Description
Book SynopsisHans Keller (1919-1985) was one of the most brilliant and stimulating writers on music of his day, and this is the first large selection of his essays.
Trade Review'Brilliantly selected essays' BBC Music Magazine
'Christopher Wintle's outstandingly empathetic introduction that would seem best to encapsulate the style and ongoing purpose of this collection of musical (and I choose the word with care) writings as representative of 'Keller's crusade'.' Musical Times
Table of ContentsPreface; Acknowledgments; A Note on the Text; Introduction; Part I. Criticism: 1. Problems in writing about music; 2. Resistances to Britten's music: their psychology; 3. National frontiers in music; 4. Sport and art: the concept of mastery; 5. Music and psychopathology; Part II. Composers and Their Music: 6. Art as departure (Haydn); 7. New Music: Beethoven's Choral Fantasy; 8. Schubert: tune and melody; 9. Little known greatness (Mendelssohn and Mozart); 10. Schumann was a symphonist; 11. Tristan and the realism of adolescence (Wagner); 12. Resistances to Brahms; 13. Elgar the progressive; 14. The unpopularity of Mahler's popularity; 15. The sentimental violin (Glazounov); 16. The 'Lucky' Hand and other errors (Schoenberg); 17. Natural master (Schmidt); 18. Schoenberg: A Survivor from Warsaw ; 19. Film music: The Harry Lime theme (Karas and Weill); 20. Mátyás Seiber 1905–1960; 21. Gloriana as music drama (a reaffirmation) (Britten); 22. Shostakovich's Twelfth Quartet; 23. Stravinsky v. Stravinsky; 24. The state of the symphony: not only Maxwell Davies's; 25. Britten's last masterpiece; 26. The Man and the Music (Simpson); Part III. Towards a Theory of Music: 27. Towards a theory of music; 28. The musical analysis of music; 29. Functional Analysis No. 9A: Mozart's Piano Sonata in A minor, K 310; 30. A slip of Mozart's: Its analytical significance (1956/57); 31. Knowing things backwards; 32. Mozart's wrong key signature; 33. Key characteristics; 34. Strict serial technique in classical music; 35. Schoenberg: the future of symphonic thought; 36. Whose fault is the speaking voice? 37. Why this piece is about Billy Budd; 38. Rhythm: Gershwin and Stravinsky; 39. Principles of composition; Notes; Index.
