Download or read book Alfred Schnittke s Concerto Grosso written by Peter J. Schmelz and published by Oxford Keynotes. This book was released on 2019 with total page 185 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Concerto Grosso no. 1 is one of Alfred Schnittke's best-known and most compelling works, sounding the surface of late Soviet life while resonating with contemporary compositional currents around the world such as postmodernism. It marked a decisive point in Schnittke's development of the approach he called polystylism, which aimed to contain in a single composition the wide range of contemporary musical styles, including "jazz, pop, rock, or serial music." Thanks to it and his other similar compositions, Schnittke became one of the most-performed and most-recorded living composers at the end of the twentieth century. Peter J. Schmelz's Alfred Schnittke's Concerto Grosso no. 1 represents the first accessible and comprehensive study of this composition. The novel structure of the book engages with the piece conceptually, historically, musically, and phenomenologically, with the six movements of the composition framing the six chapters. Augmenting and complicating the insights of existing English, Russian, and German publications on the Concerto Grosso no. 1, the book adds new information from underused primary sources, including Schnittke's unpublished correspondence and his many published interviews. It engages further with his sketches for the piece, and with contemporary Soviet musical criticism, resulting in a more objective, historical account of this rich, multifaceted composition, its influences, and its impact on music making in the USSR and worldwide.
Download or read book Such Freedom If Only Musical written by Peter J Schmelz and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2009-03-04 with total page 409 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Following Stalin's death in 1953, during the period now known as the Thaw, Nikita Khrushchev opened up greater freedoms in cultural and intellectual life. A broad group of intellectuals and artists in Soviet Russia were able to take advantage of this, and in no realm of the arts was this perhaps more true than in music. Students at Soviet conservatories were at last able to use various channels--many of questionable legality--to acquire and hear music that had previously been forbidden, and visiting performers and composers brought young Soviets new sounds and new compositions. In the 1960s, composers such as Andrey Volkonsky, Edison Denisov, Alfred Schnittke, Arvo Pärt, Sofia Gubaidulina, and Valentin Silvestrov experimented with a wide variety of then new and unfamiliar techniques ranging from serialism to aleatory devices, and audiences eager to escape the music of predictable sameness typical to socialist realism were attracted to performances of their new and unfamiliar creations. This "unofficial" music by young Soviet composers inhabited the gray space between legal and illegal. Such Freedom, If Only Musical traces the changing compositional styles and politically charged reception of this music, and brings to life the paradoxical freedoms and sense of resistance or opposition that it suggested to Soviet listeners. Author Peter J. Schmelz draws upon interviews conducted with many of the most important composers and performers of the musical Thaw, and supplements this first-hand testimony with careful archival research and detailed musical analyses. The first book to explore this period in detail, Such Freedom, If Only Musical will appeal to musicologists and theorists interested in post-war arts movements, the Cold War, and Soviet music, as well as historians of Russian culture and society.
Download or read book A Schnittke Reader written by Alfred Schnittke and published by Indiana University Press. This book was released on 2002-08-16 with total page 297 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This compilation assembles previously published and unpublished essays by Schnittke and supplements them with an interview with cellist and scholar Alexander Ivashkin. The book is illustrated with musical examples, many of them in Schnittke's own hand. In A Schnittke Reader, the composer speaks of his life, his works, other composers, performers, and a broad range of topics in 20th-century music. The volume is rounded out with reflections by some of Schnittke's contemporaries.
Download or read book Alfred Schnittke s Concerto Grosso no 1 written by Peter J. Schmelz and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2019-05-17 with total page 128 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Concerto Grosso no. 1 is one of Alfred Schnittke's best-known and most compelling works, sounding the surface of late Soviet life while resonating with contemporary compositional currents around the world such as postmodernism. It marked a decisive point in Schnittke's development of the approach he called polystylism, which aimed to contain in a single composition the wide range of contemporary musical styles, including "jazz, pop, rock, or serial music." Thanks to it and his other similar compositions, Schnittke became one of the most-performed and most-recorded living composers at the end of the twentieth century. Peter J. Schmelz's Alfred Schnittke's Concerto Grosso no. 1 represents the first accessible and comprehensive study of this composition. The novel structure of the book engages with the piece conceptually, historically, musically, and phenomenologically, with the six movements of the composition framing the six chapters. Augmenting and complicating the insights of existing English, Russian, and German publications on the Concerto Grosso no. 1, the book adds new information from underused primary sources, including Schnittke's unpublished correspondence and his many published interviews. It engages further with his sketches for the piece, and with contemporary Soviet musical criticism, resulting in a more objective, historical account of this rich, multifaceted composition, its influences, and its impact on music making in the USSR and worldwide.
