Books in the Music in Context series

Simon P. Keefe presents a fresh interpretation of one of western music's most celebrated works. The study focuses on historical and current understandings of Mozart's Requiem in fiction, drama, film, criticism and performance, paying special attention to legends surrounding the work, and re-appraises Mozart's musical contributions and completions of the score.

In The Monstrous New Art Anna Zayaruznaya focuses on a group of late medieval musical compositions that foreground monstrous and hybrid creatures and ideas. The book is generously illustrated with figures and music examples, and will be of interest to scholars of music history and fourteenth-century French literature and culture.

In the first detailed contextual study of Beethoven's middle-period quartets, Nancy November explores reception history, early performance practices and aesthetic contexts. Detailed analyses provide new historical understanding of physical, visual, social, ideological and theatrical aspects of this music, offering a fresh critique of key paradigms in current Beethoven studies.

J. P. E. Harper-Scott's book proposes a new theory of musical modernism, bringing contemporary philosophy into contact with music theory and interpretation. It explores the capacity for music to challenge cultural and political ideas and provides a critique of modern music histories.

Rufus Hallmark sets Schumann's famous song cycle in the context of the challenges and social expectations faced by women in early nineteenth-century Germany. His study offers insights on Schumann's composing materials, reception of the song cycle, other contemporary poems about women, and comparisons with other musical settings of the poems.

This unique publication offers fresh perspectives on key manuscript sources of medieval song. In ten chapters, leading experts each treat a single manuscript in detail, offering new findings, essential summaries of each manuscript's contents and historiography, and detailed, accessible analyses of the songs' music and texts.

Maurice Ravel's operas L'Heure espagnole (1907/1911) and L'Enfant et les sortileges (1919-25) are pivotal works in the composer's relatively small A uvre. Emerging from periods shaped by very distinct musical concerns and historical circumstances, these two vastly different works nevertheless share qualities that reveal the heart of Ravel's compositional aesthetic. In this comprehensive study, Emily Kilpatrick unites musical, literary, biographical and cultural perspectives to shed new light on Ravel's operas. In documenting the operas' history, setting them within the cultural canvas of their creation and pursuing diverse strands of analytical and thematic exploration, Kilpatrick reveals crucial aspects of the composer's working life: his approach to creative collaboration, his responsiveness to cultural, aesthetic and musical debate, and the centrality of language and literature in his compositional practice. The first study of its kind, this book is an invaluable resource for students, specialists, opera-goers and devotees of French music.

This unique publication offers fresh perspectives on key manuscript sources of medieval song. In ten chapters, leading experts each treat a single manuscript in detail, offering new findings, essential summaries of each manuscript's contents and historiography, and detailed, accessible analyses of the songs' music and texts.

Presents new methodologies to explore medieval processes of musical and poetic creation, from plainchant and vernacular French songs to organa, motets and clausulae. Engages with questions of text-music relationships, liturgy, and the development of notational technologies, exploring authorship, originality, practices of quotation and reworking.

This book examines the role of place in Delius' works, challenging existing views on their complex historical and musical contexts. It will appeal to readers familiar with Delius' music, and to those seeking a detailed guide to selected pieces, as well as those new to his work.

Self-referential music illuminates connections between musicians and reveals similarities between their networks and those of other professionals, especially visual artists. This book will appeal to readers interested in the music and culture of the late medieval and early modern eras - musicians, musicologists, and historians of art and culture.

A significant addition to the scholarship available in English on Victoria and his music, this study encompasses the genesis, style, and impact of the six-voice Requiem. It will be of interest to students and scholars studying the Renaissance and sacred and courtly rituals in the early-modern period more generally, as well as enquiring listeners.