Books in the Eastman Studies in Music series

A long-needed and up-to-date overview of the syntax and principles that make Verdi's operas so effective and so beloved today.

This biography of Minna Planer, Richard Wagner's wife of 30 years, reveals her as an artist who was vital to her husband's creative life.

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.

Scholars explore from many fresh angles the interweavings of two of the richest strands of human culture - music and esotericism - with examples from the medieval period to the modern age.

Examines the history of musical self-quotation, and reveals and explores a previously unidentified case of Schubert quoting one of his own songs in a major instrumental work.Enthusiasts and experts have long relished Schubert's quotations of his own music. This study centers on a previously unidentified pairing: "e;Ave Maria,"e; one of his most beloved songs, and the Piano Trio no. 2, a masterpiece that holds a unique position in his career. Messing's Self-Quotation in Schubert interrogates the concept of self-quotation from the standpoints of terminology and authorial intent, and it demonstrates, for the first time, how Schubert's practice of self-quotation relates to prevailing practices in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Messing goes on to analyze in detail the musical relationships between the two works and to investigate thecircumstances that led Schubert to compose each of them. "e;Ave Maria"e; is one of the few Schubert songs for which we have documentation of some early private performances, and the trio stood at the heart of Schubert's only public concert devoted to his works. Messing establishes that Schubert sought to convey an associative meaning with this self-quotation, trusting in his contemporaries' familiarity with the original melody and with Walter Scott's poem, a text that carried profound resonances in Catholic Vienna. Scrutinizing this evidence yields the symbolic purpose behind Schubert's allusion to "e;Ave Maria"e; in the piano trio: honoring the recently deceased Beethoven andvalidating Schubert as his legatee. SCOTT MESSING is Charles A. Dana Professor of Music Emeritus at Alma College.

All-new interviews with 33 of the world's leading composers--from Adams and Crumb to Gubaidulina and Rihm--give unique insights into the creative process.Balint Andras Varga is perhaps the world's most respected interviewer of living composers. For The Courage of Composers and the Tyranny of Taste: Reflections on New Music, Varga has confronted thirty-three composers with quotations carefully chosen to elicit their thoughts about an issue that is crucial for any serious creative artist: How can one find courage to deal with the sometimes tyrannical expectations of the outside world? The result is an imaginary roundtable at which we encounter fresh, revealing, previously unpublished statements from such world-renowned composers as John Adams, Friedrich Cerha, George Crumb, Sofia Gubaidulina, Georg Friedrich Haas, Giya Kancheli, Gyorgy Kurtag, Helmut Lachenmann, Libby Larsen, Robert Morris, and Wolfgang Rihm. Also represented are composers who are becoming more prominent with the passing years -- Chaya Czernowin, Pascal Dusapin, and Rebecca Saunders -- as well as conductor-composer Michael Gielen, festival director Nicholas Kenyon, and music critics Paul Griffiths and Arnold Whittall. In The Courage of Composers and the Tyranny of Taste, composers and other insightful individuals comment on choices made, traps avoided, unforeseen consequences, proud accomplishments, occasional regrets: the whole range of experiences central to artistic creativity. Balint Andras Varga isthe acclaimed author of Gyorgy Kurtag: Three Interviews and Ligeti Homages; Three Questions for 65 Composers; and From Boulanger to Stockhausen: Interviews and a Memoir (all available from University of Rochester Press).

