Part I. Clouds of feeling: excerpt audio recordings. Imagining excerpts; Rhetorics of seduction; Demons and dandies; All too human -- Part II. Invented works : complete audio records. The visual stage; Cruel laughter; Dancing in time -- Part III. Partial visions : video recordings. Zooming in, gazing back; Trauma retold; Libertines punished.
Wye Jamison Allanbrook’s widely influential Rhythmic Gesture in Mozart challenges the view that Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s music was a “pure play” of key and theme, more abstract than that of his predecessors. Allanbrook’s innovative work shows that Mozart used a vocabulary of symbolic gestures and musical rhythms to reveal the nature of his characters and their interrelations. The dance rhythms and meters that pervade his operas conveyed very specific meanings to the audiences of the day.
Although there are many accounts of Mozart's life, and countless descriptions and analyses of his music, this is the first attempt to portray Mozart's creative life as a composer. K ster selects forty works or groups of works covering virtually every important stage in Mozart's career, from the first keyboard works of the young Wunderkind to Mozart's final days and the composition of the Requiem. Each chapter deals with the developments and events in the lives of the Mozarts as associated with or highlighted by a particular work or constellation of works. The bulk of the book--the is concerned with Mozart's life and compositions from his arrival in Vienna in 1781 to his death there some ten years later. Drawing on the tremendous advances in Mozart research over the last thirty years, and the publication of the New Mozart Edition, K ster's book makes a major contribution to our understanding of the creative development of the composer who represents for most musicians and music lovers the highest pinnacle of musical achievement.
Renowned Mozart scholar Daniel Heartz brings his deep knowledge of social history, theater, and art to a study of the last and great decade of Mozart's operas. Mozart specialists will recognize some of Heartz's best-known essays here; but six pieces are new for the collection, and others have been revised and updated with little-known documents on the librettist's, composer's, and stage director's craft. All lovers of opera will value the elegance and wit of Professor Heartz's writing, enhanced by thirty-seven illustrations, many from his private collection. The volume includes Heartz's classic essay on Idomeneo (1781), the work that continued to inspire and sustain Mozart through his next, and final, six operas. Thomas Bauman brings his special expertise to a discussion of Die Entführung aus dem Serail (1782). The ten central chapters are devoted to the three great operas composed to librettos by Lorenzo da Ponte—Le nozze di Figaro (l786), Don Giovanni (l787), and Così fan tutte (l790). The reader is treated to fresh insights on da Ponte's role as Mozart's astute and stage-wise collaborator, on the singers whose gifts helped shape each opera, and on the musical connections among the three works. Parallels are drawn with some of the greatest creative artists in other fields, such as Molière, Watteau, and Fragonard. The world of the dance, one of Heartz's specialties, lends an illuminating perspective as well. Finally, the essays discuss the deep spirituality of Mozart's last two operas, Die Zauberflöte and La Clemenza di Tito (both l79l). They also address the pertinence of opera outside Vienna at the end of the century, the fortunes and aspirations of Freemasonry in Austria, and the relation of Mozart's overtures to the dramaturgy of the operas.
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart is a genius, the most brilliant musician the world will ever see. But the court of eighteenth-century Vienna doesn t recognize his talents - only Antonio Salieri, the Court Composer, does, and he is tortured by what he hears. Seething with rage at the genius of this flippant buffoon and suddenly aware of his own mediocrity, Salieri declares war and sets out to destroy the man he sees as God s instrument on earth. Peter Shaffer s award-winning play is a rich, exuberant portrayal of a God-like man among mortals, and lives destroyed by envy."
During the years 1500–1800, European performing arts reveled in a kaleidoscope of Otherness: Middle-Eastern harem women, fortune-telling Spanish 'Gypsies', Incan priests, Barbary pirates, moresca dancers, and more. In this prequel to his 2009 book Musical Exoticism, Ralph P. Locke explores how exotic locales and their inhabitants were characterized in musical genres ranging from instrumental pieces and popular songs to oratorios, ballets, and operas. Locke's study offers new insights into much-loved masterworks by composers such as Cavalli, Lully, Purcell, Rameau, Handel, Vivaldi, Gluck, and Mozart. In these works, evocations of ethnic and cultural Otherness often mingle attraction with envy or fear, and some pieces were understood at the time as commenting on conditions in Europe itself. Locke's accessible study, which includes numerous musical examples and rare illustrations, will be of interest to anyone who is intrigued by the relationship between music and cultural history, and by the challenges of cross-cultural (mis)understanding.
Up-to-date, authoritative, and accessible, this is the best Mozart opera guide available This wise and friendly guide to Mozart's operas encompasses the full range of his most popular works--Figaro, Don Giovanni, Così, Magic Flute, Seraglio, Clemenza di Tito--as well as lesser known works like Mitridate and Il re Pastore. Music historian Mary Hunter provides a lively introduction to each opera for any listener who has enjoyed a performance, either on the stage or in a video recording, and who wishes to understand the opera more fully. The Companion includes a synopsis and commentary on each work, as well as background information on the three main genres in which Mozart wrote: opera seria, opera buffa, and Singspiel. An essay on the "anatomy" of a Mozart opera points out the musical conventions with which the composer worked and suggests nontechnical ways to think about his musical choices. The book also places modern productions of the operas in historical context and explores how modern directors, producers, and conductors present Mozart's works today. Filled with factual information and interesting issues to ponder while watching a performance, this guide will appeal to newcomers and seasoned opera aficionados alike.
Mozart's emergence as a mature artist coincides with the rise to prominence of the piano, an instrument that came alive under his fingers and served as medium for many of his finest compositions. In Mozart's Piano Music, William Kinderman reconsiders common assumptions about Mozart's life and art while offering comprehensive and incisive commentary on the solo music and concertos. After placing Mozart's pianistic legacy in its larger biographical and cultural context, Kinderman addresses the lively gestural and structural aspects of Mozart's musical language and explores the nature of his creative process. Incorporating the most recent research throughout this encompassing study, Kinderman expertly surveys each of the major genres of the keyboard music, including the four-hand and two-piano works. Beyond examining issues such as Mozart's earliest childhood compositions, his musical rhetoric and expression, the social context of his Viennese concertos, and affinities between his piano works and operas, Kinderman's main emphasis falls on detailed discussion of selected individual compositions.