosen is the genuine article. . . . All of the essays in this fine book are insightful or informative. . . . For [Scott] Burnham, . . . Rosen's readers 'are in for something special.' The same can be said for readers of this book. -- Mark Kroll * EARLY MUSIC AMERICA *The eminence of most contributors is matched by the eminence of the composers discussed: from Bach to Boulez and Stockhausen via Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, Chopin, Verdi, Brahms and Schoenberg. -- Peter Williams * TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT *It is difficult to imagine a more intellectually invigorating and heartfelt tribute to the man Mackerras rightly describes as 'one of the truly great musical minds of our time'. -- Julian Haylock * INTERNATIONAL PIANO *Each of the essays . . . is on a subject that Rosen himself has written on [or music that he's recorded] with magisterial authority. . . . The final section comprises a trio of short tributes by three 'big names' -- Pierre Boulez, Elliott Carter, and Charles Mackerras. . . . [It] made me keen to go back to the music and hear it again for myself, through more enlightened ears. One can't ask more from a piece of writing about music than that. -- Mark L. Lehman * AMERICAN RECORD GUIDE *As fine a collection of writings on music as has been created in our time. --Maynard Solomon, author of Mozart: A Life, and Late Beethoven: Music, Thought, Imagination * . *It is hard to imagine a more vivid testimony to the far-reaching and enduring impact of Charles Rosen's musical thoughts, words, and deeds over the last half century than the extraordinary line-up of scholars assembled in these pages. The copious new insights these essays offer shows how much we can learn through encounters with Rosen's provocative, inspiring, and energizing writings and performances, all usefully cataloged in the extensive discography and bibliography. -- Joseph Auner, Tufts UniversityTable of ContentsFugue and Its Discontents - Joseph Kerman Fugues, Form, and Fingering: Sonata Style in Bach's Preludes and Fugues - David Schulenberg Notational Irregularities as Attributes of a New Style: The Case of Haydn's "Sun" Quartet in F Minor, Op. 20, no. 5 - Laszlo Somfai The Fugal Moment: On a Few Bars in Mozart's Quintet in C Major, K. 515 - Richard Kramer A Tale of Two Quintets: Mozart's K. 452 and Beethoven's Opus 16 - William Kinderman Vestas Feuer: Beethoven on the Path to Leonore - Lewis Lockwood Sonority and Structure: Observations on Beethoven's Early and Middle-Period Piano Compositions - Robert L. Marshall Recomposing the Grosse Fuge: Beethoven and Opus 134 - Prof. Robert Winter Schubert, the Tarantella, and the Quartettsatz, D. 703 - Julian Rushton On the Scherzando Nocturne - Jeffrey Kallberg Chopin's Modular Forms - Robert P. Morgan The Hot and the Cold: Verdi Writes to Antonio Somma about Re Lear - Philip Gossett The Ironic German: Schoenberg and the Serenade, Op. 24 - Walter Frisch Words for the Surface: Boulez, Stockhausen, and "Allover" Painting - David Gable Rosen's Modernist Haydn - James Webster Facile Metaphors, Hidden Gaps, Short Circuits: Should We Adore Adorno? - Leo Treitler The Music of a Classical Style - Scott Burnham Montaigne hors de son propos - Charles Rosen Tribute: Une culture vraiment intimidante - Pierre Boulez Tribute: Charles Rosen for His Eightieth Birthday - Elliott Carter Tribute: Charles Rosen: A Personal Appreciation by a Contemporary - Charles Mackerras Appendix 1: A Discography of the Recordings of Charles Rosen - David Gable Appendix 2: A Bibliography of the Writings of Charles Rosen - Robert Curry

Read more less

Book SynopsisSeventeen studies by noted experts that demonstrate recent approaches toward the creative interpretation of primary sources regarding Renaissance and Baroque music, Mozart, Beethoven, Mendelssohn, Verdi, Debussy, and beyond. How do we know what notes a composer intended in a given piece? -- how those notes should be played and sung? -- the nature of musical life in Bach's Leipzig, Schubert's Vienna? -- how music related to literature and other arts and social currents in different times and places? -- what attitudes musicians and music lovers had toward the music that they heard and made? We know all this from musical manuscripts and prints, opera libretti, composers'letters, reviews in newspapers and magazines, archival data, contemporary pedagogical writings, essays on aesthetics, and much else. Some of these categories of sources are the bedrock of music history and musicology. Others havebegun to be examined only in recent years. Furthermore, musicologists -- including biographers of famous composers -- now explore these various kinds of sources in a variety of ways, some of them richly traditional and others exciting and novel. These seventeen essays, all newly written, use a wide array of source materials to probe issues pertaining to a cross section of musical works and musical life from the sixteenth through the twentieth centuries. The resulting, pluralistic profile of current musicology will prove welcome to anyone fascinated by the problems of reconstructing -- reimagining, sometimes -- the evanescent musical art of the past and pondering its implications for musical life today and in the future. Roberta Montemorra Marvin is a Research Fellow at the Obermann Center for Advanced Studies at the University of Iowa where she is also Director of the Institute for Italian Opera Studies; Stephen A. Crist is associate professor and chair of the Music Department at Emory University.Trade ReviewIn this book some of the best minds in current musicology explore untrodden territory. They show that the classic source study and the traditional methods of musical analysis are not only alive and kicking, but generating new rich ideas -- some of them controversial, all of them stimulating. --Nicholas Temperley, professor emeritus of musicology, University of Illinois, and author of Bound for America: Three British Composers * . *Striding onto the stage of the 'New Musicology', the seventeen contributors to Historical Musicology proceed to kick in the footlights. Out of the broken glass, they manage to create an approach to the scholarly study of music that recognises that musical scholarship [whatever its methodological imperatives] remains rooted in the study of primary sources, and go on to demonstrate brilliantly how the benefits of the 'New' can be combined with the 'Old'. -- Mark Everist, professor of music, University of SouthamptonTable of ContentsIntroduction: Scholarly Inquiry in Historical Musicology: Sources, Methods, Interpretations - Roberta Marvin A Collaboration between Cipriano de Rore and Baldissera Donato? - Jessie Ann Owens New Perspectives on Bach's Great Eighteen Chorales - Russell Stinson Historical Theology and Hymnology as Tools for Interpreting Bach's Church Cantatas: The Case of Ich elender Mensch, wer wird mich erlösen, BWV 48 BWV 48 - Stephen Crist Performance Practice Issues That Affect Meaning in Two Bach Instrumental Works - Michael Marissen Mozart's Mitridate: Going beyond the Text - Ellen T. Harris Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach and the Aesthetics of Patricide - Richard Kramer Joseph Haydn's Influence on the Symphonies of Antonio Rosetti - Lawrence F. Bernstein Reason and Imagination: Beethoven's Aesthetic Evolution - Maynard Solomon Schubert as Formal Architect: The Quartrttsatz, D.703 - Lewis Lockwood Sex, Sexuality, and Schubert's Piano Music - Jeffrey Kallberg "Le Belle Exécution": Johann Nepomuk Hummel's Treatise and the Art of Playing the Pianoforte - Mark Kroll "For You Have Been Rebellious against the Lord": The Jewish Image in Mendelssohn's Moses and Marx's Mose - Jeffrey Sposato Andrea Maffei's "Ugly Sin": The Libretto for Verdi's I masnadieri - Roberta Marvin Mozart's Piano Concertos and the Romantic Generation - Claudia Macdonald "Wo die Zitronen blühn": Re-Versions of Arie antiche - Margaret Murata Material Culture and Postmodern Positivism: Rethinking the "Popular" in Late-Nineteenth Century French Music - Jann Pasler Otto Gombosi's Correspondence at the University of Chicago - Laurence Libin

Read more less

Book SynopsisThe first publication and exploration of a pathbreaking treatise on what would become a crucial element in the music of Stravinsky and Ravel: the octatonic scale. In 1879, French amateur composer Edmond de Polignac (1834-1901) painstakingly devised a new way to create melodies and harmonies using a scale that alternated half and whole steps. This scale -- known today as octatonic -- was animportant element in the music of Liszt and Rimsky-Korsakov, and would later figure prominently in the works of Ravel, Stravinsky, and many others. Sylvia Kahan, author of Music's Modern Muse: A Life of Winnaretta Singer, Princesse de Polignac, here publishes the Prince's octatonic treatise for the first time -- in both the original French and in English translation -- and comments extensively on what the treatise, and the Prince's little-known compositions, reveal about musical thought in late nineteenth-century Paris. Given his aristocratic lineage, Polignac might seem an unlikely precursor of musical modernism, yet he was known as an advocate of "advanced ideas." Late in life, he married wealthy heiress Winnaretta Singer, who sponsored prestigious public concerts of her husband's bold works, interpreted by the greatest musical artists in Paris. Debussy and Fauré were admirers of Polignac's music, especially the 1879 octatonic oratorio Pilate livre le Christ (Pontius Pilate Hands Christ Over). Marcel Proust lauded his compositions and the "essence of genius of their author." In Search of New Scales is based on bibliographic material in private archives, as well as letters and other documents in the Bibliothèque Nationale de France. Sylvia Kahan's new book will become a permanent point of reference for all future studies of post-Romantic and twentieth-century composition. Sylvia Kahan is Professor of Music at the Graduate Center and College of Staten Island, City University of New York. Her previous book, Music's Modern Muse, was published by the University of Rochester Press in hardcover and paperback.Trade ReviewKahan's musical analysis, and her publication and translation of Polignac's treatise alone are sufficient to position this volume as an important addition to octatonic scholarship. * MUSIC AND LETTERS *A fascinating, well-researched book--the product of an imaginative research project, . . . supplying a previously 'missing link' within the nineteenth-century history and theory of octatonicism. -- Deborah Mawer * JOURNAL OF MUSIC THEORY *One can only admire the mammoth research that S. Kahan has carried out regarding [Polignac's] life. . . . Polignac surveys the possibilities of a new musical language more deeply than did his contemporaries. . . . I should emphasize how excellent the translation is of Polignac's treatise. . . . The numerous musical examples have been set with great skill. -- René Champigny * REVUE DE MUSICOLOGIE *Fulsome indexes [in this book and Kahan's 'Music's Modern Muse'] make them easy to dip in and out of. . . . Real digestible coffee table books. -- Anthony Gritten * TEMPO *A compelling amalgam of biography, history, music theory, and cultural studies -- -- Joseph N. Straus, author of Stravinsky's Late Music and Remaking the Past: Musical Modernism and the Influence of the Tonal TraditionKahan's elegant transcription and translation of Polignac's octatonic treatise brings to light a new document that will prove important not only for the history of music theory but also for a richer understanding of the story of musical modernism in fin-de-siècle Paris. -- -- Jonathan Cross, Professor of Musicology, University of OxfordTells a history-altering story . . . Kahan's presentation and commentary are superior to those of Polignac's own. . . . The [musico-]theoretical equivalent of a page-turner. . . . Will force scholars to rethink the current understanding of the octatonic and its dissemination in France. -- Mark McFarland * MUSIC LIBRARY ASSOCIATION NOTES *Historical musicology at its best. . . . Deftly situates Polignac's work in both chronological and intellectual history. [Kahan] reads Polignac's text closely and provides expert editorial clarity to bring to life a document of great historical significance. In doing so, she pushes the theoretical explication of the octatonic scale from 1963 back to 1888. -- Benjamin Ayotte * NINETEENTH-CENTURY MUSIC REVIEW *Table of ContentsIntroduction: Edmond de Polignac and the Discovery of Octatonicism Ch. 1: Childhood and Education (1834-1859) Ch. 2: A Young Composer (1859-1877) Ch. 3: Scales A, B, C: Polignac's Invention of Octatonicism (1877-1879) Ch. 4: "Nothing of the Usual Tonality" (1880-1888) Ch. 5: The Unexpected Woman (1889-1894) Ch. 6: Alexandre de Bertha and the Guerre des gammes (1894-1896) Ch. 7: Years of Plenty (1894-1899) Ch. 8: Endings and Echoes (1900-) Ch. 9: Edmond de Polignac's Octatonic Music Afterword Preface to Polignac's Octatonic Treatise Polignac's Octatonic Treatise, "A Study on the Alternating Sequences of Whole Steps and Half Steps, (and on the Scale Known as Major-Minor)" Edmond de Polignac, "Etude sur les successions alternantes de tons et demi-tons (Et sur la gamme dite majeure-mineure)"

