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"This edition presents for the first time most of the surviving ballet music performed at Mannheim in the 1760s and 1770s. Each ballet is complete and newly engraved in full score and includes an introduction to the music, translations of scenarios, and information on the sources, composers, ballet masters and other pertinent historical background"--Pref.
Central to the repertoire of Western art music since the 18th century, the symphony has come to be regarded as one of the ultimate compositional challenges. In his five-volume series The Symphonic Repertoire, the late A. Peter Brown explores the symphony from its 18th-century beginnings to the end of the 20th century. In Volume 1, The Eighteenth-Century Symphony, 22 of Brown's former students and colleagues collaborate to complete the work that he began on this critical period of development in symphonic history. The work follows Brown's outline, is organized by country, and focuses on major composers. It includes a four-chapter overview and concludes with a reframing of the symphonic narrative. Contributors address issues of historiography, the status of research, and questions of attribution and stylistic traits, and provide background material on the musical context of composition and early performances. The volume features a CD of recordings from the Bloomington Early Music Festival Orchestra, highlighting the largely unavailable repertoire discussed in the book.
The family into which Mozart was born has never received a rigorous contextual study which does justice to the complexity of its relationships or to its interactions with colleagues, friends, and neighbours in Mozarts native city, Salzburg. Most biographies of Mozart have undervalued the manypassages in the rich family correspondence which do not bear directly on him. This book draws on the neglected material, most of which has never been translated into English. At the heart of the work is a detailed examination of the letters, supplemented by little-known archival material from thepapers of the Berchtold family, into which Mozarts sister Nannerl married. Additional information concerning S...
Twelve-tone and serial music were dominant forms of composition following World War II and remained so at least through the mid-1970s. In 1961, Ann Phillips Basart published the pioneering bibliographic work in the field.
Giving special attention to contemporary recordings and performances which show Mozart's symphonies in their best light, this study explains how his individual sound is achieved, considers problems of eighteenth-century instrumentation, and advances new theories on the composer's life.
A comprehensive study of the clarinet in use through the classical period, 1760 to 1830, a period of intensive musical experimentation. The book provides a detailed review and analysis of construction, design, materials, and makers of clarinets. Rice also explores how clarinet construction and performance practice developed in tandem with the musical styles of the period.
In the German states in the late eighteenth century, women flourished as musical performers and composers, their achievements measuring the progress of culture and society from barbarism to civilization. Female excellence, and related feminocentric values, were celebrated by forward-looking critics who argued for music as a fine art, a component of modern, polite, and commercial culture, rather than a symbol of institutional power. In the eyes of such critics, femininity—a newly emerging and primarily bourgeois ideal—linked women and music under the valorized signs of refinement, sensibility, virtue, patriotism, luxury, and, above all, beauty. This moment in musical history was eclipsed ...
In "The Orchestra and Its Instruments," Esther Singleton offers a comprehensive exploration of the symphonic ensemble, deftly illuminating the roles, timbres, and histories of each instrument that comprises the orchestra. Singleton's descriptive prose and insightful commentary engage readers in a journey through musical anatomy, blending aesthetic appreciation with technical knowledge. This work, published during the early 20th century, stands as a key contribution to musicology, reflecting the era's burgeoning interest in orchestral music, its cultural significance, and the democratization of musical education. Esther Singleton was a prolific author and editor, renowned for her passion for ...
Idomeneo, by common consent Mozart's greatest serious opera, is a rich synthesis of the dramatic potentialities of Italian opera seria, French tragedie lyrique, and recent German opera. It was composed for the finest orchestra in Germany and some excellent singers. Mozart's relish of the challenge and his problems with some performers and the bureaucracy are uniquely documented in his letters home and these form the basis here of a vivid account of the genesis of the opera. A detailed synopsis relates the musical and dramatic action of the opera, while further chapters trace the historical development of its subject-matter 'from myth to libretto' and chart the opera's performance history, including a description of Richard Strauss's 1931 reworking. Later chapters consider the opera's general structure and musical forms, and analyze passages of particular interest.
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