The Instrumental Music of Schmeltzer, Biber, Muffat and their Contemporaries

The Instrumental Music of Schmeltzer, Biber, Muffat and their Contemporaries PDF Author: Charles E. Brewer
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1351887602
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 440

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Book Description
Based on primary sources, many of which have never been published or examined in detail, this book examines the music of the late seventeenth-century composers, Biber, Schmeltzer and Muffat, and the compositions preserved in the extensive Moravian archives in Kromeriz. These works have never before been fully examined in the cultural and conceptual contexts of their time. Charles E. Brewer sets these composers and their music within a framework that first examines the basic Baroque concepts of instrumental style, and then provides a context for the specific works. The dances of Schmeltzer, for example, functioned both as incidental music in Viennese operas and as music for elaborate court pantomimes and balls. These same cultural practices also account for some of Biber's most programmatic music, which accompanied similar entertainments in Kromeriz and Salzburg. The many sonatas by these composers have also been misunderstood by not being placed in a context where it was normal to be entertained in church and edified in court. Many of the works discussed here remain unpublished but have, in recent years, been recorded. This book enhances our understanding and appreciation of these recordings by providing an analysis of the context in which the works were first performed.

The Instrumental Music of Schmeltzer, Biber, Muffat and their Contemporaries

The Instrumental Music of Schmeltzer, Biber, Muffat and their Contemporaries PDF Author: Charles E. Brewer
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1351887602
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 440

Get Book

Book Description
Based on primary sources, many of which have never been published or examined in detail, this book examines the music of the late seventeenth-century composers, Biber, Schmeltzer and Muffat, and the compositions preserved in the extensive Moravian archives in Kromeriz. These works have never before been fully examined in the cultural and conceptual contexts of their time. Charles E. Brewer sets these composers and their music within a framework that first examines the basic Baroque concepts of instrumental style, and then provides a context for the specific works. The dances of Schmeltzer, for example, functioned both as incidental music in Viennese operas and as music for elaborate court pantomimes and balls. These same cultural practices also account for some of Biber's most programmatic music, which accompanied similar entertainments in Kromeriz and Salzburg. The many sonatas by these composers have also been misunderstood by not being placed in a context where it was normal to be entertained in church and edified in court. Many of the works discussed here remain unpublished but have, in recent years, been recorded. This book enhances our understanding and appreciation of these recordings by providing an analysis of the context in which the works were first performed.

The Monteverdi Vespers of 1610 : Music, Context, Performance

The Monteverdi Vespers of 1610 : Music, Context, Performance PDF Author: Jeffrey Kurtzman
Publisher: Clarendon Press
ISBN: 0191590711
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 626

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Book Description
This is a thorough-going study of Monteverdi's Vespers, the single most significant and most widely known musical print from before the time of J.S. Bach. The author examines Monteverdi's Vespers from multiple perspectives, combining his own research with all that is known and thought of the Vespers by other scholars. The historical origin as well as the musical and liturgical context of the Vespers are surveyed; similarly the controversial historiography of the Vespers in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries is scrutinized and evaluated. A series of analytical chapters attempt to clarify Monteverdi's compositional process and the relationship between music and text in the light of recent research on modal and tonal aspects of early seventeenth century music. The final section is devoted to thirteen chapters investigating performance practice issues of the early seventeenth century and their application to the Vespers, including general and specific recommendations for performance where appropriate. The book concludes with a series of informational appendices, including the psalm cursus for Vespers of all major feasts in the liturgical calendar, texts, and structural outlines for the Vespers compositions based on a cantus firmus, an analytical discography, and bibliographies of seventeenth-century musical and theoretical sources.

The Sense of Music

The Sense of Music PDF Author: Raymond Monelle
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 1400824036
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 265

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Book Description
The fictional Dr. Strabismus sets out to write a new comprehensive theory of music. But music's tendency to deconstruct itself combined with the complexities of postmodernism doom him to failure. This is the parable that frames The Sense of Music, a novel treatment of music theory that reinterprets the modern history of Western music in the terms of semiotics. Based on the assumption that music cannot be described without reference to its meaning, Raymond Monelle proposes that works of the Western classical tradition be analyzed in terms of temporality, subjectivity, and topic theory. Critical of the abstract analysis of musical scores, Monelle argues that the score does not reveal music's sense. That sense--what a piece of music says and signifies--can be understood only with reference to history, culture, and the other arts. Thus, music is meaningful in that it signifies cultural temporalities and themes, from the traditional manly heroism of the hunt to military power to postmodern "polyvocality." This theoretical innovation allows Monelle to describe how the Classical style of the eighteenth century--which he reads as a balance of lyric and progressive time--gave way to the Romantic need for emotional realism. He argues that irony and ambiguity subsequently eroded the domination of personal emotion in Western music as well as literature, killing the composer's subjectivity with that of the author. This leaves Dr. Strabismus suffering from the postmodern condition, and Raymond Monelle with an exciting, controversial new approach to understanding music and its history.

The Modern Brass Ensemble in Twentieth-Century Britain

The Modern Brass Ensemble in Twentieth-Century Britain PDF Author: John Miller
Publisher: Boydell & Brewer
ISBN: 1783277343
Category : Brass ensembles
Languages : en
Pages : 221

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Book Description
The first study of the performance practice, repertoire and context of the modern 'brass ensemble' in the musical world.