Read more less

Book SynopsisThis contextual study of Janácek's operas reveals the composer's creative responses to a wide range of Czech and non-Czech traditions. Leos Janácek is increasingly recognized as one of the major operatic masters of the early twentieth century. In Janácek beyond the Borders, Derek Katz presents an interpretive and critical study of Janácek's major operas that questions prevailing views of the composer's relationship to the Czech language and to Slavic culture and demonstrates that the operas are deeply indebted to various existing operatic traditions outside of the Czech-speaking realm. Katz discusses the implications for Janácek's operas of the composer's notorious "speech-melody" theories and of his fascination with Russia. He also points out revealing and persuasive parallels to certain major operas in non-Czech traditions -- French, Italian, and German -- that deserve notice and that demonstrate how the composer developed a practical operatic aesthetic through emulation and creative adaptation. In this fresh and novel approach, Katz goes beyond the normal evidentiary record (letters, sketches, and published writings) and allows Janácek's works to speak for themselves. Derek Katz is Associate Professor of Music History at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He has written about Czech music for American and European academic journals and for the New York Times.Trade ReviewAn engaging and progressive work of musicology and music theory that is as thoughtful as it is thought-provoking. . . [This] meticulously researched monograph reads cleanly and swiftly. . . Katz's ability to trace Janacek's personal sense of being within the changing political climate of the Czech lands is uncanny. -- John K. Novak * MUSIC LIBRARY ASSOCIATION NOTES *Illuminating. . . Written in a broadly allusive but pleasingly unpretentious style. . . It's salutary to see a musicologist taking issue with the oft-revered pronouncements of Theodor Adorno, who managed to get Janácek conceptually wrong on every count. * OPERA NEWS *Absolutely fascinating. On each subject treated in one chapter after another, Derek Katz reveals remarkable creativity. . . The topic is ambitious, the author brilliant, the reading captivating. -- Nicolas Derny * FORUM OPERA *Derek Katz's fine book is must reading for anyone with a serious interest in the operas of Janácek and his place in the development of European operatic and musical traditions. Katz trenchantly deconstructs and reassesses all the oft-repeated generalizations about Janácek's obsession with speech melodies and his role as an 'old avant-gardist,' folkorist, or iconoclastic modernist. The result is a more complex understanding of Janácek's compositions as products of a dynamic mix of musical, dramatic, and textual imperatives created with a keen awareness of Czech and international operatic and compositional traditions. -- -- Gary B. Cohen, Professor of History, University of Minnesota, Twin CitiesTable of ContentsFinding a Context Beyond the Czech Language: Janácek and the Speech Melody Myth, Once Again Beyond the Czech Lands: To the East Beyond National Opera Beyond Western European Opera Beyond the Operatic Stage Harmony and Mortality in The Makropulos Case Bibliography Scores Discography Index

Read more less

Book SynopsisOffers readers new ways of conceptualizing music and new insights into music created in Russia. Since its original publication in 1983, Russian Theoretical Thought in Music has become the standard English-language source of information about music theory as it developed in Russia. Because of the distance of culture and language, music theory developed there largely independent of the traditions of Western Europe. Over the decades of Soviet rule, those traditions flourished and were refined even further into a fascinating world of ideas. Exploring this world offers the reader new ways of conceptualizing music and new insights into music created in Russia. This compelling volume includes Ellon Carpenter's overview of the development of music theory in Russia, followed by a look into the ideas of six particularly important theorists. Nicolas Schidlovsky examines the theoretical underpinnings of Russian Orthodox chant; Gordon McQuere probes the remarkable ideas of Boleslav Yavorsky and the seminal contribution of Boris Asafiev; and Roy Guenther explores the analytical system of Varvara Dernova. Contributors: Ellon D. Carpenter, Allen Forte, Roy G. Guenther, Gordon D. McQuere, and Nicolas Schidlovsky. Gordon McQuere is Professor of Music and Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences at Washburn University.Table of ContentsIntroduction - Allen Forte Russian Music Theory: A Conspectus - Ellon D. Carpenter Sources of Russian Chant Theory - Nicolas Schidlovsky The Theories of Boleslav Yavorsky - Gordon D. McQuere Varvara Dernova's System of Analysis of the Music of Skryabin - Roy J. Guenther Boris Asafiev and Musical Form as a Process - Gordon D. McQuere The Contributions of Taneev, Catoire, Conus, Garbuzov, Mazel, and Tiulin - Ellon D. Carpenter

Read more less

Book SynopsisUniquely revealing interviews with one of the world's greatest living composers. György Kurtág (b. 1926) is widely regarded as one of the foremost composers in the second half of the twentieth century and the early twenty-first. Born in Romania, he received crucial training in Paris from Olivier Messiaen and Marianne Stein. He was also shaped by his broadening contact there with the music of Webern and such challenging literary works as the plays of Samuel Beckett. After many years in Hungary, teaching at the Budapest Academy of Music,Kurtág settled near Bordeaux with his wife Márta. The two regularly perform duo-recitals of his music. In 2006, his . . . concertante . . . (2003, for violin, viola and orchestra) won the coveted Grawemeyer Award for MusicComposition. This unique set of interviews with Kurtág, alone or with his wife, gives a fascinating insight into the composer's personality, which is marked by shyness but also an unquenchable thirst for impressions of every kind [artistic, natural and human]. The two speak with disarming openness about their lives -- the background against which masterpieces like Messages of the Late Miss R. V. Troussova (1976-80, for soprano and chamber orchestra) or Stele (1994, for orchestra) were written. The analysis of certain of Kurtág's works, especially of . . . concertante . . ., shows the way that his mind works: no system, no dogma, no formulae -- rather, basic human emotions expressed through means that speak directly to the listener's innermost feelings. The Hungarian music publisher Bálint András Varga has spent nearly forty years working for and with composers.He has published several books, including extensive interviews with Lutoslawski, Berio, and Xenakis.Trade ReviewOffers telling insights . . . [on the] linkage between teaching and communicating, teaching and composing. . . . Reach[es] to the core of Kurtag's essential expressionism. . . . [Kurtag's] tributes to [Ligeti] provide . . . the shrewdest, clearest-eyed judgment of his friend's achievements. 'Mementos of a friendship' . . . is as artfully assembled as any of Kurtag's compositions. -- Arnold Whittall * MUSICAL TIMES *Like many of Kurtág's finest pieces, [this book] is short but densely packed. In three extended interviews with Varga, the composer provides piercing insights into a vast range of music and addresses his own work with startling clarity, candor, and humility. He also delivers three tributes to his longtime friend György Ligeti, revealing more of Ligeti's psychology and creativity than any commentator in print. -- Alex Ross * THE NEW YORKER *Read the full review at http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/alexross/2009/10/gyorgy-kurtag.html * . *This book provides a fascinating and unique insight into the life, mind, and personality of the Hungarian composer György Kurtág [.] this volume surely will play a significant role in enhancing and enlightening the way we experience Kurtág's music, both as listeners and as scholars. MUSIC & LETTERS, May 2011 * . *An important introduction to the music and the personality of this unique composer. -- Pierre BoulezA uniquely sensitive look at Kurtág's extraordinary work, character, and personality. --Kent Nagano, General Music Director of the Bavarian State Opera and Orchestra and Music Director of the Montreal Symphony Orchestra * . *Table of ContentsIntroduction: A Portrait Sketch of György Kurtág in Three Sittings Three Questions to György Kurtág (1982-1985) The Three Questions Again (1996) Key Words (2007-2008) Mementos of a Friendship: György Kurtág on György Ligeti A Brief Biography of György Kurtág Personalia List of Works Discography Notes Bibliography Index

Read more less

Book SynopsisThe first detailed study of a prolific and influential early twentieth-century composer, critic, educator-a true sage of music. In the early 1900s, August Halm was widely acknowledged to be one of the most insightful and influential authors of his day on a wide range of musical topics. Yet, in the eighty years since his untimely death at age 59 (in 1929),Halm -- the author of six widely read books and over 100 essays -- has received much less attention than such contemporaries as Hugo Riemann, Heinrich Schenker, Ernst Kurth, and Arnold Schoenberg. Lee Rothfarb's engaging and deeply researched study provides the missing images that comprise the multifaceted life of this astute musical sage. August Halm: A Critical and Creative Life in Music begins by setting the cultural stage and examining Halm's life with rich details from unpublished personal letters, diaries, notebooks, and lecture notes. Further chapters explore Halm's notion of musical logic and his proposal that the evolution of compositional technique had, by hisday, culminated in three successive musical "cultures" epitomized in Bach (fugue), Beethoven (sonata), and Bruckner (symphony). Another chapter examines, for the first time anywhere, Halm's own compositions, their motivating aesthetic premises, and their connection with late twentieth-century postmodernism. The volume closes with an assessment of Halm's significance for present-day music theory, including its branches that deal with narrativity, plot theory, embodiment, and semiotics. Halm's subject matter and creative activities ranged widely, and he aimed at maintaining a style that would be accessible and intriguing to music amateurs and music educators at all levels. LeeRothfarb's book -- written in the same spirit -- will interest not only music theorists and musicologists but also composers and classroom and private music teachers. Lee Rothfarb is Professor of Music at the University of California, Santa Barbara. His previous publications include Ernst Kurth as Theorist and Analyst and Ernst Kurth: Selected Writings.Trade ReviewOffer[s] breadth and depth to the life and work of a figure . . . , in Adorno's words, 'disgracefully forgotten.' . . . A very lucid volume, and an excellent digest and (in places) extension of [Rothfarb's previous] work on Halm. -- Nicholas Attfield * MUSIC & LETTERS *[Halm] can be considered the 'musical conscience of his time.' His writings . . . promote a philosophy of listening and of musical analysis. . . . Rothfarb leads his readers on a journey in masterful manner. . . . The physical production of the book is beyond reproach. -- Marc Rigaudière * REVUE DE MUSICOLOGIE *Just as Halm wrote for a wide audience of musical amateurs and professions, so too will Rothfarb's book be of interest to students and scholars, and it is recommended for academic libraries that support comprehensive music programs. . . . One of the strenghts of Rothfarb's works is his comparison of Halm's principles to those of earlier, contemporary, and later theorists, which places his ideas in historical context. -- Brian Weiner * MUSICAL LIBRARY ASSOCIATION NOTES *[Reveals] a truly original corpus of writings of quite ambitious scope. Halm could be a bracing voice for so many of us who are trying to incorporate critical perspectives within our music analyses [and] provide an invigorating tonic to our ongoing disciplinary conversations. -- Thomas Christensen Read the full review at http://www.mtosmt.org/issues/mto.11.17.4/mto.11.17.4.christensen.html * MUSIC THEORY ONLINE *With this remarkable personal and intellectual biography, Lee Rothfarb continues work begun in his volumes on Ernst Kurth [Halm's best-known student]. , and, in the course of studying his work closely, Rothfarb also constructs for us a richer, more detailed, and more nuanced view of German music-intellectual life and practice in the early twentieth century. Meticulous and commanding in its scholarship and beholden to no current mythologies, this is historical writing on music theory at its best. * . *--David Neumeyer, Leslie Waggener Professor in the College of Fine Arts, The University of Texas at Austin * . *Table of ContentsAn Intellectual and Creative Life in Music Formal Dynamism and Musical Logic Analysis between Description and Explanation Two Cultures: Bach's Fugue and Beethoven's Sonata Third Culture: Bruckner's Symphony Aesthetic Theory and Compositional Practice: Tradition, Imitation, and Innovation Halm's Oeuvre: Wisdom and Prophecy

Read more less

Book SynopsisCollection of critical and analytical scholarly essays on the music of Ravel by prominent scholars. Unmasking Ravel: New Perspectives on the Music fills a unique place in Ravel studies by combining critical interpretation and analytical focus. From the premiere of his works up to the present, Ravel has been associated with masks and the related notions of artifice and imposture. This has led scholars to perceive a lack of depth in his music and, consequently, to discourage investigation of his musical language. This volume balances and interweavesthese modes of inquiry. Part 1, "Orientations and Influences," illuminates the sometimes contradictory aesthetic, biographical, and literary strands comprising Ravel's artistry and our understanding of it. Part 2, "Analytical Case Studies," engages representative works from Ravel's major genres using a variety of methodologies, focusing on structural process and his complex relation to stylistic convention. Part 3, "Interdisciplinary Studies," integratesmusical analysis and art criticism, semiotics, and psychoanalysis in creating novel methodologies. Contributors include prominent scholars of Ravel's and fin-de-siècle music: Elliott Antokoletz, Gurminder Bhogal, Sigrun B. Heinzelmann, Volker Helbing, Steven Huebner, Peter Kaminsky, Barbara Kelly, David Korevaar, Daphne Leong, Michael Puri, and Lauri Suurpää. Peter Kaminsky is Professor of Music at the University of Connecticut, Storrs.Trade ReviewSuccessful . . . for the variety, depth and novelty of its analyses, but also for the way it quietly invites readers to imagine a very different place for Ravel in the canon than the one he currently occupies. Compelling and intricate analyses abound in Unmasking Ravel. -- Jessie Fillerup * JOURNAL OF THE ROYAL MUSICAL ASSOCIATION *Drawing on a wealth of primary sources, [Barbara Kelly] reveals how early tensions regarding Ravel's fame softened into mutual respect, especially from members of Les Six. . . . [Gurminder Bhogal extends] her ground-breaking research on the French arabesque [in] nuanced analyses. . . . Kaminsky and his colleagues are to be commended for moving us closer to understanding what makes [Ravel's] oeuvre so rich and alluring. FONTES ARTIS MUSICAE [Keith E. Clifton] Compelling new approaches to Ravel's music. Gives the reader insight into what makes Ravel's music the way it is -- its sources of influence and inspiration, its engagement with traditional norms, its setting of text, and its reception. [Helbing's chapter is] memorable. . . .[That by Leong and Korevaar is] illuminating. -- Claire Sher Ling Eng, Full review at http://mtosmt.org/issues/mto.12.18.1/mto.12.18.1.eng.php * MUSIC THEORY ONLINE *A collection of exceptional creativity and innovation. . . . Provides exceptional insight into the complexity of Ravel's unique formal approaches. . . . A potent reminder of the power of biography and criticism, with implications beyond Ravel scholarship. -- Timothy B. Cochran * MUSIC LIBRARY ASSOCIATION NOTES *A superb, unique contribution to Ravel scholarship. . . Provide[s] both in-depth analysis and critical interpretation. SUMMING UP: Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty and professionals. -- R. Pitts * CHOICE *This substantial and authoritative work contains state-of-the-art contributions in both the critical-historical and theoretical-analytical spheres. --Arnold Whittall, Professor Emeritus, King's College, London; author of Romantic Music: A Concise History from Schubert to Sibelius and coauthor of Music Analysis: In Theory and Practice. * . *Table of ContentsRavel's Poetics: Literary Currents, Classical Takes - Steven Huebner Re-presenting Ravel: Artificiality and the Aesthetic of Imposture - Barbara L. Kelly Adorno's Ravel - Michael J. Puri Ravel's Approach to Formal Process: Comparisons and Contexts - Peter Kaminsky Repetition as Musical Motion in Ravel's Piano Writing - Daphne N. Leong and David Korevaar Playing with Models: Sonata Form in Ravel's String Quartet and Piano Trio - Sigrun Heinzelmann Spiral and Self-Destruction in Ravel's "La valse" - Volker Helbing Diatonic Expansion and Chromatic Compression in Maurice Ravel's Sonate pour violonet violoncelle - Elliott Antokoletz Deception, Reality, and Changes of Perspective in Two Songs from Histoires Naturelles - Lauri Suurpää Not Just a Pretty Surface: Ornament and Metric Complexity in Ravel's Piano Music - Gurminder K. Bhogal The Child on the Couch; or, Toward a (Psycho)Analysis of L'enfant et les sortilèges - Peter Kaminsky

