Books in the The Bard Music Festival series

From local Kapellmeister to international icon, Joseph Haydn achieved success by developing a musical language aimed at both the connoisseurs and amateurs of the emerging musical public. This work examines Haydn's works in relation to the aesthetic and cultural crosscurrents of his time.

Sergey Prokofiev (1891-1953), arguably the popular composer of the twentieth century, led a life of triumph and tragedy. This book probes beneath the surface of his career and contextualizes his contributions to music on both sides of the nascent Cold War divide.

Reassesses the legacy of one of America's best-loved composers at a pivotal moment. This collection of essays explores the stages of cultural change on which Aaron Copland's long life (1900 to 1990) unfolded. It critiques Copland's work in these shifting contexts.

We know Robert Schumann in many ways: as a visionary composer, a seasoned journalist, a cultured man of letters, and a genius who, having passed his mantle on to the young Brahms, succumbed to mental illness in 1856. Drawing on recent pathbreaking research, this collection offers new perspectives on this seminal nineteenth-century figure. In Part

Tchaikovsky has long intrigued music-lovers as a figure who straddles many borders--between East and West, nationalism and cosmopolitanism, tradition and innovation, tenderness and bombast, masculine and feminine. In this book, through consideration of his music and biography, scholars from several disciplines explore the many sides of Tchaikovsky.

Bela Bartok, who died in New York, is one of the most frequently performed twentieth-century composers. He is also the subject of a growing critical and analytical literature. Divided into three parts, this volume aims to provide insights into the life and reception of this musician, especially in Hungary.

Influencing musical life from the 1880s through the First World War and remaining productive into the 1940s, Richard Strauss enjoyed a remarkable career in a constantly changing artistic and political climate. This volume presents essays on Strauss' musical works and brings together letters and memoirs from various periods of the composer's life.

During the 1830s and 1840s composer-pianist-organist-conductor Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy stood at the forefront of German and English musical life. This title explores various facets of Mendelssohn's music, his social and intellectual circles, and his career.

Comprising both interpretive essays and a selection of documents that bear on Dvorak's career and music, this volume addresses fundamental questions about the composer while presenting an argument for a radical reappraisal.

A collection of essays, which address Beethoven's musical works and their cultural contexts. It explains how the young Beethoven chose his pianos, and William Kinderman shows Beethoven in the process of sketching and revising his compositions.

Erich Wolfgang Korngold (1897-1957) was the last compositional prodigy to emerge from the Austro-German tradition of Mozart and Mendelssohn. He was lauded in his youth by everyone from Mahler to Puccini and his auspicious career in the early 1900s spanned chamber music, opera, and musical theater. Today, he is best known for his Hollywood film scores, composed between 1935 and 1947.

Richard Wagner (1813-1883) aimed to be more than just a composer. He set out to redefine opera as a 'total work of art' combining the highest aspirations of drama, poetry, the symphony, the visual arts, even religion and philosophy. This book examines his works.

In his roles as keyboard virtuoso, conductor, and master teacher, Franz Liszt reinvented the concert experience, advanced an agenda for symphonic and dramatic music, and transmitted the foundations of modern pianism. Placing emphasis on historical contexts, this book aims to advance our understanding of the composer with fresh perspectives.

Brings together several Leos Janacek scholars to look closely at a range of issues surrounding his life and work. This book features essays accompanied by translated writings by the composer himself. It includes essays on Naturalism, opera direction, and Tristan and Isolde and four impressionistic chronicles of the 'speech melodies' of daily life.

Arnold Schoenberg (1874-1951) is acknowledged as one of the significant and multifaceted composers. This work captures Schoenberg at critical periods of his career: during the first decades of the century, primarily in his native Vienna; from 1926 to 1933, in Berlin; and from 1933 on, in the US.

