London Opera Observed 1711-1844, Volume IV
London Opera Observed 1711-1844, Volume IV

Author: Michael Burden

Publisher: Taylor & Francis

Published: 2024-08-01

Total Pages: 393

ISBN-13: 1040246400

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The thrust of these five volumes is contained in their title, London Opera Observ’d. It takes its cue from the numerous texts and volumes which — during the seventeenth, eighteenth and nineteenth centuries — used the concept of ‘spying’ or ‘observing’ by a narrator, or rambler, as a means of establishing a discourse on aspects of London life. The material in this five-volume reset edition examines opera not simply as a genre of performance, but as a wider topic of comment and debate. The stories that surrounded the Italian opera singers illuminate contemporary British attitudes towards performance, sexuality and national identity. The collection includes only complete, published material organised chronologically so as to accurately retain the contexts in which the original readers encountered them — placing an emphasis on rare texts that have not been reproduced in modern editions. The aim of this collection is not to provide a history of opera in England but to facilitate the writing of them or to assist those wishing to study topics within the field. Headnotes and footnotes establish the publication information and provide an introduction to the piece, its author, and the events surrounding it or which caused its publication. The notes concentrate on attempting to identify those figures mentioned within the texts. The approach is one of presentation, not interpretation, ensuring that the collection occupies a position that is neutral rather than polemical.

Music and Image
Music and Image

Author: Richard Leppert

Publisher: CUP Archive

Published: 1993-06-24

Total Pages: 270

ISBN-13: 9780521448543

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An examination of the place and practice of musical life in eighteenth-century England among the upper classes.

The Sacred Bridge
The Sacred Bridge

Author: Eric Werner

Publisher: KTAV Publishing House, Inc.

Published: 1959

Total Pages: 298

ISBN-13: 9780881250527

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"This is the first full-length comparative study of the music of the Christian and Jewish liturgies. It is designed to show the liturgical and musical interdependence of Church and Synagogue during the first millennium of the Christian era and to highlight the series of cultural exhanges between East and West that occurred during those centuries. With a wealth of scholarly evidence, the author tells the story of the development of the Christian forms of worship, both Eastern and Roman. At the same time he explains the modifications made in Jewish ceremonies and rituals, in areas where Jews and Christians lived side by side, with resulting exchange in both directions, from Church to Synagogue as well as from Synagogue to Church. Professor Werner first examines Jewish practices of worship at the time of the beginnings of Christianity and then traces the spread and modifications of these ancient Jewish, and even pre-Jewish, conceptions of sacred music and ritual as they were adapted by various Christian groups. Historical, philological, and musicological scholarship is used to discover the complex interrelationship between Christian and Hebraic elements in prayer books, poetry and psalmody, hymns, devotional music, and all the other aspects of sacred liturgy. Professor Werner has used many sources previously neglected and has reexamined those already available. Scholars of theology, liturgy, and music, and historians as well, will find much that will stimulate further research, and all interested in the formation of the religions of the West will stand to profit from this scholarly work on the interplay of two great religious movements." --Jacket.

The Invention of 'Folk Music' and 'Art Music'
The Invention of 'Folk Music' and 'Art Music'

Author: Matthew Gelbart

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2007-10-11

Total Pages: 265

ISBN-13: 1139466089

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We tend to take for granted the labels we put to different forms of music. This study considers the origins and implications of the way in which we categorize music. Whereas earlier ways of classifying music were based on its different functions, for the past two hundred years we have been obsessed with creativity and musical origins, and classify music along these lines. Matthew Gelbart argues that folk music and art music became meaningful concepts only in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, and only in relation to each other. He examines how cultural nationalism served as the earliest impetus in classifying music by origins, and how the notions of folk music and art music followed - in conjunction with changing conceptions of nature, and changing ideas about human creativity. Through tracing the history of these musical categories, the book confronts our assumptions about different kinds of music.