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Erik Satie remains one of the most bizarre figures in music history, yet everything he did has its own curious logic, once it can be perceived. In this important new study Dr Orledge reveals what made Satie 'tick' as a composer, dealing with every aspect of Satie's complex career and relating his achievement to the other arts and to the society in which he lived. Almost every figure in contemporary art was involved with Satie in some way or another, from Matisse and Picasso to Apollinaire, Cocteau and Brancusi. This, however, is no mere life-and-works study but rather an exploration of the technique behind Satie's art, which foreshadowed most of the 'advances' of twentieth-century music from serialism to minimalism, and even muzak. As the book progresses Satie appears as far more than just the composer of the popular Gymnopédies and Parade.
Debussy and the Theatre means, in effect, 'Debussy and Pellias et Milisande', the opera both established Debussy's mature style and changed the course of operatic history.
From Gymnopedies to the scandalous ballet Relache, Erik Satie's creations are paradoxical and extraordinary, and the mask the composer created for himself was as deliberately ambiguous as his music. This biography, published to tie in with the 70th anniversary of Satie's death, includes evidence and reminiscences from a wide variety of acquaintances, friends, fellow artists and antagonists. More than half the extracts in the book appear in English for the first time.
Often considered the father of twentieth-century music, Debussy was a visionary whose influence is still felt. This book offers a wide-ranging series of essays on Debussy the man, the musician and composer. It contains insights into his character, his relationship to his Parisian environment and his musical works across all genres, with challenging views on the roles of nature and eroticism in his life and music. His music is considered through the characteristic themes of sonority, rhythm, tonality and form, with closing chapters considering the performance and reception of his music in the first years of the new century and our view of Debussy today as a major force in Western culture. This comprehensive view of Debussy is written by a team of specialists for students and informed music lovers.
In 1942 Wilfrid Mellers classed Koechlin "among the select number of contemporary composers who really matter," yet it is only in the 1980s that Koechlin has begun to achieve the recognition he deserves as a composer of breadth, vision and powerful originality: a pioneer of polytonality and a master orchestrator who was greatly admired by contemporaries such as Faure, Debussy, Satie and Milhaud. Lavishly illustrated with photographic and musical examples, this book provides the first comprehensive evaluation of Koechlin's life and works. As well as concentrating on major symphonic works like Koechlin's Jungle Book cycle, it also discusses his attraction to the early sound film and the music inspired by such stars as Lilian Harvey, Marlene Dietrich and Charlie Chaplin in the 1930s. Koechlin's career provides a fascinating study of the triumph of integrity and independence over almost overwhelming odds, and is rich and varied output offers a veritable treasure-trove for performers, scholars and enthusiasts alike.
Some of Debussy's most beloved pieces, as well as lesser-known ones from his early years, set in a rich cultural context by leading experts from the English- and French-speaking worlds. The music of Claude Debussy has always been widely beloved by listeners and performers alike, more perhaps than that of any of the other pioneers of musical modernism. However rich in itself, his creative output also participated, and continues to participate, in a network of cultural connections, the scope and meaning of which can only be gleaned through multiple interpretive frameworks. Debussy's Resonance offers twenty new studies by some of themost active and respected English- and French-language scholar...
Is business, for music, a regrettable necessity or a spur to creativity? Are there limits to the influence that economic factors can or should exert on the musical imagination and its product? In the eleven essays contained in this book the authors wrestle with these questions from the perspective of their chosen area of research. The range is wide: from 1700 to the present day; from the opera house to the community centre; from composers, performers and pedagogues to managers, publishers and lawyers; from piano miniatures to folk music and pop CDs. If there is a consensus, it is that music serves its own interests best when it harnesses business rather than denying it.
French Music Since Berlioz explores key developments in French classical music during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. This volume draws on the expertise of a range of French music scholars who provide their own perspectives on particular aspects of the subject. D dre Donnellon's introduction discusses important issues and debates in French classical music of the period, highlights key figures and institutions, and provides a context for the chapters that follow. The first two of these are concerned with opera in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries respectively, addressed by Thomas Cooper for the nineteenth century and Richard Langham Smith for the twentieth. Timothy Jones's chapte...
This edited volume explores the dialogue between art and music with that of mystical currents at the turn of the twentieth century. The volume draws on the most current research from both art historians and musicologists to present an interdisciplinary approach to the study of mysticism’s historical importance. The chapters in this edited volume gauge the scope of different interpretations of mysticism and illuminate how an exchange between the sister arts unveil an underlying stream of metaphysical, supernatural, and spiritual ideas over the course of the century. Case studies include Charles Tournemire, Joseph Péladan, Erik Satie, Hilma af Klint, Jean Sibelius, František Kupka, and Wassily Kandinsky. The contributors’ unique theoretical perspectives and disciplinary methodologies offer expert insight on both the rewards and inevitable aesthetic complications that arise when one artform meets another. The book will be of interest to scholars working in art history, musicology, visual culture, and mysticism.
This introduction provides students and scholars with the information and skills they need when studying composers' sketches.