'Allegri's Miserere' in the Sistine Chapel

'Allegri's Miserere' in the Sistine Chapel

Author: Graham O'Reilly

Publisher: Boydell & Brewer

Published: 2020

Total Pages: 378

ISBN-13: 1783274875

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

The Miserere by Italian composer Gregorio Allegri (1582-1652) is one of the most popular, oft performed and recorded choral pieces of late Renaissance/early Baroque music. Yet the piece known today bears little resemblanceto Allegri's original or to the piece as it was performed before 1870.


The Two Kinds of Decay

The Two Kinds of Decay

Author: Sarah Manguso

Publisher: Macmillan + ORM

Published: 2009-05-26

Total Pages: 194

ISBN-13: 1429940980

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

A poet and author recounts her nine-year struggle with a rare autoimmune disease in this spare and unsparing memoir of illness and recovery. At twenty-one, just as she was starting to comprehend the puzzles of adulthood, Sarah Manguso was faced with another: a wildly unpredictable disease that appeared suddenly and tore through her twenties, paralyzing her for weeks at a time, programming her first to expect nothing from life and then, furiously, to expect everything. In this captivating story, Manguso recalls her struggle: arduous blood cleansings, collapsed veins, multiple chest catheters, the deaths of friends and strangers, addiction, depression, and, worst of all for a writer, the trite metaphors that accompany prolonged illness. A book of tremendous grace and self-awareness, The Two Kinds of Decay transcends the very notion of what an illness story can and should be. Praise for The Two Kinds of Decay A New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice Best Book of the Year, San Francisco Chronicle and Time Out Chicago “Moving . . . a fiercely truthful memoir.” —The Boston Globe “Hers is not a day-by-day description of this grueling time, but an impressionistic text filled with bright, poetic flashes. . . . Many sick people learn to live in the moment, but the power of Manguso’s writing makes that truism revelatory.” —The Washington Post Book World “Sarah Manguso has miraculously elevated the act of memory. She has found honesty, fear, longing and beauty in every moment of her young life, giving this book an intensity found nowhere else. You put it down panting with wonder and grief, but never with pity. A breakthrough in the memoir, and in writing.” —Andrew Sean Greer


The Rome Zoo

The Rome Zoo

Author: Pascal Janovjak

Publisher: Black Inc.

Published: 2021-08-03

Total Pages: 240

ISBN-13: 1743821859

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Rome, too, wants the sound of roaring as evening falls ... The Rome Zoo: a place born of fantasy and driven by a nation’s aspirations. It has witnessed – and reflected in its tarnished mirror – the great follies of the twentieth century. Now, in an ongoing battle that has seen it survive world wars and epidemics, the zoo must once again reinvent itself, and assert its relevance in the Eternal City. Caught up in these machinations is a cast of characters worthy of this baroque backdrop: a man desperate to find meaning in his own life, a woman tasked with halting the zoo’s decline and a rare animal, the last of its species, who bewitches the world. Drifting between past and present, The Rome Zoo weaves together these and many other stories, forming a colourful and evocative tapestry of life at this strange place. It is both a love story and a poignant juxtaposition of the human need to classify, to subdue, with the untameable nature of our dramas and anxieties. Spellbinding and disturbing, precise and dreamy, this award-winning novel, translated by Stephanie Smee, is unlike any other. Winner of the Swiss Literature Award, the Prix Michel-Dentan and the Prix du public de la RTS “Like all truly great literary allegories, The Rome Zoo is both innocent and wise, filled equally with tenderness and darkness. A gorgeous, dream-like fable of Italy's past and present.” —Ceridwen Dovey


The Mozart Myths

The Mozart Myths

Author: William Stafford

Publisher: Stanford University Press

Published: 1993-10-01

Total Pages: 308

ISBN-13: 9780804722223

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

This is an ambitious attempt to separate what is actually known (and can be known) about Mozart from the many myths and legends that have grown up about his life and character, notably the circumstances of his death and his alleged immaturity, drinking, extravagance, womanizing, unreliability, and professional failure.


