Music

After the Golden Age: Romantic Pianism and Modern Performance

Kenneth Hamilton

This book dissects the oft-invoked myth of a romantic Golden Age of Pianism. It discusses the performance-style of great pianists from Liszt to Paderewski and Busoni, and delves into the ... More

This book dissects the oft-invoked myth of a romantic Golden Age of Pianism. It discusses the performance-style of great pianists from Liszt to Paderewski and Busoni, and delves into the far-from-inevitable development of the piano recital. The book recounts how classical concerts evolved from exuberant, sometimes riotous events into the formal, funereal trotting out of predictable pieces they can be today; how an often unhistorical “respect for the score” began to replace pianists' improvizations and adaptations; and how the clinical custom arose that an audience should be seen and not heard. The book chronicles why pianists of the past did not always begin a piece with the first note of the score, nor end with the last. It emphasizes that anxiety over wrong notes is a relatively recent psychosis, and that playing entirely from memory a relatively recent requirement. The book presents a vivid tale of how drastically different are the recitals of the present compared to concerts of the past, and how their own role has diminished from noisily active participants in the concert experience to passive recipients of artistic benediction from the stage. The book's broad message proclaims that there is nothing divinely ordained about our own concert-practices, programming, and piano-performance styles. Many aspects of the modern approach are unhistorical — some laudable, some merely ludicrous. They are also far removed from those fondly remembered as constituting a Golden Age. Less

Amico: The Life of Giovanni Battista Viotti

Warwick Lister

This book is a full-length biography in English of Giovanni Battista Viotti (1755–1824), one of the great violinist-composers in the history of music, and arguably the most influential ... More

This book is a full-length biography in English of Giovanni Battista Viotti (1755–1824), one of the great violinist-composers in the history of music, and arguably the most influential violinist who ever lived. He rose from humble origins as a blacksmith's son in a village near Turin, Italy, and early studies with Gaetano Pugnani, to a triumphant international career, particularly in Paris and London. His multifarious career as concert performer, composer, teacher, opera theater director, and impresario was played out against the backdrop of a dramatically changing world: from the ancien régime patronage of an Italian prince and the Queen of France, Marie Antoinette, to the commercial and box-office–centered institutions of the early 19th century. Viotti's life was intensely dramatic. He knew tragedy as well as success: he was forced to flee the French Revolution, he was exiled from England for an extended period, his attempt to establish himself in business met with failure, and he died heavily in debt. His correspondence with an English family, the Chinnerys, with whom he was intimately associated for the last half of his life, provides an unusually revealing glimpse into his personal life. Viotti's biography is not without its mysteries, among which is his renunciation, twice in his life, of public performance. This study is based on extensive documentary research, much of it here revealed for the first time. Viotti's works are considered in the context of his life. Eleven appendices include translations of various Viotti-related archival documents, and additional information on Viotti's siblings, his places of residence, his violins, his unfinished violin method, and financial matters. Less

Analytical and Cross-Cultural Studies in World Music

Michael Tenzer, John Roeder (eds)

This collection of essays analyzes diverse musical creations with reference to the contexts in which the music is created and performed. The authors explain the music as sound in ... More

This collection of essays analyzes diverse musical creations with reference to the contexts in which the music is created and performed. The authors explain the music as sound in process, through prose, diagrams, transcriptions, recordings, and (online) multimedia presentations, all intended to convey the richness, beauty, and ingenuity of their subjects. The music ranges across geography and cultures—court music of Japan and medieval Europe, pagode song from Brazil, solos by the jazz pianist Thelonius Monk and by the sitar master Budhaditya Mukherjee, form-and-timbre improvisations of a Boston sound collective, South Korean folk drumming, and the ceremonial music of indigenous cultures in North American and Australia. Thus the essays diversify and expand the scope of this book’s companion volume, Analytical Studies in World Music, to all inhabited continents and many of its greatest musical traditions. An introduction and an afterword point out common analytical approaches, and present a new way to classify music according to its temporal organization. Two special chapters consider the juxtaposition of music from different cultures: of world-music traditions and popular music genres, and of Balinese music and European Art music, raising questions about the musical encounters and fusions of today’s interconnected world. Less

Analytical Studies in World Music: Analytical Studies in World Music

Michael Tenzer (ed.)

