bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Poulenc, La Voix, Et L’Amour
Authors: Mellers Wilfrid
Published: November 2023

Despite his partiality for the dance—so exuberantly manifest in the two-piano concerto—Poulenc was convinced that ‘essentially I am a man of song in all its forms’. Whereas he had shaky confidence in his ability to handle large instrumental forms he was, in the basic song-form of the ‘melodie’ with piano accompaniment, ‘afraid of no-one’, proud that there was something he could do better than most. Few would now doubt that some of the songs he wrote in the 1930s and 1940s are, however restricted their genre, great music. For these songs Poulenc did not abandon the poets who had moved him in early youth, though he added others, notably Paul Eluard, who ‘always brought out the best in me’. But the first song-cycle of the 1930s,
Introduction: Step by Step
Authors: Clark Walter Aaron
Published: November 2023

The Year 1909 Represented A Significant Milestone In The Passage From The Romantic Period To The Modern. German Expressionism Was In Full Career As Wassily Kandinsky Painted His First Abstract Compositions And Arnold Schoen Berg Experimented With Atonality In His Monodrama Erwartung And The Five Orchestral Pieces, Op. 16. Igor Stravinsky Began Collaborating With Sergey Diaghilev On The Firebird Ballet For Its 1910 Premiere In Paris, Where Pablo Picasso Was Laying The Foundation For Cubism In His Paintings Harlequin And Ambroise Vollard. Sigmund Freud Lectured To American Audiences On Psy Choanalysis, And Frank Lloyd Wright Designed His Innovative Robie House In Chicago. The King Who Gave His Name To A Decade Of Relative Calm And Prosperity, Edward Vii, Was In The Last Full Year Of His Reign.
The Phenomenon (1860-1875)
Authors: Clark Walter Aaron
Published: November 2023

AT the end of his life, Ulysses S. Grant penned the memorable phrase, ‘I think I am a verb instead of a personal pronoun’.1 Isaac Albeniz2 was an adjective and a noun. The word albeniz comes from the Basque language3 and means skinny, slender, or thread-like; it can also mean short or clever, in a devious sort of way. As a noun, it translates as a thread, strand, or even an abundance of hay.4 By coincidence, all of the above adjectives applied to Albeniz in his early years, as he was thin, short, and exceedingly ingenious. Ironically, in adulthood he became rather corpulent and self-deprecatingly signed his letters ‘Saco’ (‘Sack’), ‘El Gordo’ (‘The Fat One’), or ‘Saco gordo’ (‘Fat Sack’), a play on the second syllable of his first name. The mature Albeniz was anything but albeniz, at least in the principal sense of the word!
The Legacy of Albéniz
Authors: Clark Walter Aaron
Published: November 2023

The impact of Albeniz’s life and work obviously did not end with his funeral. The fact that a major publisher has contracted this book strongly suggests that Albeniz continues to be a vital presence in the canon of western music. Thousands of recordings of his music have been made, and no less than forty publishing houses have printed his works.1 And Albeniz exerted a discernible influence on succeeding composers. Yet, his output was undeniably uneven in quality, and the only part of it to hold a place in the repertoire is a portion of the piano music. The rest of the piano pieces, stage works, and songs have slid into obscurity. Despite the enormous creative energy he poured into his operas in particular, his reputation has reaped relatively little benefit from them. Why? We might begin to answer this question by briefly tracing the fate of his operas to tl1e present day.
Tomaso Albinoni’s Pimpinone and the Comic Intermezzo
Authors: Talbot Michael
Published: November 2023

The Pimpinone of Tomaso Albinoni (1671-1751) belongs to a distinct group of some twenty sets of comic intermezzi written for the Venetian stage in the period 1706-9.1 These short dramatic works, which pioneered an important new genre, included several that, like Pimpinone, immediately became repertory favourites performed year after year all over Italy and beyond. If Pimpinone is today somewhat better known than its companion pieces in the early intermezzo repertory, such as the intermezzi for the characters Lisetta and Astrobolo, or Pollastrella and Parpagnacco, or Palandrana and Zamberlucco, the main reason is probably that the publication, in 1936, of a modem edition of Telemann’s later setting (1725) of the same libretto, slightly adapted and partly translated into German, stimulated curiosity about the original setting and its possible relation to Telemann’s music.2 Such speculation was eventually ended when a score of Albinoni’s setting was tracked down and found to contain entirely different music (the very difference, of course, provoked further study directed towards a comparison of the two settings).
The Mature Style
Authors: Wegman Rob C
Published: November 2023

Somewhere in the four years between 1487 and 1491 Obrecht hit upon a creative formula that unlocked his full artistic potential. This discovery was the central turning-point in his career. The few securely dated works on either side of the four-year period leave no doubt that he virtually underwent a creative rebirth. On the one side are the masses of 1486-7, in which Obrecht is still a searching, exploring composer.
Introduction: Principles of Form
Authors: Haimo Ethan
Published: November 2023

For well over a century the question of how best to define or describe the forms of late eighteenth-century instrumental music (sonata form, rondo, sonata-rondo, and so forth) has been the focus of an often bitter scholarly debate. One reason for the durability of the controversy has been the very imprecision of the questions.
Symphony No. 55 (1774)
Authors: Haimo Ethan
Published: November 2023

