Music-Genres & Styles-Classical

More than any other composer, Beethoven left to posterity a vast body of material that documents the early stages of almost everything he wrote. From this trove of sketchbooks, Lewis Lockwood draws us into the composer's mind, unveiling a creative process of astonishing scope...

This very distinctive new work on Tchaikovsky uniquely combines a lively biography of one of the best-loved composers of the nineteenth century with a chronological guide to his music, from the popular ballets and concertos to lesser-known pieces. Brown enthusiastically and sensitively guides the...

Such questions concern the role of the cantatas in Bach's compositional development, musical models for the works, and performance practice during the composer's lifetime. In this book, Bach scholars place the works in their historical and biographical context, guiding the reader through their literary,...

The Essays Before a Sonata was conceived by Ives as a preface of sorts to the composition. Ives's musings also explore the nature of music, discuss the source of a composer's impulses and inspiration, and offer some biting comments on celebrated masters. The writings...

An illustrated history of musical thought in the nineteenth century and its relationship to the Romantic movement.Author: Alfred EinsteinISBN-10: 0393097331ISBN-13: 9780393097337Publisher: W. W. Norton & CompanyLanguage: EnglishPublished: 05/17/1947Pages: 384Format: HardcoverWeight: 1.60lbsSize: 9.55h x 6.45w x 1.41d

This volume continues the study of the eighteenth century begun in Haydn, Mozart, and the Viennese School 1740-1780 (1995) by focusing on the capital cities other than Vienna that were most important in the creation and diffusion of new music. It tells of events...

Focusing on Dvorák's eventful stay in the United States from 1892 to 1895, this book explores the world behind the public legend, offering fresh insights into the composer's music. We see the traditional image--that of a simple Czech fellow with a flair for composing...

This is the standard work on its subject, and its author the outstanding authority. Pierre Bernac had a long and distinguished career as a singer, specializing in the French song (or mélodie) repertoire. For many years he was incomparable partnered by Francis Poulenc, one...

After the editor's introduction, devoted to an overall view of Beethoven's significance, there are essays by Joseph Kerman and Boris Schwarz concerning the composer's sketches. Alan Tyson discusses the oratorio Christus am Oelberge; Philip Downes, the Eroica Symphony; F. E. Kirby, the Pastoral Symphony;...

Thomas Ad s (b. 1971) is an established international figure, both as composer and performer, with popular and critical acclaim and admiration from around the world. Edward Venn examines in depth one of Ad s's most significant works so far, his orchestral Asyla (1997)....

Piano Lessons with Claudio Arrau provides an insider's view of the art of piano performance as exemplified by one of the great artists of the twentieth century. Chilean pianist Claudio Arrau devoted his life to the piano and its music. As a child prodigy,...

Today Georges Bizet is most immediately recognized as the composer of the acclaimed opera Carmen. One of the most frequently performed operas for over a century, Carmen explores concepts such as the femme fatale and murderous jealousy with vivacity, color, and a wealth of...

Sergey Prokofiev was one of the twentieth century's greatest composers--and one of its greatest mysteries. Until now. In The People's Artist, Simon Morrison draws on groundbreaking research to illuminate the life of this major composer, deftly analyzing Prokofiev's music in light of new archival...

Modest Musorgsky was one of the towering figures of nineteenth-century Russian music. Now, in this new volume in the Master Musicians series, David Brown gives us the first life-and-works study of Musorgsky to appear in English for over a half century. Indeed, this is...

What is rhetorical music? In The Pathetick Musician, Bruce Haynes and Geoffrey Burgess illustrate the vital place of rhetoric and eloquent expression in the creation and performance of Baroque music. Through engaging explorations of the cantatas of J.S. Bach, the authors explode the conventional...

Metric Manipulations in Haydn and Mozart makes a significant contribution to music theory and to the growing conversation on metric perception and musical composition. Focusing on the chamber music of Haydn and Mozart produced during the years 1787 to 1791, the period of most...