Download or read book The Routledge Handbook to the Music of Alfred Schnittke written by Gavin Dixon and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2022-01-31 with total page 475 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Routledge Handbook to the Music of Alfred Schnittke is a comprehensive study of the work of one of the most important Russian composers of the late 20th century. Each piece is discussed in detail, with particular attention to the composer’s groundbreaking polystylism, as well as his unique approach to musical symbolism and his deep engagement with Christian themes. This is the first publication to look at Schnittke’s output in its entirety, and for most works it represents either the first ever published analysis or the first in a language other than Russian. The volume presents new research from the Ivashkin-Schnittke Archive at Goldsmiths, University of London and the collection of Schnittke’s compositional sketches at the Julliard Library in New York. It also draws on the substantial research on Schnittke’s music published in the Russian language. Including a work list and bibliography of primary and secondary sources, this is an essential reference for all those interested in Russian music, 20th-century music and performance studies.
Download or read book Schnittke Studies written by Gavin Dixon and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2016-11-18 with total page 302 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Alfred Schnittke (1934-1998) was arguably the most important Russian composer since Shostakovich, and his music has generated a great deal of academic interest in the years since his death. Schnittke Studies provides a variety of perspectives on the composer and his music. The field is currently diverse and vibrant, and this book demonstrates the range of academic approaches being applied to Schnittke’s work and the insights they provide, covering: polystylism, for which Schnittke is best known, the significance of the composer’s Christian faith, and detailed formal analyses of key works, with connections drawn between the apparently divergent periods of the composer’s career. This book has been prepared as a memorial to Professor Alexander Ivashkin, a leading scholar in the field, who died in 2014, and will be of interest not only to those studying Schnittke's music, but also those with an interest in late Soviet-era music in general. Chapter 5 of this book is freely available as a downloadable Open Access PDF at http://www.taylorfrancis.com under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC-BY-NC-ND) 4.0 license.
Download or read book The Cambridge Companion to the Concerto written by Simon P. Keefe and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2005-10-27 with total page 344 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A rare volume dedicated entirely to scholarship on the genre of the concerto.
Download or read book Sonic Overload written by Peter J. Schmelz and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2020-12-29 with total page 431 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Sonic Overload offers a new, music-centered cultural history of the late Soviet Union. It focuses on polystylism in music as a response to the information overload swamping listeners in the Soviet Union during its final decades. It traces the ways in which leading composers Alfred Schnittke and Valentin Silvestrov initially embraced popular sources before ultimately rejecting them. Polystylism first responded to the utopian impulses of Soviet ideology with utopian impulses to encompass all musical styles, from "high" to "low". But these initial all-embracing aspirations were soon followed by retreats to alternate utopias founded on carefully selecting satisfactory borrowings, as familiar hierarchies of culture, taste, and class reasserted themselves. Looking at polystylism in the late USSR tells us about past and present, near and far, as it probes the musical roots of the overloaded, distracted present. Based on archival research, oral historical interviews, and other overlooked primary materials, as well as close listening and thorough examination of scores and recordings, Sonic Overload presents a multilayered and comprehensive portrait of late-Soviet polystylism and cultural life, and of the music of Silvestrov and Schnittke. Sonic Overload is intended for musicologists and Soviet, Russian, and Ukrainian specialists in history, the arts, film, and literature, as well as readers interested in twentieth- and twenty-first century music; modernism and postmodernism; quotation and collage; the intersections of "high" and "low" cultures; and politics and the arts.