With the exception of the first movement of Symphony No. 21, every one of the movements analyzed to this point has either been a sonata form or a menuet. This is neither accidental nor the result of a purposefully skewed selection. Although other formal types do make occasional appearances, the plain fact is that sonata forms (including binary variants) and menuets constitute the overwhelming majority of Haydn’s early symphonic forms.1 Beginning with works from the 1770s, other formal types start to take on increasing prominence. (Surely it cannot be coincidental that the gradual rise in the use of these formal types is mirrored by the almost total disappearance of binary variants.)
Conclusions
Authors: Hurley David Ross
Published: November 2023

Handel composed with remarkable speed. What this tells us depends upon our own preconceptions, or as Philip Gossett would have it, upon the point we are trying to make. While Rossini has been criticized for writing quickly (unlike a ‘serious’ composer such as Beethoven), facility is often interpreted as merely another proof of Mozart’s genius. As Gossett has noted, ‘the aesthetic quality of a work of art, the extent to which it has endured or will endure, is not a function of its period of gestation. Let us purge this diction from our critical vocabulary’.
Introduction: Celebrating Transgression and Excess: Busnoys and the Boundaries of Late Medieval Culture
Authors: Higgins Paula
Published: November 2023

I can’t live like this any longer unless I have some comfort for my pain; just one hour, or less-or more; and every day I’ll serve the god of love faithfully unto death.) When Antoine Busnoys penned the poem containing the lines above, he embedded in them an acrostic yielding the name of a woman: one ‘Jaqueljne d’Aqvevjle’ ( Jacqueline d’Hacqueville). In so doing he broke the cardinal rule of courtly love: a commitment to absolute secrecy.
Musical Politics in Late Medieval Poitiers: A Tale of Two Choirmasters
Authors: Higgins Paula
Published: November 2023

Ate medieval composers typically acquired their earliest musical training as choirboys in the maîtrise (choir school) of a collegiate church or cathedral, yet remarkably few details about their musical education have survived. Only for a handful of men can we identify the church in which they served as choirboys and pinpoint masters who in all probability supervised their musical studies and nurtured their nascent talents.
Text, Tone, and Symbol: Regarding Busnoys’s Conception of In hydraulis and its Presumed Relationship to Ockeghem’s Ut heremita solus
Authors: Bentrem Jaap Van
Published: November 2023

In the early eighteenth century, Rembrandt’s most fan10us painting, De Nachtwacht (The Night Watch), was moved from the Kloveniersdoelen, the building for which it was originally intended, and installed in the Town Hall of Amsterdam (today the Royal Palace on De Dam). As a result the painting had to be altered to suit its new physical surroundings: strips were cut off, foreshortening the painting’s left side in particular.
Resjois toi terre de France/Rex pacificus: An ‘Ockeghem’ Work Reattributed to Busnoys
Authors: Lindmayr-Brandl Andrea
Published: November 2023

He image of Ockeghem as the great French court composer and of Busnoys as a lesser Burgundian master has dominated music historiography for generations. Despite their inexactitude, such classifications nevertheless serve to order our impressions, our experiences, and our knowledge. A similarly long-standing music historiographical bias towards works of known authorship has made it much more difficult to survey a repertory of anonymous compositions than a set of works classified as belonging to Josquin, Morton, Dufay, Busnoys, or Ockeghem. A single outstanding composition amidst the mass of anonymous works that still malice up about half the late medieval repertory has little opportunity to draw attention to itself and consequently fades into music historical oblivion.
Simultaneous Conception and Compositional Process in the Late Fifteenth Century
Authors: Wexler Richard
Published: November 2023

By placing each voice in its own individual range, making the voices equal in terms of their overall character and rhythmic values, substituting a paraphrase cantus firmus that migrates throughout the texture for the oldfashioned long-note cantus firmus, and providing a point of imitation at the outset of each phrase of counterpoint, composers of the late fifteenth century formulated what some have called the ‘a cappella ideal’.
Fortepianos and their Music
Authors: Komlós Katalin
Published: November 2023

Eighteenth-century pianos shaped and influenced the music that was written for them. However, although organological studies probe the instrument in ever more detail, and musical criticism focuses increasingly on the musical repertoire, the relationship between the two has not been properly examined. This book concentrates on the keyboard writing of the last third of the eighteenth century, as inspired by the fundamentally different constructions of the German/Viennese and the English pianoforte. The highly articulated languages of Mozart and his Viennese contemporaries, and the more robust, pre-romantic style of Duzzek and his London colleagues reflect the very characteristics of these respective instruments. Beyond the scrutiny of the music, attention is given also to the players. The differentiation between professionals and amateurs is addressed, and contemporary sources help provide a description of late-eighteenth-century performing styles; such a survey offers new insight into the living art of the pianoforte during a most important period in its history.
Choral
Authors: Simeone Nigel , Tyrrell John , Němcová Alena
Published: November 2023

The first edition, authorized by the composer, states that this is ‘the first choral composition by Janácek’. This is almost certainly true as far as secular choral works are concerned since his appointment as chorus master of the choral society Svatopluk, for which Orání was written, took place on 13 Feb 1873, and Orání was given at the first concert he conducted (see Notes: INCLUSION IN A CYCLE).
Vocal
Authors: Simeone Nigel , Tyrrell John , Němcová Alena
Published: November 2023

