Performance studies in the Western art music tradition have often been dominated by the relationship of theoretical score-analysis to performance, although some recent trends have aimed at dislodging the primacy of the score in favour of assessing performance on its own terms. In this book Julian Hellaby further develops these trends by placing performance firmly at the heart of his investigations and presents a structured approach to analysing the interpretation of a musical work from the...

The principal purpose of topics in musicology has been to identify meaning-bearing units within a musical composition that would have been understood by contemporary audiences and therefore also by later receivers, albeit in a different context and with a need for historically aware listening. Since Leonard Ratner (1980) introduced the idea of topics, his relatively simple ideas have been expanded and developed by a number of distinguished authors. Topic theory has now become a well-establ...

In this book, Julian Hellaby presents a detailed study of English piano playing and career management as it was in the middle years of the twentieth century. Making regular comparisons with early twenty-first-century practice, the author examines career-launching mechanisms, such as auditions and competitions, and investigates available means of career sustenance, including artist management, publicity outlets, recital and concerto work, broadcasts, recordings and media reviews. Additional...

In the latest of his books exploring a lifetime's passion for music, bestselling author and philosopher Roger Scruton brings his immense critical faculties to bear on a panoply of different musical genres, both contemporary and classical.Music as an Art begins by examining music through a philosophical lens, engaging in discussions about tonality, music and the moral life, music and cognitive science and German idealism, as well as recalling the author's s...

One of contemporary music’s most significant and controversial figures, Brian Ferneyhough's complex and challenging music draws inspiration from painting, literature and philosophy, as well as music from the recent and distant past. His dense, multi-layered compositions intrigue musicians while pushing performer and instrument to the limits of their abilities. A wide-ranging survey of his life and work to date, Brian Ferneyhough examines the critical issues fundamental to understanding the...

The Cambridge Companion to Chopin provides the enquiring music-lover with helpful insights into a musical style which recognises no contradiction between the accessible and the sophisticated, the popular and the significant. Twelve essays by leading Chopin scholars make up three parts. Part 1 discusses the sources of Chopin's style in the music of his predecessors and the social history of the period. Part 2 profiles the mature music, and Part 3 considers the afterlife of the music - its r...

"An effort to expand sonata theory more solidly into the nineteenth-century repertoire." — NotesIn Sonata Fragments, Andrew Davis argues that the Romantic sonata is firmly rooted, both formally and expressively, in its Classical forebears, using Classical conventions in order to convey a broad constellation of Romantic aesthetic values. This claim runs contrary to conventional theories of the Romantic sonata that place this nineteenth-century music...

Stravinsky's work spanned the major part of the twentieth century and engaged with nearly all its principal compositional developments. This Companion reflects the breadth of Stravinsky's achievement and influence in essays by leading international scholars on a wide range of topics. It is divided into three parts dealing with the contexts within which Stravinsky worked (Russian, modernist and compositional), with his key compositions (Russian, neoclassical and serial), and with the recept...

Nyman's rise to international prominence during the last three decades has made him one of the world's most successful living composers. His music has nevertheless been criticized for its parasitic borrowing of other composers' ideas and for its relentless self-borrowing. In this first book-length study in English, Pwyll ap Si laces Nyman's writings within the general context of Anglo-American experimentalism, minimalism and post-minimalism, and provides a series of useful contexts from wh...

This selection of sixteen of Nicholas Cook's essays covers the period from 1987 to 2004 and brings out the development of the author's ideas over these years. In particular the two keywords of the title -Meaning and Performance- represent critical directions that expand to the point that, by the end of the book, they become coextensive: music is seen as social action and meaning as created by that action. Within this overall direction, a wide variety of topics is explored, ranging from Bee...

Internationally renowned scholars and performers present a wide range of new analytical, historical and critical perspectives on some of Mozart's most popular chamber music: his sonatas with violin, keyboard trios and quartets and the quintet with wind instruments. The chapters trace a broad chronology, from the childhood works, to the Mannheim and Paris sonatas with keyboard and violin, and the mature compositions from his Vienna years. Drawing upon the most recent research, this study se...

Composing for Voice: Exploring Voice, Language and Music, Second Edition, elucidates how language and music function together from the perspectives of composers, singers and actors, providing an understanding of the complex functions of the voice pedagogically, musicologically and dramatically. Composing for Voice examines the voice across a wide range of musical genres (including pop, jazz, folk, classical, opera and the musical) and explores the fusion of language and m...