The fascinating correspondence of the Berlin lawyer and musician Christian Gottfried Krause is an important document reflecting the trends and developments in aesthetics, music theory and music making in the Prussian capital during the reign of Frederick the Great. Krause's letters shed light on the rise of a bourgeois music culture, which during h
In The Marquis d’Argens: A Philosophical Life Julia Gasper analyzes the life and works of an influential Enlightenment writer and philosopher. The facts of d’Argens’ life as well as his works have been a source of controversy due to the many rumors and anonymous publications erroneously linked to him. Through meticulous research, Gasper provides the only comprehensive list of d’Argens’ works and separates the realities of his life from the myths that have built up around him. Accused of being a libertine or an unoriginal mimic of greater minds, d’Argens has too often been dismissed as an unimportant figure. Gasper defends this much maligned philosopher and reveals how imaginative and influential he truly was.
This collection presents numerous discoveries and fresh insights into music and musical practices that shaped distinctly localized individual and collective identities in pre-modern and early modern Europe. Contributions by leading and emerging European music experts fall into three areas: plainchant traditions in Aquitania and the Iberian peninsula during the first 700 years of the second millennium; late medieval musical aesthetics, traditions and practices in Paris, Padua, Prague and more generally England, Germany and Spain; and local traditions in Renaissance Augsburg and Baroque Naples and Dresden. In addition to in-depth readings of anonymous musical traditions, contributors provide new details concerning the lives and music of well-known composers. This book will appeal to a broad range of readers, including chant scholars, medievalists, music historians, and anyone interested in music's place in pre modern and early modern European culture.
During the late eighteenth century, a musical–cultural phenomenon swept the globe. The English square piano—invented in the early 1760s by an entrepreneurial German guitar maker in London—not only became an indispensable part of social life, but also inspired the creation of an expressive and scintillating repertoire. Square pianos reinforced music as life’s counterpoint, and were played by royalty, by musicians of the highest calibre and by aspiring amateurs alike. On Sunday, 13 May 1787, a square piano departed from Portsmouth on board the Sirius, the flagship of the First Fleet, bound for Botany Bay. Who made the First Fleet piano, and when was it made? Who owned it? Who played it, and who listened? What music did the instrument sound out, and within what contexts was its voice heard? What became of the First Fleet piano after its arrival on antipodean soil, and who played a part in the instrument’s subsequent history? Two extant instruments contend for the title ‘First Fleet piano’; which of these made the epic journey to Botany Bay in 1787–88? The First Fleet Piano: A Musician’s View answers these questions, and provides tantalising glimpses of social and cultural life both in Georgian England and in the early colony at Sydney Cove. The First Fleet piano is placed within the musical and social contexts for which it was created, and narratives of the individuals whose lives have been touched by the instrument are woven together into an account of the First Fleet piano’s conjunction with the forces of history. View ‘The First Fleet Piano: Volume Two Appendices’. Note: Volume 1 and 2 are sold as a set ($180 for both) and cannot be purchased separately.
The Ashgate Research Companion to Johann Sebastian Bach provides an indispensable introduction to the Bach research of the past thirty-fifty years. It is not a lexicon providing information on all the major aspects of Bach's life and work, such as the Oxford Composer Companion: J. S. Bach. Nor is it an entry-level research tool aimed at those making a beginning of such studies. The valuable essays presented here are designed for the next level of Bach research and are aimed at masters and doctoral students, as well as others interested in coming to terms with the current state of Bach research. Each author covers three aspects within their specific subject area; firstly, to describe the results of research over the past thirty-fifty years, concentrating on the most significant and controversial, such as: the debate over Smend's NBA edition of the B minor Mass; Blume's conclusions with regard to Bach's religion in the wake of the 'new' chronology; Rifkin's one-to-a-vocal-part interpretation; the rediscovery of the Berlin Singakademie manuscripts in Kiev; the discovery of hitherto unknown manuscripts and documents and the re-evaluation of previously known sources. Secondly, each author provides a critical analysis of current research being undertaken that is exploring new aspects, reinterpreting earlier assumptions, and/or opening-up new methodologies. For example, Martin W. B. Jarvis has suggested that Anna Magdalena Bach composed the cello suites and contributed to other works of her husband - another controversial hypothesis, whose newly proposed forensic methodology requires investigation. On the other hand, research into Bach's knowledge of the Lutheran chorale tradition is currently underway, which is likely to shed more light on the composer's choices and usage of this tradition. Thirdly, each author identifies areas that are still in need of investigation and research.