Veselý (1924, 161), presumably relying on Janacek’s information, lists this piece under ‘accompanied folksongs’ as a song with piano accompaniment, dating from 1875.
Bruckner’s disciples
Authors: Kennedy Michael
Published: November 2023

Mahler entered the Vienna Conservatory in September 1875. The director since 1851 had been Joseph Hellmesberger, violinist, leader of a celebrated string quartet, conductor, and anti-Semite. He was forty-seven. Mahler’s teachers were Julius Epstein for pianoforte, Robert Fuchs (1847–1927)–who had only recently joined the stafffor harmony, and Franz Krenn (1816–97) for composition. Fuchs told Alma Mahler years afterwards: ‘Mahler always played truant and yet there was nothing he couldn’t do.’ That he was already a composer of songs may be deduced from the fact that his fellow students spoke of him as ‘another Schubert’. He also continued privately with his general education, for which he paid by giving pianoforte lessons.
Cassel, Leipzig, Budapest
Authors: Kennedy Michael
Published: November 2023

Mahler said in later life that if he had won the Beethoven Prize he could have avoided ‘this hellish life in the theatre’, by which he meant conducting opera. He was romanticizing. He had begun his career as a conductor before he even finished Das klagende Lied. He had been given a post at the health resort of Hall, Upper Austria, in the summer of 1880 to conduct musical comedies and to perform such chores as tidying the pit after the performance. What remains unexplained is why he was advised to try conducting when he had hitherto shown no inclination in that direction. According to Paul Stefan,1 the publisher Rattig advised Mahler to see an agent. Through this agent the Hall engagement was offered and accepted against the advice of Mahler’s parents but on the advice of Epstein, his mentor and pianoforte teacher. Up to this point it might have been expected that Mahler would become a concert pianist. Accounts of his playing indicate that it was exceptionally compelling, especially of Beethoven and Bach. Friedrich (Fritz) Lohr, another member of Mahler’s student circle in Vienna, spent a summer holiday with him at Lohr’s home in Perchtoldsdorf in 1884 when Mahler played for many hours.
Prelude, in canon
Authors: MacDonald Malcolm
Published: November 2023

Some seven years before his death, Brahms published a set of thirteen Canons for female voices. Its opus number, 113, is misleadingly high. These miniatures of the contrapuntist’s art, setting aphoristic texts by arch-Romantic poets such as Eichendorff and Rückert, or treating some of his favourite folk-melodies, mostly date from his youth and early manhood, from the 1850s and 60s. The exception is no. 13, the last (and most elaborate) of them, which sets the little poem by Rückert given above..
Young Kreisler (1833-53)
Authors: MacDonald Malcolm
Published: November 2023

Twenty years after Brahms’s death, when many critics still maintained that, whatever his greatness as an ‘absolute’ musician, he had possessed no sense of instrumental colour, it fell to the Marxist philosopher Ernst Bloch to place within his first culture-spanning magnum opus, Geist der Utopie, an elegant characterization of Brahms as a master of the orchestra: He does have colour: his orchestral sound has been compared, not unfavourably, to the North German heathland, which appears from a distance like a broad, monotonous expanse, but whose greyness, as we enter, suddenly dissolves into a myriad little blooms and specks of colour.
In his homeland
Authors: Samson Jim
Published: November 2023

On 14 October 1894, a Chopin monument was unveiled at the com¬ poser’s birthplace in the tiny village of Zelazowa Wola, some thirty miles due west of Warsaw. The initiative came largely from the Russian composer Mily Balakirev, and at a celebration concert in Warsaw three days later Balakirev himself performed the Lento con gran espressione in C sharp minor. The concert, organized by the Warsaw Music Society, ended with an arrangement for chorus and orchestra of the Polonaise in A major, Op. 40 No. 1.

Several very different modes of reception are highlighted by these events. First there is the Chopin cult, of which Zelazowa Wola has since become the principal shrine, though it has several rivals. Before the erection of the monument little had been made of Chopin’s birthplace, a modest cottage which formed part of an estate belonging to the Skarbek family.
The wonderchild (1811-27)
Authors: Watson Derek
Published: November 2023

The genius of Liszt is by its very complex nature hard to define. Claims made for his greatness as pianist, composer, teacher, writer, champion of music old and new, and most generous musical spirit of the nineteenth century are legion. Born in Hungary and yet much nearer to Vienna than to Pest, at home and at work in France, Germany and Italy - he can be claimed by a handful of nations as their son. From Lisbon to Moscow and from Dublin to Constantinople the records speak of his versatility and his victories. The reaction created by genius is, as Marcel Proust put it, ‘like those extremely high temperatures which have the power to disintegrate combinations of atoms which they proceed to combine afresh in a diametrically opposite order, following another type’. The traditional opening for the biographer is to explain genius by way of geography.
Years of pilgrimage (1828-39)
Authors: Watson Derek
Published: November 2023

Anna Liszt joined her son in Paris and they set up home in Montmartre. A decade later Liszt described his revulsion for the career of the travelling prodigy: When death robbed me of my father and I returned to Paris alone, I began to foresee what art could become and what the artist must become; and I was overwhelmed by the awareness of insuperable obstacles all around me which barred the direction that my thoughts led me.
The Heroic style II, 1806–1809
Authors: Kinderman William
Published: November 2023