Catalog of Copyright Entries

Catalog of Copyright Entries PDF Author: Library of Congress. Copyright Office
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Copyright
Languages : en
Pages : 1004

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Book Description


Brass Scholarship in Review

Brass Scholarship in Review PDF Author: Stewart Carter
Publisher: Pendragon Press
ISBN: 9781576471050
Category : Juvenile Nonfiction
Languages : en
Pages : 324

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Book Description
Les journées de cuivres anciens (Early Brass Days), the Historic Brass Society conference at the Cité de la Musique in Paris, attracted performers, scholars, educators, and students of early brass from various parts of Europe and the United States. Brass Scholarship in Review provides a record of the scholarly side of the conference, including reports on roundtable discussions as well as individual papers from leading authorities on early brass. Articles cover a wide range of interests, from the historical to the technical, from the Renaissance to the twentieth century. There are articles on such diverse topics as early hunting horn signals, trumpeters in Renaissance Parma, early recordings, trumpet acoustics, and the characteristics of metals used in early instrument manufacture. The volume is particularly rich in nineteenth-century topics, including ground-breaking work on Adolph Sax as leader of the banda of the Paris Opéra and recent discoveries relating to the Gautrot firm of instrument makers.

A History of the Trombone

A History of the Trombone PDF Author: David M. Guion
Publisher: Scarecrow Press
ISBN: 1461655900
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 269

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Book Description
A History of the Trombone, the first title in the new series American Wind Band, is a comprehensive account of the development of the trombone from its initial form as a 14th-century Medieval trumpet to its alterations in the 15th century; from its marginalized use in a particular Renaissance ensemble to its acceptance in various kinds of artistic and popular music in the 19th and 20th centuries. David M. Guion accesses new and important primary source materials to present the full sweep of the instrument's history, placing particular emphasis on the people who played the instrument, the music they performed, and the relevant cultural contexts. After a general overview, the material is presented in two main sections: the first traces the development of the trombone itself and examines the literature written about it, and the second investigates the history of performance on the instrument—the ensembles it participated in, the occasions in which it took part, the people who played it, and the social, intellectual, political, economic, and technological forces that impinged on that history. Guion analyzes the trombone's place in countries all over the world and in many styles of music, such as art, opera, popular, and world music. An appendix of transcriptions of selected primary source documents, including translations, and a comprehensive bibliography round out this important reference. Fully illustrated with more than 80 images, A History of the Trombone appeals not just to trombonists but to students, scholars, and fans of all musical instruments.

Johann Sebastian Bach's Christmas Oratorio

Johann Sebastian Bach's Christmas Oratorio PDF Author: Markus Rathey
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 019027526X
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 432

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Book Description
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 "war on Christmas," discouraging riotous pageants and carnivalesque rituals in favor of more personal and internalized expressions of piety. Christmas rituals, such as the "Heilig Christ" plays and the rocking of the child (Kindelwiegen) were abolished, and Christian devotion focused increasingly on the metaphor of a birth of Christ in the human heart. John Sebastian Bach's Christmas Oratorio, composed in 1734, both reflects this new piety and conveys the composer's experience living through this tumult during his own childhood and early career. Markus Rathey's book is the first thorough study of this popular masterpiece in English. While giving a comprehensive overview of the Christmas Oratorio as a whole, the book focuses on two themes in particular: the cultural and theological understanding of Christmas in Bach's time and the compositional process that led Bach from the earliest concepts to the completed piece. The cultural and religious context of the oratorio provides the backdrop for Rathey's detailed analysis of the composition, in which he explores Bach's compositional practices, for example, his reuse and parodies of movements that had originally been composed for secular cantatas. The book analyzes Bach's original score and sheds new light on the way Bach wrote the piece, how he shaped musical themes, and how he revised his initial ideas into the final composition.

The Social and Religious Designs of J.S. Bach's Brandenburg Concertos

The Social and Religious Designs of J.S. Bach's Brandenburg Concertos PDF Author: Michael Marissen
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691006865
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 163

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Book Description
This new investigation of the Brandenburg Concertos explores musical, social, and religious implications of Bach's treatment of eighteenth-century musical hierarchies. By reference to contemporary music theory, to alternate notions of the meaning of "concerto," and to various eighteenth-century conventions of form and instrumentation, the book argues that the Brandenburg Concertos are better understood not as an arbitrary collection of unrelated examples of "pure" instrumental music, but rather as a carefully compiled and meaningfully organized set. It shows how Bach's concertos challenge (as opposed to reflect) existing musical and social hierarchies. Careful consideration of Lutheran theology and Bach's documented understanding of it reveals, however, that his music should not be understood to call for progressive political action. One important message of Lutheranism, and, in this interpretation, of Bach's concertos, is that in the next world, the heavenly one, the hierarchies of the present world will no longer be necessary. Bach's music more likely instructs its listeners how to think about and spiritually cope with contemporary hierarchies than how to act upon them. In this sense, contrary to currently accepted views, Bach's concertos share with his extensive output of vocal music for the Lutheran liturgy an essentially religious character.

Brass Instruments

Brass Instruments PDF Author: Anthony Baines
Publisher: Courier Corporation
ISBN: 0486275744
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 322

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Book Description
Evolution of trumpets, trombones, bugles, cornets, French horns, tubas, and other brass wind instruments. Indispensable resource for any brass player or music historian. Over 140 illustrations and 48 music examples.