In 1933 choreographer George Balanchine and impresario Lincoln Kirstein embarked on an elusive quest to found a ballet company and school in the United States. Though their efforts would eventually re
Marie Sumner Lott examines the music available to musical consumers in the nineteenth century, and what that music tells us about their tastes, priorities, and activities. Her social history of chambe
Chamber music includes some of the world's greatest music. It is widely played in homes, without an audience, by players who are mostly amateurs, and much of the repertoire is playable even by tho
First organized in Brussels in 1912 by precocious young Belgian musicians, the Pro Arte String Quartet has survived two world wars and is still performing more than a century later -- a durability uni
This book is the first detailed contextual study of string quartets in Beethoven's Vienna, at a time when that genre reigned supreme among the different chamber genres. Focusing on a key transition pe
Thomas Schuttenhelm provides a detailed account of the events leading up to and throughout the compositional process associated with Michael Tippett’s Fifth String Quartet, and a comprehensive analysi
Zeitmaße is one of a group of four acknowledged masterpieces composed between 1955-57 that together established Karlheinz Stockhausen as the leading figure in the European avant-garde. Of the four wo
Experiencing the Violin Concerto explores the violin concerto from Vivaldi's "Four Seasons" to Bartók and beyond, the social and personal histories of unforgettable virtuosi, the wonderful i
Christopher Fox (1955) has emerged as one of the most fascinating composers of the post-war generation. His spirit of experimentalism pervades an oeuvre in which he has blithely created his own versio
What does it mean to talk about musical coherence at the end of a century characterised by fragmentation and discontinuity? How can the diverse influences which stand behind the works of many late-twe
In 1829 Goethe famously described the string quartet as 'a conversation among four intelligent people'. Inspired by this metaphor, Edward Klorman's study draws on a wide variety of documentary and iconographic sources to explore Mozart's chamber works as 'the music of friends'. Illuminating the meanings and historical foundations of comparisons between chamber music and social interplay, Klorman infuses the analysis of sonata form and phrase rhythm with a performer's sensibility. He develops a new analytical method called multiple agency that interprets the various players within an ensemble as participants in stylized social intercourse - characters capable of surprising, seducing, outwitting, and even deceiving one another musically. This book is accompanied by online resources that include original recordings performed by the author and other musicians, as well as video analyses that invite the reader to experience the interplay in time, as if from within the ensemble.
Though many consider Beethoven one of the greatest symphonists of all time, his sixteen string quartet compositions are masterpieces in their own right, among the most extraordinary and challenging pi
Miles Davis’s Bitches Brew is one of the most iconic albums in American music, the preeminent landmark and fertile seedbed of jazz-fusion. Fans have been fortunate in the past few years to gain access
It was 1969, and Miles Davis, prince of cool, was on the edge of being left behind by a dynamic generation of young musicians, an important handful of whom had been in his band. Rock music was flying
When he died suddenly at the age of twenty-six, Otis Redding (1941-1967) had already become the conscience of a new kind of music. Sure, Berry Gordy might have built the first black-owned music empire
In Chamber Music: An Extensive Guide for Listeners,Lucy Miller Murray transforms her decades of program notes for some of the world’s most distinguished artists and presenters into the go-to guide for
Selections from the famous musicologist's acclaimed Essays in Musical Analysiscomprise surveys of Bach's "Goldberg" Variations and Art of the Fugue plus works by Haydn, Mozart, Beeth