After he put Fidelio aside, Beethoven’s major artistic preoccupation became the set of three ‘Razumovsky’ string quartets in F major, E minor, and C major of op. 59, composed mainly between April and November 1806. This trilogy stands at the centre of a splendid series of masterpieces from that year, including the Fourth Piano Concerto op. 58, the Fourth Symphony op. 60, and the Violin Concerto op. 61. An orchestral ambition surfaces in the imaginative sonorities and enhanced scale of some movements of the ‘Razumovsky’ quartets, from the broad opening Allegro of the F major Qyartet to the nervously emphatic finale of the C major.
The Congress of Vienna ‘Period 1813–1815
Authors: Kinderman William
Published: November 2023

The aftermath of the ‘Immortal Beloved’ affair of 1812 opens the most contradictory chapter in Beethoven’s life. At no other time did he enjoy so much public veneration or receive such generous monetary rewards.
The Gaalitzin’ Qurtets 1824–1825
Authors: Kinderman William
Published: November 2023

The composition of Beethoven’s last important group of works, the five final quartets, is bound up with a commission from the Russian prince and amateur cellist Nikolaus Galitzin in St Petersburg. Beethoven had already been thinking of composing quartets (and had received an enquiry from Carl Friedrich Peters about one) prior to Galitzin’s request, but the prince seems to have acted as the major catalyst. In November 1822 Galitzin wrote to Beethoven requesting the composition of as many as three new quartets. Beethoven accepted the proposal in January 1823; but the actual composition of the first of these new quartets was delayed for more than a year by other projects, notably the Ninth Symphony.
Opportunities (1817-1819)
Authors: McKay Elizabeth Norman
Published: November 2023

AT the end of January 1817 Schubert attained his twentieth birthday. Already a picture of the composer is emerging. He was short in stature and thick-set, an unassuming, unprepossessing, bespectacled young man who preferred the congenial company of intimate friends to what he judged to be more pretentious society. Reticent even with friends about his own feelings and aspirations, he was to a high degree absorbed in music, both composition and performance; yet his absorption was not exclusive, and he particularly enjoyed both high-spirited companionship and serious discussion about artistic subjects, literature, and politics. With family and friends he was affectionate and generous, warm-hearted, honest, and straightforward. At the same time, he was subject to swings of temperament and mood changes which sometimes restricted his ability to conform to the self-discipline demanded of normal society. He felt a strong sense of vocation to be a composer, and this was entirely in accord with the high-minded principles in art and morality propagated by the Bildung Circle. But here too his temperament, like that of many other great creative artists and writers, sometimes conflicted with his sense of vocation. At times he was unable to compose for days on end; at others he was spurred on to hyperactivity. Professionally he was nai”ve, incapable of planning his career and sometimes of seizing opportunities when they arose.
The Manuscript Tradition: Sources and Notation
Authors: O’neill Mary
Published: November 2023

By comparison with troubadour song, which survives with music in only four main sources, the legacy of trouvère song is relatively handsome: as well as various fragments, there are some twenty substantial extant chansonniers in which both text and music are preserved. As with the troubadour repertoire, there are also a number of extant trouvère sources that record only poetic texts; the focus here, however, will be on that corpus of chansonniers in which both text and music are recorded together. Table 2.1 lists the central sources of trouvère song together with common abbreviations and the standard sigla that will be used for the purpose of reference. While the basis for the study of trouvère song must be the extant chansonniers, a number of limitations with regard to their evidence have to be taken into consideration.
Biographical Notes
Authors: Hillier Paul
Published: November 2023

Although Part was born and grew up in Estonia, any suggestion that his music could be characterized as ‘Estonian’ would be misleading: it makes no use of Estonian themes or motifs,1 and offers no imaginative evocation of anything that might be interpreted as having a national identity; nor, apart from a couple of early cantatas, does the composer choose the Estonian language for his texts. Yet it is unlikely that the composer’s unique musical and spiritual identity could have been created anywhere else. Part has avowed that his musical education is Western, while his spiritual education is Eastern. But the particular significance of these compass points only becomes meaningful if we know the central reference point from which they emanate. In Part’s case, of course, that is Estonia, wedged between East (Russia and the Orthodox Church) and West (Germany and Scandinavia). His ‘Western’ musical training dwelt on the conventional canon of great composers, though it also owed a great deal at a local level to Russian models. However, despite its proximity to Russia, the Estonian capital, Tallinn, has the unmistakable air of being a European city, attached firmly to a cultural perspective that links cities along the Baltic coast and eventually winds round to places like Amsterdam and Copenhagen, and across land to Berlin and Prague; intellectually, this is primarily a Germanic heritage.
After Credo
Authors: Hillier Paul
Published: November 2023

With Credo, P;Ҕrt had written himself into a cul-de-sac: he had reached a position of complete despair, in which the composition of music appeared to be the most futile of gestures, and he lacked the musical faith and will-power to write even a single note. It was from this creative death that there gradually arose in him a search for an entirely new way to proceed.
TeDeum, Stabat Mater, Miserere
Authors: Hillier Paul
Published: November 2023

