Receive articles and news via RSS feeds or email subscription.
This book is in German, which may make it of limited interest to people who are not sufficiently familiar with the language.
Birgit Nilsson probably never heard of “the Protestant work ethic,” but she didn’t need to know it.
Once upon a time, there was something known as early music. This was not so much a repertoire, a musico-historical epoch, as an attitude, a counter-cultural group.
Over the past decade, there have been a plethora of works trying to identify the historical models for characters in Puccini’s famous opera Madama Butterfly.
The interpretive reception of medieval music begins, as John Haines lays forth in the present investigation, already during the latter period of the Middle Ages.
True to the title of this collection, the present volume of correspondence edited by Henry-Louis de La Grange and Günther Weiss — here translated, revised , and supplemented by Antony Beaumont — offers, to date, the most complete body of letters of Gustav Mahler to his wife Alma.
The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians (the “New Grove”) stands as the definitive encyclopedia on music in the English language.1
Introduction: Philip Gossett is one of those rarities in academia: a scholar of the first order and a consummate teacher.
This is a very attractive book, which, in addition to the expected text, has many striking photos, a list of the operas performed in Chicago, indicating all the seasons in which each work was given, and a season by season chronology, limited to professional companies.
This is a highly impressive coffee-table table book, loaded with stunning photographs of productions, singers, composers, and even our nation’s glorious capital.
Some twenty years ago, a leading German musicologist remarked that the music of Parsifal
It must not have been an easy life, being Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791). Perhaps even more so after the fact when scholars began to do their research and “wanna bes” began their intimations and psychoanalyzing. In the more seventy-five years of Mozart scholarship and its coming of age, one must ask: How much more is there to learn, to research?
This new volume from Yale University Press is one of those rare and treasured phenomena in Russian music scholarship that illuminate their subject from a new angle — that of cultural history. Indeed, Boris Gasparov's expressed goal in Five Operas and a Symphony is nothing less than turning the table on poetry, philosophy, and literary criticism that have for so long ruled the field of Slavic research, and elucidating them from a musical point of view.
At a time when the press has made the public aware of the difficult circumstances that exist for the symphony orchestra in the United States, it is refreshing to find a book that demonstrates unequivocally the nature of that institution and, as a consequence, its power in culture.
Shakespeare’s Macbeth is a weighty play, and Verdi’s Macbeth seems to be a weighty opera: the three volumes of this edition (two of the full score, plus a smaller Critical Commentary containing the critical notes and a description of the sources) weigh 16.6 pounds. It is remarkable to think that this is the first full score of either the 1847 original or the 1865 revised Macbeth ever published.
As far back as the Middle Ages, students (often only identified as Anonymous) have recorded the methods of performance imparted by their masters. In later centuries, such illustrious teachers wrote and published their own methods.
This book examines two of the more interesting musical pieces of the Romantic movement: Romeo et Juliette (1839) and La damnation de Faust (1846). Both were composed by Hector Berlioz (1803-69), and were very much constructed in a Gesamtkunstwerk mode where literature, music, and the other arts are fused together in a hybrid style that defies genre and categorization.
This is a collection of the original libretti to Puccini's Le Villi, Edgar, Manon Lescaut, La Bohème, Tosca, Madama Butterfly, La Fanciulla del West, La Rondine, Il Trittico (Gianni Schicchi, Il Tabarro, Suor Angelica), and Turandot in nine booklets within a cardboard slipcase.
Throughout the history of Poland, music has been an enduring force in its culture, and Polish composers were at the forefront of a number of developments in the twentieth century.
The Cambridge Companion to Stravinsky joins more than a dozen similar volumes published by the Cambridge University Press over the years and devoted to the life and works of a single composer. Each one traditionally is a collection of essays by leading scholars in the field, organized into three main sections — biography; works (mostly by genre); reception and posthumous legacy.
The world of J.S. Haydn is one gravely underappreciated and undervalued. He never earned the right to a 1980’s bio pic like Mozart or was appreciated and saluted in pop culture through early rock n’ roll like Beethoven.
Even on a scholarly level Haydn’s music is passed over in favor of who and what he inspired, innovated and crafted. His personal life never caught the attention of the public as he was probably never prone to smashing mirrors in local palaces either.
The elemental importance of Haydn’s music and artistry is brought to the forefront in David Hurwitz’s new book, “Exploring Haydn: A Listener’s Guide to Music’s Boldest Innovator”. Hurwitz mentions early on how Haydn is commonly ignored. He notes that his music holds many keys to one’s understanding of the immensity of Haydn’s influence on classical music that followed shortly after his time up through to today.
Though this book is more than a mere protest to prove how much Haydn was the father of the symphony. Instead, like Hurwitz’s other ‘Unlocking The Masters’ books, it scintillates in description and delves into the inner workings of not only Haydn’s music but the importance of his innovations at the time, his creativity and how these both carry on through to today.
Ultimately, the passion for the process in which Haydn composed and how the music developed over time and how the listener should hear these hidden masterpieces is the crux of Hurwitz’s book. The author’s goal is to show the novice or beginner music fan what one can expect from engaging in Haydn’s music. He takes apart each piece and examines it carefully and skillfully. Truly, by listening to either one of the accompanying compact discs then reading along with Hurwitz, a new level of perception and understanding music is presented to the zealous listener. His descriptions are useful to the unacquainted ear and he opens a new dimension of listening appreciation. Hurwitz is able to described the music without completely patronizing the reader into submission. With the knowledge one can cull from this book, anyone will not feel stifled by Hurwitz’s writing. If anything he promotes the usage of the reader’s imagination.
An inundated listener is taken on a pragmatic journey through the wild, colorful and often humorous realm of Haydn. Movements from symphonies and string quartets from various eras of the composer’s life and career are highlighted and poured over and dissected with a refreshingly friendly scholarly flair. Along the way, the music novice is given biographical information on the master composer. The music is discussed along with the development and evolution of Haydn’s compositions which give the reader a well rounded look into the creative process.
This book is a nearly infallible piece of work for the inexperienced and for those eager to learn more not only about Haydn, but also about music itself. It falls short only when it attempts to simplify certain matters. For example, when explaining the difference between major and minor we are left with an almost exasperating conclusion of: “major=happy, minor=sad”. Surely there is a middle ground for one to stray far from the philosophical and bloated writings of say a Theodore Adorno and yet not have to simply too far in the other direction..
However, these are merely picayune side notes rather than a weighty complaint. This book may not find it’s way into the hearts of the cognoscenti, but should serve its justice more fittingly in the class rooms of high school students on down. With the aid of this book many may find that there isn’t so much mystery to understanding music but the joy in discovery as Mr. Hurwitz shows. The overall experience of “Exploring Haydn” is one that educates with skill, patience and devotion; it wishes nothing more but for the reader to love and appreciate this underrated composer as much as the author.
B. Fraipont
