Kategoria BISAC: Music >> Genres & Styles - Classical

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...

In addition to his novels, short stories, plays, poetry, and a flood of journalism, Theodore Dreiser is estimated to have written an astonishing 20,000 letters. "A Picture and a Criticism of Life" presents a selection from his previously unpublished letters and shows Dreiser in every mood and circumstance, from crisply professional to happily unbuttoned. Meticulously annotated by Donald Pizer, the selections often shed significant new light on the writer's beliefs and activities during the various stages of his long...

Available in English for the first time, Prosdocimo's Tractatus plane musice (1412) and Tractatus musice speculative (1425) are exemplary texts for understanding the high sophistication of music theory in the early fifteenth century. Known for considering music as a science based on demonstrable mathematical principles, Prosdocimo praises Marchetto for his theory of plainchant but criticizes his influential Lucidarium for its heterodox mathematics."" In dismissing Marchetto as a mere performer, Prosdocimo takes up matters as broad as the nature and definition of music and as precise as...

..". demystifies more than 2000 names of composers, conductors and performers, titles of works and musical terms in some two dozen languages." --Publishers Weekly

..". Fradkin's guide will save people from both error and affectation." --Rettig on Reference

"What a great idea for a book." --Denver Post

"Multifaceted and well organized... A wide range of useful tips will help attentive readers avoid common pronunciation gaffes and build on the sound advice offered... This is a book for the linguistically sensitive and musically inclined to keep handy."...

..". detailed and thorough... a wealth of information... David Yeomans deserves our thanks for a job exceedingly well done." --American Music Teacher

..". a must for pianists... " --American Reference Book Annual

"David Yeomans's study is certainly to be recommended for all good music libraries, pianists and students of Bartok." --The Music Review

"Although there are currently more than 15 books in print about composer Bela Bartok, this short volume is unique in its focus on his complete oeuvre for solo piano.... Recommended for pianists, piano teachers, and students from...

Stylized dance music and music based on dance rhythms pervade Bach's compositions. Although the music of this very special genre has long been a part of every serious musician's repertoire, little has been written about it.

The original edition of this addressed works that bore the names of dances--a considerable corpus. In this expanded version of their practical and insightful study, Meredith Little and Natalie Jenne apply the same principals to the study of a great number of Bach's works that use identifiable dance rhythms but do not bear dance-specific titles.

Part I...

"Hatten s interpretations are at times surprisingly poetic in their expression.... In his book he effectively creates an interaction between aspects of music theory, analysis, aesthetics and semiotics. His work yields some novel insights that deserve careful consideration from anyone in these fields." The Semiotic Review of Books

Musical Meaning in Beethoven offers a fresh approach to the problem of expressive meaning in music. Beginning with a provocative analysis of the slow movement of the Hammerklavier piano sonata, Robert S. Hatten examines the roles of markedness, Classical...

J. S. Bach's Suites for Unaccompanied Cello are among the most cherished and frequently played works in the entire literature of music, and yet they have never been the subject of a full-length music analytical study. The musical examples herein include every note of all movements (so one needs no separate copy of the music while reading the book), and undertakes both basic analyses--harmonic reduction, functional harmonic analysis, step progression analysis, form analysis, and syntagmatic and paradigmatic melodic analysis--and specialized analyses for some of the individual movements....

"Berlioz the person-composer-writer is the sensitive child of his century and a most passionate voice of his time." --The Opera Quarterly

"Berlioz could hardly have been better served than by the translator of this English edition... It is an invaluable and long-overdue addition to the Berlioz literature in English. Elisabeth Csicsery-Ronay has given us an A travers chants for the millennium." --Music and Letters

Hector Berlioz (1803-1869) was equally prominent as composer and music critic. A Travers Chants is the collection of writings he himself selected from his thirty-odd...

