Mendelssohn

Mendelssohn

Author: R. Larry Todd

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2003-10-23

Total Pages: 748

ISBN-13: 9780195110432

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An extraordinary prodigy of Mozartean abilities, Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy was a distinguished composer and conductor. Now, in the first major Mendelssohn biography to appear in decades, Todd offers a remarkably fresh account of this musical giant.


Listening to Mendelssohn

Listening to Mendelssohn

Author: David Hurwitz

Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield

Published: 2020-01-07

Total Pages: 205

ISBN-13: 1538134934

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The greatest musical prodigy since Mozart (some would say he was even greater), Felix Mendelssohn (1809–1847) excelled in everything he did, musical or otherwise, and during his brief life became Europe’s most respected and beloved composer. Yet no musician suffered more drastic swings in his posthumous reputation, and as a result Mendelssohn’s music was obscured by a host of extra-musical factors: changes in taste, the rise of nationalism, anti-Semitism, and contempt for Victorian culture. This “owner’s manual” offers a guide to Mendelssohn’s musical output, major and minor, providing points of entry into a large body of work, much of which remains far too little known. There’s much more to Mendelssohn than the “Italian” Symphony and the “Midsummer Night’s Dream” Overture, and a whole creative world of vivid, expressive, and fantastical music is ready for exploration.


Mendelssohn's Musical Education

Mendelssohn's Musical Education

Author: R. Larry Todd

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 1983-04-21

Total Pages: 280

ISBN-13: 9780521246552

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This book is a study and critical edition of Mendelssohn's composition exercise book from his early period of study with Carl Friedrich Zelter (1819-1821). The workbook illustrates in considerable detail the young musician's struggle to master the rules of part writing and principles of counterpoint. Much of Zelter's systematic teaching method is grounded in the eighteenth-century theoretical tradition of Berlin; not surprisingly, the exercises bear the stamp of the music of J. S. Bach, which heavily influenced such Berlin musicians as C. P. E. Bach, C. F. C. Fasch, Marpurg, Kirnberger, Zelter and Mendelssohn. There is little doubt that the historicist attitude of the mature Mendelssohn - as seen in his efforts to revive the works of Bach and Handel and in his propensity toward strict contrapuntal techniques in his own music - was conditioned by these studies with Zelter. The publication of the workbook sheds new light on the early development of one ofthe most important nineteenth-century composers who, though affected by the new wave of romanticism that swept over Europe, never lost his respect for the past. No less important, the manuscript includes several previously unpublished pieces which rank among Mendelssohn's earliest compositions.


Selected Songs Without Words

Selected Songs Without Words

Author: Felix Mendelssohn

Publisher: Alfred Music

Published:

Total Pages: 60

ISBN-13: 9781457462115

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We proudly add this collection of Mendelssohn songs to our highly respected Piano Masters Series. From his fifty songs in the complete set we have selected twelve of the most often taught and performed pieces, spanning all opus numbers in the set. This new collection offers a wide variety of writing styles to help introduce this composer to your students.


Listening to Reason

Listening to Reason

Author: Michael P. Steinberg

Publisher: Princeton University Press

Published: 2010-01-02

Total Pages: 264

ISBN-13: 1400835739

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This pathbreaking work reveals the pivotal role of music--musical works and musical culture--in debates about society, self, and culture that forged European modernity through the "long nineteenth century." Michael Steinberg argues that, from the late 1700s to the early 1900s, music not only reflected but also embodied modern subjectivity as it increasingly engaged and criticized old regimes of power, belief, and representation. His purview ranges from Mozart to Mahler, and from the sacred to the secular, including opera as well as symphonic and solo instrumental music. Defining subjectivity as the experience rather than the position of the "I," Steinberg argues that music's embodiment of subjectivity involved its apparent capacity to "listen" to itself, its past, its desires. Nineteenth-century music, in particular music from a north German Protestant sphere, inspired introspection in a way that the music and art of previous periods, notably the Catholic baroque with its emphasis on the visual, did not. The book analyzes musical subjectivity initially from Mozart through Mendelssohn, then seeks it, in its central chapter, in those aspects of Wagner that contradict his own ideological imperialism, before finally uncovering its survival in the post-Wagnerian recovery from musical and other ideologies. Engagingly written yet theoretically sophisticated, Listening to Reason represents a startlingly original corrective to cultural history's long-standing inhibition to engage with music while presenting a powerful alternative vision of the modern. Some images inside the book are unavailable due to digital copyright restrictions.


