The Dawn of Music Semiology showcases the work of nine leading musicologists, inspired by the work of Jean-Jacques Nattiez, the founding father of music semiology. Now entering its fifth decade as Nattiez enters his eighth, music semiology, or music semiotics, is still a young, vibrant field, and this book reflects its energy and diversity. It appeals to readers wanting to explore the meaning of music in our lives and to understand the ways of appreciating the complexities that lie behind its simple beauty and direct impact on us. Following a preface by Pierre Boulez and an introduction by...

Stravinsky's "Great Passacaglia" marks the first full-length analytic study devoted to the Concerto for Piano and Wind Instruments, an important neoclassic piece composed by one of the most influential composers of the twentieth century. Donald Traut examines the complex significance of this piece for Stravinsky and his contemporaries. For the composer, the Concerto was both a major artistic accomplishment in his burgeoning neoclassic style and a vehicle for financial gain as a touring soloist, an endeavor that took him throughout Europe and was instrumental in bringing him to America for the...

Explorations in Schenkerian Analysis is a collection of fifteen essays dedicated to the memory of Edward Laufer, an influential advocate of Schenker's method. The chapters are presented in chronological order by composer, opening with Charles Burkhart's contribution, which is presented as a letter to Edward Laufer (written before his death), and ending with excerpts from Stephen Slottow's 2003 interview with Laufer (in an appendix). While the unifying focus is Schenkerian analysis, there is considerable variety in the approaches taken by the contributors. There is also variety in the...

With a colorful history that spans 450 years, the violin has proven to be one of the world's most important and versatile instruments. Addressed to performing musicians, serious concertgoers, and collectors of recordings, The Violin offers insightful, up-to-date essays on a wide range of topics. Essays discuss beloved masterpieces from the violin's solo repertoire, with individual chapters on the Italian Baroque, Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, and the violin concerto in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, as well as the evolution of performance styles and interpretation as documented in...

Balint Andras Varga is perhaps the world's most respected interviewer of living composers. For The Courage of Composers and the Tyranny of Taste: Reflections on New Music, Varga has confronted thirty-three composers with quotations carefully chosen to elicit their thoughts about an issue that is crucial for any serious creative artist: How can one find courage to deal with the sometimes tyrannical expectations of the outside world? The result is an imaginary roundtable at which we encounter fresh, revealing, previously unpublished statements from such world-renowned composers as John Adams,...

Nadia Boulanger and Igor Stravinsky began corresponding in 1929 when Stravinsky sought someone to supervise the musical education of his younger son, Soulima. Boulanger accepted the position and began what would prove to be a warm and lasting dialogue with the Stravinsky family. For fifty years Boulanger exchanged over 400 letters with Igor Stravinsky and an additional 389 with members of his immediate family: his wife Catherine, his mother Anna, and his sons Theodore and Soulima. The selected dialogue, presented here in English translation (with French originals available on the companion...

The composer's diaries, translated for the first time, with commentary on his distinctive musical aesthetics and his relationship to artistic cross-currents in Czechoslovakia, France, and America.

This pathbreaking study reveals Purcell's extensive use of symmetry and reversal in his much-loved trio sonatas, and shows how these hidden structural processes make his music multilayered and appealing.

A rich interdisciplinary exploration of the world of Sara Levy, a Jewish salonniere and skilled performing musician in late eighteenth-century Berlin, and her impact on the Bach revival, German-Jewish life, and Enlightenment culture.

Some of Debussy's most beloved pieces, as well as lesser-known ones from his early years, set in a rich cultural context by leading experts from the English- and French-speaking worlds.