Read more less

Book SynopsisBiography of the late American composer Leon Kirchner (1919-2009), exploring his work and important personal associations. In this first biography of American composer, pianist, conductor, and teacher Leon Kirchner (1919-2009), Robert Riggs paints a vivid picture of an extraordinary, multifaceted musician. Refugees from Hitler's Third Reich (Schoenberg, Bloch, and Stravinsky) dominated Kirchner's early development, and he in turn became a transformative mentor for later generations at the University of Southern California, Mills College, and Harvard University. Kirchner's performance persona is brought to life by highlighting his appearances with top orchestras and at major festivals, especially his long tenure at the Marlboro Music Festival, where he worked with Rudolf Serkin and Pablo Casals. Currentchampions of his music (Yo-Yo Ma, Leon Fleisher, and James Levine) are also key protagonists. Kirchner's entire oeuvre is discussed within the chronological narrative, and six representative works are examined in detail. Inaddition to Riggs's extensive interviews with the composer, the biography is documented with Kirchner's colorful correspondence from a roster of luminaries: Saul Bellow, Leonard Bernstein, Edward Cone, Aaron Copland, Darius Milhaud, Isaac Stern, Roger Sessions, and many others. Excerpts from Kirchner's own elegantly written essays and speeches complete the portrait and reveal his highly personal, romantic view of music as powerful art capable of endowing humanity with an "aesthetic sensibility and protective wisdom, without which we cannot survive." Robert Riggs is Professor of Music at the University of Mississippi.Trade Review[Kirchner] taught a generation of musicians, including performers such as Yo-Yo Ma. . . . Riggs does an excellent job of describing the expressive content and technical aspects of the compositions. . . . The many extracts from primary sources, especially letters between Schoenberg, Sessions, Copland, and Kirchner, along with Kirchner's own eloquent statements and speeches, bring a fascinating period of history vividly to life. -- Jonathan Blumhofer * MUSIC LIBRARY ASSOCIATION NOTES *This in-depth study of the broad range of talents, achievements, friendships, statements, and creative activities of Leon Kirchner (1919-2009) is a treasure. . . . Admirably captures the essence of this lionhearted, in all ways creative, human being. -- Dorothy Lamb Crawford * AMERICAN MUSIC *[Kirchner] was, with Leonard Bernstein, the outstanding American composer of his generation. . . . Everything in Kirchner is expressive, passionate, full of emotional power. . . . A fine portrait . . . enlivened by personal details and anecdotes derived from Riggs's conversations with Kirchner. -- David Matthews * TEMPO *An insider's view of the development of American musical modernism throughout the 20th century. Topics of special interest include Kirchner's training with Arnold Schoenberg and Roger Sessions, relationships with other leading performers and composers (e.g., Aaron Copland), and personal philosophies of musical pedagogy and aesthetics. -- Stanley C. Pelkey * CHOICE *Contemporary American composers have few able defenders, . . . so it is good to have a biographical tribute . . . from University of Rochester Press to Leon Kirchner, who died in 2009 at age 90l. . . . Excellent and worthy appreciation . . . [of] a major and enduring talent. -- Benjamin Ivry Full review at http://blogs.forward.com/the-arty-semite/134623/ * THE ART SEMITE *This handsomely-produced book is the first to be published on Kirchner... details of Kirchner's rich musical life as composer, pianist, conductor and university teacher are assiduously spelt out and enlivened by personal details and anecdotes TEMPO, Vol. 65 No. 258, October 2011 * . *Informative and welcome introduction to a composer who balanced modernist leanings with an instinctive sense of the romantic. -- Michael Quinn and chosen as an Editor's Choice book of 2011 * CLASSICAL MUSIC *

Read more less

Book SynopsisA collection of essays on new music, composers, and issues in American music criticism and aestheticson by composer and music theorist Robert Morris. The Whistling Blackbird: Essays and Talks on New Music is the long-awaited book of essays from Robert Morris, the greatly admired composer and music theorist. In these essays, Morris presents a new and multifaceted view ofrecent developments in American music. His views on music, as well as his many compositions, defy easy classification, favoring instead a holistic, creative, and critical approach. The Whistling Blackbird contains fourteen essays and talks, divided into three parts, preceded by an "Overture" that portrays what it means to compose music in the United States today. Part 1 presents essays on American composers John Cage, Milton Babbitt, Richard Swift, and Stefan Wolpe. Part 2 comprises talks on Morris's music that illustrate his ideas and creative approaches over forty years of music composition, including his outdoor compositions, an ongoing project that began in 1999. Part 3 includes four essays in music criticism: on the relation of composition to ethnomusicology; on phenomenology and attention; on music theory at the millennium; and on issues in musical time. Threaded throughout this collection of essays are Morris's diverse and seemingly disparate interests and influences. English romantic poetry, mathematical combinatorics, group and set theory, hiking, Buddhist philosophy, Chinese and Japanese poetry and painting, jazz and nonwestern music, chaos theory, linguistics, and the American transcendental movement exist side by side in a fascinating and eclectic portrait of American musical composition at the dawn of the new millennium. Robert Morris is Professor of Music Composition at the Eastman School of Music, University of Rochester.Trade ReviewRobert Morris is a composer with a long and active career writing music who has through his writings about music established himself as a major figure in the field of music theory. The Whistling Blackbird both reveals how his renown came about and illustrates vividly why he deserves such recognition as a theorist. One hopes that it will prompt further serious interest in him as a composer. Each essay reaches far beyond the workshop to engage reasons why the music was made at all. Since much of the book seems to be engaged with placing surprising ideas in conversation with each other, the reader will feel invited to join in. -- Andrew Mead * AMERICAN MUSIC *These wide-ranging essays [are drawn] from a lifetime of thinking and teaching about all music, [including] John Cage, Milton Babbitt, [and] 'the confluence between Western art music and ethnomusicology.'. . . The book holds together nicely, not least because of Morris's direct, informative writing style. -- William K. Kearns * CHOICE *

Read more less

Book SynopsisUnlocks the secrets behind the images and music of an important Spanish musical manuscript compiled for a brotherhood of suspected heretics ca. 1500. The Rosary Cantoral is a rare and beautifully decorated manuscript of Latin plainchant for the Catholic Mass compiled in Toledo, Spain, around the year 1500. In an engaging and richly interdisciplinary essay, Lorenzo Candelaria approaches the Rosary Cantoral as a cultural artifact, unlocking the secrets behind its images and music to reveal the social history and rituals of an elite brotherhood dedicated to the rosary and aspects of the religious communityit served: the Dominicans of San Pedro Mártir de Toledo. The Rosary Cantoral: Ritual and Social Design in a Chantbook from Early Renaissance Toledo presents a model for realizing the fuller significance of illuminatedmusic manuscripts as cultural artifacts and offers unprecedented insights into the social and devotional life of Toledo, Spain, around the turn of the sixteenth century. After solving the mystery of the Rosary Cantoral's origins,subsequent essays probe the meaning and cultural significance of the manuscript's iconography (including a border decoration after Albrecht Dürer), its rare Spanish chants for the Mass, and two striking musical works for multiplevoices (one by Josquin Desprez and another on "L'homme armé"). Ultimately, this book focuses on the extraordinary circumstances that engendered the compilation of the Rosary Cantoral around 1500: a system of patronage between a brotherhood of suspected heretics and a religious house that was a key supporter of the Inquisition in Toledo. Lorenzo Candelaria (University of Texas at Austin) is co-author of American Music: A Panorama.Trade ReviewWinner of the American Musicological Society's Robert M. Stevenson Award for Outstanding Scholarship in Iberian Music, 2009 * . *Scholars such as [Candelaria], informed, analytical and well-balanced, deserve to reach as large a number of the interested academic world as possible. BIBLIOTHEQUE D'HUMANISME ET RENAISSANCE [Leonard R. N. Ashley] [An] impressive piece of historical detection...which successfully straddles the concerns of liturgy, polyphony, and manuscript illumination. [It] will stand as an intriguing contribution to a much-overlooked field. -- Iain Fenlon * AMERICAN HISTORICAL REVIEW *The scope of the book. . . makes this valuable reading for scholars in a wide variety of disciplines, while its lucid and clear writing style makes it accessible to anyone interested in Spanish cultural history, liturgy, or medieval and early-modern studies. -- James Boyce O.Carm. * SPECULUM *The author is to be applauded for shining a much-needed spotlight on the vast corpus of similar Spanish and New World cantorales that until very recently have been regarded as 'of very little interest. -- Michael Noone * MUSIC LIBRARY ASSOCIATION NOTES *Few [interdisciplinary] studies have been more compelling. . . . [Candelaria] is equally at home when dealing with the finer points of art history or the sometimes murky nature of the antiquities market. . . . [He] crafts a story that rivals good detective fiction. It even has a surprise at the end that involves the dark halls of the Spanish Inqusition. -- Michael B. O'Connor * RENAISSANCE QUARTERLY *The book is in many ways a detective story which identifies the MS's provenance and function by fascinating and devious approaches: I won't try to summarise it and spoil the story. . . .This study throws light not only on this particular MS but on the usage of the Rosary in Spanish politics and history. And there is a moral for art historians studying MSS with music and vice-versa: see beyond your own discipline. -- Clifford Bartlett * EARLY MUSIC REVIEW *. . . one of the most attractive and intriguing books on Spanish music history to reach the market in recent years. . . . It is thoroughly to be recommended. -- Bernadette Nelson * EARLY MUSIC *Table of ContentsIntroduction The Mystery of the Rosary Cantoral San Pedro Mártir de Toledo "El Cavaller de Colunya": A Legend of the Rosary The Emblem of the Five Wounds Hercules and Albrecht Dürer's Das Meerwunder Roses for the Blessed Virgin: The Music The Confraternity of Toledo and Its Patronage Epilogue Appendices Notes Bibliography Index

Read more less

Book SynopsisThe first in-depth study of Mendelssohn's two settings of Goethe's Die erste Walpurgisnacht, in the context of scenes from Goethe's Faust and other works. This paperback edition of Mendelssohn, Goethe, and the Walpurgis Night addresses tolerance and acceptance in the face of cultural, political, and religious strife. Its point of departure is the Walpurgis Night. The Night, also known as Beltane or May Eve, was supposedly an annual witches' Sabbath that centered around the Brocken, the highest peak of the Harz Mountains. After exploring how a notoriously pagan celebration came to be named after the Christian missionary St. Walpurgis (ca. 710-79), John Michael Cooper discusses the Night's treatments in several closely interwoven works by Goethe and Mendelssohn. His book situates those works in their immediate personal andprofessional contexts, as well as among treatments by a wide array of other artists, philosophers, and political thinkers, including Voltaire, Lessing, Shelley, Heine, Delacroix, and Berlioz. In an age of decisive political and religious conflict, Walpurgis Night became a heathen muse: a source of spiritual inspiration that was neither specifically Christian, nor Jewish, nor Muslim. And Mendelssohn's and Goethe's engagements with it offer new insightsinto its role in European cultural history, as well as into issues of political, religious, and social identity -- and the relations between cultural groups -- in today's world. John Michael Cooper is Professor of Music at Southwestern University and author of Mendelssohn's "Italian" Symphony (Oxford University Press).Trade ReviewCommanding and authoritative. . . Will be particularly valuable to conductors and musicians performing the cantata. -- Peter Hoyng * GERMAN STUDIES *Stimulating and informative . . . generously illustrated by excerpts from the score. . . The book has much to offer, in particular, to English-speaking readers without a command of German and unfamiliar with the Walpurgis Night origins and legends, who will appreciate the historical frame and the generous translation of key texts. Scholars of German literature will profit from the rigorous musicological analysis. -- Meredith Lee * GERMAN QUARTERLY *[Mendelssohn, Goethe, and the Walpurgnis Night] seeks to . . . provide the foundation for a comprehensive overhaul of our view of the composer. . . Cooper's detailed discussions of the music are complemented by a wide-ranging investigation of the work's reception. . . It was an inspired move . . . to open the section on reception with a comparison of the posthumous reputations of Goethe and Mendelssohn. -- James Garratt * NINETEENTH-CENTURY MUSIC REVIEW *The lure of sorcery and witches' Sabbaths . . . [told by Cooper] with fluency, enthusiasm and an eye for detail. -- Hugh Macdonald * TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT *An outstanding piece of scholarship. . . .Entirely successful. . . . Argues convincingly for a Mendelssohn engaged with culture, informed about his thinking, and -- most important -- willing and eager to take artistic risks in order to not only state his opinions but also build bridges. . . The use of illustrations in early publications is especially illuminating. -- Siegwart Reichwald * MUSIC LIBRARY ASSOCIATION NOTES *Dozens of excellently selected illustrations. . . Thoughtful and warmly written. . . .Its] themes are interwoven in an imaginative, careful way, made to come alive for readers familiar or not with the book's topics. . . A rich vein indeed. -- Peter Williams * MUSICAL TIMES *A highly entertaining and authoritative account of the Walpurgis Night tradition in European culture, and of Mendelssohn's cantata, which Berlioz praised for the 'perfection' of its interweaving of voices and instruments. The author blends skillfully history, criticism, musical analysis, and source studies to shed new light on Mendelssohn's perhaps most provocative, and unjustifiably neglected, work. -- R. Larry Todd, Arts & Sciences Professor of Music, Duke University, and author of Mendelssohn: A Life in MusicTable of ContentsThe Cultural and Religious Prehistories Tolerance, Translation, and Acceptance: Goethe's and Mendelssohn's Voices in European Cultural Discourse to ca. 1850 Reality and Illusion, Past and Present: Goethe and the Walpurgisnacht The Composition, Revision, and Publication of Mendelssohn's Die erste Walpurgisnacht The Sources, Structure, and Narrative of Mendelssohn's Walpurgisnacht Settings At the Crossroads of Identity: Critical and Artistic Responses to Goethe's and Mendelssohn's Walpurgisnacht Treatments Preforming Identity and Alterity: Die erste WalpurgisnachtThen and Now

