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Addresses the ways that writers, musicians, philosophers, politicians, critics, and scholars speak of music from varying standpoints and in varying ways
This book explores the ways in which music can engender religious experience, by virtue of its ability to evoke the ineffable and affect how the world is open to us. Arguing against approaches that limit the religious significance of music to an illustrative function, The Extravagance of Music sets out a more expansive and optimistic vision, which suggests that there is an ‘excess’ or ‘extravagance’ in both music and the divine that can open up revelatory and transformative possibilities. In Part I, David Brown argues that even in the absence of words, classical instrumental music can disclose something of the divine nature that allows us to speak of an experience analogous to contem...
Are there "missing links", links that are "easy to miss" between art and religion and between the ways in which they respond to or partake of reality? The hypothesis of this anthology is that these in fact do exist and its authors explore these links on the basis of a specific text or oeuvre, a specific artwork or exhibition. Following an introductory essay exploring the discussion on relating art and religion, there are artides on Jannis Kounellis and Andrew Forster, on plays by William Shakespeare, Gerard Jan Rijnders and Anny van Hoof, on an exhibition curated by Julia Kristeva. There is an analysis of a novel by Frederic Buechner and one of the autobiographical writings of Dorothy Day. Poems of M. Vasalis and Judith Herzberg are considered, along with the music of Olivier Messiaen and Plato's dialogue 'Sophist'.
Religion and Pastness examines the implications of the Augustinian concept of time as favoring a-causality over linear continuity. From this viewpoint the various essays address problems of dynamics and stasis in texts, paintings and music ranging from Augustine to Abelard, Eriugena, Thoreau, Calvin, Shakespeare, Rubens, Bach, Stravinsky, Messiaen, Virginia Woolf, Cavell.
Recognized as one of the most innovative and influential directors of our time, Peter Sellars has produced acclaimed—and often controversial—versions of many beloved operas and oratorios. He has also collaborated with several composers, including John C. Adams and Kaija Saariaho, to create challenging new operas. The Passions of Peter Sellars follows the development of his style, beginning with his interpretations of the Mozart-Da Ponte operas, proceeding to works for which he assembled the libretti and even the music, and concluding with his celebrated stagings of Bach’s passions with the Berlin Philharmonic. Many directors leave the musical aspects of opera entirely to the singers an...
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Later life is a fraught topic in our commercialized, anti-aging, death-denying culture. Where does creativity fit in? The canonical composers whose stories are told in this book--Giuseppe Verdi (1813-1901), Richard Strauss (1864-1949), Olivier Messiaen (1908-1992), and Benjamin Britten (1913-1976)--offer radically individual responses to that question. In their late years, each of these national icons wrote an opera around which coalesced major issues about their own creativity and aging, ranging from declining health to the critical expectations that accompany success and long artistic careers. They also had to deal with the social, political and aesthetic changes of their time, including W...
Over three decades, Paul Griffiths's survey has remained the definitive study of music since the Second World War; this fully revised and updated edition re-establishes Modern Music and After as the preeminent introduction to the music of our time. The disruptions of the war, and the struggles of the ensuing peace, were reflected in the music of the time: in Pierre Boulez's radical reformation of compositional technique and in John Cage's development of zen music; in Milton Babbitt's settling of the serial system and in Dmitry Shostakovich's unsettling symphonies; in Karlheinz Stockhausen's development of electronic music and in Luigi Nono's pursuit of the universally human, in Iannis Xenaki...
Eleven international scholars analyse key works by Sir James MacMillan, and contextualise his unique musical-theological approach.
The first substantial volume in English to explore the impact of Arvo Pärt on contemporary music and culture.