Maurice Duruflé, 1902-1986

Maurice Duruflé, 1902-1986

Author: Ronald Ebrecht

Publisher: Scarecrow Press

Published: 2002-06-11

Total Pages: 232

ISBN-13: 1461669634

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Maurice Duruflé (1902-1986) is best known as composer of the hauntingly beautiful and moving Requiem of 1947, and as organist during his long tenure at the church of Saint-Etienne-du-Mont in Paris. He studied composition and organ with Tournemire, Vierne, Gigout, and Dukas among others, and became well known outside France through tours and conferences, often attended with his wife, the late Marie-Madeleine Chevalier. Ebrecht has brought together in this centenary tribute a fine collection of articles on Duruflé's life and work that will enthrall all those who have come under the spell of this great master of French Impressionism. About the contributors: Marie-Claire Alain the renowned French organist, recording artist, and teacher was one of Duruflés first harmony students at the Paris Conservatoire. James Frazier has studied liturgy and music at several universities, and was a Fulbright scholar in France, where he studied privately with Madame Duruflé. Maria Rubis Bauer concluded her doctoral dissertation on Duruflé at the University of Kansas. Jeffrey Reynolds is Associate Professor of Humanities and chair of the music department at the University of Alabama, Birmingham. Herndon Spillman's landmark recording of the complete works of Duruflé won him a Grand Prix du Disque in 1973. He is Professor of Music at Louisiana State University. Eliane Chevalier was the sister of Marie-Madeleine Duruflé, with whom she shared a passion for music. Ned Tipton is Director of Music of the American Cathedral in Paris.


Mozart in Context

Mozart in Context

Author: Simon P. Keefe

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2018-12-20

Total Pages: 427

ISBN-13: 1316850838

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

The vibrant intellectual, social and political climate of mid eighteenth-century Europe presented opportunities and challenges for artists and musicians alike. This book focuses on Mozart the man and musician as he responds to different aspects of that world. It reveals his views on music, aesthetics and other matters; on places in Austria and across Europe that shaped his life; on career contexts and environments, including patronage, activities as an impresario, publishing, theatrical culture and financial matters; on engagement with performers and performance, focusing on Mozart's experiences as a practicing musician; and on reception and legacy from his own time through to the present day. Probing diverse Mozartian contexts in a variety of ways, the contributors reflect the vitality of existing scholarship and point towards areas primed for further study. This volume is essential reading for students and scholars of late eighteenth-century music and for Mozart aficionados and music lovers in general.


Coquettes, Wives, and Widows

Coquettes, Wives, and Widows

Author: Marcie Ray

Publisher: Eastman Studies in Music

Published: 2020

Total Pages: 201

ISBN-13: 1580469884

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

A revelatory study of how composers and dramatists of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century France criticized and trivialized independent women in their portrayals of them in works of theater and opera.


Bonfire Songs

Bonfire Songs

Author: Patrick Paul Macey

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 1998

Total Pages: 390

ISBN-13: 9780198166696

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Fra Girolamo Savonarola had a profound effect on the political and moral life of Florence in the 1490s, and his legacy lived on during the century after his execution in 1498, not just in Florence but in Ferrara and beyond the Alps, as far as Paris, Munich, and London. This study reconstructscontexts and musical settings for the popular tradition of sacred laude that were sung during the Savonarolan carnivals in 1496, 1497, and 1498. It further examines a broad network of patronage for the courtly tradition of Latin motets that provided elaborate musical settings for Savonarola'smeditations on Psalms 30 and 50. The friar's success in Florence can be partially attributed to his adoption of sacred laude (and the tunes of bawdy carnival songs) that had been promoted by Lorenzo de' Medici. The texts of the old carnival songs were suppressed, but the music was adapted to laudewith texts that proclaim the friar's prophecy of castigation and renewal. The citizens could thus internalize Savonarola's message by singing it. Savonarola himself wrote several lauda texts, and their musical settings are reconstructed here, as well as those for an underground tradition of laudewritten to venerate him after his execution. Part II turns to the courtly tradition and the Latin motet. Several Catholic patrons, scattered from Ferrara to France to England, were drawn to the friar's prison meditation on Psalms 30 and 50, and they commissioned elaborate musical settings of the opening words of both. A dozen motets on thefriar's psalm meditations can be traced from composes such as Willaert, Rore, Le Jeune, Lassus, and Byrd. Savonarola's highly personal texts inspired some of the most moving musical setings of the sixteenth century, in spite of the Church's unfavourable attitude toward the friar's disruptiveexample, which had set a precedent for Protestant reformers such as Martin Luther.


Listen

Listen

Author: Peter Szendy

Publisher: Fordham Univ Press

Published: 2009-08-25

Total Pages: 178

ISBN-13: 9780823228010

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

An enlightening exploration of the concept of listening and the evolving role of the listener from Beethoven to Charlie Parker to contemporary remixing. In this intimate meditation on listening, Peter Szendy examines what the role of the listener is, and has been, through the centuries. The roles of the composer and the musician are clear, but where exactly does the listener stand in relation to music? What is the responsibility of the listener? Does a listener have any rights, as the author and composer have copyright? Is it possible to convey to others how we ourselves listen to music? Though personal memory and intellectual history, Szendy takes readers on a fascinating and ear-opening journey to answer these questions. Along the way, he examines the evolution of copyright laws as applied to musical works and takes us into the courtroom to examine different debates on what we are and aren’t allowed to listen to, and to witness the fine line between musical borrowing and outright plagiarism. Finally, he examines the recent phenomenon of DJs and digital compilations, and wonders how technology has affected our listening habits.