Webern and the Lyric Impulse

Webern and the Lyric Impulse

Author: Anne Chatoney Shreffler

Publisher:

Published: 1994

Total Pages: 296

ISBN-13:

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This study provides a new view of a composer long considered to be one of the century's most rigorously intellectual creators, Anton Webern. By examining a central pre-twelve-tone work, the Trakl cycle, Op 14, in the context of the Viennese intellectual and artistic climate, Professor Shreffler shows how Webern's responses to Trakl's complex verse enabled him to expand his musical vocabulary. The author's emphasis on Webern's compositional process is of particular importance: whether because of the anxiety of creating a new musical language, or because of an innate hyper-perfectionism (or both), Webern rejected most of what he composed. A close examination of the manuscript sources - fragments, sketches, and fair copies - of Webern's comparatively neglected middle-period lieder enables her to shed light on Webern's musical language and his working methods. A focus on the sources also helps to modify the view that his music progressed steadily in the direction of the twelve-tone technique. The works reveal instead a concern with expressing the essence of the text; this lyricism, rather than articulating a substantially different aesthetic from the later works, provides a better understanding of the consummate lyricism of all his music, however compressed or fragmented its utterance in the `classic' twelve-tone works.


Webern Studies

Webern Studies

Author: Kathryn Bailey

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 1996-08-28

Total Pages: 400

ISBN-13: 9780521475266

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This collection of essays looks at the music of Webern from several different perspectives. Webern scholarship, based on the sketches and other primary material now owned by the Paul Sacher Stiftung in Basel and the Library of Congress in Washington, has emphasised Webern's lyricism, and this is a theme running through Webern Studies. Most of the essays are the result of work with primary material. The volume includes entries from Webern's diaries, and all of the row tables for his twelve-note music. A comprehensive Webern bibliography covers thoroughly the period since Zoltan Roman's bibliography of 1978.


Webern and the Transformation of Nature

Webern and the Transformation of Nature

Author: Julian Johnson

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 1999

Total Pages: 298

ISBN-13: 9780521661492

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This book considers the idea of nature in the music of Anton Webern. It stands out from other studies because it explores the wider social and cultural dimensions of the music, as opposed to the often narrow, technical analysis of the music. In doing so it offers an important case study for the way in which social ideas can be discussed in relation to apparently 'abstract' modern music. Moreover, it does so in relation to musical details not simply on the level of biography or cultural history.


Anton Webern

Anton Webern

Author: Darin Hoskisson

Publisher: Taylor & Francis

Published: 2017-03-27

Total Pages: 238

ISBN-13: 1317672682

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Anton Webern: A Research and Information Guide offers carefully selected and annotated sources regarding Webern from 1975 to present day, including sources on Webern’s life, his music, and the interpretation and reception of his music. Along with this comprehensive annotated listing of print and online sources, the book discusses the history of research on Webern and includes a brief chronology of his life. It is a major reference tool for those interested in Webern and his music and valuable for researchers of 20th century music and the Second Viennese School.


Beethovens Diabelli Variations

Beethovens Diabelli Variations

Author: William Kinderman

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2008-03-15

Total Pages: 247

ISBN-13: 0199711747

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The Thirty-three Variations on a Waltz by Diabelli, Op. 120, represent Beethovens most extraordinary achievement in the art of variation-writing. In their originality and power of invention, they stand beside other late Beethoven masterpieces such as the Ninth Symphony, the Missa Solemnis, and the last quartets. William Kindermans study of the compositional history of the work includes the first extended investigation and reconstruction of the sketches and drafts, and reveals, contrary to earlier views of its chronology, that it was actually begun in 1819, then put aside, and completed in 1822-3. Kinderman also provides an analytical discussion of the complete work, and he demonstrates how insights derived from a close study of the sketches can illuminate Beethovens compositional ideas and attitudes and contribute substantially to a better understanding of this massive and complex set of variations. The book includes complete transcriptions of the two central documents in the genesis of the Diabelli variations - the reconstructed Wittgenstein Sketchbook and the Paris - Landsberg - Montauban Draft.


Ernst Krenek and the Politics of Musical Style

Ernst Krenek and the Politics of Musical Style

Author: Peter Tregear

Publisher: Scarecrow Press

Published: 2013-07-05

Total Pages: 195

ISBN-13: 0810882639

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Ernst Krenek has been described as a “one-man history of twentieth-century music.” His vast compositional output encompasses many of its extremes and expresses many of its contradictions. Few have attempted, however, to contextualize Krenek’s compositional output because our understanding of classical music in the first half of the twentieth century still largely remains focused on the music of a few canonical figures. Responding to renewed interest from performers in Krenek’s work, particularly his operas, Peter Tregear’s Ernst Krenek and the Politics of Musical Style addresses this gap in the scholarly literature and makes an important contribution to our comprehension of the ways in which his music reflected and informed broader social and political debates in Austria and Germany at the time. Focusing on Krenek’s compositional path from the eclectic musical language of Jonny spielt auf to the austere twelve-tone technique of Karl V, Tregear provides an historical and critical context to this most historically significant period of Krenek’s creative life. His study also enriches our understanding of many of Krenek’s contemporaries, such as Alban Berg and Arnold Schoenberg. This book should interest students, scholars and practitioners with an interest in modern opera, and contemporary classical music as well as early-20th-century German history more generally.


Driven Into Paradise

Driven Into Paradise

Author: Reinhold Brinkmann

Publisher: Univ of California Press

Published: 1999-09-14

Total Pages: 398

ISBN-13: 9780520214132

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"This is a long overdue and brilliant contribution to our understanding of the intellectual migration from Europe. The essays in this volume illuminate in new ways the experiences of musicians and scholars who fled Europe."—Leon Botstein, Music Director, American Symphony Orchestra "With a sweep and coherence very rare in essay collections, this volume immediately takes its place as one of the most important publications on twentieth-century music. The range of source materials is dazzling: anecdotes, letters, memoirs, interviews, newspaper articles, musical scores, films, and archival documents. Handled with deft scholarship, they add up to a balanced yet deeply moving account of how figures of exile experienced and transformed American culture."—Walter Frisch, author of The Early Works of Arnold Schoenberg


Stefan Wolpe and the Avant-Garde Diaspora

Stefan Wolpe and the Avant-Garde Diaspora

Author: Brigid Maureen Cohen

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2012-09-13

Total Pages: 341

ISBN-13: 1107003008

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Cohen traces a history of modernism in migration through the composer Stefan Wolpe, from the Bauhaus to Black Mountain College.