Read more less

Book SynopsisAn exploration of the meaning and reception of "modernist" music. The debate over modernist music has continued for almost a century: from Strauss's Elektra and Webern's Symphony Op.21 to John Cage's renegotiation of musical control, the unusual musical practices of the Velvet Underground, and Stanley Kubrick's use of Ligeti's Lux Aeterna in the epic film 2001. The composers discussed in these pages -- including Bartók, Stockhausen, Bernard Herrmann, Steve Reich, and many others -- are modernists inthat they are defined by their individualism, whether covert or overt, and share a basic urge toward redesigning musical discourse. The aim of this volume is to negotiate a varied and open middle ground between polemical extremes of reception. The contributors sketch out the possible significance of a repertory that in past discussions has been deemed either meaningless or beyond describable meaning. With an emphasis on recent aesthetics and contexts-- including film music, sexuality, metaphor, and ideas of a listening grammar -- they trace the meanings that such works and composers have held for listeners of different kinds. None of them takes up the usual mandate of "educated listening" to modernist works: the notion that a person can appreciate "difficult" music if given enough time and schooling. Instead the book defines novel but meaningful avenues of significance for modernist music, avenues beyond those deemed appropriate or acceptable by the academy. While some contributors offer new listening strategies, most interpret the listening premise more loosely: as a metaphor for any manner of personal and immediate connection with music. In addition to a previously untranslated article by Pierre Boulez, the volume contains articles (all but one previously unpublished) by twelve distinctive and prominent composers, music critics, and music theorists from America, Europe, Australia, and South Africa: Arved Ashby, Amy Bauer, William Bolcom, Jonathan Bernard, Judy Lochhead, Fred Maus, Andrew Mead, Greg Sandow, Martin Scherzinger, Jeremy Tambling, Richard Toop, and Lloyd Whitesell. Arved Ashby is Associate Professor of Music at the Ohio State University.Trade ReviewA superb compilation of essays that will provoke discussion and thought on all sides. The writers are first and foremost music-lovers, and that standpoint informs all of the essays. Urgently recommended. --composer, from a review at amazon.com -- David D. McIntire, composer, from a review at amazon.comThere are few recent books on serious musical matters which ask more pressing questions and provide more thought-provoking -- even pleasurable -- answers than this one; few other books in which so many facets of modern culture. . . are brought together so productively. [Ashby's] introduction and opening chapter alone contain enough material for several books. . . I expect to be referring to the arguments and examples given here for some time to come. -- Arnold Whittall * THE GRAMOPHONE *Excellent collection. . . anyone with even the slightest concern for the topic should take the time to chew on what is in this book...an invaluable resource. * AMERICAN RECORD GUIDE *The Pleasure of Modernist Music presents the reader with a significant array of possible listening strategies for music otherwise dismissed as un-listenable. . . . Where these essays overlap is as fascinating as where they diverge in that the overlapping reveals the compositions, personalities, and ideologies most influential in a musical century that was conflicted at best. To the benefit of the present day listener, professional musician or otherwise, these essays represent a bold step forward in rescuing a body of music from that conflict, as well as from its own self-imposed alienation. * MLA NOTES, 2006 *Table of ContentsIntention and Meaning in Modernist Music The End of the Mannerist Century A Fine Analysis In Memory of a Receding Dialectic: The Political Relevance of Autonomy and Formalism in Modernist Musical Aesthetics Twentieth-Century Tonality, or, Breaking Up Is Hard to Do "Tone-Color, Movement, Changing Harmonic Planes": Cognition, Constraints and Conceptual Blends in Modernist Music Sexual and Musical Categories Listening to Schizophrenia: The Wozzeck Case The Musician Writes: The Deaf Man Looks On? "Are You Sure You Can't Hear It?": Some Informal Reflections on Simple Information and Listening A Fine Madness "One Man's Signal is Another Man's Noise": Personal Encounters with Post-Tonal Music The "Modernization" of Rock & Roll, 1965-75 Refiguring the Modernist Program for Hearing: Steve Reich and George Rochberg Modernism Goes to the Movies

Read more less

Book SynopsisSheds light on the process of cultural change that occurred over the course of a century or more in the majority of Pennsylvania German communities and churches. The Pennsylvania Dutch comprised the largest single ethnic group in the early American Republic of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Yet like other ethnic minorities in early America, they struggled to maintain their own distinct ethnic identity in everything that they did. Eventually their German Lutheran and Reformed customs and folkways gave way to Anglo-American pressure. The tune and chorale books printed for use in Pennsylvania Dutch churches document this gradual process of Americanization, including notable moments of resistance to change. Daniel Grimminger's Sacred Song and the Pennsylvania Dutch is the only in-depth study of the shifting identity of the Pennsylvania Dutch as manifested in their music. Through a closer examination of music sources, folk art, and historical contexts, this interdisciplinary study sheds light on the process of cultural change that occurred over the course of a century or more in the majority of Pennsylvania German communities and churches. Grimminger's book also provides a model with which to view all ethnic enclaves, in America and elsewhere, andthe ways in which loyalties can shift as a group becomes part of a larger cultural fabric. Daniel Grimminger holds a doctorate in sacred music and choral conducting, as well as a PhD in musicology. He also holds a masterof theological studies degree and is a clergyman in the North American Lutheran Church. Grimminger teaches at Kent State University and is the pastor at Faith Lutheran Church in Millersburg, Holmes County, Ohio.Trade ReviewA knowledgeable account of `the largest ethnic group in early America outside of the English-speaking population.' . . . All the known books are illustrated or sampled. . . . One gets a good idea of the gradual acculturation of these communities and their language. . . . The basic research on the publications, reports, texts, personnel, buildings and church practices (including singing schools) will give the book a permanent value. -- Peter Williams * MUSICAL TIMES *Sacred Song and the Pennsylvania Dutch is an important contribution to the history of German-language hymnody in the United States. Grimminger traces the development of Pennsylvania Dutch tune books, situating them in relation to better-known Anglo-American tune books and placing them in context with contemporary developments such as revivalism, public education, and theological change. The sacred music of one of the largest ethnic groups in early America receives a thorough and well-deserved exploration in Grimminger's comprehensive study. -- -- Alice M. Caldwell, Moravian music scholarTable of ContentsIntroduction Identity and Conflict in Pennsylvania Dutch Culture Ethnic Retention Retentive Tune and Chorale Books Adaptation and Acculturation Amalgamation The Pennsylvania Choral Harmony: The Culmination of a Tradition Implications for Future Work

Read more less

Book SynopsisA renowned Verdi authority offers here the often-astounding first history of how Verdi's early operas -- including one of his great masterpieces, Rigoletto -- made their way into America's musical life. The operas of Giuseppe Verdi stand at the center of today's operatic repertoire, and have done so for more than a century. The story of how the reputation and wide appeal of these operas spread from Western Europe throughout the world has long needed to be told. This latest book by noted Verdi authority George W. Martin, Verdi in America: Oberto through Rigoletto, specifically details the changing fortunes of Verdi's early operas in the theaters andconcert halls of the United States. Among the important works whose fates Martin traces are Nabucco, Attila, Ernani, Macbeth (in its original version), Luisa Miller, and one of Verdi's immortal masterpieces: Rigoletto, denounced in 1860 as the epitome of immorality. Martin also explores the astonishing revival of many of these operas in the 1940s and onward (including Macbeth in its revised version of 1865), and the first American productions-sometimes in small opera houses outside the main circuit of some Verdi operas that had never previously managed to cross the Atlantic. Extensive quotations from newspaper reviews testify tothe eventual triumph of these remarkable works. They also reveal the crucial shifts in tastes and expectations that have occurred from Verdi's day to our own. Independent scholar George W. Martin is the author of several books on Italian opera, including Verdi, His Music, Life and Times, Verdi at the Golden Gate: Opera and San Francisco in the Gold Rush Years, and Aspects of Verdi.Trade ReviewMartin's most comprehensive study on this subject to date. It reflects an awareness of how Verdi's reception outside Italy has influenced our understanding of the complex and fascinating legends and legacies surrounding his career. Martin's aim to shed light on the historical context behind the Verdi productions produces some of the most intriguing aspects of the book. -- Chloe Valenti * MUSIC & LETTERS *A tour de force. . . . Succeeds extraordinarily in achieving his stated goals. A vibrant book that is filled with enough detailed information on Verdi's operas to satisfy a researcher's needs, but is also readily accessible to the general operagoer. -- John Graziano * JOURNAL OF THE SOCIETY FOR AMERICAN MUSIC *A unique panorama of Verdi's early operas and American operatic practice, past and present. . . . Martin's discussions of each opera illuminate historical trends that are often overlooked. . . . Perhaps most valuable are Martin's discussions of . . . a network of smaller companies, venues, and concert series that are rarely, if ever examined. . . . Methodologically unique, illuminating for the first time the transformation of operatic practice (in America) from the mid-nineteenth century through the current day. . . . A student of American opera, American musical institutions, and Giuseppe Verdi should consider George W. Martin's book required reading, and its dual functionality as both a reference book and monograph makes it a particularly useful addition to the library shelf. -- Christopher Lynch * MUSIC REFERENCE SERVICES QUARTERLY *Keen insight. . . . A history of the early American operatic stage through the prism of Verdi's early works. Especially pertinent is information on many of the US's most important regional opera house -- material unavailable elsewhere -- and [on the] recording histories of the operas. . . . Deeply edifying. Summing Up: Highly recommended. All readers. -- S. C. Champagne * CHOICE *Offers informed, trenchant assessments of important Met stagings. . . . Especially insightful about the work of regional companies. . . . Martin's effort combines a critic's eye, a scholar's rigor and a fan's enthusiasm. -- Fred Cohn * OPERA NEWS *Informative and filled with engaging materials and useful data. . . . Provides a wealth of details about how different religious beliefs in different areas created barriers against opera. -- Claudio Vellutini * CAMBRIDGE OPERA JOURNAL *Table of ContentsIntroduction Nabucco I Lombardi alla prima crociata Ernani I due Foscari Attila Macbeth The Country's Growth Stimulates Opera I masnadieri Jérusalem Luisa Miller Rigoletto Opera on Tour and the Rise of Regional Companies Oberto Un giorno di regno Giovanna d'Arco Alzira Il corsaro La battaglia di Legnano Stiffelio Appendix A: The Operas, Their World, Western Hemisphere, and U.S. Premieres Appendix B: The Swift Spread of Ernani Appendix C: Dollar Values and Populations Appendix D: The San Carlo Touring Company: Repertory and Number ofPerformances, 1913/14 through 1928/29 Appendix E: Number of Performances of Verdi's Operas at the Metropolitan, 1883/84 through 2008/9 Appendix F: An Arrangement, a Reduction, and the Score as Written: Stiffelio

