Kategoria BISAC: Music >> Printed Music - Opera & Classical Scores

Francesca Caccini (1587-ca.1640) was an accomplished composer, singer, and instrumentalist in the tradition of the Florentine Camerata. Her 1618 volume Il primo libro delle musiche was dedicated to her patron the Cardinal de' Medici (1596-1666).

This modern critical edition presents 17 secular monodies for one and two voices with figured bass accompaniment from this landmark collection. The book includes text translations, biographical and stylistic essays, recommendations on performance practice, and other commentary.

Music examples and charts illustrate the analyses, and each essay is fully annotated by the editor. In some cases, the results of the original research by the editor or by others working in the field are published here for the first time. Much of the material has never before appeared in English.

A score embodying the best available musical text.

Historical background--what is known of the circumstances surrounding the origin of the work, including (where relevant) original source material.

A detailed analysis of the music, by the editor of the volume or another...

Music example and charts illustrate the analyses, and each essay is fully annotated by the editor. In some cases, the results of original research by the editor or by others working in the field are published here for the first time. Much of the material has never before appeared in English.

A score embodying the best available musical text.

Historical background-what is known of the circumstances surrounding the origin of the work, including (where relevant) original source material.

A detailed analysis of the music, by the editor of the volume or another well-known...

Music examples and charts illustrate the analyses, and each essay is fully annotated by the editor. In some cases, the results of original research by the editor or by others working in the field are published here for the first time. Much of the material has never before appeared in English.

A score embodying the best available musical text.

Historical background-what is known of the circumstances surrounding the origin of the work, including (where relevant) original source material.

A detailed analysis of the music, by the editor of the volume or another well-known...

"He Wagner] has been much criticized for this strongly personal statement of a religious subject, which mingles the concepts of sacred and profane love; but in the light of modern knowledge, his insight into the relationship between religious and sexual experience can only seem much in advance of his time." "Encylopaedia Britannica"
Completed in 1882, "Parsifal" is Wagner's last opera and one of his finest, renowned for its splendid music and glowing orchestration. With its deeply personal treatment of the legend of the Holy Grail, and the subtle intensity and depth of compassion of...

-La Boheme is perhaps Puccini's most nearly perfect opera.- -- Hughes, Famous Puccini Operas.
It has long been one of the world's most beloved musical works -- an instantly enchanting blend of charm, warmth, gaiety, and pathos, brought to vibrant life by Puccini's sparkling, lighthearted score. La Boheme, based on Henri Murger's novel Scenes de la Vie de Boheme, was first performed at the Teatro Regio, Turin, in 1896. It soon became a staple of the operatic repertoire and has remained so ever since. Grove's Dictionary of Music and Musicians notes...

In 1910, following his successful orchestration of selections for the ballet Les Sylphides, the innovative young composer Igor Stravinsky was commissioned by the director of the Ballets Russes, Serge Diaghilev, to create a completely new score. The dazzling result was The Firebird, a work which brought overnight success to its creator and distinguished him as the most gifted of the younger generation of Russian composers. Based on Russian fairy tales, the piece, according to Grove's Dictionary of Music and Musicians, has "all the coloring of a Russian child's picture...

In The Flying Dutchman, finished in 1841 and first presented at Dresden in 1843, Wagner achieved the first true representation of his mature style as a German Romantic composer. As in his later works, the opera is based on legend, with a simple outline and a small number of profoundly significant characters. There is also a greater reliance on the use of leitmotivs than in his previous operas, and a textual and musical unity new to the composer's work.
This edition has been directly reproduced from a limited edition prepared by the great conductor Felix Weingartner in 1896. It...

Stravinsky's score for the ballet "Petrushka, " commissioned by Diaghilev for the Ballets Russes, was first performed in Paris in 1911 and was an immediate sensation with the public and the critics. It followed by a year the great success of his score for "The Firebird, " also produced by the Ballets Russes, and it confirmed Stravinsky's reputation as the most gifted of the younger generation of Russian composers.
The ballet had begun in Stravinsky's mind as a "picture of a puppet suddenly endowed with life, exasperating the patience of the orchestra with diabolical cascades of...

Like Chopin, Scriabin made the piano the focus of his art. Among the supreme achievements of that art are the ten sonatas he composed between 1892 and 1913, works that abundantly display both his technical virtuosity and the exhilarating emotional gamut he ranged with such individuality.
All ten of Scriabin's sonatas are reprinted here from the authoritative Russian edition published in 1964. The first four reveal the influences of the pianism of Chopin and Liszt. The subsequent sonatas richly display Scriabin's emerging impressionist techniques and his deep attraction to mysticism,...

Jean Cocteau labeled this revolutionary work "a pastorale of the prehistoric world" at its premiere in Paris in 1913, when interest in primitivism was at its zenith among the avant-garde. These "Scenes of Pagan Russia" did indeed inspire primitive reactions among their opening night audience, who were so vociferous in their protests that the dancers could scarcely hear the music.
Yet this powerful work, with its novel rhythms and hitherto unheard-of chordal combinations and orchestral effects would change forever the elements of musical language and exert an enormous influence on three...

Among the most popular of Mahler's symphonic works, the 7th Symphony has neither a "program" nor a folk-song theme. It is a purely instrumental composition, both hopeful and romantic in feeling. The restrained mood and thematic economy of the symphony make it one of the least extravagant of the composer's works; it is also one of the most enjoyable.
Despite the lack of a "program" for the 7th, some critics profess to find that "a good case can be made out for the symphony as a whole having been consciously built round the poetic idea of nocturnal nature, progressing through various...

Commissioned by Serge Diaghilev for the Ballets Russes, Stravinsky's score for the ballet Petrushka was an immediate sensation at its Paris premiere in 1911. Brilliantly orchestrated in bold, unheard-of instrumental colors, this work is filled with Russian folksongs as well as new and striking harmonies. Alternately poignant and splendidly imposing, the score is one of the most popular and acclaimed works of the twentieth century.
Petrushka is published here in full score with English titling, stage directions, and a detailed table of contents. Ideal for study in the...

In 1910, innovative young Russian composer Igor Stravinsky was commissioned by Serge Diaghilev, director of the Ballets Russes, to create a completely new score. The dazzling result was The Firebird, which brought overnight success to its creator and distinguished him as the most gifted of the younger generation of Russian composers. According to Grove's Dictionary of Music and Musicians, the piece, based on a series of Russian fairy tales, has "all the coloring of a Russian child's picture book . . . brilliant orchestration, glowing color . . . an extraordinary evocative...