It has been our intention in commissioning this book to complement the documentary and analytical focus of Cambridge University Press's first volume of Chopin studies, published in 1988. This new collection targets three main areas of research--reception history, aesthetics and criticism, and performance studies--although the boundaries between these are by no means tightly drawn.

This book contains nine essays by leading Berlioz scholars on various aspects of the great nineteenth-century musician's life and work. Among the pieces studied closely are Romeo et Juliette, La Damnation de Faust and Les Nuits d' ete. An essay on newly discovered documents gives us a revealing portrait of the artist as a young man; another essay which examines little studied manuscripts shows us how precisely Berlioz arranged Gluck's celebrated opera Orphee. The practical question of Berlioz's metronome marks are studied thoroughly for the first time, and the volume closes with a novel piece...

This collection of essays on Debussy's life and music is aimed at both the music lover and a specialist readership. Many of the contributors to the current volume have worked on various pieces in the long-overdue complete edition, and the significance of their research is presented here. Topics include an examination of Debussy's working methods, his visual tastes, his reception in England, aspects of performance practice, as well as studies of his libretti and his relationship to the poet Stephane Mallarme.

Mahler Studies comprises ten innovative essays by leading experts on topics spanning the range of current Mahler research, including biographical, psychoanalytical, source-critical, and theoretical approaches to the composer who, with astonishing foresight, repeatedly claimed that "my time will come." Highlights include previously inaccessible documents, sketches, and family letters, an insightful overview of Mahler and the "eternal feminine," state-of-the-art essays on Mahler and musical analysis, and a clear account of the influential Mahler criticism of Theodor W. Adorno.

Focusing on his activity in Hamburg from 1767 until his death in 1788, this collection of essays explores the literary and aesthetic contexts of C.P.E. Bach's later work. It includes essays on Bach's position on contemporary concepts of responsiveness, his sacred music and views on religion, and on the contemporary and posthumous reception of his music. The volume seeks to re-establish the centrality of Bach's music in late 18th-century German culture.

The French composer Olivier Messiaen is one of the major figures of twentieth-century music. This collection of scholarly essays offers new cultural, historical, biographical and analytical perspectives on Messiaen's musical oeuvre from 1941 to 1992. The volume includes: a fascinating snapshot of Messiaen's life in occupied France; a study of the Surrealist poetics of Messiaen's song cycle Harawi; a chapter on Messiaen's iconoclastic path to the avant-garde heritage that he bequeathed to his pupils; discussion on Messiaen's place in twentieth-century music; and detailed analysis of specific...

Since the bicentennial of Mozart's death in 1991, the principal concern of much Mozart research has been to situate the composer and his music in increasingly well informed biographical, historical, critical and analytical contexts. The contributors to Mozart Studies share this desire to paint ever-more rounded, focused and sensitive pictures of the composer by drawing upon wide-ranging historical materials and critical tools, and to project scholarly understandings considerably beyond the narrow frames of reference that traditionally characterised Mozart research. While chapters are grouped...

Reflecting the growth of international interest in Elgar's music, this collection of essays brings together leading scholars from the UK and the USA, and covers the broadest range of analytical approaches to his music. It is perhaps in textual analysis and criticism that Elgar studies are showing their most remarkable growth. In this volume, analysts and theorists place Elgar at the centre of research into late-tonal music theory - particularly Schenkerian and neo-Riemannian - and the continually burgeoning area of musical hermeneutics. Through study of published scores and recently...

This volume contains historical and analytical essays on Anton Bruckner and his music. For the past century the principal concerns of scholars of Bruckner's music have been his personal and musical relationship with Wagner, editorial problems in his scores, his enigmatic personality, and the assessment of his monumental late-nineteenth-century style. The studies in this volume consider these issues in the light of the latest research. Of interest to the lay person will be the discussions of the manner in which politics and special interests have affected the dissemination and perception of...

Sibelius Studies presents a new portrait of this popular and prolific composer. Sibelius's symphonies often have been mentioned in the same breath with Beethoven's; indeed, in the twentieth century, they have enjoyed a commensurate popularity. The book contextualizes Sibelius' symphonies and tone poems in the larger development of European music, especially its transition from late romanticism to modernism. The relationship between Sibelius the man and his music, his personal life and creative work, is explored, with new revelations emerging from sketches, diaries, and letters.