The Violin Conspiracy

The Violin Conspiracy

Author: Brendan Slocumb

Publisher: Anchor

Published: 2022-02-01

Total Pages: 353

ISBN-13: 059331543X

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GOOD MORNING AMERICA BOOK CLUB PICK! • Ray McMillian is a Black classical musician on the rise—undeterred by the pressure and prejudice of the classical music world—when a shocking theft sends him on a desperate quest to recover his great-great-grandfather’s heirloom violin on the eve of the most prestigious musical competition in the world. “I loved The Violin Conspiracy for exactly the same reasons I loved The Queen’s Gambit: a surprising, beautifully rendered underdog hero I cared about deeply and a fascinating, cutthroat world I knew nothing about—in this case, classical music.” —Chris Bohjalian, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Flight Attendant and Hour of the Witch Growing up Black in rural North Carolina, Ray McMillian’s life is already mapped out. But Ray has a gift and a dream—he’s determined to become a world-class professional violinist, and nothing will stand in his way. Not his mother, who wants him to stop making such a racket; not the fact that he can’t afford a violin suitable to his talents; not even the racism inherent in the world of classical music. When he discovers that his beat-up, family fiddle is actually a priceless Stradivarius, all his dreams suddenly seem within reach, and together, Ray and his violin take the world by storm. But on the eve of the renowned and cutthroat Tchaikovsky Competition—the Olympics of classical music—the violin is stolen, a ransom note for five million dollars left in its place. Without it, Ray feels like he's lost a piece of himself. As the competition approaches, Ray must not only reclaim his precious violin, but prove to himself—and the world—that no matter the outcome, there has always been a truly great musician within him.


The Cambridge Companion to Mendelssohn

The Cambridge Companion to Mendelssohn

Author: Peter Mercer-Taylor

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2004-10-21

Total Pages: 336

ISBN-13: 9780521533423

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This book surveys the life, work, and posthumous reception of nineteenth-century German-Jewish composer Felix Mendelssohn.


Sounds and Sweet Airs

Sounds and Sweet Airs

Author: Anna Beer

Publisher: Simon and Schuster

Published: 2016-04-07

Total Pages: 533

ISBN-13: 1780748574

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The hidden history of the women who dared to write music in a man’s world. ‘Lucid, engaging and exuberant... [Sounds and Sweet Airs] is terrifically enjoyable and accessible, and leaves one hankering for a second volume.’ The Sunday Times Francesca Caccini. Barbara Strozzi. Élisabeth Jacquet de la Guerre. Marianna Martines. Fanny Hensel. Clara Schumann. Lili Boulanger. Elizabeth Maconchy. Since the birth of classical music, women who dared compose have faced a bitter struggle to be heard. In spite of this, female composers continued to create, inspire and challenge. Yet even today so much of their work languishes unheard. Anna Beer reveals the highs and lows experienced by eight composers across the centuries, from Renaissance Florence to twentieth-century London, restoring to their rightful place exceptional women whom history has forgotten.


The Gift of Music

The Gift of Music

Author: Jane Stuart Smith

Publisher: Crossway

Published: 1995

Total Pages: 322

ISBN-13: 9780891078692

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Fascinating descriptions of forty leading composers whose faith, or lack of it, had an influence on Western civilization. Indexed. Great for all students of music.