Read more less

Book SynopsisThe renowned treatise on music, by an eleventh-century monk, in a critical edition with annotated English translation, introduction, and detailed indexes. Long recognized as one of the most important medieval treatises on music, the Musica of Hermannus Contractus is here presented in a newly revised translation, with commentary reflecting the best current scholarship. A polymath and monk, Hermannus Contractus (1013-54) contributed to the important advancements made in European arts and sciences in the first half of the eleventh century, writing on history, astronomy, and time-keeping devices,among other topics, and composing several chants. His music theory, founded on a systematic treatment of traditional concepts and terminology dating back to the ancient Greeks, is concerned largely with the organization of pitchin Gregorian chant. Hermann's approach stems from Germanic species-based thought, and is marked by a distinction between aspects of form and aspects of position, privileging the latter. He expresses this in terms imported from then-new developments in Italian music theory, thus acting as a nexus for the two traditions. Numerology and number symbolism play significant roles in Hermann's theories, and his critiques of other theorists offer insights into medieval intellectual life. Hermann also uses chant citations and exercises to help his readers apply theory to practice. John L. Snyder's revised edition of Ellinwood's long-standard 1952 text and translation offers a new introduction, including codicological descriptions of the sources; a critical edition of the Latin text with an annotated English translation on facing pages; appendices detailing the documents pertaining to Hermann's life, his citations of plainsong, and his original diastematic notation system; and greatly expanded indexes. Snyder's Musica will serve as the standard version of this major historical document for years to come. Leonard Ellinwood (1905-94) served in the Library of Congress cataloging divisions in music and in the humanities for thirty-five years. He published scholarly works and editions of both medieval music and church music. John L. Snyder is Professor of Music Theory and Musicology at the University of Houston's Moores School of Music.Trade ReviewThis new edition of the Music of Hermannus Contractus (or Herman of Reichenau) is very welcome. Snyder's introduction deals comprehensively with Herman's life and the content of his treatise as well as its influence on later authors. The manuscripts are fully described and their relationship discussed...The edition is enhanced by the end-matter, which includes variant readings of several diagrams and of all the neumed chant quotations. -- John Caldwell * MUSIC & LETTERS *This new edition is a welcome addition to any library and will surely eclipse Ellinwood's older edition as a standard reference for Hermann studies, and for medieval musicology, from this point forward. -- Karen M. Cook * FRANCIA-RECENSIO *One of the most important eleventh-century music treatises written north of the Alps. A substantial introduction [by Snyder] gives a solid overview of the contents of the treatise and of its background-principally Boethius, the Musica enchiriadis, and Bernon de Reichenau. The fragment now in Kassel [and here incorporated for the first time] comes from a lineage distinct from that of the two complete manuscripts and often gives better readings for the diagrams. Three appendixes complete the edition. -- Christian Meyer * REVUE DE MUSICOLOGIE *Table of ContentsPreface to Leonard Ellinwood's 1952 Edition Preface to the Second Edition Abbreviations Introduction Musica Variantiae Figurarum Variantiae Neumarum Plates Appendix 1: Biographical Documents in English Translation Appendix 2: Chants Cited Appendix 3: Hermann's Diastematic Notation Bibliography Index Verborum Index Cantuum General Index

Read more less

Book SynopsisThe fascinating letters of conductor-author Nicolas Slonimsky (1894-1995) to his wife, sharing his adventures as he traveled around the world to conduct new American music. In the mid-twentieth century renowned musicologist, conductor, and lexicographer Nicolas Slonimsky traveled to cities throughout the world to play and conduct music of the American avant-garde. From trips to Paris, Berlin, Havana,New York, Los Angeles, Buenos Aires, Rio de Janeiro, and Moscow, Slonimsky wrote letters to his wife, the art critic Dorothy Adlow, vividly and humorously describing his adventures. Dear Dorothy: Letters from NicolasSlonimsky to Dorothy Adlow is a collection of these missives. Though personal, they chronicle Slonimsky's work as an ambassador of modern music who introduced twentieth-century composers, particularly American composers, to audiences worldwide. Full of his admired wit and energy, the letters recount his performances, rehearsals, lectures, day-to-day activities in foreign cities and concert halls, and the anxieties of stretching limited funds to cover an ever-expanding itinerary. They also reveal a side of Slonimsky not seen from his other published writings: a man with deep devotion to his wife and family. Annotated and with an introduction by Slonimsky's daughter, Electra Slonimsky Yourke, this collection documents the meeting of historic musical cultures-Old World Europe, the Soviet Union, and the vibrant countries of Latin America-with the modernist music of the United States. Written in a lively, humorous style, these letters will be of interest to scholars and students of American music and social historians as well as musicians, music lovers, and concertgoers. Electra Slonimsky Yourke is the daughter ofNicolas Slonimsky and Dorothy Adlow, and editor of several collections of her father's work, including The Listener's Companion and the four-volume Writings on Music. Nicolas Slonimsky (1894-1995) was a Renaissance man in the modern-music world of the mid-twentieth century. Composer, conductor, critic, and lexicographer, he authored many books including Lexicon of Musical Invective: Critical Assaults on Composers since Beethoven's Time and a memoir, Perfect Pitch.Trade ReviewThese are delightful letters, elegantly written, fastidiously edited, and, in addition to the valuable contextual information they provide, create a picture of a uniquely positive and generous human being. -- Peter Dickinson * MUSIC & LETTERS *Even franker than Slonimsky's 1988 memoirs Perfect Pitch: A Life Story. . . . Slonimsky was alert to piano gossip during his trips. . . . A genial wit. -- Benjamin Ivry * INTERNATIONAL PIANO *Slonimsky (1894-95) was an important adjunct to the world of 'modern' music during much of the 20th century. . . . The letters . . . are affectionate, charming, . . . sometimes astonishing. They reveal much . . . about Slonimsky's travels and concert giving, and the difficulties composers faced (between 1931 and 1963). -- W. Metcalfe * CHOICE *This remarkable, edifying collection of letters vividly illuminates the personality, unique ideas, and musical journeys of Nicolas Slonimsky, one of the most eloquent musical figures of the twentieth century. -- -- Sabine Feisst, author of Schoenberg's New World: The American YearsReaders join Dorothy Adlow as her husband, the indefatigable Nicolas Slonimsky, regales her with his musicological adventures and journeys of self-discovery. Thanks to his epistolary habit and her archivist inclinations, we see the personal Slonimsky as well as the 'roving ambassador from the world of new music,' the proud linguist and humorist, the collector of scores and acquaintances, and one of the twentieth century's most beloved musical polymaths at work. -- -- Denise Von Glahn, professor of musicology, Florida State University.Table of ContentsForeword by Carol J. Oja Introduction Dorothy Adlow Conducting in Havana, Paris, Berlin, Budapest, San Francisco, New York, 1931-32 The Hollywood Bowl, 1933 Latin America, 1941-42 The Soviet Union and Surrounding Lands, 1962-63

Read more less

Book SynopsisThe pathbreaking revival in Paris ca. 1900 of long-neglected operas by Mozart, Gluck, and Rameau -- and what this meant to French audiences, critics, and composers. Focusing on the operas of Mozart, Gluck, and Rameau, Building the Operatic Museum examines the role that eighteenth-century works played in the opera houses of Paris around the turn of the twentieth century. These works, mostly neglected during the nineteenth century, became the main exhibits in what William Gibbons calls the Operatic Museum -- a physical and conceptual space in which great masterworks from the past and present could, like works ofvisual art in the Louvre, entertain audiences while educating them in their own history and national identity. Drawing on the fields of musicology, museum studies, art history, and literature, Gibbons explores how this "museum" transformed Parisian musical theater into a place of cultural memory, dedicated to the display of French musical greatness. William Gibbons is Associate Professor of Musicology at Texas Christian University.Trade ReviewGibbons synthesizes much recent literature on such topics as French musical nationalism and the reception of early music in the nineteenth century, and analyzes these cultural trends in a manner that is [extensively] documented, rich in insight, clear, and highly readable. The book is a model of skillful argument and of expertise in organizing a subject that could easily overflow; a lesson in history and historiography that succeeds in offering a convincing central thesis (the establishment of an Operatic Museum) without denying the manysidedness of historical reality. * IL SAGGIATORE MUSICAL *What makes the book particularly worthwhile is its careful contextualization of the major fin-de-siècle revivals of eighteenth-century operas including abundant selections from critical discourse. . . . One of the merits of Gibbons' book is the way it enables us to see how these dilemmas [of historical fidelity vs. practical viability, and of Germanic traditions vs. French national pride] were understood, and hotly debated, throughout the period in question, paving the way for a conception of the repertoire that is still very much with us. The book's most engrossing section is probably the one devoted to Mozart, for the [Austrian] composer's place within the French operatic pantheon would always entail the most complex negotiations. * NINETEENTH-CENTURY MUSIC REVIEW *Gibbons's well-written study of the productions of eighteenth-century operas in late nineteenth-century Paris considers broad issues of edition-making, nationalist interpretation, allegorical readings, and value judgment. An important addition to critical reflections on canon building. --Steven Huebner, McGill University * . *Table of ContentsIntroduction Museums Restorations (De)Translations Transitions Resurrections Tragedies Symbols Monuments Quarrels Archaeologies Notes Bibliography Index

Read more less

Book SynopsisThe first account of how Wagner's last years and his death in Venice have been mythologized in novels and other works of the creative imagination. The vast literature about Richard Wagner and his works includes a surprising number of fictional works, including novels, plays, satires, and an opera. Many of these deal with his last years and his death in Venice in 1883 -- andeven a fabricated eleventh-hour romance. These fictional treatments -- many presented here in English for the first time -- reveal a striking evolution in the way that Wagner's character and reputation have been viewed over more than a century. They offer insights into changing contexts in Western intellectual and cultural history. And they make clear how much Wagner's associations with Venice have become part of the accumulated mythology of "thefloating city." John Barker's Wagner and Venice Fictionalized: Variations on a Theme will be of interest to all lovers of opera, Venice, and European culture generally. John W. Barker is Emeritus Professor of History at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, specializing in medieval (including Venetian) history. He is also a passionate music lover and record collector, and an active music critic and journalist.Trade ReviewJohn W. Barker has done a prodigious feat of reading and research. . . . Addresse[s] the array of literary myth surrounding that consummate dealer in magic and spells[, Richard Wagner]. MUSICAL TIMES [David Cormack] -- David Cormack * MUSICAL TIMES *

Read more less

Book SynopsisThe first book about Elliott Carter's only opera--or indeed about any single work by this still-productive modern master. In 1997, the eminent American composer Elliott Carter teamed with British music critic/librettist Paul Griffiths to create the one-act opera What Next? Hailed by the New York Times as "theatrically dynamic" and "poignant," the opera explores how six people work together to emerge from the wreckage of an accident. Today, What Next? enjoys a prominent position in Carter's celebrated "late late" compositional period. In the firstbook to focus exclusively on one Carter composition, Guy Capuzzo uses the metaphors of communication, cooperation, and separation to trace the dramatic arc of What Next? Through an approach that places stage action, words,and music on equal footing, Capuzzo's readings of four excerpts from the opera reveal the inner workings of Carter and Griffiths's tragicomedy. Elliott Carter's "What Next?": Communication, Cooperation, and Separation sheds light on a significant work by a major figure in twentieth-century concert music and will be of interest to all who study American music, vocal music, and musical criticism. Guy Capuzzo is associate professor of music theory at the University of North Carolina - Greensboro.Trade ReviewKeenly perceptive. . . . Excellent choice of an illustrative `analytical vignette' at end of chapter 2. . . . Illustrated with exceptionally well-produced music examples that will aid anyone wanting to be rewarded by close listening to the connections he uncovers. -- Marguerite Boland * MUSIC & LETTERS *Among the best musicological writings devoted to Carter. . . . Greatly facilitated by a presentation that is remarkably clear. -- Denis Vermaelen * REVUE DE MUSICOLOGIE *A rare example of a book devoted entirely to a single, recent composition. . . . Show[s] how Carter manages to create a reliably functioning mechanism more than equal to the demands he makes on it. -- Arnold Whittall * MUSICAL TIMES *In elucidating the inner workings of Carter's musical language Capuzzo makes a significant contribution to Carter scholarship, and to the literature of contemporary music theory. -- -- John Link, William Paterson UniversityA fascinating study. . . . Capuzzo addresses the inner clarity and expressive immediacy of 'What Next,' as well as the tragicomedy.'OPERA NEDERLAND [Mark Duijnstee] Capuzzo's prose style is plain-spoken and approachable. . . . Lively and rewarding. OPERA NEWS [Arlo McKinnon] Full Review In his insightful book-length analytical study of this opus, Guy Capuzzo has contributed an invaluable resource to Carter studies, as well as to post-tonal music theory. . . . [He] expresses his ideas with clarity, and those who do not have a predilection for technical analysis will still be able to gain much insight into the narrative, drama, history, and critical reception of the work. Readers are also fortunate that the quality of the publication is quite high, and University of Rochester Press is to be commended for their attention to editorial detail. Furthermore, Capuzzo's study makes a nice companion to those books on Carter and his music already in the press's catalogue (Carter 1997 and Meyer and Shreffler 2008). Anyone who knows these sources will certainly want Capuzzo's monograph as part of their collection as well. -- J. Daniel Jenkins Full Review * MUSIC THEORY ONLINE *Table of ContentsIntroduction Preliminaries An Analytic Approach to What Next? Identity Formation in Episodes 1-2 Communication and Irony in the Explanation Episodes Cooperation and Confusion in the Hope Episodes Communication and Gender Breakdown in Episodes 37-38 Appendix: Libretto Excerpts Notes Bibliography Index