Download or read book Claude Debussy s Clair de Lune written by Gurminder Kaur Bhogal and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2018 with total page 169 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Debussy himself had little regard for Clair de Lune, and scholars have thus far followed suit--until now. Claude Debussy's Clair de Lune is the first book wholly dedicated to an historical, cultural, and analytical investigation of the French composer's famous composition for piano. Author Gurminder Kaur Bhogal explores why, over any other piece in Debussy's repertoire for piano, Clair de Lune achieved stardom in the decades following the composer's death, and how, as the third movement of the Suite Bergamasque, it managed to almost fully eclipse the other movements. Drawing on a broad range of excerpts from classical and popular music, commercials, film, and video games, Bhogal examines the various ways in which listeners have engaged with the piece. She also places it in its proper artistic context, through analysis alongside the poetry of Paul Verlaine and the paintings of Jean-Antoine Watteau. A wide range of aural, visual, and video examples energize the narrative, and demonstrate how Clair de Lune has come to achieve an iconic status within and beyond Debussy's oeuvre.
Download or read book Sonata 1955 written by Alfred Schnittke and published by Warner (CA). This book was released on 2005 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: (String). Schnittke composed this sonata during 1954-55 when he was studying composition and counterpoint with Yevgeny Golubev, as well as instrumentation with Nikolai Rakov at the Moscow Conservatory. It was composed during Schnittke's second student year. In order to distinguish it from the later Violin Sonatas No. 1-3, it has been designated "Sonata 1955" by the publishers. Schnittke wrote the sonata at a time when the music of Shostakovich had a strong influence upon him. Nonetheless, one can, already in this early work, observe an individual musical language. Irina Schnittke came upon the manuscript of the present work when viewing the posthumous works of her husband, who died in 1998, and turned it over to the publishers for publication. The world premiere of the Sonata 1955 took place on 9 March, 2003 in London with Daniel Hope, violin, and Ivan Sokolov, piano. The work has been edited for publication by Daniel Hope and Ivan Sokolov. Completions by the editors have been disignated by brackets, parentheses are by Alfred Schnittke. The sonata was issued on the CD "East Meets West" (Warner Classics No. 2564-61329-2) in 2004.
Download or read book The Complete Classical Music Guide written by DK and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2020-08-11 with total page 354 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What makes Mozart's music so great? Why does a minor chord sound sad and a major chord sound happy? What's the difference between opera and operetta? From Bach to Bernstein, this definitive guide offers a complete survey of the history of classical music. Whether you already love classical music or you're just beginning to explore it, The Complete Classical Music Guide invites you to discover the spirituality of Byrd's masses, the awesome power of Handel's Messiah, and the wonders of Wagner's operas, as well as hundreds of more composers and their masterpieces. This guide takes you on a journey through more than 1,000 years, charting the evolution of musical instruments, styles, and genres. Biographies of major and lesser-known composers offer rich insights into their music and the historical and cultural contexts that influenced their genius. The book explores the features that defined each musical era - from the ornate brilliance of the Baroque, through the drama of Romantic music, to contemporary genres such as minimalism and electronic music. Timelines, quotes, and color photographs give a voice to this music and the exceptionally gifted individuals who created it.
Download or read book Rethinking Reich written by Sumanth Gopinath and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2019 with total page 417 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Described by music critic Alex Ross as "the most original musical thinker of our time" and having received innumerable accolades in a career spanning over fifty years, composer Steve Reich is considered by many to be America's greatest contemporary composer. His music, however, remains largely underresearched. Rethinking Reich redresses this imbalance, providing a space for prominent and emerging scholars to reassess the composer's contribution to music in the twentieth century. Featuring fourteen tightly focused and multifarious essays on various aspects of Reich's work--ranging from analytical, aesthetic, and archival studies to sociocultural, philosophical, and ethnomusicological reflections--this edited volume reveals new insights, including those enabled by access to the growing Steve Reich Collection at the Paul Sacher Foundation archive, the premier institution for primary research on twentieth-century and contemporary classical music. This volume takes on the timely task of challenging the hegemony of Reich's own articulate and convincing discourses on his music, as found in his Writings on Music (OUP, 2002), and breaks new ground in the broader field of minimalism studies.