Central to the repertoire of Western art music since the 18th century, the symphony has come to be regarded as one of the ultimate compositional challenges. Surprisingly, heretofore there has been no truly extensive, broad-based treatment of the genre, and the best of the existing studies are now several decades old. In this five-volume series, A. Peter Brown explores the symphony from its 18th-century beginnings to the end of the 20th century. Synthesizing the enormous scholarly literature, Brown presents up-to-date overviews of the status of research, discusses any important former or...

..". a joy to read." --Choice

..". spiritedly written... " --Music and Letters

Although the Russian piano concerto had inauspicious beginnings, its development during the19th century laid superb artistic foundations for the monumental concerti of the 20th century. Insights gained here will help performers and teachers to understand later developments in concerto writing.

"This book is a substantial and timely contribution to Brahms studies. Its strategy is to focus on a single critical work, the C-Minor Piano Quartet, analyzing and interpreting it in great detail, but also using it as a stepping-stone to connect it to other central Brahms works in order to reach a new understanding of the composer's technical language and expressive intent. It is an original and worthy contribution on the music of a major composer." --Patrick McCreless

Expressive Forms in Brahms's Instrumental Music integrates a wide variety of analytical methods into a broader study...

The young Richard Strauss was almost exclusively an orchestral composer. Yet, the year 1903 brought a significant break from orchestral writing, and Strauss then shifted his focus to opera for the next four decades. In the aftermath of the Second World War he returned to orchestral music, having first served and then been summarily dismissed by the Third Reich. Despite its enduring appeal among concert audiences, and the intriguing pattern of his compositional career, Richard Strauss's orchestral music has yet to receive the scholarly consideration it deserves.

Richard Strauss's...

Beethoven's late style is the language of his ninth symphony, the Missa Solemnis, the last piano sonatas and string quartets, the Diabelli Variations, the Bagatelles, as well as five piano sonatas, five string quartets, and several smaller piano works. Historically, these works are seen as forging a bridge between the Classical and Romantic traditions: in terms of their musical structure, they continue to be regarded as revolutionary.

Spitzer's book examines these late works in light of the musical and philosophical writings of the German intellectual Theodor Adorno, and in so doing,...

Classical music permeates contemporary life. Encountered in waiting rooms, movies, and hotel lobbies as much as in the concert hall, perennial orchestral favorites mingle with commercial jingles, video-game soundtracks, and the booming bass from a passing car to form the musical soundscape of our daily lives. In this provocative and ground-breaking study, Melanie Lowe explores why the public instrumental music of late-eighteenth-century Europe has remained accessible, entertaining, and distinctly pleasurable to a wide variety of listeners for over 200 years. By placing listeners at the...

The second part of the third volume to appear in the magnum opus of A. Peter Brown continues the geographical tour of the mid-19th-to early-20th-century symphony begun in Vol. 3A. Brown discusses works from England, Russia, and France--including those by Potter, Bennett, Stanford, Elgar, Rimsky-Korsakov, Borodin, Tchaikovsky, Rachmaninoff, Gounod, Bizet, Franck, Dukas, and many others. A single source provides a detailed analysis of stylistic traits and background material on the composition and performances of these masterpieces.

Brown's series synthesizes an enormous amount of...

Following the second World War, Olivier Messiaen, previously known primarily for his religious music, composed three works inspired by the medieval love story of Tristan and Iseult: Harawi, Turangal DEGREESDla-symphonie, and Cinq rechants. Though the song cycle, symphony, and choral work each consider their source story in a different way, the three compositions are tied closely together by theme and musical technique. This new study is the only full-length consideration of this most significant work, applying literary techniques of stylistic analysis and source...

Although born Giuseppe Guttovergi to a poor, immigrant Italian family, it was as Paul Creston that Giuseppe rose to prominence, becoming one of the most widely performed American composers. Rhythm was a continued subject of research for this composer, and by 1945 he had established a terminology of rhythmic structures, which he observed both in his music and the music of other composers, even writing two books on the subject. This volume presents for the first time a complete descriptive account of the life of the composer, as well as access to currently available materials by and about...