Read more less

Book SynopsisThe first comprehensive study of Verdi's perennially popular opera Il trovatore, written by one of the world's great Verdi authorities. No full-length study has ever been written on Il trovatore, in his day Verdi's most successful stage work. This book by one of the world's great Verdi authorities fills that gap, providing a comprehensive look at the opera,from its genesis and structure to its early performance history and critical reception. Starting with the background of the opera, the volume traces the origins of the original play by Antonio García Gutiérrez, El trovador, and offers a new, more credible source for the drama. In addition, it examines the evolution of the libretto, the music, and the arrangement of the narrative, revealing innovative musical and dramatic features not seenby other critics. The book also includes a discussion of contemporary reviews and a section on some of the important performers in the twentieth century (for example, Toscanini and Caruso), as well as a consideration of several ofthe more unusual stagings of the work mounted during the final decades of the century. With these and other explorations, Martin Chusid offers a thorough survey of Verdi's Il trovatore and in the process deepens and enhances our encounter with one of the mainstays of the operatic reparatory. Martin Chusid is Professor Emeritus of Music, New York University, and founding director of the American Institute for Verdi Studies.Trade ReviewChusid has offered us an effective analytical and conceptual introduction to one of Verdi's perennial masterpieces, and his love for Verdi's middle-period operas shines through on every page. Significant and original contributions to the canon of Verdi scholarship. * JOURNAL OF MUSICOLOGICAL RESEARCH *His wide-ranging account makes for engaging and entertaining reading. Many passages from Verdi's and Cammarano's letters are translated into English here for the first time. [Chusid's book is] an essential introductory study of the opera. Cogent observations on matters of tonal structure. Valuable background about the Spanish theatrical context of the play and its operatic origins in 'Scribe's libretto for Halévy's opera La juive. General readers including opera-goers and record collectors, will find it a wonderful source of valuable background information about the opera, and scholars will be able to build on it as a starting point for further research and investigation. -- David Lawton * VERDI FORUM *Who could have imagined that Verdi's most popular opera, Il trovatore, would have to wait until now for a monograph in English? But Martin Chusid, with his vast experience in the world of Verdi studies and whose archive at NYU has supplied original material for his analysis, is the right person to have written it. After reading Chusid's remarks about the reception and history of Il trovatore and understanding Verdi's complex treatment of structure and tonality, no one can think any more of the opera as a 'concert in costume,' one that simply requires the four greatest singers in the world. -- -- Philip Gossett, general editor, The Works of Giuseppe VerdiTable of ContentsThe Spanish Background and the Play El trovador Cammarano's Role in Shaping the Libretto andVerdi's Emendations New Wine in Old Bottles: The Drama and the Music The Scene of the "Miserere" The Reception and Diffusion of Il trovatore

Read more less

Book SynopsisThe first detailed narrative of the Composers' Forum, documenting the vast array of composers, musical styles, ideologies, and audience responses in New York in the 1930s. The New York Composers' Forum was a weekly series of new-music concerts sponsored by the Federal Music Project and Works Progress Administration. It showcased the music of modern American composers such as Aaron Copland, Amy Beach, Henry Cowell, and Ruth Crawford Seeger, and included question-and-answer sessions between the composers and audiences. These sessions led to discussions, arguments, and sometimes even riots, all documented in nearly complete transcripts. This book is the first to tell the story of the Composers' Forum. Following the fascinating threads of dialogue from the transcripts, Melissa de Graaf explores the remarkable diversity of composers and musical styles represented, including numerous composers who have since been ignored or forgotten. She also examines the composers' and listeners' attitudes toward modernism, politics, gender, race, and American identity. In this important study of a unique and overlooked American institution, de Graaf shows that "modern" aesthetics in the 1930s comprised far more diverse styles and thought than we imagine today. Melissa J. de Graaf is Associate Professor ofMusicology at the University of Miami.Trade ReviewThoroughly grounded in primary source research, including meticulous work with the Composers' Forum archive. Provides a case study of many intersecting strands of U.S. cultural and political life. . . . [De Graaf's] work offers a model for scholarship and teaching that probes into systems of privilege and oppression [and] invites scholars and teachers to construct courses exploring various musical styles from the classical, folk and popular traditions and the connected social issues that will resonate with and inspire the people we teach to take action. * JOURNAL OF THE SOCIETY FOR AMERICAN MUSIC *An unusually engaging and stimulating account. . . . The abundant issues she raises intersect with some of the most elusive, yet central topics to have shaped modern music, . . . namely race, politics, nationalism, gender, and sexuality. Brings much previously untouched archival evidence to light, with unprecedented emphasis on the Forum's audiences as they confronted a challenging range of contemporary music. A 'who's who' of twentieth-century American music, with Roy Harris, Charles Ives, Otto Luening, Walter Piston, Randall Thompson, and Virgil Thomson among the many prominent participants. Highly readable, critically apt, and well documented. That nearly every chapter has music examples must be commended, along with the author's apposite observations about scores. By helping to focus the dissonance and din of that unusually fervent decade [the 1930s] during the great creative ferment of its latter half, Melissa J. de Graaf provides exemplary service. -- Daniel E. Mathers * MUSIC & LETTERS *De Graaf analyzes the spectrum of modern music styles and the audiences/ reactions to them. . . . A stimulating array of related topics such as gendered reception of modern music, the melting pot of American musical identity, and the search for authenticity in voice. * MIDWEST BOOK REVIEW *A lively and engaging presentation of the urban American 'new music' scene during the late 1930s. De Graaf's book provides a fascinating examination of New Yorkers' musical opinions -- both enthusiastic and hostile -- in copious and vivid detail. This is a superb study of the genuinely diverse character of 'modern' musical life in 1930s New York, which deserves to be widely read. --Thomas L. Riis, Director, American Music Research Center, University of Colorado, Boulder * . *Table of ContentsIntroduction: The Significance of the Composers' Forum The Composers' Forum in Context: Modernism and Diversity in the 1930s Reactions to Modernist Style and Ideas The Gendered Reception of Modern Music Orientalism, Jewish Music, and the Search for Spiritual Authenticity White Composers and Representations of Race: The Forum as Battleground over Issues of Authenticity and Appropriation Creating American Identity: Folk Song and Nationalism Conclusion: The Demise and Impact of the Composers' Forum Appendixes Composers and Works Student Composers and Works Composers' Forum Selection Committees Notes Selected Bibliography Index

Read more less

Book SynopsisNew essays by noted authorities on music and related arts in early modern Italy, giving special attention to musical sources, poetry, performance, and visual arts. The rich cultural environment of early modern Italy inspired a vast array of musical innovations: this was the first age of the virtuoso performer, the era that witnessed the beginnings of opera, and a moment that saw the intersection and cross-fertilization of madrigals and songs of all sorts. Word, Image, and Song: Essays on Early Modern Italy presents a broad range of approaches to the study of music and related arts in that era. Topics include musical source studies, issues of performance, poetry and linguistics, influences on music from the classical tradition, and the interconnectedness of music and visual art. Their points of departure include well-known musical workssuch as Monteverdi's madrigals, librettos of seventeenth-century operas, the poetry of Giambattista Marino, and the paintings of Titian and his contemporaries. Contributors: Jennifer Williams Brown, Mauro Calcagno, Alan Curtis, Suzanne G. Cusick, Ruth I. DeFord, Dinko Fabris, Beth L. Glixon, Jonathan E. Glixon, Barbara Russano Hanning, Wendy Heller, Robert R. Holzer, Deborah Howard, Giuseppe Mazzotta, Margaret Murata, David Rosand, Susan ParkerShimp, Gary Tomlinson, Alvaro Torrente, Andrew H. Weaver. Rebecca Cypess is Assistant Professor of Music at the Mason Gross School of the Arts at Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey. Beth L. Glixon is Instructor in Musicology at the University of Kentucky School of Music. Nathan Link is NEH Associate Professor of Music at Centre College.Trade ReviewAlmost every essay is rooted in seventeenth-century Venice. Nonetheless, the editors have achieved what amounts to a landmark collection of scholarly commentary on the compositional, spatial, visual, hermeneutic, and socio-political power of musical drama in this period. will appeal to scholars across a wide array of disciplines. Encourages a keen reconsideration of documentary sources and the stratified ways in which they can be read, . . . combining empirical analysis with a keen cultural and humanistic perspective. [Cusick's chapter] engages the reader in an old musicological topic made fresh by means of a compelling methodological framework. * MUSIC & LETTERS *The excellent scholarship, brilliant insights, and fresh and sometimes unconventional thinking in this impressive collection offer a significant contribution to the study of the relationship of music and verbal text in seventeenth-century Italy. Representing modern approaches to questions that in some cases are more than a century old, these essays reflect a harmonious variety of methods, points of view, and interests. --Hendrik Schulze, University of North Texas * . *Table of ContentsMaria Cavalli, Copyist and Teacher - Jennifer Williams Brown Il ritorno di Poppea: A New German Source Provokes Some New Thoughts-and Old Arguments - Alan Curtis An Unreported Mantuan Libretto from 1623 - Gary Tomlinson The Triumph of Inconstancy: The Vicissitudes of a Seventeenth-Century Libretto - Beth Glixon and Jonathan E. Glixon A Letter on Benedetto Ferrari, "Eccellentissimo sonator di tiorba" - Dinko Fabris Recordings of Music Written for St. Mark's: An Architectural Historian's View - Deborah Howard The Twenty-Two Steps: Clef Anomalies or "Basso alla bastarda" in Mid-Seventeenth-Century Italian Opera - Alvaro Torrente "Indarno chiedi": Clorinda and the Interpretation of Monteverdi's Combattimento - Suzanne G. Cusick The Veil, the Mask, and the Eunuch: Sight, Sound, and Imperial Erotics in L'incoronazione di Poppea - Wendy Heller Baciami, Claudio: Psychological Depth and Carnal Desire in the Marino Settings of Monteverdi's Book Seven - Andrew H. Weaver Powerless Spirit: Echo on the Musical Stage of the Late Renaissance - Barbara Russano Hanning Excavating Virgil in Counter-Reformation Rome: Domenico Mazzocchi's Dialoghi Based on the Aeneid - Susan Parker Shimp Music as a Fonte della varietà: Sforza Pallavicino on the Aria 233Robert R. Holzer - Robert R. Holzer Giambattista Marino's Operatic Aesthetics - Giuseppe Mazzotta Strophic Form in the Canzonettas of Orazio Vecchi, Luca Marenzio, and Claudio Monteverdi - Ruth I. DeFord Cantar ottave, cantar storie - Margaret Murata Dramatizing Discourse in Seventeenth-Century Opera: Music as Illocutionary Force in Francesco Cavalli's Giasone (1649) - Mauro Calcagno Incitamentum amoris musica [picta] - Prof David Rosand Selected Bibliography List of Contributors Index

Read more less

Book SynopsisApplies the notion of musical "voice" to diverse repertoires, ranging from the operas and cantatas of Handel to the autograph albums of nineteenth-century collector Charlotte de Rothschild. The concept of musical voice has been a subject of controversy in recent decades, as the primacy of the composer's place in the creation of the work has been called into question. The essays in Word, Image, and Song: Essays onMusical Voices take the notion of musical voice as a starting point, and apply it in varying ways to diverse repertoires and music-historical circumstances, ranging from the operas and cantatas of Handel to the autograph albums of nineteenth-century collector Charlotte de Rothschild. Rather than attributing interpretive control to the composer, performer, or audience alone, these essays present a range of interpretive strategies with respect to the various voices that one might hear and understand as emerging from a musical work: the composer's voice, the performer's voice, the patron's voice, the collector's voice, and the social or receptive voice. Contributors: Bathia Churgin, Rebecca Cypess, Roger Freitas, Philip Gossett, Ellen T. Harris, Joseph Kerman, Nathan Link, Daniel R. Melamed, Giovanni Morelli, Kristina Muxfeldt, Ruth Smith, Ruth A. Solie. Rebecca Cypess is Assistant Professor of Music at the Mason Gross School of the Arts at Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey. Beth L. Glixon is instructor in musicology at the University of Kentucky School of Music. Nathan Link is NEH Associate Professor of Music at Centre College.Trade ReviewThese essays illustrate the diversity of approaches that scholars have applied to the study of text and music in the first decade of the twenty-first century. In their sampling of a fascinating variety of musical genres, milieux, and practices, these studies open windows for new insights into cultural history in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, as well as into the lives and musical thinking of writers, composers, and performers. --Douglass Seaton, Warren D. Allen Professor of Music, Florida State University * . *Table of ContentsThe Choices of Hercules and Handel - Ruth Smith The Cantata as Narrative: Serials, Colloquies, and Commemoratives - Ellen T. Harris Communities of Time in Handel's Opera - Nathan Link The Metastasian Sonosphere - Giovanni Morelli Music for a Saxon Princess - Rebecca Cypess Text, Voice, and Genre in "Nun ist der Herr zur Ruh gebracht" - Daniel R. Melamed Happy and Sad: Robert Schumann's Art of Ambiguity - Kristina Muxfeldt Beethoven's Handel and the Messiah - Bathia Churgin The Livre d'or of Charlotte de Rothschild - Philip Gossett The Art of Artlessness, or Adelina Patti Teaches Us How to Be Natural - Roger Freitas Manly Music: Reading Victorian Language - Ruth Solie Selected Bibliography List of Contributors