A pathbreaking study of the Parisian press's attempts to claim Richard Wagner's place in French history and imagination during the unstable and conflict-ridden years of the Third Reich. Richard Wagner was a polarizing figure in France from the time that he first entered French musical life in the mid nineteenth century. Critics employed him to symbolize everything from democratic revolution to authoritarian antisemitism. During periods of Franco-German conflict, such as the Franco-Prussian War and World War I, Wagner was associated in France with German nationalism and chauvinism. This association has led to the assumption that, with the advent of the Third Reich, the French once again rejected Wagner.Drawing on hundreds of press sources and employing close readings, this book seeks to explain a paradox: as the German threat grew more tangible from 1933, the Parisian press insisted on seeing in Wagner a universality that transcended his Germanness. Repudiating the notion that Wagner stood for Germany, French critics attempted to reclaim his role in their own national history and imagination.Claiming Wagner for France: Music and Politics in the Parisian Press, 1933-1944 reveals how the concept of a universal Wagner, which was used to challenge the Nazis in the 1930s, was gradually transformed into the infamous collaborationist rhetoric promoted by the Vichy government and exploited by the Nazis between 1940 and 1944. Rachel Orzech's study offers a close examination of Wagner's place in France's cultural landscape at this time, contributing to our understanding of how the French grappled with one of the most challenging periods in their history.

A bold application of the concept of "e;canonical"e; works to the development of French operatic and concert life in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.This long-awaited book by a leading historian of European music life offers a fresh reading of concert and operatic life by showing how certain musical works in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century France came to be considered "e;canonic"e;: that is, admirable and worthy of being taken as models. In a series of interlinked essays, William Weber draws particular attention to the ways in which such reputations could shift in different eras and circumstances. The first chapter outlines how such a surge of reputation came about for Jean-Baptiste Lully after his death in 1687, followed a century later by one for the operas of Christoph-Willibald Gluck and Niccolo Piccinni. Next, Beverly Wilcox contributes a crucial chapter exploring how a canon of sacred works evolved at the Concert Spirituel between 1725 and 1790. Subsequent chapters detail the rise of an "e;incipient canon"e; for Joseph Haydn's music in the 1780s; a new operatic canon centered on works of Gioachino Rossini and Giacomo Meyerbeer; a century-long canonic repertory at the theater of the Opera-Comique; and, between 1860 and 1914, frequent concert performances of excerpts from Wagner's operas, sometimes along with excerpts from Meyerbeer's. Throughout, Weber and Wilcox demonstrate how the French musical press reflected musical taste, and also shaped it, across two centuries.

Guides modern performers and scholars through the intricacies of German Baroque metric theory, via analyses of treatises and organ music by J.S. Bach and other leading composers, such as Buxtehude, Bruhns, and Weckman.Before the advent of the metronome ca. 1800, there was little in the way of a standardized, commonly accessible method for precisely communicating how fast musical compositions should be performed. Instead of absolute time (that is, plottable on a metronome), Baroque musicians developed notational cues for relative speed: this was accomplished primarily through combinations of time signatures and note values. Julia Dokter's Tempo and Tactus in the German Baroque helps decode these tempo cues for modern performers.Part 1 investigates metric theory in music treatises from roughly 1600 to 1790. Parts 2 and 3 explore the organ scores of pivotal composers such as J. S. Bach, Dieterich Buxtehude, Matthias Weckman, and Nicolaus Bruhns, and present case studies demonstrating how Baroque tempo indications may interact in performance situations. Readers will discover how Baroque musicians modified the Renaissance mensural system to incorporate tempo shifts; how the various duple, triple, and compound meters interrelated; how the technical display of stylus phantasticus writing affected tempo; how tempo words (such as allegro) functioned; and how the choice of performing forces-chorus, solo keyboard, and so on-could affect the way tempo was notated. By addressing questions of tempo fundamental to German Baroque music, this book lays important groundwork for organists and for performers of other instrumental music of this period.

A practical but scholarly guide to Japanese instruments by one of the country's leading composers.The unique sounds of the biwa, shamisen, and other traditional instruments from Japan are heard more and more often in works for the concert hall and opera house. Composing for Japanese Instruments is a practical orchestration and instrumentation manual with contextual and relevant historical information for composers who wish to learn how to compose for traditional Japanese instruments. Widely regarded as the authoritative text on the subject in Japan and China, it contains hundreds of musical examples, diagrams, photographs, and fingering charts. Many of the musical examples can be heard on a companion website. The book also contains valuable appendices, one of works author Minoru Miki composed using Japanese traditional instruments, and one of works by other composers -- including Toru Takemitsu and Henry Cowell -- using these instruments. Minoru Miki was a composer of international renown, recognized in Japan as a pioneer in writing for Japanese traditional instruments. Marty Regan is associate professor of music at Texas A&M University. Philip Flavin is associate professor at the Osaka University of Economicsand Law and adjunct senior research associate of Monash University in Melbourne, Australia.

