Download or read book Beethoven s Folksong Settings written by Barry A. R. Cooper and published by Oxford University Press on Demand. This book was released on 1994 with total page 270 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Beethoven composed far more folksong settings than any other type of composition. Most are British songs, including Auld Lang Syne and the The Miller of Dee, with text by such authors as Burns, Byron and Scott. Yet Beethoven's settings, commissioned by George Thomson of Edinburgh, have beenneglected by performers and scholars alike, and nearly all accounts of them are both superficial and startlingly inaccurate. This book is based on a very elablorate study of a wide range of sources, and dispels the many myths that have been circulating about this music. Every one of the 179settings is dated to within a few weeks and an account is given of the souces of the melodies and texts, the difficulties of sending the music across Europe during the Napoleonic Wars (smugglers were even called upon to assist!), the fees Beethoven received, and when and how the texts were added.By comparing Beethoven's settings with those of his predecessors Pleyel, Haydhn and Kozeluch, the author demonstrates that Beethoven comprehensively transcended the bounds of convention, producing settings of extra-ordinary quality and originality. Suggestions are also made for overcoming theproblems of presenting these songs in performance.

Download or read book Beethoven s Symphonies An Artistic Vision written by Lewis Lockwood and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2015-10-26 with total page 231 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “[Beethoven’s] music never grows old— and, enjoyed alongside Mr. Lockwood’s expert commentary, it sparkles with fresh magic.”—Wall Street Journal More than any other composer, Beethoven left to posterity a vast body of material that documents the early stages of almost everything he wrote. From this trove of sketchbooks, Lewis Lockwood draws us into the composer’s mind, unveiling a creative process of astonishing scope and originality. For musicians and nonmusicians alike, Beethoven’s symphonies stand at the summit of artistic achievement, loved today as they were two hundred years ago for their emotional cogency, variety, and unprecedented individuality. Beethoven labored to complete nine of them over his lifetime—a quarter of Mozart’s output and a tenth of Haydn’s—yet no musical works are more iconic, more indelibly stamped on the memory of anyone who has heard them. They are the products of an imagination that drove the composer to build out of the highest musical traditions of the past something startlingly new. Lockwood brings to bear a long career of studying the surviving sources that yield insight into Beethoven’s creative work, including concept sketches for symphonies that were never finished. From these, Lockwood offers fascinating revelations into the historical and biographical circumstances in which the symphonies were composed. In this compelling story of Beethoven’s singular ambition, Lockwood introduces readers to the symphonies as individual artworks, broadly tracing their genesis against the backdrop of political upheavals, concert life, and their relationship to his major works in other genres. From the first symphonies, written during his emerging deafness, to the monumental Ninth, Lockwood brings to life Beethoven’s lifelong passion to compose works of unsurpassed beauty.

Download or read book Beethoven written by William Kinderman and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2009-04-10 with total page 445 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Combining musical insight with the most recent research, William Kinderman's Beethoven is both a richly drawn portrait of the man and a guide to his music. Kinderman traces the composer's intellectual and musical development from the early works written in Bonn to the Ninth Symphony and the late quartets, looking at compositions from different and original perspectives that show Beethoven's art as a union of sensuous and rational, of expression and structure. In analyses of individual pieces, Kinderman shows that the deepening of Beethoven's musical thought was a continuous process over decades of his life. In this new updated edition, Kinderman gives more attention to the composer's early chamber music, his songs, his opera Fidelio, and to a number of often-neglected works of the composer's later years and fascinating projects left incomplete. A revised view emerges from this of Beethoven's aesthetics and the musical meaning of his works. Rather than the conventional image of a heroic and tormented figure, Kinderman provides a more complex, more fully rounded account of the composer. Although Beethoven's deafness and his other personal crises are addressed, together with this ever-increasing commitment to his art, so too are the lighter aspects of his personality: his humor, his love of puns, his great delight in juxtaposing the exalted and the commonplace.

