Search results for ""Author Philip Ross Bullock""

A biography of composer Sergei Rachmaninoff, published in collaboration with the Bard Music Festival. One of the most popular classical composers of all time, Sergei Rachmaninoff (1873–1943) has often been dismissed by critics as a conservative, nostalgic holdover of the nineteenth century and a composer fundamentally hostile to musical modernism. The original essays collected here show how he was more responsive to aspects of contemporary musical life than is often thought, and how his deeply felt sense of Russianness coexisted with an appreciation of American and European culture. In particular, the essays document his involvement with intellectual and artistic circles in prerevolutionary Moscow and how the form of modernity they promoted shaped his early output. This volume represents one of the first serious explorations of Rachmaninoff’s successful career as a composer, pianist, and conductor, first in late Imperial Russia, and then after emigration in both the United States and interwar Europe. Shedding light on some unfamiliar works, especially his three operas and his many songs, the book also includes a substantial number of new documents illustrating Rachmaninoff’s celebrity status in America.

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Philip Ross Bullock looks at the life and works of Rosa Newmarch (1857-1940), the leading authority on Russian music and culture in late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century England. Although Newmarch's work and influence are often acknowledged - most particularly by scholars of English poetry, and of the role of women in English music - the full range of her ideas and activities has yet to be studied. As an inveterate traveller, prolific author, and polyglot friend of some of Europe's leading musicians, such as Elgar, Sibelius and Janácek, Newmarch deserves to be better appreciated. On the basis of both published and archival materials, the details of Newmarch's busy life are traced in an opening chapter, followed by an overview of English interest in Russian culture around the turn of the century, a period which saw a long-standing Russophobia (largely political and military) challenged by a more passionate and well-informed interest in the arts Three chapters then deal with the features that characterize Newmarch's engagement with Russian culture and society, and - more significantly perhaps - which she also championed in her native England; nationalism; the role of the intelligentsia; and feminism. In each case, Newmarch's interest in Russia was no mere instance of ethnographic curiosity; rather, her observations about and passion for Russia were translated into a commentary on the state of contemporary English cultural and social life. Her interest in nationalism was based on the conviction that each country deserved an art of its own. Her call for artists and intellectuals to play a vital role in the cultural and social life of the country illustrated how her Russian experiences could map onto the liberal values of Victorian England. And her feminism was linked to the idea that women could exercise roles of authority and influence in society through participation in the arts. A final chapter considers how her late interest in the music of Czechoslovakia picked up and developed these themes in the context of interwar Europe.

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A biography of composer Sergei Rachmaninoff, published in collaboration with the Bard Music Festival. One of the most popular classical composers of all time, Sergei Rachmaninoff (1873–1943) has often been dismissed by critics as a conservative, nostalgic holdover of the nineteenth century and a composer fundamentally hostile to musical modernism. The original essays collected here show how he was more responsive to aspects of contemporary musical life than is often thought, and how his deeply felt sense of Russianness coexisted with an appreciation of American and European culture. In particular, the essays document his involvement with intellectual and artistic circles in prerevolutionary Moscow and how the form of modernity they promoted shaped his early output. This volume represents one of the first serious explorations of Rachmaninoff’s successful career as a composer, pianist, and conductor, first in late Imperial Russia, and then after emigration in both the United States and interwar Europe. Shedding light on some unfamiliar works, especially his three operas and his many songs, the book also includes a substantial number of new documents illustrating Rachmaninoff’s celebrity status in America.

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A timely attempt to re-map a critical appreciation of early twentieth-century modernism through a Nordic lens. Following the end of the Cold War, a former East-West binary model of European identity has been replaced with a series of more complex and variegated patterns. Northern Europe is one such territory, and the idea of the 'North' more generally has come in for increased critical scrutiny. This volume reappraises the work of Sibelius, Nielsen and their contemporaries, but it also reassesses the wider implications of the 'Nordic Breakthrough' for fields such as the visual arts, theatre, literature and architecture. Music's Nordic Breakthrough adopts an interdisciplinary methodology and expands the geographical reach of the 'Nordic zone' to include interactions with Russia, the Baltic states and Great Britain; a new understanding of the region emerges as an arena of artistic affinity, cutural exchange and shared preoccupations. At the same time, the book constitutes an attempt to re-map and recentre early twentieth-century European modernism through a distinctively Nordic lens. The thematic approach on display reveals the complex interaction of networks, individuals, ideologies and the transfer of ideas. The book will beof interest to musicologists working in late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century repertoires, as well as those more broadly interested in modernism in music and its neighbouring arts. The book also offers important reading forart historians, theatre scholars and literary critics. CONTRIBUTORS: Charlotte Ashby, Leah Broad, Daniel M. Grimley, Louise Hardiman, Kevin Karnes, Pirjo Lyytikäinen, Tomi Mäkelä, Julia Mannherz, Arnulf Christian Mattes, Philip Ross Bullock, Kirsten Rutschmann, and Mikkel Zangenberg.

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