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The first biography of the composer Gérard Grisey shows how the artist's sensuality and rigor came together to form the musical genre known as spectralism. The French composer Gérard Grisey (1946-98) changed the course of music history with his small but potent output. Labeled "spectral" music, his compositions looked to the physics of sound and the capacities of human perception for material and inspiration. Born in Belfort, Grisey was the son of a French Resistance veteran turned car mechanic and a homemaker. His first instrument was as humble as his background: the accordion. But Grisey rose from his provincial background to the heights of his profession. This first biography of Grisey ...
Presented in six contrasting and complementary pairs, the essays treat such matters as Berlioz's aesthetics and what it means to write about the meaning of his music; the political implications of his fiction and the affinities of his projects as composer and as critic; what the Germans thought of his work before his travels in Germany and what the English made of him when he visited their capital city. We learn in explicit detail how Berlioz deployed the mezzo-soprano voice, what he seems to have written immediately after encountering Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet (a surprise), and where he benefited from Beethoven in what later became Romeo et Juliette.
Focuses on the operatic soprano as the diva and her relationships with technology from the 1820s to the digital age.
In his lifetime, the opera composer Fromental Halévy was considered the leader of the French school; his admirers included Wagner, Berlioz, and later Mahler. Today, he is chiefly remembered for his grand tragic opera La Juive (Paris, 1835), a unique work exploring the nature of freedom, faith, and tolerance. It has enjoyed rediscovery in recent times, and its perennial challenge to our presuppositions makes it a work of intense artistic significance. Halevy worked in the heady context of Paris after the 1830 Revolution and before the debacle of 1870—when the French capital was at the centre of the operatic world. He wrote some 30 operas in the established genres of grand opéra and opéra...
In this translation of the groundbreaking Le Chant Intime, internationally renowned baritone François Le Roux, in conversation with journalist Romain Raynaldy, presents a master class on French art song, with a thorough analysis of 60 selected songs that deviate from the traditionally narrow repertoire of the mélodie genre. Taking an approach that goes far beyond the typical limiting conventions, Le Roux and Raynaldy adhere to composer Francis Poulenc's principle that a song should always be a love affair, not an arranged marriage. Neither theoretical nor purely academic, this guide instills in its readers a deep appreciation for the historical and artistic context of each piece by enrichi...
Sacred Sounds, Secular Spaces provides the first fundamental reconsideration of music's role in the relationship between the French state and the Catholic Church in the Third Republic, revealing how composers and critics from often opposing ideological factions undermined the secular/sacred binary through composition and musical performance.
The 1889 Exposition universelle in Paris is famous as a turning point in the history of French music, and modern music generally. This book explores the ways in which music was used, exhibited, listened to, and written about during the Exposition universelle. It also reveals the sociopolitical uses of music in France during the 19th century.
Hélène Seydoux establece brillantemente cómo en la ópera, más que en otras formas artísticas –literatura, teatro o cine–, las mujeres reciben el máximo privilegio al otorgar a las cantantes el mayor espacio lírico. Seydoux analiza las grandes óperas de los grandes compositores y trata de buscar un modelo emblemático femenino que sirva como referente común en el ámbito del bel canto, mientras trata de buscar paralelismos con la época, la sociedad, el momento en el que las óperas fueron creadas intentando establecer hasta que punto estas son reflejo de esas condiciones. Porque la ópera también es una interpretación del mundo. La autora, se aleja de la tesis de la musicología y ayuda al lector a descubrir (o a redescubrir) los placeres de la tragedia lírica, la comedia bufa o el drama jocular.
Opera Acts explores a wealth of new historical material about singers in the late nineteenth century and challenges the idea that this was a period of decline for the opera singer. In detailed case studies of four figures - the late Verdi baritone Victor Maurel; Bizet's first Carmen, Célestine Galli-Marié; Massenet's muse of the 1880s and 1890s, Sibyl Sanderson; and the early Wagner star Jean de Reszke - Karen Henson argues that singers in the late nineteenth century continued to be important, but in ways that were not conventionally 'vocal'. Instead they enjoyed a freedom and creativity based on their ability to express text, act and communicate physically, and exploit the era's media. By these and other means, singers played a crucial role in the creation of opera up to the end of the nineteenth century.
Demonstrates the profound impact of The Poems of Ossian on composers of the Romantic Era and later: Beethoven, Schubert, Mendelssohn, Brahms, Massenet, and many others. Beyond Fingal's Cave: Ossian in the Musical Imagination is the first study in English of musical compositions inspired by the poems published in the 1760s and attributed to a purported ancient Scottish bard named Ossian. From around 1780 onwards, the poems stimulated poets, artists, and composers in Europe as well as North America to break away from the formality of the Enlightenment. The admiration for Ossian's poems -shared by Napoleon, Goethe, and Thomas Jefferson - was an important stimulus in the development of Romantici...