This newest volume in The Works of Giuseppe Verdi series comprises his only two surviving secular choral works: "Inno popolare," or "Hymn of the People," for unaccompanied male chorus, and "Inno delle nazioni," or "Hymn of the Nations," for tenor solo, chorus, and orchestra. Verdi wrote the brief "Inno popolare" in 1848 at the behest of the Italian philosopher and patriot Giuseppe Mazzini, intending that it become an anthem for Italy at a time when the country had just driven away its Austrian overlords. He wrote no more independent patriotic pieces untilhe was askedin 1861to represent...
This newest volume in The Works of Giuseppe Verdi series comprises his only two surviving secular choral works: "Inno popolare," or "Hymn of the Pe...
Composed between October 1846 and the spring of 1847, "I masnadieri" features a libretto based on Schiller's play "Die Rauber" (The Robbers). The opera premiered in July 1847 at Her Majesty's Theatre, London, with Jenny Lind as the "prima donna." Verdi himself supervised the rehearsals for the premiere, and the original performing parts, which contain annotations made by the players under Verdi's direction and changes made by the composer during the rehearsals, have been preserved at the archives of the Royal Opera House. The critical edition is the first publication of "I masnadieri" in...
Composed between October 1846 and the spring of 1847, "I masnadieri" features a libretto based on Schiller's play "Die Rauber" (The Robbers). The oper...
How do we know what notes a composer intended in a given piece? -- how those notes should be played and sung? -- the nature of musical life in Bach's Leipzig, Schubert's Vienna? -- how music related to literature and other arts and social currents in different times and places? -- what attitudes musicians and music lovers had toward the music that they heard and made? We know all this from musical manuscripts and prints, opera libretti, composers' letters, reviews in newspapers and magazines, archival data, contemporary pedagogical writings, essays on aesthetics, and much else. Some of these...
How do we know what notes a composer intended in a given piece? -- how those notes should be played and sung? -- the nature of musical life in Bach's ...
Art and money, culture and commerce, have long been seen as uncomfortable bedfellows. Indeed, the connections between them have tended to resist full investigation, particularly in the musical sphere. The Idea of Art Music in a Commercial World, 1800-1930, is a collection of essays that present fresh insights into the ways in which art music, i.e., classical music, functioned beyond its newly established aesthetic purpose (art for art's sake) and intersected with commercial agendas in nineteenth- and early twentieth-century culture. Understanding how art music was portrayed and perceived in a...
Art and money, culture and commerce, have long been seen as uncomfortable bedfellows. Indeed, the connections between them have tended to resist full ...