Jean Barraque is increasingly being recognized as one of the great composers of the second half of the 20th century. Though he left only seven works, his voice in each of them is unmistakeable, and powerful. He had no doubt of his responsibility, as a creator, to take his listeners on challenging adventures that could not but leave them changed. After the collapse of morality he had witnessed as a child growing up during the Second World War, and having taken notice of so much disarray in the culture around him, he set himself to make music that would, out of chaos, speak. Three others were...

The musical scene in mid-nineteenth century New York City, contrary to common belief, was exceptionally vibrant. Thanks to several opera companies, no fewer than two orchestras, public chamber music and solo concerts, and numerous choirs, New Yorkers were regularly exposed to -new- music of Verdi, Meyerbeer, Schumann, Berlioz, Liszt, and Wagner. In European Music and Musicians in New York City, 1840-1900, the first thorough exploration of musical life in New York City during this period, editor John Graziano and a number of other distinguished essayists assert that the richness of the...

This study presents a history and analysis of the Prague musical community from 1900 until the end of democracy in 1938. Opera and Ideology in Prague not only narrates the fascinating history of a local musical community but also reveals much about music and culture in Europe. The fin-de-siecle period was dominated by the musicologist Zdenek Nejedly's polemics regarding the competing -legacies- of Smetana and Dvorak and the merits of modernism. After Czech independence in 1918, a new generation of musicians accepted modernist foreign influences only with extreme hesitation. The 1926 Prague...