Just before the most important violin competition of her career, seventeen-year-old prodigy Carmen faces critical decisions about her anti-anxiety drug addiction, her controlling mother, and a potential romance with her most talented rival.
A new and wide-ranging collection of essays by leading international scholars, exploring the concept and practices of virtuosity in Franz Liszt and his contemporaries.
An intensely romantic, “brilliant debut” (Kirkus Reviews) about a dangerous addiction, a fierce rivalry, and a forbidden love. Now is not the time for Carmen to fall in love. And Jeremy is hands-down the wrong guy for her to fall for. He is infuriating, arrogant, and the only person who can stand in the way of Carmen getting the one thing she wants most: to win the prestigious Guarneri competition. Carmen’s whole life is violin, and until she met Jeremy, her whole focus was winning. But what if Jeremy isn’t just hot…what if Jeremy is better? Carmen knows that kissing Jeremy can’t end well, but she just can't stay away. Nobody else understands her—and riles her up—like he does. Still, she can’t trust him with her biggest secret: She is so desperate to win, she takes antianxiety drugs to perform, and what started as an easy fix has become a hungry addiction. Carmen is sick of not feeling anything on stage and even sicker of always doing what she’s told, doing what’s expected. Sometimes being on top just means you have a long way to fall….
“A valuable resource for musicologists, theorists, pianists, and aestheticians interested in reading about Schumann’s views on virtuosity.” —Notes Considered one of the greatest composers—and music critics—of the Romantic era, Robert Schumann (1810–1856) played an important role in shaping nineteenth-century German ideas about virtuosity. Forging his career in the decades that saw abundant public fascination with the feats and creations of virtuosos (Liszt, Paganini, and Chopin among others), Schumann engaged with instrumental virtuosity through not only his compositions and performances but also his music reviews and writings about his contemporaries. Ultimately, the discourse of virtuosity influenced the culture of Western “art music” well beyond the nineteenth century and into the present day. By examining previously unexplored archival sources, Alexander Stefaniak looks at the diverse approaches to virtuosity Schumann developed over the course of his career, revealing several distinct currents in nineteenth-century German virtuosity and the enduring flexibility of virtuosity discourse.
A study of the reflexive relationship between music and language in the nineteenth century, this book maintains a discrete historical focus while drawing upon an aesthetic going back to problems of epic delivery in ancient Greece. Reading Romantic reactions to music together with linguistic and economic conflicts brought about by the rise of journalism, the book pursues the tension around performativity that both connects and separates music and writing. Franz Liszt is the organizing figure in this detailed study of music in Heine and Baudelaire. The acclaimed virtuoso functions both as a metaphor for a musical mode of enunciation and as a historical referent. This dual status dramatizes the struggle at the heart of nineteenth-century aesthetics between poetic self-reference and realism’s efforts to report the world accurately. Debates surrounding Liszt pinpoint the conflict between the view that locates sense in the process of its production and the contrary judgment privileging a stable meaning over the exteriority of its execution. This dualism also articulates the problematic relationship of the individual to general social and linguistic structures. The book’s analyses of nineteenth-century theories of correspondence, along with the thematization of the “other arts,” point to the limitations of analogy, the impossibility of a general theory of art, and a crisis of identity—that is, a shared non-identity—that can be the only common property among different discourses, genres, and media. Virtuosity of the Nineteenth Century offers a fresh reading of relatively marginal texts by canonical figures, addressing questions about the relation between the arts, the possibility of critical description, and the function of performativity.
This book is about three sets of etudes by Liszt: the Etude en douze exercices (1826), its reworking as Douzes grandes études (1837), and their reworking as Douzes études d'exécution transcendante (1851). At the same time it is a book about nineteenth-century instrumental music in general, in that the three works invite the exploration of features characteristic of the early Romantic era in music. These include: a composer-performer culture, the concept of virtuosity, the significance of recomposition, music and the poetic, and the consolidation of a musical work-concept. A central concern is to illuminate the relationship between the work-concept and a performance- and genre-orientated musical culture. At the same time the book reflects on how we might make judgements of the 'Transcendentals', of the Symphonic Poem Mazeppa (based on the fourth etude), and of Liszt's music in general.
Nothing strikes the ear quite like a soprano singing in the sonic stratosphere. Whether thrilling, chilling, or repellent to the listener, the reaction to cascades of coloratura with climaxing high notes is strong. Coloratura-agile, rapid-fire singing-was originally essential for all singers, but its function changed greatly when it became the specialty of particular sopranos over the course of the nineteenth century. The central argument of Vocal Virtuosity challenges the historical commonplace that coloratura became an anachronism in nineteenth-century opera. Instead, the book demonstrates that melismas at mid-century were made modern. Coloratura became an increasingly marked musical gesture during the century with a correspondingly more specific dramaturgical function. In exploring this transformation, the book reveals the instigators of this change in vocal practice and examines the historical traces of Parisian singers who were the period's greatest exponents of vertiginous vocality as archetypes of the modern coloratura soprano. The book constructs the historical trajectory of coloratura as it became gendered the provenance of the female singer, while also considering what melismas can signify in operatic performance. As a whole, it argues that vocal virtuosity was a source of power for women, generating space for female authorship and creativity. In so doing, the book reclaims a place in history for the coloratura soprano.
Annotation Ethical Virtuosity challenges you to identify, articulate, defend and live the personal values and ethical principles that define who you are and how you lead others. Renowned author Dr. Louie Larimer presents seven simple steps that lead to ethical virtuosity. You'll discover the meaning of ethics, integrity, character, personal accountability and moral courage and how they are relevant within today's business environment.
This book is a comparative macrosociological study of the interaction between religious virtuosi and society in two civilizations: traditional Theravada Buddhism and Medieval Catholicism. Merging Weberian sociology with the Maussian tradition of gift-analysis, and criticizing the neglect of meaning in current comparative historical sociology, the author also argues the need for a multidimensional approach capable of addressing the part played by religious orientations in shaping the institutional strength and ideological power of religious elites in the historical framework of the Great Traditions.
Drawing upon the past two decades of burgeoning literature in philosophy of music, this study offers a comprehensive, critical analysis of what is entailed in performance interpretation. It argues that integrity and other virtues offset the harm that virtuosity and rigid historical authenticity can impose on the perceptive judgment required of excellent musical interpretation. Proposed are challenging and provocative reassessments of the appropriate roles for virtuosity and historical authenticity in musical performance. Acknowledging the competitive ethos of the contemporary music scene, it details the kind of character a performer needs to develop in order to withstand those pressures and to achieve interpretive excellence. Performers are encouraged to examine and explore the ethical dimension of their art against their responsibilities to the diverse patrons they serve. Professional and student performers and instructors will appreciate this practical discussion of the ethical challenges performers confront when interpreting musical works. The ethical discourse applies to instrumental performance studies, the history and theory of music, general music pedagogy, and philosophy of music courses.