Once considered as little more than the froth in the wake of the First World War, a witty boy-hedonist who, in the giddy Twenties, tweaked the noses of moribund establishmentarians, Poulenc has in fact proved unexpectedly durable--more so than any of his colleagues among Les Six, including those who developed more grandiose ambitions. Here is a survey of Poulenc's music, based on careful selection of his works, and written by an authoritative guide. After placing Poulenc in the context of French life and society after the First World War and considering him in relation to his masters and...
Once considered as little more than the froth in the wake of the First World War, a witty boy-hedonist who, in the giddy Twenties, tweaked the noses o...
Displaying the broad erudition and intellectual agility that have informed a lifetime of scholarship, Wilfrid Mellers offers a set of diverse reflections on how western art music illuminates the shifting relationship between humankind and the natural world. Beginning with two turn-of-the-century operas - Frederick Delius's A Village Romeo and Juliet and Claude Debussy's Pellas et Mlisande - that present humankind as lost in a tangled wood that is at once internal and external, Mellers develops the theme of wilderness in sociological, psychological, ecological, and even geological terms. He...
Displaying the broad erudition and intellectual agility that have informed a lifetime of scholarship, Wilfrid Mellers offers a set of diverse reflecti...
The late Wilfrid Mellers, who occupies a special place among music critics, described himself as a non-believer; but his preference for music that -displays a sense of the numinous- (in his words) will strike a chord with many who listen to religious music nowadays, and who share his view that music that confronts first and last things is likely to offer more than music that evades them. The essays form five groups, which together offer a survey of religious music from around the first millennium to the beginning of the second, in the context of the difficult issues of what religious music...
The late Wilfrid Mellers, who occupies a special place among music critics, described himself as a non-believer; but his preference for music that -di...
Angels of the Night falls into three parts. From the Jazz explosion ignited by Black Musicians in the early years of the 1900s, in the Reliious context of Gospel Music and in the Secular context of the Blues.
Angels of the Night falls into three parts. From the Jazz explosion ignited by Black Musicians in the early years of the 1900s, in the Reliious contex...
