Art music, orchestral and formal music

The phrase "e;popular music revolution"e; may instantly bring to mind such twentieth-century musical movements as jazz and rock 'n' roll.

Influenced by Robert and Clara Schumann and Joseph Joachim, Johannes Brahms not only learned to play the organ at the beginning of his career, but also wrote significant compositions for the instrument as a result of his early counterpoint study.

Shortly before his death, Percy Grainger (1882-1961) lodged over twenty unpublished sketches in his Australian Museum.

In Off Key, Kay Dickinson offers a compelling study of how certain alliances of music and film are judged aesthetic failures.

An exemplary investigation into music and sustainability, Singing and Survival tells the story of how music helped the Rapanui people of Easter Island to preserve their unique cultural heritage.

This book makes a substantial collection of Vaughan Williams's writings widely available to music lovers, students, and researchers alike.

Divi Zheni identifies itself as a Bulgarian women's chorus and band, but it is located in Boston and none of its members come from Bulgaria.

When Bela Bartok died in September of 1945, he left a partially completed viola concerto commissioned by the virtuoso violist William Primrose.

In this penetrating study, Russell Stinson explores how four of the greatest composers of the nineteenth century--Felix Mendelssohn, Robert Schumann, Franz Liszt, and Johannes Brahms--responded to the model of Bach's organ music.

The attempt to play music with the styles and instruments of its era--commonly referred to as the early music movement--has become immensely popular in recent years.

A jazz writer for three decades, W.

In The Composer as Intellectual, musicologist Jane Fulcher reveals the extent to which leading French composers between the World Wars were not only aware of but also engaged intellectually and creatively with the central political and ideological issues of the period.

During the years preceding the composition of Tristan and Isolde, Wagner's aesthetics underwent a momentous turnaround, principally as a result of his discovery of Schopenhauer.

In Oh Joy!

From the Jim Crow world of 1920s Greenville, South Carolina, to Greenwich Village's Cafe Society in the '40s, to their 1974 Grammy-winning collaboration on "e;Loves Me Like a Rock,"e; the Dixie Hummingbirds have been one of gospel's most durable and inspiring groups.

Since its beginnings, opera has depended on recognition as a central aspect of both plot and theme.

It's difficult to imagine Franz Liszt performing in Peoria, but his contemporary and foremost rival, Sigismund Thalberg, did just that.

One of the most fascinating figures of seventeenth-century music, composer and singer Antonia Padoani Bembo (c.

This is the first detailed history of musical activities at Venetian lay confraternities.

Music in Chopin's Warsaw examines the rich musical environment of Fryderyk Chopin's youth--largely unknown to the English-speaking world--and places Chopin's early works in the context of this milieu.

This book is the first biography of 20th-century pianist Rudolf Serkin, providing a narrative of Serkin's life with emphasis on his European roots and the impact of his move to America.

The Muse That Sings is a unique behind-the-scenes look at both twentieth-century music and the nuts and bolts of creative work.

In the London of Shakespeare and William Byrd, Thomas East was the premier, often exclusive, printer of music.

Michael Steinberg's 1996 volume The Symphony: A Reader's Guide received glowing reviews across America.

Renowned today as a prominent African-American in Music Theater and the Arts community, composer, conductor, and violinist Will Marion Cook was a key figure in the development of American music from the 1890s to the 1920s.

Musical Symbolism in the Operas of Debussy and Bartok explores the means by which two early 20th century operas - Debussy's Pelleas et Melisande (1902) and Bartok's Duke Bluebeard's Castle (1911) - transformed the harmonic structures of the traditional major/minor scale system into a new musical language.

In this book Christopher Hasty presents a striking new theory of musical duration.

New York City witnessed a dazzling burst of creativity in the 1920s.

The 20th century French composer Olivier Messiaen was a devout Roman Catholic and notably claimed that his music was an expression of his faith.

In the last decades of the 17th century, the feast of Christmas in Lutheran Germany underwent a major transformation when theologians and local governments waged an early modern "e;war on Christmas,"e; discouraging riotous pageants and carnivalesque rituals in favor of more personal and internalized expressions of piety.

Ephemeral, fragile, often left unbound, sixteenth-century songbooks led fleeting lives in the pockets of singers and on the music desks of instrumentalists.

In 1714, the 29 year-old Johann Sebastian Bach was promoted to the position of concertmaster at the ducal court of Weimar.

Purcell's Dido and Aeneas stands as the greatest operatic achievement of seventeenth-century England, and yet, despite its global renown, it remains cloaked in mystery.

The quintessential Romantic artist of his century, Hector Berlioz impressed Paganini and Liszt as "e;Beethoven's only heir"e; and dazzled the young Wagner as a composer, orchestra conductor, and critic.

Why would Gustav Mahler (1860-1911), modernist titan and so-called prophet of the New Music, commit himself time and again to the venerable sonata-allegro form of Mozart and Beethoven?

The world of Sub-Saharan African music is immensely rich and diverse, containing a plethora of repertoires and traditions.

Elliott Carter (1908-2012) was the foremost composer of classical music in America during the second half of the 20th century.

Elliott Carter (1908-2012) was the foremost composer of classical music in America during the second half of the 20th century.

Mirrors of Heaven or Worldly Theaters?

In a tradition extending from the medieval era to the early twentieth century, visually disabled Japanese women known as goze toured the countryside as professional singers.

In 1950, as Arnold Schoenberg anticipated the publication of a collection of 15 of his most important writings, Style and Idea, he was already at work on a second volume to be called Program Notes.

Alla Osipenko is the gripping story of one of history's greatest ballerinas, a courageous rebel who paid the price for speaking truth to the Soviet State.

Alla Osipenko is the gripping story of one of history's greatest ballerinas, a courageous rebel who paid the price for speaking truth to the Soviet State.

In Local Fusions, author Barbara Rose Lange explores musical life in Hungary, Slovakia, and Austria between the end of the Cold War and the world financial crisis of 2008.

This book is about how music "e;in a key"e; is composed.

Over the past 30 years, musicologists have produced a remarkable new body of research literature focusing on the lives and careers of women composers in their socio-historical contexts.

Throughout Spanish colonial America, limpieza de sangre (literally, "e;purity of blood"e;) determined an individual's status within the complex system of social hierarchy called casta.

Environmental Sound Artists: In Their Own Words is an incisive and imaginative look at the international environmental sound art movement, which emerged in the late 1960s.