Explores the influence of anthropological theories, travel literature, psychology, and other intellectual trends on the perception of non-Western music and elucidates the roots of today's field of ethnomusicology.Bennett Zon's Representing Non-Western Music in Nineteenth-Century Britain is the first book to situate non-Western music within the intellectual culture of nineteenth-century Britain. It covers many crucial issues -- race,orientalism, otherness, evolution -- and explores the influence of important anthropological theories on the perception of non-Western music. The book also considers a wide range of other writings of the period, from psychology and travel literature to musicology and theories of musical transcription, and it reflects on the historically problematic term "e;ethnomusicology."e; Representing Non-Western Music discusses such theories as noble simplicity, monogenism and polygenism, the comparative method, degenerationism, and developmentalism. Zon looks at the effect of evolutionism on the musical press, general music histories, and histories of national music. He also treats the work of Charles Samuel Myers, the first Britain to record non-Western music in the field, and explores how A. H. Fox Strangways used contemporary translation theory as an analogy for transcription in The Music of Hindostan (1914) to show that individuality can be retained by embracing foreign elements rather than adapting them to Western musical style. Bennett Zon is Reader in Music and Fellow of the Institute of Advanced Study, DurhamUniversity UK and author of Music and Metaphor in Nineteenth-Century British Musicology (Ashgate, 2000).

Interdisciplinary perspectives on the life and work of the esteemed "e;ultra-modern"e; American composer and pioneering folk music activist, Ruth Crawford Seeger (1901-1953).Ruth Crawford Seeger's Worlds offers new perspectives on the life and pioneering musical activities of American composer and folk music activist Ruth Crawford Seeger (1901-1953). Ruth Crawford developed a unique modernist style with such now-esteemed works as her String Quartet 1931. In 1933, after marrying Charles Seeger, she turned to the work of teaching music to children and of transcribing, arranging, and publishing folk songs. Thiscollection of studies by musicologists, music theorists, folklorists, historians, music educators, and women's studies scholars reveals how innovation and tradition have intertwined in surprising ways to shape the cultural landscape of twentieth-century America. Contributors: Lyn Ellen Burkett, Melissa J. De Graaf, Taylor A. Greer, Lydia Hamessley, Bess Lomax Hawes, Jerrold Hirsch, Roberta Lamb, Carol J. Oja, Nancy Yunhwa Rao, Joseph N. Straus,Judith Tick. Ray Allen (Brooklyn College) is author of Singing in the Spirit: African-American Sacred Quartets in New York City. Ellie M. Hisama (Columbia University) is author of Gendering Musical Modernism: The Music of Ruth Crawford Seeger, Marion Bauer, and Miriam Gideon.

