Peter Maxwell Davies, Selected Writings

Peter Maxwell Davies, Selected Writings

Author: Peter Maxwell Davies

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2018

Total Pages: 349

ISBN-13: 1107157994

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A varied and wide-ranging collection in which the celebrated post-war composer Peter Maxwell Davies presents his work and his opinions.


The Music of Peter Maxwell Davies

The Music of Peter Maxwell Davies

Author: Nicholas Jones

Publisher: Boydell & Brewer

Published: 2020

Total Pages: 384

ISBN-13: 1783274832

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Peter Maxwell Davies (1934-2016) was one of the leading international composers of the post-war period as well as one of the most productive. This book provides a global view of his music, integrating a number of resonant themes in the composer's work while covering a representative cross-section of his vast output - his work list encompasses nearly 550 compositions in every established genre. Each chapter focuses on specific major works and offers general discussion of other selected works connected to the main themes. These themes include compositional technique and process; genre; form and architecture; tonality and texture; allusion, quotation and musical critique; and place and landscape. Throughout, the book contends that Davies's works are not created in a vacuum but are intimately connected to, and are a reflection of, 'the past'. This deep engagement occurs on a number of levels, fluctuating and interacting with the composer's own predominantly modernist idiom and evoking a chain of historical resonances. Making sustained reference to Davies's own words, articles and programme notes as well as privileged access to primary source material from his estate, the book illuminates the composer's practices and approaches while shaping a discourse around his music. NICHOLAS JONES is Senior Lecturer in Musicology at Cardiff University. RICHARD MCGREGOR is Emeritus Professor of Music at the University of Cumbria and part-time Lecturer at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland.


Historical Dictionary of Modern and Contemporary Classical Music

Historical Dictionary of Modern and Contemporary Classical Music

Author: Nicole V. Gagné

Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield

Published: 2019-07-17

Total Pages: 545

ISBN-13: 1538122987

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The contemporary music scene thus embodies a uniquely broad spectrum of activity, which has grown and changed down to the present hour. With new talents emerging and different technologies developing as we move further into the 21st century, no one can predict what paths music will take next. All we can be certain of is that the inspiration and originality that make music live will continue to bring awe, delight, fascination, and beauty to the people who listen to it. This book cover modernist and postmodern concert music worldwide from the years 1888 to 2018. This second edition of Historical Dictionary of Modern and Contemporary Classical Music contains a chronology, an introduction, and an extensive bibliography. The dictionary section has over 500 cross-referenced entries on the most important composers, musicians, methods, styles, and media in modernist and postmodern classical music worldwide, from 1888 to 2018. This book is an excellent resource for students, researchers, and anyone wanting to know more about modern and contemporary classical music.


Michael Nyman: Collected Writings

Michael Nyman: Collected Writings

Author: Pwyll ap Siôn

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2016-04-22

Total Pages: 467

ISBN-13: 1317096843

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For over three decades Michael Nyman's music has succeeded in reaching beyond the small community of contemporary music aficionados to a much wider range of listeners. An important element in unlocking the key to Nyman's success lies in his writings about music, which preoccupied him for over a decade from the late 1960s to the early 1980s. During this time Nyman produced over 100 articles, covering almost every conceivable musical style and genre - from the Early Music revival and the West's interest in 'world' music, or from John Cage and minimalism to rock and pop. Nyman initiated a number of landmark moments in the course of late twentieth-century music along the way: he was one of the first to critique the distinction between the European avant-garde and the American experimental movement; he was the first to coin the term 'minimalism' in relation to the music of (then largely unknown) Steve Reich and Terry Riley, and later Philip Glass; the first to seriously engage with the music of the English experimental tradition and the importance of Cornelius Cardew, and to identify the importance of Art Colleges in nurturing and developing a radical alternative to modernism; and one of the first writers to grasp the significance of post-minimalists such as Brian Eno and Harold Budd, and to realize how these elements could be brought together into a new aesthetic vision for his own creative endeavours, which was formulated during the late 1970s and early 80s. Much of what transformed and defined Nyman's musical character may be found within the pages of this volume of his writings, comprehensively edited and annotated for the first time, and including previously unpublished material from Nyman's second interview with Steve Reich in 1976. There is also much here to engage the minds of those who are interested in pre-twentieth century music, from Early and Baroque music (Handel and Purcell in particular) to innovative features in Haydn, spatial elements in Berlioz, or Bruckner and Mahler's symphonic works.


A History of Welsh Music

A History of Welsh Music

Author: Trevor Herbert

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2022-09-29

Total Pages: 786

ISBN-13: 1009041673

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From early medieval bards to the bands of the 'Cool Cymru' era, this book looks at Welsh musical practices and traditions, the forces that have influenced and directed them, and the ways in which the idea of Wales as a 'musical nation' has been formed and embedded in popular consciousness in Wales and beyond. Beginning with early medieval descriptions of musical life in Wales, the book provides both an overarching study of Welsh music history and detailed consideration of the ideas, beliefs, practices and institutions that shaped it. Topics include the eisteddfod, the church and the chapel, the influence of the Welsh language and Welsh cultural traditions, the scholarship of the Celtic Revival and the folk song movement, the impacts of industrialization and digitization, and exposure to broader trends in popular culture, including commercial popular music and sport.