Gustav Mahler's music has provoked extreme responses from the public and from experts. This volume examines the broader political, social, and literary changes reflected in Mahler's music. It examines the composer's Jewish identity, and considers contemporary theories of memory, and the theatricality of Mahler's art and fin-de-siecle politics.

Dmitri Shostakovich (1906 - 1975) has a reputation as one of the leading composers of the twentieth century. This work expands the traditional purview of Shostakovich's world, exploring the composer's creativity and art in terms of the expectations - historical, cultural, and political - that forged them.

Edward Elgar (1857-1934) is undoubtedly one of the most fascinating, important, and influential figures in the history of British music. This work examines the composer's life, presenting a comprehensive portrait of both the man and the age in which he lived.

A brand-new look at the life and music of renowned composer Erich Wolfgang KorngoldErich Wolfgang Korngold (1897ΓÇô1957) was the last compositional prodigy to emerge from the Austro-German tradition of Mozart and Mendelssohn. He was lauded in his youth by everyone from Mahler to Puccini and his auspicious career in the early 1900s spanned chamber music, opera, and musical theater. Today, he is best known for his Hollywood film scores, composed between 1935 and 1947. From his prewar operas in Vienna to his pathbreaking contributions to American film, Korngold and His World provides a substantial reassessment of KorngoldΓÇÖs life and accomplishments.Korngold struggled to reconcile the musical language of his Viennese upbringing with American popular song and cinema, and was forced to adapt to a new life after wartime emigration to Hollywood. This collection examines KorngoldΓÇÖs operas and film scores, the critical reception of his music, and his place in the milieus of both the Old and New Worlds. The volume also features numerous historical documentsΓÇömany previously unpublished and in first-ever English translationsΓÇöincluding essays by the composer as well as memoirs by his wife, Luzi Korngold, and his father, the renowned music critic Julius Korngold.The contributors are Leon Botstein, David Brodbeck, Bryan Gilliam, Daniel Goldmark, Lily Hirsch, Kevin Karnes, Sherry Lee, Neil Lerner, Sadie Menicanin, Ben Winters, Amy Wlodarski, and Charles Youmans.Bard Music Festival 2019Korngold and His WorldBard CollegeAugust 9ΓÇô11 and 16ΓÇô18, 2019

Shows Charles Ives in the context of his world in a number of ways. This volume features essays which examine Ives' relationships to European music and to American music, politics, business, and landscape. It also shows Ives as a composer well versed in four distinctive musical traditions who blended them in his mature music.

A new look at the life, times, and music of Polish composer and piano virtuoso Fryderyk ChopinFryderyk Chopin (1810–49), although the most beloved of piano composers, remains a contradictory figure, an artist of virtually universal appeal who preferred the company of only a few sympathetic friends and listeners. Chopin and His World reexamines Chopin and his music in light of the cultural narratives formed during his lifetime. These include the romanticism of the ailing spirit, tragically singing its death-song as life ebbs; the Polish expatriate, helpless witness to the martyrdom of his beloved homeland, exiled among friendly but uncomprehending strangers; the sorcerer-bard of dream, memory, and Gothic terror; and the pianist''s pianist, shunning the appreciative crowds yet composing and improvising idealized operas, scenes, dances, and narratives in the shadow of virtuoso-idol Franz Liszt.The international Chopin scholars gathered here demonstrate the ways in which Chopin responded to and was understood to exemplify these narratives, as an artist of his own time and one who transcended it. This collection also offers recently rediscovered artistic representations of his hands (with analysis), and—for the first time in English—an extended tribute to Chopin published in Poland upon his death and contemporary Polish writings contextualizing Chopin''s compositional strategies.The contributors are Jonathan D. Bellman, Leon Botstein, Jean-Jacques Eigeldinger, Halina Goldberg, Jeffrey Kallberg, David Kasunic, Anatole Leikin, Eric McKee, James Parakilas, John Rink, and Sandra P. Rosenblum. Contemporary documents by Karol Kurpiński, Adam Mickiewicz, and Józef Sikorski are included.