Revealing unpublished interviews with John Cage and some of his closest colleagues, including Virgil Thomson, Karlheinz Stockhausen, Pauline Oliveros, Merce Cunningham, and David Tudor.John Cage was one of America's most renowned composers from the 1940s until his death in 1992. But he was also a much-admired writer and artist, and a uniquely attractive personality able to present his ideas engagingly wherever he went. As an interview subject he was a consummate professional. The main source of CageTalk: Dialogues with and about John Cage is a panoply of vivid and compulsively readable interviews given to Peter Dickinson in the late 1980s for a BBC Radio 3 documentary. The original BBC program lasted an hour, but the full discussions with Cage and many of the main figures connected with him were not published until the first edition of this book.CageTalk also includes earlier BBC interviews with Cage, including ones by the renowned literary critic Frank Kermode and art critic David Sylvester. And Dickinson, the editor of this volume, contributes little-known source material about Cage's Musicircus and Roaratorio as well as a substantial introduction exploring the multiple roles that Cage's varied and challenging output played during much of the twentieth century and continuesto play in the early twenty-first. Apart from the long interview with Cage himself, there are discussions with Bonnie Bird, Earle Brown, Merce Cunningham, Minna Lederman, Otto Luening, Jackson Mac Low, Peadar Mercier, Pauline Oliveros, John Rockwell, Kurt Schwertsik, Karlheinz Stockhausen, Virgil Thomson, David Tudor, La Monte Young, and Paul Zukovsky. Most of the interviews were given to Peter Dickinson but there are others involving Rebecca Boyle,Anthony Cheevers, Michael Oliver, and Roger Smalley. Peter Dickinson, British composer and pianist, is Emeritus Professor, University of Keele and University of London, and has written or edited several books about twentieth-century music, including Copland Connotations [Boydell Press, 2002] and The Music of Lennox Berkeley [Boydell Press, 2003].

A curated collection of Enlightenment operas, paintings, and literary works that were all marked by the "Telemacomania" scandal, a furious cultural frenzy with dangerous political stakes.

This book is a philosophical tour through the experience of beauty: what it is, and how the composer, performer, and listener all contribute. It explores -- with insight, patience, and humor -- profound issues at the essence of our experience. A student performance of Beethoven's String Quartet No. 10 in E-Flat Major, known as the "Harp," serves as a point of departure and a recurring theme. For the layperson the core of the book is five dialogues betweenIcarus, an inquiring student intensely concerned with fulfilling his highest potential as a musician, and Daedalus, a curmudgeonly, iconoclastic teacher who guides Icarus's search. Three technical articles, geared to the music professional and academic, treat the issues in greater depth. Supplementary online audio files and musical examples. Markand Thakar, music director of the Baltimore Chamber Orchestra, is an internationally renownedpedagogue of conducting. A protégé of the legendary Sergiu Celibidache and former assistant conductor of the New York Philharmonic, Thakar is author of On the Principles and Practice of Conducting (University of RochesterPress, 2016) and Counterpoint: Fundamentals of Music Making (Yale University Press, 1990).

A new, deeply researched biography of the great French organist, who composed some of the best-loved works in the organ repertory -- and the masterful Requiem.

The pathbreaking revival in Paris ca. 1900 of long-neglected operas by Mozart, Gluck, and Rameau -- and what this meant to French audiences, critics, and composers.

One of Europe's foremost experts on early guitar music explores this little known but richly rewarding repertoire.

Brings to light the life and work of one of France's most distinguished musicians in the most complete biography in any language of Charles-Marie Widor.

The first thorough theoretical study of Janacek's compositions, focusing on motivic and rhythmic structure and identifying elements that give the music coherence, character, and interest.

Uniquely revealing interviews with one of the world's greatest living composers.

Compulsively readable interviews with the great American composer and his friends and colleagues, including Aaron Copland, Virgil Thomson, and Leontyne Price.

A new theory of musical analysis from an award-winning author, with six detailed analyses of works from Beethoven to today.

An innovative and incisive reassessment of a seminal figure in nineteenth-century musical life, through a fresh consideration of his aesthetic, critical, and autobiographical writings.

Tells the forgotten story of post-Rossinian opera buffa, with attention to masterpieces by Donizetti and fascinating comic works by Luigi Ricci, the young Verdi, and other composers.

Few bodies of Western music are as widely respected, studied, and emulated as the fugues of Johann Sebastian Bach. Despite the esteem which Bach's contributions brought to the genre, however, the origin and early history of the fugue remain poorly understood. This work addresses both the history and methodology of the pre-Bach fugue.

The previously unpublished autobiography and additional essays by the orchestrator-composer of some of America's most important musical theatre productions.