Combining the approaches of ethnomusicology and music theory, this book offers perspectives for thinking about how musical sounds are shaped, arranged, and composed by their diverse ... More

Combining the approaches of ethnomusicology and music theory, this book offers perspectives for thinking about how musical sounds are shaped, arranged, and composed by their diverse makers worldwide. Eleven in-depth explanations of Iranian sung poetry, Javanese and Balinese gamelan music, Afro-Cuban drumming, Shanghai opera, flamenco, modern American chamber music, Central African group singing, Bulgarian dance tunes, South Indian song, and a Mozart piano concerto create a diverse compendium of music analyses. Through description of contexts of performance and creation, and especially compositional and formal construction, each chapter proposes stimulating ways to hear, conceive, and imagine these repertoires. Selections on the companion recordings are carefully matched with extensive transcriptions and illuminating diagrams in every chapter. Opening rich cross-cultural and comparative perspectives on music, this volume addresses the practical needs of students and scholars in the contemporary world of fusions, contact, borrowing, and curiosity about music everywhere. Less

The Art of Performance

Heinrich Schenker, Irene Schreier Scott

Heribert Esser (ed.)

From early on, Heinrich Schenker was deeply interested in performance. There are many references to a planned publication on performance, there are finished segments and many ... More

From early on, Heinrich Schenker was deeply interested in performance. There are many references to a planned publication on performance, there are finished segments and many miscellaneous related notebook-jottings, but his theoretical writings took precedence over all else and he never completed the book. This book may be taken as a compilation, as is explained in detail in the editor's introduction. It presents what Schenker regarded as one of his main missions: to rectify the direction music performance had taken in his time. He argues that for a meaningful performance of a masterwork the performer must understand the inner workings of the music. Therefore, the many players — largely pianists — who merely use the text to show their own ability do injustice to the music and mislead audiences. This holds true even for those who follow the markings of the composers slavishly but without understanding. In discussing the great composers' modes of notation and showing that their markings only indicate a desired effect, we get highly practical and imaginative advice based on the author's own experience as performing pianist and composer. He covers different aspects of pianistic technique including hand motions, legato and non legato touch, fingering, pedal, and articulation. The discussion of dynamics and tempo are equally valid for all instrumentalists. Throughout, the aim of a free, “singing” performance which comes from having assimilated the music is stressed: it results in true “re-creation”. Less

The Arts of the Prima Donna in the Long Nineteenth Century

Rachel Cowgill, Hilary Poriss (eds)

The female singers who graced the nineteenth-century operatic stage were among the most celebrated women of their era, but they were also among the most transgressive. This book explores ... More

The female singers who graced the nineteenth-century operatic stage were among the most celebrated women of their era, but they were also among the most transgressive. This book explores the means by which this preeminence was negotiated, traversing the musical, the dramatic, and the visual, while addressing more recognizably modern concerns, such as career management, literary representation, and image manipulation. A key theme is the emergence of the diva archetype over the course of the century—a new ideological discourse through which the extremes of operatic female vocality were reinterpreted. Chapters approach the prima donna from the perspectives of cultural history, musicology, gender/sexuality studies, theater and literature studies, and critical theory. Less

The Astaires: Fred & Adele

Kathleen Riley

Before ‘Fred and Ginger’, there was ‘Fred and Adele’, a show business partnership and a cultural sensation like no other. It is difficult in our ‘celebrity’-sated era to comprehend what ... More

