Carols of Birds, Bells, and Sacred Hymns from Ukraine
An Anthology and Cultural Companion
Ukraine’s abundant heritage of singing includes thousands of carols. This anthology introduces an ancient culture that is nevertheless new to world audiences. In this book, the carols become a prism through which all of Ukraine’s history, culture, and vibrant spirit are brought to light. It includes the internationally celebrated “Carol of the Bells”—in its original version as a winter song of gratitude and resilience, and it covers sacred and secular pieces for the Christmas to New Year’s season: from early chant to elaborate new choral fantasies. Transliterations and translations…
This anthology of Ukrainian carols is a prism through which Ukraine’s history, culture, and vibrant spirit are revealed. It includes the original “Carol of the Bells,” music scores, translations, and the gripping narratives of choral activism that helped a nation survive.
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Sonic Mediations
Body, Sound, Technology
Sonic Mediations: Body, Sound, Technology is a collection of original essays that represents an invaluable contribution to the burgeoning field of sound studies. While sound is often posited as having a bridging function, as a passive in-between, this volume invites readers to rethink the concept of mediation by examining the relationships between the body, sound and technology. The chapters provide a series of focused case studies involving sound and music technologies, performances and installations, which address key issues for sound scholars: How are audio performances mediated by sound technologies as…
Sonic Mediations is a collection of essays that invites readers to rethink mediation by examining the relationships between the body, sound, and technology. It addresses key questions about performance, perception, and the role of the listener.
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Giacomo Meyerbeer
A Critical Life and Iconography
Giacomo Meyerbeer was once one of the most famous of all opera composers, enjoying into the twentieth century the same universal admiration and performance as a composer like Puccini does today. Through a series of adverse factors, his reputation was seriously damaged with the resurgence of nationalism and the growing ant-Semitism in France and Germany at the end of the nineteenth century, the propagation of a Wagnerian operatic aesthetic, the decline of the bel canto vocal tradition, and the disfavour manifested towards the heroism of French grand opera. All these…
Once a titan of opera, Giacomo Meyerbeer’s legacy was all but erased. Based on newly recovered private papers, this definitive biography reveals the man behind the myth, charting his downfall and modern rediscovery.
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Music Glocalization
Heritage and Innovation in a Digital Age
This unique edited volume offers a distinctive theoretical perspective and advanced insights into how music is impacted by the interaction of global forces with local conditions. As the first major book to apply the timely notion of “glocality” to music, this collection features robust scholarship on genres and practices from many corners of the world: from studies of European opera professions and the oeuvre of several contemporary art music composers, to music in Uzbekistan and Indonesia, urban street musicians, and even the didjeridoo. The authors interrogate theories of glocalization, distinguishing…
The first major book to apply the timely notion of “glocality” to music, it offers a distinctive theoretical perspective and advanced insights into how music is impacted by the interaction of global forces with local conditions.
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The Study of Musical Performance in Antiquity
Archaeology and Written Sources
This collection of eleven essays provides the reader with some valuable insights into the richness of sources dealing with music and musical performance scattered over 3000 years and covering a wide range of geographies, from Syria to Iberia, through Greece and Rome. The volume, then, offers a series of examinations of literary data and materials from different areas of the Classical World and the Near East in ancient times and in late Antiquity, examined both synchronically and diachronically, in some cases in dialogue with one another. This broad treatment makes…
This collection of essays provides valuable insights into the richness of sources dealing with music and musical performance scattered over 3000 years and covering a wide range of geographies, from Syria to Iberia, through Greece and Rome.
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From £19.99
The composer Ludwig Minkus represents one of music’s biggest mysteries. Who was he? Hardly anything is known about him, and yet he occupied an influential position in the theatres of the Imperial ballet in late nineteenth-century Russia. He has been recognised as a predecessor of Tchaikovsky, but as a musician is commonly held to have been so feeble as to be beneath contempt. Yet despite the scorn heaped on him, and his consequent obscurity, Minkus is far from being forgotten. Since the early 1960s his name has slowly begun to…
Ludwig Minkus is one of music’s biggest mysteries. An influential composer for Imperial Russia’s ballet, he was scorned by critics. Now his works Don Quixote and La Bayadère are taking the world by surprise. This study discovers the man behind the powerful music.
