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Consolidates the research field of topic theory by clarifying its basic concepts and exploring its historical foundations.
Combining historical music theory with the cognitive study of music, Playing with Meter traces metric manipulations and strategies in Haydn and Mozart's string chamber music from 1787 to 1791. Her analysis shed new light on this repertoire and redefine the role of meter and rhythm in Classical music.
"This book presents a systematic discussion of hypermeter and phrase structure in eighteenth-century music. It combines perspectives from historical and modern music theory with insights from the cognitive study of music and introduces a dynamic model of hypermeter, which allows the analyst to trace the effect of hypermetric manipulations in real time. This model is applied in analyses of string chamber music by Haydn and Mozart. The analyses shed a new light upon this celebrated musical repertoire, but the aim of this book goes far beyond an analytical survey of specific compositions. Rather, it is to give a comprehensive account of the ways in which phrase structure and hypermeter were described by eighteenth-century music theorists, conceived by eighteenth-century composers, and perceived by eighteenth-century listeners"--
Singing in Signs: New Semiotic Explorations of Opera offers a bold and refreshing assessment of the state of opera study that engages composer-constructed and work-specific music-semiotic systems, broader socio-cultural music codes, and narrative strategies, with implications for performance and staging practices today.
An innovative study of the ways performance influenced Mozart’s compositional style. We know Mozart as one of history’s greatest composers. But his contemporaries revered him as a multi-instrumentalist, a dazzling improviser, and the foremost keyboard virtuoso of his time. When he composed, it was often with a single aim in mind: to set the stage, quite literally, for compelling and captivating performances. He wrote piano concertos not with an eye to posterity but to give himself a repertoire with which to flaunt his keyboard wizardry before an awestruck public. The same was true of his sonatas, string quartets, symphonies, and operas, all of which were painstakingly crafted to produce ...
Offering a concise introduction to one of the most important and influential piano concertos in the history of Western music, this handbook provides an example of the productive interaction of music history, music theory and music analysis. It combines an account of the work's genesis, Schumann's earlier, unsuccessful attempts to compose in the genre and the evolving conception of the piano concerto evident in his critical writing with a detailed yet accessible analysis of each movement, which draws on the latest research into the theory and analysis of nineteenth-century instrumental forms. This handbook also reconstructs the Concerto's critical reception, performance history in centres including London, Vienna, Leipzig and New York, and its discography, before surveying piano concertos composed under its influence in the century after its completion, including well-known concertos by Brahms, Grieg, Tchaikovsky and Rachmaninov, as well as lesser-known music by Scharwenka, Rubinstein, Beach, Macdowell and Stanford.
The da-da-da-DUM motive from Beethoven's Fifth Symphony is an undeniably evocative moment for any music fan. Whether it be a first foray into classical music, childhood piano lessons, or the soundtrack to a beloved movie scene, this is a moment not easily forgotten. So what makes this andother musical motives so memorable? In Musical Motives, author Brent Auerbachs look at the ways that motives - or the small-scale pitch and rhythm shapes ever-present in music - tie musical compositions together, and why we remember some more than others.Musical motives function like motifs in visual art, tying together sonic space. They repeat frequently, either as perfect copies or with slight variation. W...
Beating Time & Measuring Music in the Early Modern Era chronicles the shifting relationships between ideas about time in music and science from the sixteenth through the early nineteenth centuries. Centered on theories of musical meter, the book investigates the interdependence between theories of meter and conceptualizations of time from the age of Zarlino to the invention of the metronome. These formulations have evolved throughout the history of Western music, reflecting fundamental reevaluations not only of music but also of time itself. Drawing on paradigms from the history of science and technology and the history of philosophy, author Roger Mathew Grant illustrates ways in which theor...
Written by ten leading scholars, this volume assembles studies of eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century music under the broad rubric of communication. That such an impulse motivates musical composition and performance in this period of European musical history is often acknowledged but seldom examined in depth. The book explores a broad set of issues, ranging from the exigencies of the market for books and music in the eighteenth century through to the deployment of dance topoi in musical composition. A number of close readings of individual works by Mozart, Haydn and Beethoven draw on a sophisticated body of historically-appropriate technical resources to illuminate theories of form, metre, bass lines and dance topoi. Students and scholars of music history, theory and analysis will find in this volume a set of challenging, state-of-the-art essays that will stimulate debate about musical meaning and engender further study.
Reveals how the culture and repertoire of the early Viennese ballroom permeated and intersected with other areas of musical life.