Read more less

Book SynopsisThe long-awaited memoir of Julius Rudel, the legendary opera conductor and arts administrator, gives insight into his ground-breaking repertory choices and his collaborations with Beverly Sills, Plácido Domingo, and others. As a seventeen-year-old Jewish boy, Julius Rudel escaped from Austria after the Nazi invasion and moved to New York, where he began his career as an unpaid musical assistant and worked his way up through the ranks of the newly formed New York City Opera, being named in 1957 as the company's general director and principal conductor. Later, he became the first artistic director of the Kennedy Center in Washington, DC. In his twenty-two-year leadership of New York City Opera, Rudel challenged audiences with new and unusual repertoire -- including fifteen world premieres and three seasons consisting entirely of American operas -- turning the popularly priced "People's Opera" intothe most influential and daring opera company in the United States. Rudel writes in detail of his unusual repertoire choices and of the political battles behind New York City Opera's move to Lincoln Center in 1966, and hereminisces about his legendary collaborations with Beverly Sills (on Handel's Giulio Cesare and Donizetti's "Three Queens") and Plácido Domingo (on Ginastera's Don Rodrigo) -- and about his work with other extraordinary talents including Norman Treigle, Phyllis Curtin, William Ball, Frank Corsaro, Tito Capobianco, Leopold Stokowski, Leonard Bernstein, Harold Prince, and Gian Carlo Menotti. First and Lasting Impressions givesa rare personal look into Julius Rudel's career as a conductor and administrator during the glory years of New York City Opera. Julius Rudel was general director and principal conductor of New York City Opera from 1957to 1979, and since that time has been a frequent guest conductor at the Metropolitan Opera and many of the world's other great opera houses. Rebecca Paller, a curator at the Paley Center for Media in New York, has written about the arts for publications including Opera News, Opera, Vogue, Playbill, Symphony, and American Theatre.Trade ReviewIn his remarkable career at New York City Opera, Julius Rudel enriched and enlarged the lives of music-loving New Yorkers. This book, coauthored with Rebecca Paller, is a fascinating account of how his devotion to music -- music, not marketing -- helped shape an era. I am particularly happy to have Maestro Rudel's version of his long and complicated working relationship with Beverly Sills. -- -- Brian Kellow, features editor, Opera NewsJulius Rudel offers us direct insight into his rise through the ranks to become the director of one of America's most vibrant cultural institutions in the twentieth century, the New York City Opera. Evident on nearly every page is that same abiding dedication, guiding spirit, and bold imagination that helped to transplant a largely foreign art form and root it deep in America's artistic soil. This book will prove fascinating to opera singers, lovers of opera, especially American opera, not to mention interested teachers, pianists, voice coaches, orchestra and choral conductors. -- -- Michael V. Pisani, Vassar CollegeHe looks back at his career with a good humour which suggests how he survived. . . . He and his co-author write engagingly. . . . Interesting for most opera-lovers, and, for those with transatlantic [i.e., American] viewpoints, fascinating. -- Michael Scott Rohan * BBC MUSIC MAGAZINE *Julius Rudel has a great tale to tell. . . . Any reader with an interest in Rudel, in New York City Opera, or in the running of an opera company will devour it cover to cover. -- Fred Cohn * OPERA NEWS *Highly informative, entertaining . . . autobiography by conductor Rudel and a biography in his words of the New York City Opera. . . . A loving memoir, brutally frank, but never vindictive. Powerful, even emotional working associations with great artists: Norman Treigle, Beverly Sills, Phyllis Curtin, John Alexander, Richard Cassilly, and dozens more. . . . A most humane gentleman. -- Charles H. Parsons * AMERICAN RECORD GUIDE *Table of ContentsIntroduction Early Life in Vienna and the Shadow of the Swastika "The People's Opera" Takes Flight: The Early Years of New York City Opera The Flying Baton: A Company in Transition A Lighter Muse: Broadway Musicals Brush Up Your Shakespeare and Return to Vienna Inheriting the Wind All-American Intermezzo: The Company Way Politics and Acoustics: The Move to Lincoln Center Tintinnabulation: Don Rodrigo and a Young Star Named Domingo A Summer Idyll: The Magic of Caramoor Giulio Cesare and the Sills Phenomenon The Kennedy Center: From Concept to Opening Glory Days Jon Vickers: The Third Time Was Not the Charm Reversal of Fortune Life after New York City Opera Appendix: The Three American Seasons of New York City Opera Index

Read more less

Book SynopsisThis pioneering study of ballets staged in Parisian music halls brings to light a vibrant dance culture central to the renewal of French choreography at the fin de siècle. This pioneering study of Parisian music-hall ballet brings to light a vibrant dance culture that was central to the renewal of French ballet at the turn of the twentieth century. Long thought a lost period for ballet in France, the fin de siècle in fact saw a flourishing of choreographic activity. More than four hundred ballets were created to great acclaim, half of which were full-scale pantomime-ballets, with entertaining narratives, catchy music, titillating choreography, lavish sets and costumes, appealing corps girls, and star ballerinas. Most of these productions were staged not at the elite Paris Opéra but in the city's trendiest commercial venues: music halls. Between 1871 and 1913, the Folies-Bergère, the Olympia, and the Casino de Paris brought together the era's leading authors of light theater and comic opera to produce a flurry of imaginative ballets that combined the conventional structures of high art with the popular idioms of mass entertainment. They also drew unprecedented numbers of people who had never before attended ballet. Parisian Music-Hall Ballet, 1871-1913 rediscovers this repertoire and culture, supplying a missing chapter in the history of French dance. Sarah Gutsche-Miller is Assistant Professor of Musicology at the University of Toronto.Trade Review[A] compelling contribution to French dance and music history. The author's new and important insights contribute much to our understanding of the dramatic achievements of the 'historical avant-garde' in the early decades of the twentienth century. * DANCE RESEARCH REVIEW *Gutsche-Miller's work not only illuminates the supposed 'Dark Ages' of French ballet, but also provides a vital corrective to conventional wisdom about the cultural context into which Diaghilev launched his troupe. A lucid and lively history that vividly reconstructs the art world of Parisian music-hall ballet at its three principal venues: the Folies-Bergères, the Olympia, and the Casino de Paris. Serves as a caution against focusing too narrowly on activities at only the most powerful and prestigious 'high art' institutions. The book's generous appendices...will prove an invaluable reference for scholars wishing to investigate thsi repertory further. MUSIC & LETTERS [Helena Kopchick Spencer] * . *Gutsche-Miller's meticulous research provides a glimpse of these now-lost ballets, created at the impressive rate of four to six new works per year. Points to canny ways that composers used music to evoke place, atmosphere, and character . . . Gutsche-Miller's greatest contribution lies in her insistence that this popular genre is worthy of serious scholarly inquiry. * NINETEENTH-CENTURY FRENCH STUDIES *Table of ContentsList of Figures Acknowledgments Introduction The Venues and the Shows Music Halls for Tout-Paris Creative Artists: Authors, Composers, and Choreographers The Ballet-Divertissement Real Pantomime-Ballets: The Choreographic Conventions of 1890s Music-Hall Ballet Music as Storyteller: The Musical Conventions of 1890s Music-Hall Ballet As Pleasing to the Ear as to the Eye: A Popular Musical Style The Stories of Music-Hall Ballet: Romance, Flirtations, and Other Pleasures A Delight to Behold: Glitter, Glamour, and Girls Appendix A: Tables of Ballets Staged by the Folies-Bergere, the Olympia, and the Casino de Paris Appendix B: Synopses of Ballets Staged at the Folies-Bergere, the Olympia, and the Casino de Paris Notes Bibliography Index

Read more less

Book SynopsisExamines Mendelssohn's relationship to the past, shedding light on the construction of historical legacies that, in some cases, served to assert German cultural supremacy only two decades after the composer's death. By upbringing, family connections, and education, Felix Mendelssohn was ideally positioned to contribute to the historical legacies of the German people, who in the aftermath of the Napoleonic Wars discovered that they were a nation with a distinct culture. The number of cultural icons of German nationalism that Mendelssohn "discovered," promoted, or was asked to promote (by way of commissions) in his compositions is striking: Gutenberg and the invention of the printing press, Dürer and Nuremberg, Luther and the Augsburg Confession as the manifesto of Protestantism, Bach and the St. Matthew Passion, Beethoven and his claims to universal brotherhood. The essays in thisvolume investigate from a variety of perspectives Mendelssohn's relationship to the music of the past, including the significance of Bach's music for the Mendelssohn family, the homages to Bach in Mendelssohn's organ compositions,the influence of Beethoven in the Reformation Symphony, and Mendelssohn's reception and use of Handel's oratorios. Together, the essays shed light on the construction of legacies that, in some cases, served to assert German cultural supremacy only two decades after the composer's death in 1847. Contributors: Celia Applegate, John Michael Cooper, Hans Davidsson, Wm. A. Little, Peter Mercer-Taylor, Siegwart Reichwald, Glenn Stanley, Russell Stinson, Benedict Taylor, Nicholas Thistlethwaite, Jürgen Thym, R. Larry Todd, Christoph Wolff Jürgen Thym is professor emeritus of musicology at the Eastman School of Music and editor of Of Poetry and Song: Approaches tothe Nineteenth-Century Lied (University of Rochester Press, 2010).Trade ReviewThis book has on the one hand broad appeal because of the breadth of its coverage and on the other hand scholarly depth made possible by its commitment to specialized work. . . . [A]n important contribution to Mendelssohn studies that will remain valuable for many years to come. * AMERICAN ORGANIST *Breathtaking in its erudition and thoroughness. Though particularly of use to organists . . . this volume reflects the sort of full-orbed consideration of music that musicologists prize, music studied in terms of analysis, cultural history, and contemporary context. An excellent addition to academic music libraries as well as the private collections of musicologists. * MUSIC LIBRARY ASSOCIATION NOTES *An engaging and important collection of studies for anyone interested in Mendelssohn and his music. Jürgen Thym's Introduction 'Of Statues and Monuments' eloquently sets the scene. The reader will find many interconnections between the separate essays. . . . sections on registration, style and phrasing offer fresh insights on the interpretation of the sonatas. * ORGAN AUSTRALIA *[The chapters] illuminate and expand ideas of Mendelssohn's place as a composer, performer, and ultimately caretaker of musical history. [Davidsson's chapter,] a substantial look at Opus 65 in historical context, performance, and registrations [is] alone worth the price of the volume. This book displays the important of [Mendelssohn's] legacy in a new light. It should be on every musician's shelf. Highly recommended. * JOURNAL OF THE ASSOCIATION OF ANGLICAN MUSICIANS *An excellent compilation of [previously unpublished] essays on Mendelssohn, where his life and work are explored as well as his role in the recovery and preservation of musical traditions of the past from a musicological point of view. Perhaps the most remarkable feature of the work is its possible practical application, which is very evident in the extensive chapter [by Hans Davidsson] on the organ. Interesting connections are created between chapters, with some anticipating topics that are later developed further. * DOCE NOTAS *Brings together papers by a group of centrally important scholars. The book offers a diverse spread of topics covering background history, biography, and repertoire, employing a nice variety of approaches. These essays open up new areas for further work. -- -- Douglass Seaton, Warren D. Allen Professor of Music, Florida State UniversityTable of ContentsIntroduction: Of Statues and Monuments Mendelssohn and the Contrapuntal Tradition Mendelssohn and the Catholic Tradition: Roman Influences on His Kirchen-Musik, Op. 23 and Drei Motetten, Op. 39 Mendelssohn and the Legacy of Beethoven's Ninth: Vocality in the "Reformation" Symphony Mendelssohn and the Organ Some Observations on Mendelssohn's Bach Recital "He Ought to Have a Statue" : Mendelssohn, Gauntlett, and the English Organ Reform Mendelssohn's Sonatas, Op. 65, and the Craighead-Saunders Organ at the Eastman School of Music: Aspects of Performance Practice and Context The Bach Tradition among the Mendelssohn Ancestry Music History as Sermon: Style, Form, and Narrative in Mendelssohn's "Dürer" Cantata (1828) Mendelssohn's "Authentic" Handel in Context: German Approaches to Translation and Art and Architectural Restoration in the Early Nineteenth Century Beyond the Ethical and Aesthetic: On Reconciling Religious Art with Secular Art-Religion in Mendelssohn's "Lobgesang" Mendelssohn's Religious Worlds: Currents and Crosscurrents of Protestantism in Nineteenth-Century Germany and Great Britain List of Contributors Index