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The Life and Work of Pauline Viardot Garcia
The Years of Grace, Volume 2, 1863-1910
This is the second volume of the Life and Work of Pauline Viardot Garcia: The Years of Grace, 1863–1910. Viardot was an international opera singer, composer and teacher who was seminal in the world of music in the 19th century. She came from a famous family of musicians, her father being the Spanish tenor Manuel del Popolo Vicente Rodriguez Garcia. Her mother, Joaquina Sitchès, was also a singer and taught Pauline; her brother Manuel Patrizio Garcia was an eminent singing teacher and inventor of the laryngoscope and her sister was…
Pauline Viardot was a seminal 19th-century opera singer, composer, and teacher whose friends included Chopin, Liszt, and Wagner. Loved by Ivan Turgenev, she was a fascinating woman at the heart of her age. This volume covers her later years.
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The Choral Works of Jennifer Higdon
Choral Kaleidoscope
Jennifer Higdon is an esteemed American composer known internationally, and the recipient of many awards in various musical genres. Though best known for her instrumental works and operas, she is a prolific writer of choral music that is fascinating, varied in style, profound, and meaningful, and speaks directly to a contemporary audience through the carefully selected texts. This book explores a number of Higdon’s choral works, both extended and short works, citing the extensive relationship of the music to the texts, which are set a cappella, with full orchestra or…
Esteemed composer Jennifer Higdon writes fascinating and profound choral music. This book explores her works, citing the extensive relationship of the music to the texts. It presents compositional characteristics, analysis, and insights directly from the composer.
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The Marriage between Perfume and the Lyric Stage
The Essence of Opera
“But what is this scent of balmy air? What this ray of light in my tomb? I seem to see an angel, amid a scent of roses” sings Florestan in Fidelio, Beethoven’s only opera. The role of scents, smells, fragrances, and odours in opera has long been neglected, just as how much opera and its stars have influenced the world of perfumery from the nineteenth century to the present day. In the first book-length study on the topic, Professor Mary May Robertson explores the relationship between opera, perfumes, and their…
The role of scents in opera and its influence on perfumery has long been neglected. In the first book-length study on the topic, Professor Mary May Robertson explores the previously undiscussed connection between the two, revealing their ultimate marriage in Operatic Perfumes.
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Daniel-François-Esprit Auber
The Man and His Music
Daniel-François-Esprit Auber (1782-1871), the composer of La Muette de Portici (1828) and Fra Diavolo (1830), was once regarded as one of the great figures of music, a staple of the operatic repertoire in France, and indeed around the world. It is now almost impossible to understand the extent of his once universal fame, his influence on contemporary composers. His operas were in the theatre repertories of the world until the 1920s, and innumerable arrangements of them were published and sold everywhere. The ubiquity of his overtures—Masaniello, Fra Diavolo, The Bronze…
Once regarded as a great figure of music, with an impact as great as Rossini’s, Daniel-François-Esprit Auber is now neglected. The time has come to reassess his life and work, especially his collaboration with master librettist Eugène Scribe, and hear his elegant music again.
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An Anthology of French and Francophone Singers from A to Z
“Singin’ in French”
Every musical form has had an impact on the linguistic practices of our society. French song is a vector of cultural, social, and stylistic values. Throughout the world, songs in the French language are used in the teaching of French: professors incorporate songs into the curriculum in order to illustrate differences of register and linguistic variation, as well as to raise lexical or grammatical questions. As a form of popular expression, song is a genre that has, in recent years, become the focus of serious academic scholarship and criticism. However,…
This richly illustrated mini-dictionary provides a collection of portraits of the greatest singers of the French language and describes how they have contributed to the musical landscape in both France and the larger francophone community and the world as a whole.
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The Seven-String Guitar in Russia
Its Origins, Repertoire, and Performance Practice, 1800-1850
This definitive work on the history of the seven-string guitar in Russia, its cosmopolitan origins, its vast and diverse repertoire, and its unique sound and performance practice is a goldmine of information on the instrument’s players and composers—Andrei Sychra, Semion Aksionov, Mikhail Vysotsky, and many others––who brought the art of playing to unprecedented heights. It details various connections between this musical tradition and the country's peculiar cultural and political context, including the contribution of women composers in the 18th century, the cultural implications of the Third Partition of…
This definitive history of the seven-string guitar in Russia explores its cosmopolitan origins, diverse repertoire, and unique sound. It details the tradition’s connections to the country’s cultural and political context, including the role of the Russian Roma in its formation.
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The Life and Work of Percy Aldridge Grainger
Till Life Become Fire
What goes into the making of a creative genius and how can their gifts be used to help uplift humankind? These were questions that led the Australian/American pianist, composer, and music educator Percy Aldridge Grainger (1882-1961) to exhaustively document his life, his thoughts, and his associations and establish in the country of his birth a museum dedicated to helping answer those questions. Grainger was a creative genius who thought more in terms of the future than of the present and was an advocate for the role that music can play…
Creative genius Percy Grainger documented his life to explore how music can uplift humankind. This book is the first to detail his life and music using his own words, unpublished documents, and musical examples in a study that is both accessible and detailed.
