Shuffle Along
Shuffle Along

Author: Noble Sissle

Publisher: A-R Editions, Inc.

Published: 2018-11-30

Total Pages: 639

ISBN-13: 1987200284

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The Broadway musical Shuffle Along—with book by Flournoy Miller and Aubrey Lyles, lyrics by Noble Sissle, and music by Eubie Blake—premiered on 23 May 1921 at the Cort Theatre on 63rd Street and became the first overwhelmingly successful African American musical on Broadway. Langston Hughes, who saw the production, said that Shuffle Along marked the beginning of the Harlem Renaissance. Both black and white audiences swarmed to the show, which prompted the integration of subsequent Broadway audiences. The dances were such a smash that choreographers for white Broadway shows hired Shuffle Along chorus girls to teach their chorus lines the new steps. “Love Will Find a Way,” the first successful unburlesqued love song in a black Broadway show, was so well-received that audiences demanded multiple encores. The show’s influences went far beyond Broadway: Some of the period’s most influential black musicians, including dancer Josephine Baker, vocalist Paul Robeson, composer Hall Johnson, and composer William Grant Still, all got their start in Shuffle Along. The editors have assembled the full score and libretto for this critical edition from the original performance materials. The critical report thoroughly explains all sources and editorial decisions. The accompanying scholarly essay examines the music, dances, and script of Shuffle Along and places this influential show in its social, racial, and historical context.

Appalachian Spring
Appalachian Spring

Author: Aaron Copland

Publisher: A-R Editions, Inc.

Published: 2019-12-31

Total Pages: 295

ISBN-13: 1987204581

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Appalachian Spring is perhaps the most popular work by Aaron Copland (1900–1990). Composed as a ballet for the renowned choreographer Martha Graham (1894–1991), it was the result of a close collaboration between Copland and Graham, and the music quickly took on a life of its own. However, the best known versions of the score, those most frequently recorded and heard in concert, differ in form and musical content from the original ballet, which was scored for a chamber ensemble of thirteen instruments and premiered by the Martha Graham Dance Company at the Library of Congress on 30 October 1944. This edition presents the first completed engraving of the original version of Appalachian Spring, providing musicians and scholars access to the score as it has been performed for more than 75 years by the Graham Company. On each page of the score, the editors have included stills from the 1958 film of the ballet, with Graham dancing the lead role, in order to highlight the connection between music and dance. An introductory essay explores the creation of the work, the musical structure, the origins of and differences among multiple versions of the score, and the continued significance and influence of Copland’s music. The critical commentary draws on manuscript and published sources, as well as Graham Company performance practice, to illuminate editorial decisions. The edition also includes appendices that present a comparison of historical tempi, markings from the Graham tradition for augmenting the orchestration, and a selected discography of different versions of the score.

Beethoven
Beethoven

Author: William Kinderman

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2009-04-10

Total Pages: 445

ISBN-13: 0199886946

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Combining musical insight with the most recent research, William Kinderman's Beethoven is both a richly drawn portrait of the man and a guide to his music. Kinderman traces the composer's intellectual and musical development from the early works written in Bonn to the Ninth Symphony and the late quartets, looking at compositions from different and original perspectives that show Beethoven's art as a union of sensuous and rational, of expression and structure. In analyses of individual pieces, Kinderman shows that the deepening of Beethoven's musical thought was a continuous process over decades of his life. In this new updated edition, Kinderman gives more attention to the composer's early chamber music, his songs, his opera Fidelio, and to a number of often-neglected works of the composer's later years and fascinating projects left incomplete. A revised view emerges from this of Beethoven's aesthetics and the musical meaning of his works. Rather than the conventional image of a heroic and tormented figure, Kinderman provides a more complex, more fully rounded account of the composer. Although Beethoven's deafness and his other personal crises are addressed, together with this ever-increasing commitment to his art, so too are the lighter aspects of his personality: his humor, his love of puns, his great delight in juxtaposing the exalted and the commonplace.

Brahms and His World
Brahms and His World

Author: Walter Frisch

Publisher: Princeton University Press

Published: 2009-07-06

Total Pages: 479

ISBN-13: 1400833620

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Since its first publication in 1990, Brahms and His World has become a key text for listeners, performers, and scholars interested in the life, work, and times of one of the nineteenth century's most celebrated composers. In this substantially revised and enlarged edition, the editors remain close to the vision behind the original book while updating its contents to reflect new perspectives on Brahms that have developed over the past two decades. To this end, the original essays by leading experts are retained and revised, and supplemented by contributions from a new generation of Brahms scholars. Together, they consider such topics as Brahms's relationship with Clara and Robert Schumann, his musical interactions with the "New German School" of Wagner and Liszt, his influence upon Arnold Schoenberg and other young composers, his approach to performing his own music, and his productive interactions with visual artists. The essays are complemented by a new selection of criticism and analyses of Brahms's works published by the composer's contemporaries, documenting the ways in which Brahms's music was understood by nineteenth- and early twentieth-century audiences in Europe and North America. A new selection of memoirs by Brahms's friends, students, and early admirers provides intimate glimpses into the composer's working methods and personality. And a catalog of the music, literature, and visual arts dedicated to Brahms documents the breadth of influence exerted by the composer upon his contemporaries.