Download or read book Defining Russia Musically written by Richard Taruskin and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2000-09-25 with total page 600 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: with an air of alterity--sensed, exploited, bemoaned, reveled in, traded on, and defended against both from within and from without." The author's goal is to explore this assumption of otherness in an all-encompassing work that re-creates the cultural contexts of the folksong anthologies of the 1700s, the operas, symphonies, and ballets of the 1800s, the modernist masterpieces of the 1900s, and the hugely fraught but ambiguous products of the Soviet period. Taruskin begins by showing how enlightened aristocrats, reactionary romantics, and the theorists and victims of totalitarianism have variously fashioned their vision of Russian society in musical terms. He then examines how Russia as a whole shaped its identity in contrast to an "East" during the age of its imperialist expansion, and in contrast to two different musical "Wests," Germany and Italy, during the formative years of its national consciousness.
Download or read book Teaching Stravinsky written by Kimberly A. Francis and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2015 with total page 297 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: It was her love of music - especially Stravinsky's music - that drew them together. This book tells the story of the ever-changing nature of Boulanger and Stravinsky's relationship from Boulanger's perspective, tracing their interactions from 1931 to 1971. Throughout, it asks how Boulanger's professional activity during the turbulent twentieth century intersected with her efforts on behalf of Stravinsky and how this facilitated her own influential conversations with the composer about his works while also drawing her into close contact with his family.
Download or read book Sonic Overload written by Peter J. Schmelz and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2020-12-29 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Sonic Overload offers a new, music-centered cultural history of the late Soviet Union. It focuses on polystylism in music as a response to the information overload swamping listeners in the Soviet Union during its final decades. It traces the ways in which leading composers Alfred Schnittke and Valentin Silvestrov initially embraced popular sources before ultimately rejecting them. Polystylism first responded to the utopian impulses of Soviet ideology with utopian impulses to encompass all musical styles, from "high" to "low". But these initial all-embracing aspirations were soon followed by retreats to alternate utopias founded on carefully selecting satisfactory borrowings, as familiar hierarchies of culture, taste, and class reasserted themselves. Looking at polystylism in the late USSR tells us about past and present, near and far, as it probes the musical roots of the overloaded, distracted present. Based on archival research, oral historical interviews, and other overlooked primary materials, as well as close listening and thorough examination of scores and recordings, Sonic Overload presents a multilayered and comprehensive portrait of late-Soviet polystylism and cultural life, and of the music of Silvestrov and Schnittke. Sonic Overload is intended for musicologists and Soviet, Russian, and Ukrainian specialists in history, the arts, film, and literature, as well as readers interested in twentieth- and twenty-first century music; modernism and postmodernism; quotation and collage; the intersections of "high" and "low" cultures; and politics and the arts.
Download or read book Debussy written by Eric Frederick Jensen and published by Master Musicians. This book was released on 2014 with total page 324 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Nearly one hundred years after the death of its composer, the music of Claude Debussy has lost none of its appeal. In this authoritative biography, author Eric Frederick Jensen brings together the most recent biographical research, including a revised catalogue of Debussy's compositions and the first complete edition of his correspondence. With separate, chronological sections on his life and music, Debussy is accessible to the general reader who wishes to focus on his life and personality, while providing detailed discussion of the music to musicians and students.
Download or read book Tallis written by Kerry McCarthy and published by MASTER MUSICIANS SERIES. This book was released on 2020 with total page 281 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The composer Thomas Tallis (c. 1505 - November 1585) lived and worked through much of the turbulent Tudor period in England. Unlike many of his contemporaries, he did not just react to radical change: he thrived on it. He helped invent new musical styles to meet the demands of the English Reformation. He revived and reimagined older musical forms for a new era. Fewer than a hundred of his works have survived, but they are incredibly diverse, from miniature settings of psalms and hymns to a monumental forty-voice motet. In this new biography, author Kerry McCarthy traces Tallis's long career from his youthful appointment at Dover Priory to his years as a senior member of the Chapel Royal, revisiting the most important documents of his life and a wide variety of his musical works. The book also takes readers on a guided journey along the River Thames to the palaces, castles, and houses where Tallis made music for the four monarchs he served. It ends with reflections on Tallis's will, his epitaph (whose complete text McCarthy has recently rediscovered), and other postmortem remembrances that give us a glimpse of his significant place in the sixteenth-century musical world. Tallis will be treasured by performers, scholars, Tudor enthusiasts, and anyone interested in English Renaissance music.