The words of this hymn, thought to have originated early in the fifth century, are among the most venerable of non-biblical texts still in use in the Christian tradition. Part describes them as consisting of ‘immutable truths’, which reminded him of the ‘immeasurable serenity imparted by a mountain panorama’. In his setting of the Te Deum he sought to convey a mood ‘that could be infinite in time, by delicately removing one piece--one particle of time-out of the flow of infinity. I had to draw this music gently out of silence and emptiness.’1 Although Part does not employ the Gregorian melody (also of considerable age), he creates a series of chant-like melodies using the tintinnabuli technique, and it is interesting to see how readily the chant melos floats to the surface (see Ex. 22b). These chanted sections alternate with choral statements and string responses, beneath which for most of the opening and closing sections is heard a wind harp drone, duly reinforcing the sense of endless time and space.
Shorter Works and Litany
Authors: Hillier Paul
Published: November 2023

In earlier chapters the discussion of individual works followed approximately their chronological order of composition, as this usefully portrayed the evolution of Part’s musical language. By the time he arrived in the West, Part had consolidated the tintinnabuli style, so each new work appeared as a fresh manifestation of this strongly centred vision. Each work has a very specific identity, certainly, often using tintinnabuli principles in a manner unique to that work, but to discuss this later music in chronological order would imply that there has continued to be a strong linear development far more than is really the case. I make this observation in a qualified manner, because in certain respects the tintinnabuli style has grown, but this is less a case of development from one point to the next, and more one of expansion of a central concept. I do not mean to imply that Part has stood still, but rather that he has moved around ‘within’ tintinnabuli, stretching certain elements in different ways perhaps, but always able to return (one feels) to the basic tintinnabuli language at a moment’s notice.
Sacred Music: Psalms and Anthems
Authors: Spink Ian
Published: November 2023

LAWE s’s metier may have been as a composer of secular love songs, yet he had been brought up against a background of cathedral music, and since 1626 had been a countertenor in the Chapel Royal. His appointment as ‘pistoler’ —the most junior position—dated from 1 January, and it would have been in that capacity that he sang at the coronation of Charles I on 2 February. Later the same year, on 3 November, he was advanced to Gentleman, for which the pay was £40 a year. The Master of the Chapel was then Nathaniel Giles, and the organists were Thomas Tomkins and Thomas Warwick, the latter in place of the recently deceased Orlando Gibbons. At the time the repertoire of the Chapel was rather conservative, consisting mainly of works by Byrd, Gibbons, Giles, and Tomkins, though by 1635 it included works by modernistically inclined composers such as Richard Portman and Walter Porter, as well as four verse anthems by Henry Lawes and two by his brother William. He was one of those who travelled north to Edinburgh in the summer of 1633 to assist the Scottish Chapel Royal at the Coronation of King Charles, and it seems likely that when the court went to Oxford soon after the outbreak of the Civil War in 1642, he too went there with the Chapel.
Miscellaneous Metropolitan Concerts
Authors: Palmer Fiona M
Published: November 2023

The metropolis offered a cornucopia of musical entertainment to well-to-do members of English society. Such large-scale musical organizations as the King’s Theatre, Ancient Concerts, and the Philharmonic Society were com plemented by the smaller-scale ventures of individual and collective musicians. Among these were benefit concerts put on by solo performers in pursuit of per sonal profit; charitable music-making, such as for the Adult Orphans’ Institution; the concerts of the Royal Academy of Music; the Vocal, City, and Amateur, concerts; and, in addition, the other subscription concerts and private music-making that went on in the homes of the wealthy. Since Dragonetti spent such a long period in England, changes inevitably took place in musical taste and expectation during his time. In his early years, the impact of Haydn’s visits and the predilection for virtuosity were very strong. The taste for virtuosity moved from a diversity of instruments to focus mainly on pianos and vio lins in the last thirty years of Dragonetti’s life. A corresponding shift towards chamber music echoed this changing fashion.
Frock Rock
Authors: Bayton Mavis
Published: November 2023

This is the first ethnographic study of women’s popular music-making. It is based on over 100 in-depth interviews as well as participant observation by the author, a sociologist, who has herself played in various bands since punk. Bayton covers the period from the late 1970s until the mid 1990s, focusing mainly on women instrumentalists in female and mixed bands. Amongst others, interviewees include Skin from Skunk Anansie, Debbie Smith from Echobelly, Candida Doyle from Pulp, Gail Greenwood from Belly and L7, Natasha Atlas from Transglobal Underground, and Vie Subversa from Poison Girls. Although female vocalists have always been common, women playing instruments in bands are still proportionally rare. Frock Rock explores the social factors that keep women from playing and those routes that have enabled women's involvement. The book then examines the everyday worlds of women's music-making from bands just starting up to the professional stage: songwriting, rehearsing, the first gig, getting a manager, record companies, recording, and touring. Easy to read and packed with fascinating quotes, Frock Rock makes an invaluable contribution to the field of popular music studies and will become a key text in cultural studies, media studies, women’s studies, and sociology of culture courses.
Liturgical Compositions, 1723–1732
Authors: Stockigt Janice B
Published: November 2023