Before ‘Fred and Ginger’, there was ‘Fred and Adele’, a show business partnership and a cultural sensation like no other. It is difficult in our ‘celebrity’-sated era to comprehend what a genuine phenomenon the Astaires were. At the height of their success in the mid-1920s the siblings were seasoned transatlantic commuters, ambassadors of an art form they had helped to revolutionize, adored by audiences, feted by royalty, and courted socially by the elite in just about every field of endeavour. They seemed to define the Jazz Age. They were Gershwin’s music in motion; a fascinating pair who wove fascinating rhythms in song and dance. The story of Fred and Adele Astaire is an extraordinary one and is told here in depth and within its historical and theatrical context. It is not merely the first part of Fred’s long and illustrious career; it holds a significance and a fascination of its own, as well as having implications for Astaire’s subsequent career, which have not been fully appreciated. The story of the Astaires is also the story of an era. Born at the close of the nineteenth century, they, in effect, grew up together with the new century. Manifestly children of their time, they glamorously embodied the interwar style they had partly originated. At the same time, their appeal as performers was based largely on their apparent defiance of the darker aspects of the interwar psyche. They were an affirmation of life and hope in the midst of a prevalent crisis of faith and identity. Less

Audacious Euphony: Chromatic Harmony and the Triad's Second Nature

Richard Cohn

Many nineteenth-century theorists viewed triadic distance in terms of common tones and voice-leading proximity, rather than root consonance and mutual diatonic constituency. Audacious ... More

Many nineteenth-century theorists viewed triadic distance in terms of common tones and voice-leading proximity, rather than root consonance and mutual diatonic constituency. Audacious Euphony reconstructs this view and uses it as the basis for a chromatic model of triadic space, developing geometric representations from blueprints of Euler (1739) and Weitzmann (1853). The model renders coherent many passages of romantic music (e.g. of Schubert, Liszt, Brahms, Chopin, Wagner) that are disjunct from the standpoint of classical tonality. Semantic attributes commonly ascribed to romantic music are theorized as the result of incompatibilities between classical and romantic conceptions of triadic distance. The model generalizes to apply to relations among Tristan-genus seventh chords, due to their structural homologies with triads. At the heart of the approach is the observation that major and minor triads are minimal perturbations of perfectly even augmented triads, and that this property underlies their status as voice-leading optimizers. Consonant triads are thus overdetermined, as they are also independently the acoustic optimizers of classical theory. Both consonant triads and Tristan-genus seventh chords are homophonous diamorphs, whose syntactic behaviors and semantic qualities require two distinct theories, as well as a third one that reconciles them in a cognitively plausible way. Among the compositions treated analytically in Audacious Euphony are Schubert “Der Doppelgänger” and “Auf dem Fluße”, his sonatas D. 959 and 960, Chopin’s e-minor prelude, fantasy, and g-minor ballade, Schumann’s Dichterliebe, Liszt’s Consolation #3 and organ Kyrie, Rimsky-Korsakov’s Antar, Fauré’s Requiem, Brahms’s 1st and 2nd Symphonies, Wagner’s Parsifal, Bruckner’s 3rd Symphony, Dvorak’s New World Symphony, and Strauss’s “Frühling.” Less

Bach

Malcolm Boyd

In this book, biographical chapters alternate with commentary on the works of Bach, to demonstrate how the circumstances of Bach's life helped to shape the music he wrote during various ... More

In this book, biographical chapters alternate with commentary on the works of Bach, to demonstrate how the circumstances of Bach's life helped to shape the music he wrote during various periods. The book follows Bach as he travels from Arnstadt and Muhlhausen to Weimar, Cothen, and finally Leipzig. These journeys alternating with insightful discussions of the great composer's organ and orchestral compositions. As well as presenting a rounded picture of Bach, his music, and his posthumous reputation and influence, this book considers the sometimes controversial topics of “parody” and arrangement, number symbolism, and the style and meaning of Bach's late works. Recent theories on the constitution of Bach's performing forces at Leipzig are also present. The text and the appendixes (which include a chronology, personalia, bibliography, and a complete catalogue of Bach's works) are revised in this edition to take account of more recent research undertaken by Bach scholars, including the gold mine of new information uncovered in the former USSR. Less