Handel as Orpheus

Handel as Orpheus

Author: Ellen T. Harris

Publisher: Harvard University Press

Published: 2004-09-30

Total Pages: 452

ISBN-13: 9780674015982

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Handel wrote over 100 cantatas, compositions for voice and instruments decsribing the joy and pain of love. In the first comprehensive study of the cantatas, Harris investigates their place in Handel's life as well as their extraordinary beauty.


Berlioz

Berlioz

Author: D. Kern Holoman

Publisher: Harvard University Press

Published: 1989

Total Pages: 710

ISBN-13: 9780674067783

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A captivating and sumptuously illustrated biography, Berlioz is not only a complete account of the Romantic era composer, but also an acute analysis of his compositions and a description of his work as a conductor and critic. 139 halftones, 3 maps, 160 musical examples.


A Poetics of Handel's Operas

A Poetics of Handel's Operas

Author: Nathan Link

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2023

Total Pages: 393

ISBN-13: 0197651348

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"A Poetics of Handel's Operas investigates the rich representational fabric of Handel's stories, drawing upon musicology, narratology, drama, and film in offering a study with appeal to scholars, producers and performers, opera afficionados, and anyone fascinated by storytelling. In most storytelling genres, we often distinguish between the story, on the one hand, and the way that story is represented, on the other, without a second thought. We know that a character in a film hears neither her own voice-over nor the ambient music that accompanies it, and that she does not really build a house from the ground up in the three minutes spanned by the cinematic montage that depict its construction. In opera, however, many commentators to this day characterize the medium as "unrealistic," since we know, for example, that people in the real world do not sing to each other, nor does orchestral music accompany their utterances. This said, the vocal and orchestral music, while not literally present in the world of the story surely have a great deal to tell us about the opera's story and its characters, and if we distinguish the performance we see and hear on the stage and in the orchestra pit from the story represented, we enable ourselves to construct stories that are no less coherent than those conveyed by other media. By avoiding conflation of the story and its representation, we enable ourselves to engage more meaningfully with the significance of these and many other unique aspects of operatic storytelling"--


Robert Schumann

Robert Schumann

Author: Jon W. Finson

Publisher: Harvard University Press

Published: 2007

Total Pages: 342

ISBN-13: 9780674026292

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Arguably no other 19th-century German composer was as literate or as finely attuned to setting verse as Robert Schumann. Finson challenges assumptions about Schumann’s Lieder, engaging traditionally held interpretations. Arranged in part thematically, rather than by strict compositional chronology, this book speaks to the heart of Schumann’s music.


Mozart

Mozart

Author: Alan Tyson

Publisher: Harvard University Press

Published: 1987

Total Pages: 396

ISBN-13: 9780674588318

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The results and implications of Tyson's work on Mozart have had a profound impact on virtually every aspect of research on this composer. This book assembles his major articles, previously scattered through magazines, journals, and festschrifts, plus two unpublished pieces, into a treasure trove for musicologists and music lovers.


The Joy of Playing, the Joy of Thinking

The Joy of Playing, the Joy of Thinking

Author: Charles Rosen

Publisher: Harvard University Press

Published: 2020-11-03

Total Pages: 161

ISBN-13: 0674988469

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Brilliant, practical, and humorous conversations with one of the twentieth-century’s greatest musicologists on art, culture, and the physical pain of playing a difficult passage until one attains its rewards. Throughout his life, Charles Rosen combined formidable intelligence with immense skill as a concert pianist. He began studying at Juilliard at age seven and went on to inspire a generation of scholars to combine history, aesthetics, and score analysis in what became known as “new musicology.” The Joy of Playing, the Joy of Thinking presents a masterclass for music lovers. In interviews originally conducted and published in French, Rosen’s friend Catherine Temerson asks carefully crafted questions to elicit his insights on the evolution of music—not to mention painting, theater, science, and modernism. Rosen touches on the usefulness of aesthetic reflection, the pleasure of overcoming stage fright, and the drama of conquering a technically difficult passage. He tells vivid stories on composers from Chopin and Wagner to Stravinsky and Elliott Carter. In Temerson’s questions and Rosen’s responses arise conundrums both practical and metaphysical. Is it possible to understand a work without analyzing it? Does music exist if it isn’t played? Throughout, Rosen returns to the theme of sensuality, arguing that if one does not possess a physical craving to play an instrument, then one should choose another pursuit. Rosen takes readers to the heart of the musical matter. “Music is a way of instructing the soul, making it more sensitive,” he says, “but it is useful only insofar as it is pleasurable. This pleasure is manifest to anyone who experiences music as an inexorable need of body and mind.”


Orientations

Orientations

Author: Pierre Boulez

Publisher: London : Faber and Faber

Published: 1986

Total Pages: 541

ISBN-13: 9780571143474

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Pierre Boulez is arguably the single most influential - and controversial - figure in the world of contemporary music. As composer, conductor and personality, his challenging views of modern developments are lent a special authority by his very high standing as an interpreter of great composers like Wagner, Debussy, Bart k and Stravinsky. This collection of writings enhances his unrivalled reputation as a lucid and compelling expositor of the modern composer's world.


Bach

Bach

Author: Christoph Wolff

Publisher: Harvard University Press

Published: 1991

Total Pages: 484

ISBN-13: 9780674059269

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More than two centuries after his lifetime, J. S. Bach's work continues to set musical standards. Noted Bach scholar Christoph Wolff offers new perspectives on the composer's life and remarkable career.


Bach's Continuo Group

Bach's Continuo Group

Author: Laurence Dreyfus

Publisher:

Published: 1987

Total Pages: 288

ISBN-13:

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When Bach's cantatas, masses, passions, and chorales were originally performed under the composer's direction, which instruments played the basso continuo, the line that establishes the harmonic framework? This book answers this and other fundamental questions and probes the rationale behind Baroque performance conventions.