What is music, and why does it move us? From Pythagoras to the present, writers have struggled to isolate the essence of "pure" or "absolute" music in ways that also account for its profound effect. In Absolute Music: The History of an Idea, Mark...

Why would Gustav Mahler (1860-1911), modernist titan and so-called prophet of the New Music, commit himself time and again to the venerable sonata-allegro form of Mozart and Beethoven? How could so gifted a symphonic storyteller be drawn to a framework that many have dismissed...

Not just Bach and Handel, but Vivaldi and Monteverdi, Couperin and Rameau, Purcell and Schutz are familiar and loved figures of the baroque era. This survey offers perspectives on these men, and the times in which they lived. to all those who are attracted...

Celebrating its 100th anniversary, this extraordinary series continues to amaze and captivate its readers with detailed insight into the lives and work of music's geniuses. Unlike other composer biographies that focus narrowly on the music, this series explores the personal history of each composer...

Domenico Dragonetti (1763-1846) was the most famous double-bass player in history. He dominated the English musical world for just over half a century. This critical biography explores his extraordinary career as musician, composer, entrepreneur, and pedagogue.Author: Fiona M. PalmerISBN-10: 0198165919ISBN-13: 9780198165910Publisher: Clarendon PressLanguage: EnglishPublished:...

This is the only extensive study of the Monteverdi Vespers, vastly expanding on the author's 1978 set of essays on the subject, long since out-of-print. The volume studies the Vespers from the perspectives of its musical and liturgical origins and context, presents analytical essays...

Timpani Tone and the Interpretation of Baroque and Classical Music explores the nature, production, and evolution of timpani tone and provides insights into how to interpret the music of J. S. Bach, Handel, Haydn, and Mozart. In drawing on 31 years of experience, Steven...

Qualities of motion and emotion in song come from poetic images, melody, harmony, and voice leading, but they also come from rhythm and meter-the flow and articulation of words and music in time. This book explores rhythm and meter in the nineteenth-century German Lied,...

Chopin's Second Ballade, Op. 38 is frequently performed, and takes only seven or so minutes to play. Yet the work remains very poorly understood--disagreement prevails on issues from its tonic and two-key structure to its posited relationship with the poems of Adam Mickiewicz. Chopin's...

Is music removed from politics? To what ends, beneficent or malevolent, can music and musicians be put? In short, when human rights are grossly abused and politics turned to fascist demagoguery, can art and artists be innocent? These questions and their implications are explored...

Written by one of the world's outstanding music historians and critics, the late Alfred Einstein, this classic study of Mozart's character and works brings to light many new facts about his relationship with his family, his susceptibility to ambitious women, and his associations with...

Between early 1806 and early 1807, Ludwig van Beethoven completed a remarkable series of instrumental works. But critics have struggled to reconcile the music of this banner year with Beethoven's heroic style, the paradigm through which his middle-period works have typically been understood.Drawing on...

Debussy's Critics: Sound, Affect, and the Experience of Modernism explores the music of Claude Debussy and its early reception in light of the rise of the empirical human sciences in Western Europe around the turn of the twentieth century. In the midst of a...

Heinrich Schutz (1585-1672) was the most important and influential German composer of the seventeenth century. Director of music at the electoral Saxon court in Dresden, he was lauded by his German contemporaries as "the father of our modern music," as "the Orpheus of our...

Lateness and Brahms takes up the fascinating, yet understudied problem of how Brahms fits into the culture of turn-of-the-century Vienna. Brahms's conspicuous and puzzling absence in previous scholarly accounts of the time and place raises important questions, and as Margaret Notley demonstrates, the tendency...

Topics are musical signs developed and employed primarily during the long eighteenth century. Their significance relies on associations that are clearly recognizable to the listener with different genres, styles and types of music making. Topic theory, which is used to explain conventional subjects of...

Johann Sebastian Bach's two surviving passions--St. John and St. Matthew--are an essential part of the modern repertory, performed regularly both by professional ensembles and amateur groups. These large, complex pieces are well loved, but due to our distance from the original context in which...