From 1723 until the death of Friedrich August I (1 February 1733) Zelenka consistently and diligently composed for the Catholic court church of Dresden. During these years he set several Masses, Mass movements, two or three Requiems, one oratorio (1730), forty-one psalms and several hymns for Vespers, numerous Marian antiphons, two settings of the Te Deum, and at least six litanies. He also composed various small-scale liturgical works and he wrote, or reworked, several ‘Mottetti’.
L
Authors: Clinkscale Martha Novak , Watson John R
Published: November 2023

Lacabra, Joseph (fl. 1845—48). London maker at 4 University Street, Tottenham Court Road. (Harding/ PIANO2, 415) Lacabra,Julian (fl. c.1800--50). Piano maker in Madrid. (M. L. Boehm in EKI i. 366) Lachin, Nicolo (est. c.1830). Piano maker in Padua (Veneto), Italy. (Barbieri/ITALY; Dolge/PIANOS, 443) La Coste, M.A. (fl. 1841). Maker in Brussels. La Coste patented a device called ‘piano crescendo’, which was intended to improve the effect of this dynamic change (Belgian, no. 1990, order no. 190; dated 1841). Controlled by a pedal, a reservoir of air causes a metal strip to be vibrated; thus the effect of crescendo or, one supposes, dimuendo is obtained.
Q
Authors: Clinkscale Martha Novak , Watson John R
Published: November 2023

Quackenbush, John H. (fl: 1834). Piano maker in Albany, NY. (Spillane/HIST, 139) Quakers (Quaquers), F. (fl. 1859—80). Piano maker in Brussels. Qyakers was located at 12 rue d’Orleans. (J. Monnoye-Saintes in Haine—M/DICT, 337) Quandt, Carl Oulius) (b Biitow, Pomerania (now Byt6w, Poland), 11 July 1817—d Berlin, 31 Dec. 1896).
The Role of the Performer
Authors: Bazzana Kevin
Published: November 2023

Gould’S Idealism, however commonplace in principle, was directly responsible for his unusual freedom in realizing works in performance. Believing that a musical work existed apart from performance, he considered the profile of the music in performance-how the music sounded-to be a function of a specific interpretation, not an integral part of the work. Contrapuntal balances, rhythmic nuances, dynamic levels, articulation, tone colour, instrumentationeven where specified by the composer-were all subject to the performer’s will without compromising the identity or status of the work. (This was a matter of principle, and did not depend on how precise the music’s notation was.)
Poetic and Dramatic Schemes in Lutos ławski’s Vocal-Instrumental Works
Authors: Aubigny Beno î t
Published: November 2023

Music expresses this world. But that isn’t its true purpose. I believe it should be organized so as to put certain dramatic principles into effect. This chapter is perhaps less a flawless analytical exercise than an essay in the strict sense, a simple proposition where hypotheses will outweigh certitudes, a memorandum in which the composer’s words will enhance reflection and statements about his work. It is certainly not a pure study, for the very choice of subject matter, three works where music and poetry conjoin, indicates the objective even before the argument: the goal is a utopia, a synthesis of the correspondence between word and tone.
Jeux v é nitiens: Working Methods at the Start of Lutos ławski’s Mature Period
Authors: Thomas Adrian
Published: November 2023

There is an undeniable fascination in the pivotal work. Its position suggests a creation which is transitional, rough-edged, experimental, yet crucial to the understanding of the composer’s artistic development.jeuxvenitiens (1961) is such a work.
Between Polarity and Synthesis: The Modernist Paradigm in Lutos ławski’s Concertos for Cello and Piano
Authors: Whittall Arnold
Published: November 2023

‘Modernism’ is a term so swathed in the varied garments of highly diverse definition and use as to be at once deeply suspect and invaluable. My application of it here relates to a view of musical progressiveness as resisting, if not totally rejecting, the organicist predispositions of the tonal tradition, and I do not seek to confine the relevance of modernism to those late nineteenth-, early twentieth century years whose musical initiatives were themselves soon overtaken by the more radical impulses of the so-called ‘New Music’. Nor do I accept the austere view that artistic modernism is actually anti-progressive, in the sense (presum ably) that it seeks to enhance the elitism that underpins traditional aesthetic practices.
The Integrative Role of Motion Patterns in Lutos ławski’s Mature Symphonic Works: A Comparison of Livre pour orchestre and the Symphony No. 4
Authors: Tuchowski Andrzej
Published: November 2023

The concept of motion, present in music theory since ancient times, has occupied a prominent position in twentieth-century theoretical systems, for example, in the writings of Ernst Kurth, Hans Mersmann, Heinrich Schenker, and his followers.
Concerto In B Flat, K. 456
Authors: Hutchings Arthur
Published: November 2023

The fourth, fifth, and sixth concertos of this annus mirabilis may far more reasonably be regarded as forming a group than may the first three which are often spoken of as a trio, either because of a sentence in one of lvfozart’s letters, or because they were all composed within a few weeks of March--April 1784. But the second three, of which the composition was spread over the remaining months of the year, show a marked consolidation of first-movement structure; each uses the same size of orchestra, and each has other points in common.
Concerto In A, K. 488
Authors: Hutchings Arthur
Published: November 2023

