Mahler's Forgotten Conductor

Mahler's Forgotten Conductor

Author: Hernan Tesler-Mabé

Publisher: University of Toronto Press

Published: 2020-03-13

Total Pages: 273

ISBN-13: 1487505167

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The orchestral conductor Heinz Unger (1895-1965) was born in Berlin, Germany and was reared from a young age to follow in his father's footsteps and become a lawyer. In 1915, he heard a Munich performance of Gustav Mahler's Das Lied von der Erde ("The Song of the Earth") conducted by Bruno Walter and thereafter devoted the rest of his life to music and particularly to the dissemination of Gustav Mahler's music. This microhistorical engagement explores how the strands of German Jewish identity converge and were negotiated by a musician who spent the majority of his life trying to grasp who he was. Critical to this understanding was Gustav Mahler's music - a music that Unger endowed with exceptional meaning and that was central to his Jewish identity. This book sets this exploration of Unger's "performative ritual" within a biographical tale of a life lived travelling the world in search of a home, from the musician's native Germany, to the Soviet Union, England, Spain, and finally, Canada.


Music in the London Theatre from Purcell to Handel

Music in the London Theatre from Purcell to Handel

Author: Colin Timms

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2017-06-29

Total Pages: 285

ISBN-13: 1108124569

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This book is concerned with a hundred years of musical drama in England. It charts the development of the genre from the theatre works of Henry Purcell (and his contemporaries) to the dramatic oratorios of George Frideric Handel (and his). En route it investigates the objections to all-sung drama in English that were articulated in the decades around 1700, various proposed solutions, the importation of Italian opera, and the creation of the dramatic oratorio - English drama, all-sung but not staged. Most of the constituent essays take an in-depth look at a particular aspect of the process, while others draw attention to dramatic qualities in non-dramatic works that also were performed in the theatre. The journey from Purcell to Handel illustrates the vigour and vitality of English theatrical and musical traditions, and Handel's dramatic oratorios and other settings of English words answer questions posed before he was born.