101 Masterpieces of Music and Their Composers
Author: Martin Bookspan
Publisher: Main Street Books
Published: 1973
Total Pages: 490
ISBN-13:
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Don Giovanni
Author: Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Publisher: Alma Books
Published: 2018-01-01
Total Pages: 113
ISBN-13: 0714545295
DOWNLOAD EBOOKThese Opera Guides are ideal com-panions to the opera. They provide stimulating introductory articles together with the complete text of each opera in English and the original.This famous opera ends, after the hero is dragged down to hell, with a warning that evil shall not go unpunished. 'Hardly', as Michael F. Robinson notes, 'one's usual idea of a "e;comic"e; subject!' So this guide opens with a brief look at what is actually comic about it. David Wyn Jones gives an overall view of the score: he shows how the musical keys are arranged so that the dramatic momentum over two long acts is maintained and discusses orchestration and dramatic pacing in the most important scenes. Christopher Raeburn contributes a lively portrait of the 'libertine librettist' who, after his Vienna triumphs, was hounded out of London for his debts and eventually died in New York - 'revered as the father of Italian studies in America'. The full original text is given, with a pointed modern translation.
The 39 Apartments of Ludwig Van Beethoven
Author: Jonah Winter
Publisher: Schwartz & Wade
Published: 2014-04-30
Total Pages: 74
ISBN-13: 0307554007
DOWNLOAD EBOOKHow hard is it to move 5 legless pianos 39 times? Beethoven owned five legless pianos and composed great works on the floor. His first apartment was in the center of Vienna's theater district... but he forgot to pay rent, so he had to move. (And it's very hard to move a piano. Even harder to move five). Beethoven's next apartment was in a dangerous part of town... so he moved, and the pianos followed on a series of pulleys. Then came an apartment with a view of the Danube (but he made too much noise and the neighbors complained), followed by an attic apartment (where he made even MORE of a rukus), and so Beethoven moved again and again. Each time, pianos were bought, left behind, transported on pulleys, slides, and by movers, all so that gifted Beethoven could compose great works of music for the world.
Strong on Music
Author: Vera Brodsky Lawrence
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Published: 1999-02
Total Pages: 672
ISBN-13: 9780226470160
DOWNLOAD EBOOKIn Strong on Music Vera Brodsky Lawrence uses the diaries of lawyer and music lover George Templeton Strong as a jumping-off point from which to explore every aspect of New York City's musical life in the mid-nineteenth century. This third and final volume ranges across opera, orchestral and chamber music, blackface minstrels, military bands, church choirs, and even concert saloons. Among the many striking scenes vividly portrayed in Repercussions are the rapturous reception of Verdi's Ballo in maschera in 1861; the impact of the Civil War on New York's music scene, from theaters closing as their musicians enlisted to the performance of "The Star-Spangled Banner" at every possible occasion; and open-air concerts in the developing Central Park. Throughout, Lawrence mines a treasure trove of primary source materials including daily newspapers, memoirs, city directories, and architectural drawings. Indispensable for scholars, Repercussions will also fascinate music fans with its witty writing and detailed descriptions of the cultural life of America's first metropolis. Formerly a concert pianist, Vera Brodsky Lawrence spent the last third of her life as a historian of American music (she died in 1996). She was editor of The Piano Works of Louis Moreau Gottschalk and The Complete Works of Scott Joplin. On Volume 1: "A marvelous book. There is nothing like it in the literature of American music."—Harold C. Schonberg, New York Times Book Review On Volume 2: "A monumental achievement."—Victor Fell Yellin, Opera Quarterly
Masterworks of the Orchestral Repertoire
Author: Donald N. Ferguson
Publisher: U of Minnesota Press
Published: 1968-03-04
Total Pages: 686
ISBN-13: 0816657629
DOWNLOAD EBOOKMasterworks of the Orchestral Repertoire was first published in 1968. Minnesota Archive Editions uses digital technology to make long-unavailable books once again accessible, and are published unaltered from the original University of Minnesota Press editions. The fullest enjoyment of an orchestral performance or a record concert comes with a background of knowledge about the music itself. This handbook is designed to help music lovers get the ultimate pleasure from their listening by providing them with that background about a large portion of the orchestral repertoire. Professor Ferguson analyzes and interprets the most important classical symphonies, overtures, and concertos, as well as selected orchestral works of modern composers. He goes beyond a conventional analysis of structure since he believes (with a majority of the music-loving public) that great music is actually a communication -- that it expresses significant emotions. The great composers, on their own testimony, have striven not merely to create perfect forms but to interpret human experience. Mingled with the analyses, then, the reader will find comments on the expressive purport of the music. For twenty-five years Professor Ferguson has supplied the program notes for the subscription concerts of the Minneapolis Symphony Orchestra, and this volume is an outgrowth of that activity. In preparing the material for book publication, however, he studied the musical compositions anew, and the resulting chapters provide a much deeper exploration of the musical subjects than did the program notes. The themes of important works are illustrated by musical notations, and a brief glossary explains technical terms.