In the two and a half months since K. 482 the most important event is the performance of a small work, the one-act comedy Der Schauspieldirektor (usually in this country called The Impresario) in the orangery at Schtinbrunn, for which setting it was commissioned by the emperor. No doubt during the period which brought forth the Concertos in E flat, A, and C minor, Mozart’s chief thoughts and hopes were for the completion and successful launching of Figaro.
England and the Folk-Art Problem (1941)
Authors: Kildea Paul
Published: November 2023

There have been so few outstanding composers in England since the turn of the century, it is hardly surprising that America knows little of that country’s musical fashions; for it is the minor composers who most clearly indicate the trend of the age. Roughly speaking there have been two major schools, and the conflict between the two has influenced everybody. The outstanding figures whose personalities may be said to have given each school its particular character were Elgar and Parry. Elgar represents the professional point of view, which emphasizes the importance of technical efficiency and welcomes any foreign influences that can be profitably assimilated. Parry and his followers, with the Royal College of Music as their center, have stressed the amateur idea and they have encouraged folk-art, its collecting and teaching. They are inclined to suspect technical brilliance of being superficial and insincere. This difference may not be unconnected with the fact that Elgar was compelled to earn his living by music, whereas Parry was not. Parry’s national ideal was, in fact, the English Gentleman (who generally thinks it rather vulgar to take too much trouble). From Parry and his associates there arose a school of composers directly influenced by folksong, to which belonged virtually every composer known here until recently, except of course, Elgar and Frank Bridge. This may seem surprising to many Americans who have come to regard Elgar as synonymous with England. But he is, in fact, a most eclectic composer, his most obvious influences being Wagner, Tchaikovsky, and Franck.
On Behalf of Gustav Mahler (1942)
Authors: Kildea Paul
Published: November 2023

Most young American and English musicians have been encouraged, I think, to disregard Mahler. At least I myself was. Always coupled with Bruckner, he was supposed to be a purely local composer. For Germans, I was told, he had a certain sentimental attraction, though even on the Rhine and the Danube, the academicians preferred Brahms, the glamour-seekers Strauss, and the modernists Schonberg and Berg. He was long-winded and formless-the bright intellectuals cited him as an example of a romantic self-indulgent, who was so infatuated with his ideas that he could never stop. Either he couldn’t score at all, or he could only score like Wagner, using enormous orchestras with so much going on that you couldn’t hear anything clearly. Above all, he was not original. In other words, nothing for a young student! And so, when I was at a concert soon after leaving school, specially to hear an exciting new piano concerto, and saw from the programme that I had first to hear a symphony by Mahler, I naturally groaned in anticipation of forty-five minutes of boredom.
Statement to the Local Tribunal for the Registration of Conscientious Objectors (1942)
Authors: Kildea Paul
Published: November 2023

Since I believe that there is in every man the spirit of God, I cannot destroy, and feel it my duty to avoid helping to destroy as far as I am able, human life, however strongly I may disapprove of the individual’s actions or thoughts. The whole of my life has been devoted to acts of creation (being by profession a composer) and I cannot take part in acts of destruction. Moreover, I feel that the fascist attitude to life can only be overcome by passive resistance. If Hitler were in power here or this country had any similar form of government, I should feel it my duty to obstruct this regime in every non-violent way possible, and by complete non-cooperation. I believe sincerely that I can help my fellow human beings best, by continuing the work I am most qualified to do by the nature of my gifts and training, i.e. the creation or propagation of music. I have possibilities of writing music for M.O.1. (Ministry of Information) films, and for B.B.C. productions, and am offering my services to the Committee for the Encouragement of Music and Art. I am however prepared, but feel completely unsuited by nature & training, to undertake other constructive civilian work provided that it is not connected with any of the armed forces.
Conversation with Benjamin Britten (1944)
Authors: Kildea Paul
Published: November 2023

Question. You have written works in many forms and combinations, but you seem to prefer certain mediums to others. For example, you have written a great deal for string orchestra, but comparatively little for full orchestra. Why is that? Answer. I am attracted by the many features of the strings. For instance, the possibilities of elaborate devise-the effect of many voices of the same kind. There is also the infinite variety of colour-the use of mutes, pizzicato, harmonics and so forth. Then again, there is the great dexterity in the technique of string players. Generally speaking, I like to think of the smaller combinations of players, and I deplore the tendency of present-day audiences to expect only the luscious ‘tutti’ effect from an orchestra. I think this has been engendered by a ‘Hollywood’ method of scoring-both here and abroad-and also by the modern radio sets and electrical gramophones, which tend to cut off the upper partials and give the orchestra a constant rounded, booming and ‘fat’ sound. I’ve always inclined to the clear and clean-the ‘slender’ sound of, say, Mozart or Verdi or Mahler-or even Tchaikovsky, if he is played in a restrained, though vital, way. But I also write for string orchestra because I don’t like writing music in a vacuum. To my mind, actual contact with performance is very important. String orchestras are more enterprising in their programmes than symphony orchestras and I have often been asked to write for them. I feel grateful if artists take the trouble to be interested in my music and ask me to compose something. In this way, I have been glad to write for soprano and tenor voices, for the horn and oboe, and string orchestra-and even for the opera-house.
The Rape of Lucretia (?1951)
Authors: Kildea Paul
Published: November 2023