Read more less

Book SynopsisProvides new perspectives on the violin's beloved concert repertoire, its diverse roles in indigenous musical traditions on four continents, and its metaphorical presence in visual arts and literature. With a colorful history that spans 450 years, the violin has proven to be one of the world's most important and versatile instruments. Addressed to performing musicians, serious concertgoers, and collectors of recordings, The Violin offers insightful, up-to-date essays on a wide range of topics. Essays discuss beloved masterpieces from the violin's solo repertoire, with individual chapters on the Italian Baroque, Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, and the violin concerto in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, as well as the evolution of performance styles and interpretation as documented in recordings. The volume also illustrates the broad cultural and geographic reach of the instrument, offering readers a taste of the traditional music of Argentina, Mexico, Norway, and India, in which the violin's participation is an essential and characteristic element. Other chapters are devoted to American fiddling andto the violin and violinists as metaphors in literature and the visual arts. CONTRIBUTORS: Chris Goertzen, Eitan Ornoy, Robert Riggs, Peter Walls, Peter Wollny. Musicologist and violinist Robert Riggs (PhD,Harvard University) chairs the Department of Music at the University of Mississippi and is the author of articles on Mozart as well as the monograph Leon Kirchner: Composer, Performer, and Teacher (URP 2010).Trade ReviewSucceeds in emphasizing the versatility and global reach of the instrument to readers in the early stages of exploring these topics. Though Riggs devotes space to non-Western genres, the majority of the book systematically presents 'standard' violin repertoire...[Includes] a useful guide for violinists interested in reading fiction related to their instrument. * MUSIC LIBRARY ASSOCIATION NOTES *Fascinating... Riggs presents a wealth of information...written in a reader friendly style. * EARLY MUSIC *If you wish to know more about its 'virtuous and rascally associations,' (indeed the violin was long associated with the devil), this enjoyable treatise will enlighten, entertain and educate. * AUSTA STRINGENDO *Casts a wide net. There are chapters on violins and violinists in literature, the violin's association with death and the devil, recordings as documentation of performance practice, and the violin's adoption by different cultures. * AMERICAN RECORD GUIDE *Table of ContentsAssociations with Death and the Devil - Robert Riggs Violinists and Violins in Literature - Robert Riggs The Violin in Italy during the Baroque Period - Peter Walls Bach and the Violin - Peter Wollny Mozart, Beethoven, and the Violin - Robert Riggs The Violin Concerto and Virtuosity in the Nineteenth Century - Robert Riggs The Violin Concerto in the Twentieth Century - Robert Riggs The Masters' Voice: Recordings as Documentation of Performance Practice - Eitan Ornoy The Peripatetic Violin - Chris Goertzen The Devil's Box No More: Fiddling in America - Chris Goertzen Notes on Contributors Index

Read more less

Book SynopsisThis book reveals Czech composer Bedrich Smetana as a dynamic figure whose mythology has been rewritten time and again to suit shifting political perspectives. Interpretations of Czech composer Bedrich Smetana and his music have shifted as frequently as the political contexts in which they were written. This book examines not just Smetana, but also the scholar-politicians who have imagined and reimagined him and his works since the nineteenth century. During the 1870s, Smetana helped found a powerful nationalist organization called the Umelecká beseda ("Artistic Society," or UB), whose members produced the earliest scholarship on the composer as part of their calls for political action. Within the increasingly radicalized discourses of the twentieth century, individuals including future Minister of Culture and Education Zdenek Nejedlý attacked the UB for not being nationalistic enough, producing their own revisionist histories of Smetana and his works. Kelly St. Pierre investigates Smetana as both nationalist composer and national symbol, revealing the composer'slegacy as a dynamic figure whose mythology has been rewritten time and time again to suit changing political perspectives. Kelly St. Pierre is assistant professor of musicology at Wichita State University.Trade ReviewAn important book [that] investigates the creation of a collection of 'Smetana myths,' and the manner in which the composer's career and its reception were molded by a complex set of forces. Some of the most fascinating aspects of St. Pierre's book involve the sections dealing with the attempt on the part of various interlocutors to ascribe 'meaning' to specific moments of instrumental music. -- Michael Beckerman * SLAVIC REVIEW *St. Pierre brings together a wide range of published sources, such as articles and edited correspondence in translation (mostly her own). Particularly intriguing is [her] perspective on music history (and its making) as media history. The monograph's structure and appearance are impeccable, and its name index will serve as an essential companion for every future study on Smetana. * MUSIC LIBRARY ASSOCIATION NOTES *St. Pierre's book will need to be consulted by anyone interested in the subject. It is lucidly constructed and well written, and has been well served by Rochester Press [sic] in its editing of her prose . . . [and] is especially valuable in the lively details it gives of the Umelecká beseda and its members. * SLAVONIC AND EAST EUROPEAN REVIEW *A sorely needed and welcome foray not only into scholarship on the Czech composer Bedrich Smetana, but also into questions of composer biography and the role of propaganda in Central European nationalist movements...a valuable resource for scholars of European history and Czech music. * EUROPEAN HISTORY QUARTERLY *Kelly St. Pierre's concentrated and highly researched new study . . . closely examines the complex and politically controversial genesis of [Czech composer Smetana's] music, and its huge eventual significance in establishing a strong and clear national identity for that small if fiercely patriotic country contained within the 19th-century Austro-Hungarian Empire. St. Pierre has done well to cut a path through the forests of obscurantism generated by these ever-changing political perspectives, leading to a clearer picture of Smetana and his actual achievements. MUSICAL TIMES * MUSICAL TIMES *A significant work of scholarship, Kelly St. Pierre's Bedrich Smetana: Myth, Music, and Propaganda fills an obvious and important gap in the literature of musical politics in Prague from the last quarter of the nineteenth century to the end of the First Republic. With an excellent and thorough consideration of both Czech and English sources, including the most recent publications, this book will be indispensable for scholars and enthusiasts of Czech music, as well as scholars, students, and devotees of late nineteenth-century European cultural and intellectual history. -- -- Derek Katz, author of Janácek beyond the BordersTable of ContentsIntroduction Smetana Advocacy and Czech Nation-Building Smetana, Czechness, and the New German School Smetana, Czechness, and Wagner Smetana as a Proven Genius Writing the Smetana Myth: Historiography and Czechness Conclusion Notes Bibliography Index

Read more less

Book SynopsisExamines the decline and resurgence of Haydn's reputation in an effort to better understand the forces that shape critical reception on a broad scale. By the 1840s Joseph Haydn, who died in 1809 as the most celebrated composer of his generation, had degenerated into the bewigged "Papa Haydn," a shallow placeholder in music history who merely invented the forms used by Beethoven.In a remarkable reversal, Haydn swiftly regained his former stature within the opening decades of the twentieth century. Reviving Haydn: New Appreciations in the Twentieth Century examines both the decline and the subsequent resurgence of Haydn's reputation in an effort to better understand the forces that shape critical reception on a broad scale. No single person or event marked the turning point for Haydn's reputation. Instead a broad resurgence reshaped opinion in Europe and the United States in short order. The Haydn revival engaged many of the music world's leading figures -- composers (Vincent d'Indy and Arnold Schoenberg), conductors (Arturo Toscanini), performers (Wanda Landowska), critics (Lawrence Gilman), and scholars (Heinrich Schenker and Donald Tovey) -- each of whom valued Haydn's music for specific reasons and used it to advance particular goals. Yet each advocated for a rehearing and rereading of the composer's works, calling for a new appreciation of Haydn's music. Bryan Proksch is Assistant Professor of Music History at Lamar University.Trade Review[Proksch goes beyond previous studies by Botstein and Garratt by illustrating] how the nineteenth-century degradation and the twentieth-century revival of Haydn's music are both linked to the championing of newer music by composers and critics. Proksch's historical narrative...is certainly compelling. Haydn enthusiasts and scholars alike will greatly appreciate this story told in a reasonably comprehensive, single-volume account. -- Melanie Lowe * FONTES ARTIS MUSICAE *Sensitively outlines the progression in which Haydn came increasingly to be viewed as a mere stepping-stone toward Ludwig van Beethoven. Heinrich Schenker's diverse approaches to the composer are explored . . . most persuasively. Proksch's drawing on diverse primary sources allows for precious insights into the American musical scene. A thoughtfully written and overall very useful addition to the Haydn literature. Forcefully reminds us that Haydn's historical and aesthetic relevance is not an absolute given, but something his advocates must fight for day by day in the concert halls, in the general press, and in scholarly publications. -- Balazs Mikusi * MLA NOTES *Proksch masterfully untangles the various agendas that marked Haydn's reception, especially those involved in rebuilding the composer's reputation in the post-Romantic era. Reception historians must take up the challenge to explore that mind and ferret out hidden significance and meaning; to do less is simply to report what has already been printed or said. Proksch answers the call admirably and tells a fascinating story in the process. -- Jess Tyre http://haydnjournal.org * HAYDN JOURNAL *Haydn scholarship has long been in need of a comprehensive account of the composer's reception. One of Proksch's most striking insights is that both the decline and the revival of the composer's critical fortunates were connected to the claims of new music. The case studies cover France, Austria and Germany, the United States, and Great Britain, and involve figures such as d'Indy, Saint-Sae'ns, Schenker, Schoenberg, and Tovey. Bryan Proksch offers plenty of fresh material to chew on, especially for his focal period of the first half of the twentieth century. JOURNAL OF THE AMERICAN MUSICOLOGICAL SOCIETY [W. Dean Sutcliffe] -- W. Dean Sutcliffe * JOURNAL OF THE AMERICAN MUSICOLOGICAL SOCIETY *Table of ContentsAcknowledgements Introduction: A Revival in Context Haydn's Fall A Reputation at an Ebb Recomposing H-A-Y-D-N in Fin de Siecle France Eccentric Haydn as Teacher Haydn and the Neglect of German Genius Schoenberg's Lineage to Haydn Haydn in American Musical Culture Croatian Tunes, Slavic Paradigms, and the Anglophone Haydn The Genesis of Tovey's Haydn Conclusion: Haydn in the "Bad Old Days" Appendix: A Note on Methodology and the Russians Notes Bibliography Index

Read more less

Book SynopsisThe first full-length analytic study devoted to the Concerto for Piano and Wind Instruments, combining sketch studies, musicological context, and straightforward analyses of all three movements. Stravinsky's "Great Passacaglia" marks the first full-length analytic study devoted to the Concerto for Piano and Wind Instruments, an important neoclassic piece composed by one of the most influential composers of the twentieth century. Donald Traut examines the complex significance of this piece for Stravinsky and his contemporaries. For the composer, the Concerto was both a major artistic accomplishment in his burgeoning neoclassic style and a vehicle for financial gain as a touring soloist, an endeavor that took him throughout Europe and was instrumental in bringing him to America for the first time. For many of Stravinsky's critics it came to represent all that was wrong with his new style, while for others it pointed the way forward through the past, taking on an important role in the Bach revival of the 1920s. By combining sketch studies, musicological context, and straightforward analyses ofall three movements, the book paints a comprehensive picture of the piece's creation, impact, and structure that will be of interest not only to musicologists and music theorists, but to pianists, conductors, and concert-goers aswell. Donald Traut is associate professor of music theory at the University of Arizona.Trade Review[S]hould provide a great resource for scholars, conductors, and performers interested in deepening their understanding of Stravinsky's concerto and his neoclassical style. * NOTES: JOURNAL OF THE MUSIC LIBRARY ASSOCIATION *Table of ContentsIntroduction Context and Composition Concerto as Catalyst Analytical Tools and Recurring Elements Counterpoint and Tonality in the First Movement Tetrachords and Tritones in the Largo Points of Imitation in the Finale Conclusion Appendix Notes Bibliography Index

Read more less

Book SynopsisPresents current analytic views by established scholars of the traditional tonal repertoire, with essays on works by Bach, Handel, Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, Chopin, and Brahms. Bach to Brahms presents current analytic views on the traditional tonal repertoire, with essays on works by Bach, Handel, Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, Chopin, and Brahms. The fifteen essays, written by well-established scholars of this repertoire, are divided into three groups, two of which focus primarily on elements of musical design (formal, metric, and tonal organization) and voice leading at multiple levels of structure. The third groupof essays focuses on musical motives from different perspectives. The result is a volume of integrated studies on the music of the common-practice period, a body of music that remains at the core of modern concert and classroom repertoire. Contributors: Eytan Agmon, David Beach, Charles Burkhart, L. Poundie Burstein, Yosef Goldenberg, Timothy L. Jackson, William Kinderman, Joel Lester, Boyd Pomeroy, John Rink, Frank Samarotto, Lauri Suurpää, Naphtali Wagner, Eric Wen, Channan Willner. David Beach is professor emeritus and former dean of the Faculty of Music, University of Toronto. Yosef Goldenberg teaches at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and at the Jerusalem Academy of Music and Dance, where he also serves as head librarian.Trade ReviewWINNER of the 2016 Outstanding Multi-Author Publication Award * SOCIETY OF MUSIC THEORY *Table of ContentsIntroduction Strolling through a Haydn Divertimento with Two Heinrichs Ritornelli or Soli: Which Did Mozart Write First in the Opening Movement of His Violin Concerto K. 207? Outer Form, Inner Form, and Other Musical Narratives in Beethoven's Opus 14, No. 2 Temporal Poise and Oblique Dynamic in the First Movement of Beethoven's "Archduke" Trio Chopin as an Interpreter of Mozart: The Variations Opus 2 and Don Giovanni The First Movement of Brahms's Fourth Symphony Revisited: A Study of the Fanfare and the "Cloud of Mystery" "Capricious Play": Veiled Cyclic Relations in Brahms's Ballades Op. 10 and Fantasies Op. 116 Chopin's Study in Syncopation A Sharp Practice, A Natural Alternative: The Transition into the Recapitulation in the First Movement of Beethoven's "Hammerklavier" Sonata Ernst Oster's Vision of Hidden Repetitions and Motivic Enlargements in J. S. Bach's Short Keyboard Works The "Pseudo-Einsatz" in Two Handel Fugues: Heinrich Schenker's Analytical Work with Reinhard Oppel Formal Fusion and Its Effect on Voice-Leading Structure: The First Movement of Beethoven's Opus 132 Revisited Indistinct Formal Functions and Conflicting Temporal Processes in the Second Movement of Brahms's Third Symphony The Interaction of Structure and Design in the Opening Movements of Schubert's Piano Trios in B-flat Major (D. 898) and E-flat Major (D. 929) The Suspenseful Structure of Brahms's C-Major Capriccio, Op. 76, No. 8: A Schenkerian Hearing List of Contributors Index

Read more less