Fanny Hensel
Fanny Hensel

Author: R. Larry Todd

Publisher: OUP USA

Published: 2010

Total Pages: 455

ISBN-13: 0195180801

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Fanny Hensel (1805-1847) was an extraordinary musician and astute observer of European culture. Previously she was known mainly as the granddaughter of philosopher Moses Mendelssohn and the sister of composer Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy, yet Hensel is now recognized as the leading woman composer of the nineteenth century. She produced well over four hundred compositions and excelled in short, lyrical piano pieces and songs of epigrammatic intensity, but the expressive range of her art also accommodated challenging virtuoso piano and chamber works, orchestral music, and cantatas written in imitation of J.S. Bach. Her gender and position in society restricted her from opportunities afforded her brother, however, who himself quickly rose to an international career of the first rank. Hensel's own sphere of influence revolved around her Berlin residence, where she directed concerts that attracted such celebrities as Franz Liszt, Clara Schumann, Clara Novello, and her brother Felix. In this semi-public space, shared with exclusive audiences drawn from the elite of Berlin society, Hensel found her own voice as pianist, conductor and composer. For much of her life, she composed for her own pleasure, and her brother ranked her songs among the very best examples of the genre. Felix silently incorporated several of the songs into his own early publications, while a few other songs were published anonymously. Hensel began releasing her works under her own name in 1847, only to die of a stroke as the first reviews of her music began to appear. Tragically, the vast majority of her music was forgotten for a century and a half before its recent rediscovery. Renowned Mendelssohn scholar R. Larry Todd now offers a compelling, full account of Hensel's life and music, her extraordinary relationship with her brother, her position in one of Berlin's most eminent families, and her courageous struggle to define her own public voice as a composer [Publisher description].

Nineteenth-Century Piano Music
Nineteenth-Century Piano Music

Author: R. Larry Todd

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2013-10-08

Total Pages: 485

ISBN-13: 1136731210

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First Published in 2004. 19th-Century Piano Music focuses on the core composers of the 19th-century repertoire, beginning with 2 chapters giving a general overview of the repertoire and keyboard technique of the era, and then individual chapters on Beethoven, Schubert, Weber, Mendelssohn, Chopin, Schumann, Brahms, Liszt, and the women composers of the era, particularly focusing on Fanny Hensel and Clara Schumann.

A Wayfaring Stranger
A Wayfaring Stranger

Author: Veronika Kusz

Publisher: Univ of California Press

Published: 2020-01-21

Total Pages: 259

ISBN-13: 0520972260

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On March 10, 1948, world-renowned composer and pianist Ernst von Dohnányi (1877−1960) embarked for the United States, leaving Europe for good. Only a few years earlier, the seventy-year-old Hungarian had been a triumphant, internationally admired musician and leading figure in Hungarian musical life. Fleeing a political smear campaign that sought to implicate him in intellectual collaboration with fascism, he reached American shores without a job or a home. A Wayfaring Stranger presents the final period in Dohnányi’s exceptional career and uses a range of previously unavailable material to reexamine commonly held beliefs about the musician and his unique oeuvre. Offering insights into his life as a teacher, pianist, and composer, the book also considers the difficulties of émigré life, the political charges made against him, and the compositional and aesthetic dilemmas faced by a conservative artist. To this rich biographical account, Veronika Kusz adds an in-depth examination of Dohnányi’s late works—in most cases the first analyses to appear in musicological literature. This corrective history provides never-before-seen photographs of the musician’s life in the United States and skillfully illustrates Dohnányi’s impact on European and American music and the culture of the time.

Rethinking Brahms
Rethinking Brahms

Author: Nicole Grimes

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2022

Total Pages: 585

ISBN-13: 0197541739

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As one of the most significant and widely performed composers of the nineteenth century, Brahms continues to command our attention. Rethinking Brahms counterbalances prevailing scholarly assumptions that position him as a conservative composer (whether musically or politically) with a wide-ranging exploration and re-evaluation of his significance today. Drawing on German- and English-language scholarship, it deploys original approaches to his music and pursues innovative methodologies to interrogate the historical, cultural, and artistic contexts of his creativity. Empowered by recent theoretical work on form and tonality, it offers fresh analytical insights into his music, including a number of corpus studies that interrogate the relationships between Brahms and other composers, past and present. The book brings into sharp focus the productive tension that exists between the perceived fixedness of musical texts and the ephemerality of performance by considering how historical and modern performers shape established understandings of Brahms and his music. Rethinking Brahms invites the reader to hear familiar pieces anew as they are refracted through historical, artistic, and philosophical prisms. Bringing us up to the present day, it also gives sustained attention to the resounding impact of Brahms's compositions on new music by exploring works by recent composers who have engaged deeply with his oeuvre. Combining awareness of overarching contexts with perceptive insights into Brahms's music, this book enlivens our understanding of Brahms, providing a dynamic, multifaceted, complex, and invigoratingly fresh portrait of the composer.

Hans Von Bülow
Hans Von Bülow

Author: Kenneth Birkin

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2011-07-07

Total Pages: 735

ISBN-13: 1107005868

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A detailed study of the life of one of the most important and influential musical figures of the nineteenth century.

Robert Schumann's Leipzig Chamber Works
Robert Schumann's Leipzig Chamber Works

Author: Julie Hedges Brown

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2024

Total Pages: 225

ISBN-13: 0197749461

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This book explores the multi-movement Leipzig chamber works composed by Robert Schumann (1810-56). It adopts a two-pronged approach. On the one hand, it shows how this repertory illuminates Schumann's response to certain past and contemporary composers; to his own youthful, experimental past; and to various literary and cultural influences. At the same time, the book explores how different people have heard this music: listeners in Schumann's own day and beyond, in both Germanic and non-Germanic regions, and comprising the voices of critics, performers, audiences, even figures in disciplines outside of music.