In 1946 in England there was in all-the-year-round use one Opera House Sadler’s Wells (the present permanent Covent Garden Opera Company had not yet been formed1) and although ‘Peter Grimes’ had been well received the year before, it seemed unlikely that other new Operas would be put on. To some of the singers, writers and musicians involved in ‘Peter Grimes’ this appeared to be the moment to start a group dedicated to the creation of new works, performed with the least possible expense and capable of attracting new audiences by being toured all over the country. We, in this group, could not afford to risk the expense of a large chorus, orchestra and heavy elaborate scenery. We had no theatre of our own and very limited financial backing, so we determined to experiment and write an Opera the only eight characters, a tiny orchestra of twelve and a simple production. John Christie of Glyndebourne generously underwrote the venture with the backing of the newly formed Arts Council. Ronald Duncan,2 a poet with whom I had worked before, and I chose the suitable classic story of ‘The Rape of Lucretia’ by Tarquinius Sextus and set to work. We borrowed from many sources but principally from Andre Obey’s fine play ‘LeViol de Lucrece’ which made great use of two choruses, male and female, acting as commentators on the action throughout, situated on thrones on either side of the stage. In the original production these were sung by Joan Cross and Peter Pears, who had sung in the original production of’Peter Grimes’ the previous year and were among the leaders of this group. The scenery and costumes were designed by John Piper, one of our best English painters. It was produced by Eric Crozier, who is also concerned in the ‘Peter Grimes’ performance, and conducted by Ernest Ansermet.
Dido and Aeneas (1951)
Authors: Kildea Paul
Published: November 2023

Sir,-In his letter of May 3 Dr. Geoffrey Bush states that Purcell’s music to Dido and Aeneas has been ‘carefully preserved.’1 That is not quite the case. The only surviving manuscript of the music seems to be one written by John Travers 25 years after the death of Purcell and 40 years after the only contemporary performance of the work. Travers was not born at the time of this performance, and judging by obvious copying errors in the manuscript he cannot have been very familiar with the work, and it can never have been used for performance. The source for Dr. W. H. Cummings’s Purcell Society edition was written ‘probably in Purcell’s time’ (Dr. Cummings’s words).2 This came to light in the 1880s and has since disappeared (according to Professor E. ]. Dent).3 It differs widely from the above Travers manuscript which is preserved in the library of St. Michael’s College, Tenbury. There was apparently yet another manuscript consulted by MacFarren for his edition of the work for the Musical Antiquarian Society in 1841, which again differs from the above version, actually being considerably shorter.4 It seems that there is no trace of this manuscript to-day. ‘Carefully preserved’ is, therefore, a scarcely accurate phrase to use.
Variations on a Critical Theme (1952)
Authors: Kildea Paul
Published: November 2023

I can well remember my first contact with the critics. I was about 17 and three part songs of mine had been given at a London theatre concert.1 They were written as a student’s exercise, with the voice parts in strict canon. The first was amiably grotesque, the second atmospheric in a cool way, the third lumpily ‘folky.’ The only written criticism of this performance damned them entirely-as being obvious copies of Walton’s three Facade Songs.2 Now anyone who is interested can see for himself that this is silly nonsense. The Walton Songs are brilliant and sophisticated in the extreme-mine could scarcely have been more childlike and naive, with not a trace of parody throughout. It is easy to imagine the damping effect of this first notice on a young composer. I was furious and dismayed because I could see there was not a word of truth in it. I was also considerably discouraged. No friendliness-no word of encouragement-no perception. Was this the critical treatment which one was to expect all one’s life? A gloomy outlook. I decided to avoid reading critics from that day onwards. And so I have as far as possible. Alas, there are always friends to send one press notices: ‘Have you seen this; of course I don’t agree but .. .’; or that amiable vagueness which sends one the most virulent attacks: ‘Sure you would like to see this most interesting account of .. .’
Three Premieres (1954)
Authors: Kildea Paul
Published: November 2023

It was in the last days of the war, at a performance of The Messiah in Westminster Abbey, that I first heard Kathleen Ferrier sing.1 I was impressed immediately by the nobility and beauty of her presence, and by the warmth and deep range of her voice. It seemed to me (and seems so still) that hers was one of the very few voices that could tackle with success the low tessitura of that alto part. So, a few months later, in the autumn of 1945, when we were looking for a contralto to play the name part in a new opera I was writing, The Rape of Lucretia, and she was mentioned as a possibility, I enthusiastically welcomed the idea. Peter Pears, singing with her a few days later, suggested it to her, and she tentatively agreed. She was nervous about learning a new long, modern part; nervous, above all, about her acting-I think she had never been on the stage, certainly not the professional stage, in her life. She was persuaded, especially since the rehearsal period was going to be long and calm, and soon she was keenly involved, greedily absorbing each Iiew bit of the score as it came along, and helping in the arrangements too; it was she, for instance, who suggested Nancy Evans to play the other Lucretia (we were preparing a ‘run’ of the opera, and so two alternating casts were necessary).2Thus in no time her warm friendliness and keenness on any serious artistic matter made her a member of the ‘family’ which was planning this operatic venture. The ‘family’ consisted of such as Ronald Duncan, who was writing the libretto of the opera; John Piper, designing the scenery and costumes; Eric Crozier, producing; Joan Cross and Peter Pears singing, with Kathleen, the principal parts; and myself writing the music.