What does it feel like to perform music? Are there aspects of performance that remain mysterious even to the musicians themselves? What elements are open to scrutiny, experiment, and improvement? This book takes a stimulating look at dimensions of music-making that have not previously been considered together. Jonathan Dunsby deals with "performance studies" as a coherent subject, exploring such topics as the relationship between anxiety and artistry, tensions between Romanticism and Modernism, and the sound and design of music. Covering a number of intriguing issues in clear, non-technical...

Pierrot lunaire (1912) is one of the most important music theatre works ever written. This is the first guide in English to a work which continues to be performed, broadcast and recorded worldwide.

The book describes the cultural environment around the turn of the century from which Pierrot emerged and discusses Schoenberg's working methods and intentions in its composition. The composer's artistic development up to 1912 is contemplated as a backdrop to this extraordinarily original creative act, and the significance of Pierrot in the unfolding of twentieth-century music is a recurrent...

What makes a classical song a song? Covering such contrasting composers as Brahms and Berberian, Schubert and Kurtag, Jonathan Dunsby considers the nature of vocality in songs of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The essence and scope of poetic and literary meaning in the Lied tradition is subject to close scrutiny against the backdrop of "new musicological" thinking and music-theoretical orthodoxies. The reader is thus offered the best insights available within an evidence-based approach to musical discourse.

What makes a classical song a song? Covering such contrasting composers as Brahms and Berberian, Schubert and Kurtag, Jonathan Dunsby considers the nature of vocality in songs of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The essence and scope of poetic and literary meaning in the Lied tradition is subject to close scrutiny against the backdrop of "new musicological" thinking and music-theoretical orthodoxies. The reader is thus offered the best insights available within an evidence-based approach to musical discourse.

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...