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From £25.99
“OM”, a fundamental meditation sound present in the cultures of Buddhism, is a syllable full of philosophical and transcendental meanings. The category of the Orient, as contrasted, antithetical and complementary to the Occident (West) and its culture, appears to be one of the most interesting and long-lasting issues discussed in the humanities. European fascination with Oriental cultures has found multifaceted manifestations in science, art, fashion and beliefs. Music, as an important element of cultural communication, has always been well suited for transitions and inspirations. The relationship between the Orient and…
European fascination with Oriental cultures has found multifaceted manifestations. Music, as an important element of cultural communication, is well suited for such transitions. This collection of essays explores the fascinating influences between Orient and Western music.
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William Boyce
A Tercentenary Sourcebook and Compendium
William Boyce: A Tercentenary Sourcebook and Compendium is published in celebration of the three-hundreth anniversary of the birth in 1711 of England’s leading eighteenth-century composer. It is the first book to be devoted to a musician who more than any of his contemporaries carried the flag in the broadest sense for English music during a period that was inevitably dominated by the towering figure of Handel, who was then resident in London. By the late 19th century, however, Boyce had become generally known only as a composer of anthems and…
This sourcebook on William Boyce, England’s leading 18th-century composer, brings together significant contemporary documents on his life and career, with critical commentaries. It includes the first comprehensive catalogue of his works and discography.
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From £33.99
This book examines the impact of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation/Société Radio Canada (CBC/SRC) on the development of art music in Canada during the broadcaster’s first fifty years (1936-1986). In so doing, it investigates the achievement of one man: John Peter Lee Roberts. Born in Australia, he arrived in Canada in 1955, and, over the next thirty years, he worked tirelessly as a producer, administrator and adviser at the state broadcaster to bring the music of Canada to the world and the world of music to Canadians. Roberts also played a…
This book examines the CBC’s impact on art music in Canada (1936-1986) through the work of one man: John Peter Lee Roberts. For thirty years, he brought the music of Canada to the world and the world of music to Canadians, commissioning and promoting new Canadian composers.
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From £29.99
This book is an addition to the British music culture as it traces the history, growth and environmental, social and musical conditions of the Brass Band Movement during the Victorian era, and the influences of the “Romantic Period.”
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From £40.99
This is the only comprehensive musical biography in English of Mikis Theodorakis (1925-2021), the revolutionary Greek composer. The first edition (1980) was written with the assistance and support of Theodorakis himself; this new edition was commissioned after Theodorakis’ death and extends the assessment of his work to the operas, symphonies and other works composed since 1980. As a political figure in modern Greece, Theodorakis embodied the spirit of resistance to the abuse of authority, from the Nazi occupation of his country and the ensuing civil war to the military dictatorship…
The definitive musical biography of Mikis Theodorakis, the revolutionary composer who became a Greek icon of resistance. Born from the author’s personal friendship with the composer and written with his blessing, this is the authoritative account of a true popular hero.
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A Taxonomical Framework for Evaluating Piano Performances
Tempo Styles beyond Fast and Slow
In the age of online music, the repertoire and the number of recordings that we can listen to have enormously expanded. Modern-day ears are filled with a huge variety of performance styles, from Vladimir Horowitz’s expressive Mozart to Glenn Gould’s articulated Bach. Nevertheless, musicians and musicologists seem to find it difficult, if not impossible, to put what they hear into words. This book constructs a taxonomical framework through which six important aspects of tempo can be evaluated. To assess the extent to which performers embody these aspects in their…
Musicians find it difficult to put what they hear into words. This book offers a framework for evaluating six aspects of tempo. Analyzing 30 recordings of Chopin and Liszt, it shows how to precisely describe and evaluate a performer’s style of tempo and tempo variation.
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Meyerbeer’s Robert le Diable
The Premier Opéra Romantique
Robert le Diable by Giacomo Meyerbeer is regarded as a musical milestone, a definitive statement in the 19th-century development of French grand opéra from the tragédie lyrique of Lully, Rameau, Gluck and Spontini. The libretto by Eugène Scribe and Germain Delavigne was derived from the medieval legend of “Robert the Devil”. First performed on 21 November 1831 at the Paris Opéra, the work brought Meyerbeer international celebrity. Robert le Diable remains a legend in the annals of opera. The fascinating story reveals a complex imagery and symbolism that touches on…
Meyerbeer’s Robert le Diable is a milestone of French grand opéra. This book traces the opera’s history and music, and examines the fascinating iconography generated by its famous scenes, including the legendary Ballet of the Nuns, a touchstone of dark Romanticism.
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