Reverence for J. S. Bach's music and its towering presence in our cultural memory have long affected how people hear his works. In his own time, however, Bach stood as just another figure among a number of composers, many of them more popular with the music-loving public. Eschewing the great composer style of music history, Andrew Talle takes us on a journey that looks at how ordinary people made music in Bach's Germany. Talle focuses in particular on the culture of keyboard playing as lived in public and private. As he ranges through a wealth of documents, instruments, diaries, account ledgers, and works of art, Talle brings a fascinating cast of characters to life. These individuals--amateur and professional performers, patrons, instrument builders, and listeners--inhabited a lost world, and Talle's deft expertise teases out the diverse roles music played in their lives and in their relationships with one another. At the same time, his nuanced re-creation of keyboard playing's social milieu illuminates the era's reception of Bach's immortal works.
What does the sublime sound like? Miranda Stanyon traces competing varieties of the sublime, a crucial modern aesthetic category, as shaped by the antagonistic intimacies between music and language. In resounding the history of the sublime over the course of the long eighteenth century, she finds a phenomenon always already resonant.
The second son of Johann Sebastian Bach, C.P.E. Bach was an important composer in his own right, as well as a writer and performer on keyboard instruments. He composed roughly a thousand works in all the leading genres of the period, with the exception of opera, and Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven all acknowledged his influence. He was also the author of a two-volume encyclopedic book about performance on keyboard instrument. C.P.E. Bach and his music have always been the subject of significant scholarship and publication but interest has sharply increased over the past two or three decades from performers as well as music historians. This volume incorporates important writings not only on the composer and his chief works but also on theoretical issues and performance questions. The focus throughout is on relatively recent scholarship otherwise available only in hard-to-access sources.
Mozart's piano sonatas are among the most familiar of his works and stand alongside those of Haydn and Beethoven as staples of the pianist's repertoire. In this study, John Irving looks at a wide selection of contextual situations for Mozart's sonatas, focusing on the variety of ways in which they assume identities and achieve meanings. In particular, the book seeks to establish the provisionality of the sonatas' notated texts, suggesting that the texts are not so much identifiers as possibilities and that their identity resides in the usage. Close attention is paid to reception matters, analytical approaches, organology, the role of autograph manuscripts, early editions and editors, and aspects of historical performance practice - all of which go beyond the texts in opening windows onto Mozart's sonatas. Treating the sonatas collectively as a repertoire, rather than as individual works, the book surveys broad thematic issues such as the role of historical writing about music in defining a generic space for Mozart's sonatas, their construction within pedagogical traditions, the significance of sound as opposed to sight in these works (and in particular their sound on fortepianos of the later eighteenth-century) , and the creative role of the performer in their representation beyond the frame of the text. Drawing together and synthesizing this wealth of material, Irving provides an invaluable reference source for those already familiar with this repertoire.
The fathers of modern freemasonry sought a classical pedigree for their rituals and forms of association. This volume offers the first academic study of how freemasons writing in the first half of the 18th century deployed their knowledge of antiquity to bolster this claim and how the creative literature of the period reflected their ideas. The scholarly investigation of freemasonry is a relatively new phenomenon. The writings of active freemasons tend either to generate new masonic myths or to focus on the minutiae of insignia, rank, and ritual. Only in the last 50 years have non-masons given serious thought to freemasonry as a social practice and to its place within the intellectual and political life of Enlightenment Europe and beyond. Study of masonic elements in literary texts lags much further behind. This volume offers the first English translations of three mid-18th century comedies on female curiosity about this exclusively male order and shows how they reflect contemporary attempts to forge a link with ancient mystery cult. The theatrical aspect of masonic ritual and the ancient mysteries is examined in depth. This volume opens up important new ground in classical reception and 18th century theatre history.