Notes for Clarinetists: A Guide to the Repertoire offers important historical and analytical information about thirty-five of the best-known pieces written for the instrument. Numerous contextual and theoretical insights make it an essential resource for professional, amateur, and student clarinetists. With engaging prose supported...

Through musical analysis of compositions written between the mid-twelfth to late nineteenth centuries, this volume celebrates the achievements of eight composers, all women: Hildegard of Bingen, Maddalena Casulana, Barbara Strozzi, ﾉlisabeth Jacquet de la Guerre, Marianne Martines, Josephine Lang, Fanny Hensel, Clara Schumann, and...

Hyland reveals both the man and his creations, revealing how Gershwin became the first composer to apply popular music to classical forms, how his work reflected the turmoil of America in the Jazz Age, and how, despite his fame, he never achieved the happiness...

A musician of rare artistry, the self-effacing yet charismatic Yo-Yo Ma connects with his audiences with startling effectiveness. He remains devoted to the classical repertoire yet has long roved far beyond the Western classical music canon. Despite his real superstar status and thriving solo...

Designed as a practical reference guide for professional pianists and piano teachers, A Guide to Piano Music by Women Composers, Volume I, is an annotated catalogue of the available piano music in print composed by 144 women born before the 20th century. The work...

Opera has often used classical literature as a means of expressing the most vital concerns of the period in which the operas were written. Sing Sorrow explores the classical roots of many noted operas, illustrating the ways in which the operas reflected the political...

Vladimir Ussachevsky (1911-1990), a pioneer in electronic music, was also a composer, teacher and administrator of the Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Center. His more than 44 works involving electroacoustics reflect the importance of his contribution to electronic music. Ussachevsky studied with Howard Hanson, Bernard Rogers...

This great London orchestra made its debut in a recording session shortly before its first public concert in 1932 and now has well over a thousand recordings to its credit. All are dated and detailed for the first time in this meticulous study researched...

The first full-length volume on the life work of one of the most well-known and prolific masters of our time, William Thomas McKinley: A Bio-Bibliography provides both musicologists and performers with a guide toward further exploration of the composer and his music. Included within...

The evolution of Ernest Bloch's music is traced throughout his travels in Europe and America. A complete picture of Bloch emerges from this integrated study of his life and his music. The opening biographical chapter provides a brief, personal history from which Bloch's career...

Taking piano lessons at three years of age and composing by five, William Mathias became one of Britain's leading 20th-century composers. (He was invited to compose the wedding anthem for the marriage of the Prince of Wales to Lady Diana Spencer.) This work provides,...

Austrian conductor Hans Rosbaud was a leading figure in European musical life from the late 1920s until his death in 1962. Internationally respected as a conductor of Mozart and Haydn, Bruckner and Mahler, his posthumous reputation rests primarily on his standard-setting performances of modern...

With its depth of coverage and international scope this first-of-its-kind volume contains a comprehensive collection of information on recordings (LPs, CDs, or Cassettes) in which percussion instruments are featured as solo instruments or as part of chamber ensembles, with the best of the literature...

As a companion to The Wind Ensemble Sourcebook and Biographical Guide, this catalog provides a comprehensive listing of wind ensemble works from 1650 to the present. These two volumes will be completed with a third, The Wind Ensemble Thematic Catalog 1700-1900. Representing more than...

Although born Giuseppe Guttovergi to a poor, immigrant Italian family, it was as Paul Creston that Giuseppe rose to prominence, becoming one of the most widely performed American composers. Rhythm was a continued subject of research for this composer, and by 1945 he had...

From the Algonquin Round Table to the Gershwins and the Hollywood moguls, Moss Hart knew and delighted everybody. Vanity Fair has called him "one of American theater's greatest geniuses," the man responsible for such indelible successes as A Star Is Born, Camelot, and My...

Listeners have enjoyed classical music recordings for more than a century, yet important issues about recorded performances have been little explored. What is the relationship between performance and recording? How are modern audiences affected by the trends set in motion by the recording era?...