Twenty-Six Composers Teach the Violinist
Author: William Starr
Publisher: Alfred Music
Published: 1995-11-16
Total Pages: 66
ISBN-13: 1457403684
DOWNLOAD EBOOKAn invaluable collection of excerpts from solo, chamber, and orchestral literature. Covers a wide range of technical problems.
Freedom and the Arts
Author: Charles Rosen
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Published: 2012-05-21
Total Pages: 647
ISBN-13: 0674069897
DOWNLOAD EBOOKIs there a moment in history when a work receives its ideal interpretation? Or is negotiation always required to preserve the past and accommodate the present? The freedom of interpretation, Charles Rosen suggests in these sparkling explorations of music and literature, exists in a delicate balance with fidelity to the identity of the original work. Rosen cautions us to avoid doctrinaire extremes when approaching art of the past. To understand Shakespeare only as an Elizabethan or Jacobean theatergoer would understand him, or to modernize his plays with no sense of what they bring from his age, deforms the work, making it less ambiguous and inherently less interesting. For a work to remain alive, it must change character over time while preserving a valid witness to its earliest state. When twentieth-century scholars transformed Mozart's bland, idealized nineteenth-century image into that of a modern revolutionary expressionist, they paradoxically restored the reputation he had among his eighteenth-century contemporaries. Mozart became once again a complex innovator, challenging to perform and to understand. Drawing on a variety of critical methods, Rosen maintains that listening or reading with intensity-for pleasure-is the one activity indispensable for full appreciation. It allows us to experience multiple possibilities in literature and music, and to avoid recognizing only the revolutionary elements of artistic production. By reviving the sense that works of art have intrinsic merits that bring pleasure, we justify their continuing existence.
The Musical Life of Nineteenth-Century Belfast
Author: Roy Johnston
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2017-07-05
Total Pages: 400
ISBN-13: 1351542117
DOWNLOAD EBOOKRoy Johnston and Declan Plummer provide a refreshing portrait of Belfast in the nineteenth century. Before his death Roy Johnston, had written a full draft, based on an impressive array of contemporary sources, with deep and detailed attention especially to contemporary newspapers. With the deft and sensitive contribution of Declan Plummer the finished book offers a telling view of Belfast‘s thriving musical life. Largely without the participation and example of local aristocracy, nobility and gentry, Belfast‘s musical society was formed largely by the townspeople themselves in the eighteenth century and by several instrumental and choral societies in the nineteenth century. As the town grew in size and developed an industrial character, its townspeople identified increasingly with the large industrial towns and cities of the British mainland. Efforts to place themselves on the principal touring circuit of the great nineteenth-century concert artists led them to build a concert hall not in emulation of Dublin but of the British industrial towns. Belfast audiences had experienced English opera in the eighteenth century, and in due course in the nineteenth century they found themselves receiving the touring opera companies, in theatres newly built to accommodate them. Through an energetic groundwork revision of contemporary sources, Johnston and Plummer reveal a picture of sustained vitality and development that justifies Belfast‘s prominent place the history of nineteenth-century musical culture in Ireland and more broadly in the British Isles.
Fritz Reiner
Author: Philip Hart
Publisher: Northwestern University Press
Published: 1997-02-05
Total Pages: 388
ISBN-13: 0810133067
DOWNLOAD EBOOKThirty years after his death, Fritz Reiner's contribution--as a conductor, as a teacher (of Leonard Bernstein, among others), and as a musician--continues to be reassessed. Music scholar and long-time friend Philip Hart has written the definitive biography of this influential figure.
Later symphonies
Author: Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Publisher: Courier Corporation
Published: 1974-01-01
Total Pages: 290
ISBN-13: 048623052X
DOWNLOAD EBOOKThis affordable collection includes Mozart's seven final symphonies (Nos. 35–41) including the composer's greatest orchestral work — the last 3 symphonies. Includes Symphony No. 35 in D Major, K.385 ("Haffner"); Symphony No. 36 in C Major, K.425 ("Linz"); Symphony No. 37 in G Major, K.444; Symphony No. 38 in D Major, K.504 ("Prague"); and others.