Roy Hart

Roy Hart

Author: Kevin Crawford

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2022-03-10

Total Pages: 145

ISBN-13: 1000531015

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Roy Hart’s revolutionary work on the human voice through extended vocal technique and the Wolfsohn-Hart tradition has influenced several generations of practitioners. Hart’s outstanding contribution to vocal research, practice and performance stretched over 20 years until his untimely death in 1975, and his vocal training produced performers with extraordinary and highly expressive vocal ranges. He founded a theatre company, Roy Hart Theatre, that brought his ideas to realisation in groundbreaking works. His influence, through his own use of the voice for theatre and music and its embodiment in his company, was widespread, attracting the interest of directors such as Peter Brook, Jerzy Grotowski and Jean-Louis Barrault. This book combines: a detailed biography giving the social and artistic context of Hart’s work and that of the early Roy Hart Theatre an exploration of Hart’s own writings on his work, combined with a review of articles by his wife Dorothy Hart and in-depth interviews a stylistic analysis of his key works, including The Bacchae, and, L'Economiste and Biodrame, and their critical reception pathways into some of the practical exercises devised by close collaborators of Roy Hart and practitioners of the Roy Hart Theatre Tradition. As a first step towards critical understanding, and as an initial exploration before going on to further, primary research, Routledge Performance Practitioners offer unbeatable value for today’s student.


An Orkney Tapestry

An Orkney Tapestry

Author: George MacKay Brown

Publisher: Polygon

Published: 2021-08-03

Total Pages: 242

ISBN-13: 1788852354

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First published in 1969, An Orkney Tapestry, George Mackay Brown's seminal work, is a unique look at Orkney through the eye of a poet. Originally commissioned by his publisher as an introduction to the Orkney Islands, Brown approached the writing from a unique perspective and went on to produce a rich fusion of ballad, folk tale, short story, drama, and environmental writing. The book, written at an early stage in the author’s career, explores themes that appear in his later work and was a landmark in Brown’s development as a writer. Above all, it is a celebration of Orkney's people, language and history. This edition reproduces Sylvia Wishart’s beautiful illustrations, commissioned for the original hardback. Made available again for the first time in over 40 years, this new edition sits alongside Nan Shepherd’s The Living Mountain as an important precursor of environmental writing by the likes of Kathleen Jamie, Robert Macfarlane, Malachy Tallack and, most recently, Amy Liptrot.


Olivier Messiaen

Olivier Messiaen

Author: Robert Sholl

Publisher: Reaktion Books

Published: 2024-06-12

Total Pages: 402

ISBN-13: 1789148952

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Drawing on a range of sources and fields, the rich life story of this polymathic composer. This groundbreaking biography offers fresh perspectives on the life, ideas, and music of French twentieth-century composer, organist, and ornithologist Olivier Messiaen. Drawing from previously unexplored sketches and archival material, the book seamlessly combines elements of biography, musicology, theology, philosophy, psychoanalysis, and aesthetics to present a nuanced perspective on Messiaen’s work. Robert Sholl explores the profound impact of Messiaen’s devout Catholicism, which found expression through his work as a church organist, his engagement with birdsong, his interaction with Surrealism, and his profound influence on major musical figures of the latter twentieth century. Unlike previous biographies, this book also considers the perspectives of Messiaen’s contemporaries and students, providing a comprehensive understanding of his life and artistic legacy.


John Cage and Peter Yates

John Cage and Peter Yates

Author: Martin Iddon

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2019-11-14

Total Pages: 331

ISBN-13: 1108480063

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The last - and largest - of Cage's most important formative exchanges of letters, discussing music criticism and questions of aesthetics.


The Art of Appreciation

The Art of Appreciation

Author: Kate Guthrie

Publisher: Univ of California Press

Published: 2021-07-13

Total Pages: 307

ISBN-13: 0520975898

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From the BBC Proms to Bernstein's Young People's Concerts, initiatives to promote classical music have been a pervasive feature of twentieth-century musical life. The goal of these initiatives was rarely just to reach a larger and more diverse audience but to teach a particular way of listening that would help the public "appreciate" music. This book examines for the first time how and why music appreciation has had such a defining and long-lasting impact—well beyond its roots in late-Victorian liberalism. It traces the networks of music educators, philanthropists, policy makers, critics, composers, and musicians who, rather than resisting new mass media, sought to harness their pedagogic potential. The book explores how listening became embroiled in a nexus of modern problems around citizenship, leisure, and education. In so doing, it ultimately reveals how a new cultural milieu—the middlebrow—emerged at the heart of Britain's experience of modernity.