(Amadeus). Mahler's 10 symphonies and Das Lied von der Erde are intensely personal statements that have touched wide audiences. This survey examines each of the works, revealing their programmatic and personal aspects, as well as Mahler's musical techniques.

-Music is no mere play of sound, no mere tonal texture, but has a significant psychic, spiritual/intellectual and social dimension. In other words: a musical art work is not merely an autonomous artifact but also document humain.- With this thesis and with a view to the question as to the meaning of music as such the author opens his broadly designed plea for a -humane music.- Based on interdisciplinary researches, and making use of partly unfamiliar documents, he demonstrates on musical works from Monteverdi to Alban Berg how and why they can be heard and understood as a tonal language...

Johannes Brahms was until now widely regarded as the archetype of the -absolute musician-. Based on new research, the study shows how close autobiographic and poetic elements are in fact linked to his uvre. Like Robert Schumann, Brahms subscribed to an aesthetic of -poetic- music. In many of his compositions he got his inspiration from personal experiences, poems or images, as is shown by hitherto unpublished documents, letters, and diary entries, as well as from close analyses of individual works. Brahms s personality, too, is seen in a new way. He adopted Joseph Joachim s motto -Frei, aber...

20th-century music is characterized by a bewildering multitude of trends and movements. Often several movements co-exist in contradiction to each other, in a reflection of the century s intellectual currents and social and political changes, and the reactions they prompted. In this book, renowned musicologist and author Constantin Floros provides a survey of the different styles and tendencies in new music, presenting the most important composers from Schoenberg to Rihm in a series of fluent and readable essays that will appeal to connoisseurs and non-specialists alike. For Floros, music and...

While unappreciated and controversial during most of his life, Anton Bruckner is today regarded as the greatest symphonist between Beethoven and Gustav Mahler in terms of originality, boldness and monumentality of his music. The image of Bruckner the man, however, is still extreme instance of the tenacious power of prejudice. No less a figure than Gustav Mahler coined the apercu about Bruckner being -a simpleton half genius, half imbecile-. The author is out to correct that misperception. His thesis in this study is that contrary to what has hitherto been asserted, there is an intimate...

Dieser Band versammelt vierundzwanzig Beitrage von Wissenschaftlern verschiedener Generationen zu einer Ruckschau auf die Musikgeschichte des eben zu Ende gegangenen Jahrhunderts. Er ist Peter Petersen, dem langjahrigen Redakteur und Mitherausgeber des Hamburger Jahrbuchs, zum sechzigsten Geburtstag gewidmet. Die Autorinnen und Autoren haben vor allem seine drei Hauptarbeitsgebiete berucksichtigt Musiktheater, musikalische Analyse und politisch engagierte Musik. Der Titel Komposition als Kommunikation ist Reverenz an Petersens Uberzeugung, dass Musik ein Weg ist, sich uber menschliche...

Seit dem Welterfolg der Oper "Wozzeck" von Alban Berg ist Georg Buchner Teil der Musikgeschichte des 20. Jahrhunderts geworden. Zwischen 1925 und heute wurden 15 Buchner-Opern aufgefuhrt, darunter einige von bleibendem Wert. Der Band gibt einen Uberblick uber die Werke, problematisiert ihren Status als -Literaturopern- und bringt Einzelanalysen der Stucke von Paul Dessau, Peter Maxwell Davies, Friedrich Schenker, Gottfried von Einem, Alban Berg, Manfred Gurlitt und Wolfgang Rihm. In zwei Beitragen wird die Geschichte der Buchner-Rezeption in der Literaturwissenschaft dargelegt. Die von der...

Music is often defined as art for the ear, as the language of feeling, of the heart, as sound play, or as the science of composition. But music also conveys intellectual and emotional experiences, literary, religious, philosophical, social and political ideas. Countless composers encrypt contents in their music that can be deciphered by a variety of methods. This book is designed as an introduction to the basic questions of musical semantics and discusses Beethoven's committed art, the core ideas of the Ring of the Nibelung and of the Symphony of a Thousand, Wagner's idea of a religion of...