Download or read book The Creative Process in Music from Mozart to Kurtag written by William Kinderman and published by University of Illinois Press. This book was released on 2012-09-16 with total page 259 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Great music arouses wonder: how did the composer create such an original work of art? What was the artist's inspiration, and how did that idea become a reality? Cultural products inevitably arise from a context, a submerged landscape that is often not easily accessible. To bring such things to light, studies of the creative process find their cutting edge by probing beyond the surface, opening new perspectives on the apparently familiar. In this intriguing study, William Kinderman opens the door to the composer's workshop, investigating not just the final outcome but the process of creative endeavor in music. Focusing on the stages of composition, Kinderman maintains that the most rigorous basis for the study of artistic creativity comes not from anecdotal or autobiographical reports, but from original handwritten sketches, drafts, revised manuscripts, and corrected proof sheets. He explores works of major composers from the eighteenth century to the present, from Mozart's piano music and Beethoven's Piano Trio in F to Kurtág's Kafka Fragments and Hommage à R. Sch. Other chapters examine Robert Schumann's Fantasie in C, Mahler's Fifth Symphony, and Bartók's Dance Suite. Kinderman's analysis takes the form of "genetic criticism," tracing the genesis of these cultural works, exploring their aesthetic meaning, and mapping the continuity of a central European tradition that has displayed remarkable vitality for over two centuries, as accumulated legacies assumed importance for later generations. Revealing the diversity of sources, rejected passages and movements, fragmentary unfinished works, and aborted projects that were absorbed into finished compositions, The Creative Process in Music from Mozart to Kurtág illustrates the wealth of insight that can be gained through studying the creative process.

Download or read book The Invention of Folk Music and Art Music written by Matthew Gelbart and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2007-10-11 with total page 265 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: We tend to take for granted the labels we put to different forms of music. This study considers the origins and implications of the way in which we categorize music. Whereas earlier ways of classifying music were based on its different functions, for the past two hundred years we have been obsessed with creativity and musical origins, and classify music along these lines. Matthew Gelbart argues that folk music and art music became meaningful concepts only in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, and only in relation to each other. He examines how cultural nationalism served as the earliest impetus in classifying music by origins, and how the notions of folk music and art music followed - in conjunction with changing conceptions of nature, and changing ideas about human creativity. Through tracing the history of these musical categories, the book confronts our assumptions about different kinds of music.

Download or read book The Cambridge Companion to Beethoven written by Glenn Stanley and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2000-05-11 with total page 268 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This Companion, first published in 2000, provides a comprehensive view of Beethoven and his work. The first part of the book presents the composer as a private individual, as a professional, and at the work-place, discussing biographical problems, Beethoven's professional activities when not composing and his methods as a composer. In the heart of the book, individual chapters are devoted to all the major genres cultivated by Beethoven and to the elements of style and structure that cross all genres. The book concludes by looking at the ways that Beethoven and his music have been interpreted by performers, writers on music, and in the arts, literature, and philosophy. The essays in this volume, written by leading Beethoven specialists, maintain traditional emphases in Beethoven studies while incorporating other developments in musicology and theory.

Download or read book Letters to Beethoven and Other Correspondence written by Theodore Albrecht and published by U of Nebraska Press. This book was released on 1996-01-01 with total page 336 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: These volumes present approximately 430 letters and documents written to Beethoven (1770–1827) as well as those written by others (relatives, students, and secretaries) on his behalf. Along with over 70 of Beethoven’s own letters discovered since Emily Anderson’s three-volume Letters of Beethoven, these documents provide new insights into the composer’s personal life. They illuminate his dealings with publishers, other musicians, poets, patrons, relatives, friends, and a wide variety of acquaintances. The documents provide important details about the composition of many works, Beethoven’s performance practices, his criticisms of other composers and performers, and his role in the Napoleonic era. Gleaned from more than one hundred publications and collected from autograph sources in libraries and archives in Europe and the United States, these materials have never before appeared between two covers. At least sixty of the letters have never previously been published. Letters to Beethoven and Other Correspondence vastly enlarges accessibility to Beethoven’s busy life and the music he made. All documents are translated into English and annotated with identifications of persons and works.

Download or read book Letters to Beethoven and Other Correspondence 1824 1828 written by Theodore Albrecht and published by U of Nebraska Press. This book was released on 1996 with total page 350 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: These volumes present approximately 430 letters and documents written to Beethoven (1770--1827) as well as those written by others (relatives, students, and secretaries) on his behalf. Along with over 70 of Beethoven's own letters discovered since Emily Anderson's three-volume Letters of Beethoven, these documents provide new insights into the composer's personal life. They illuminate his dealings with publishers, other musicians, poets, patrons, relatives, friends, and a wide variety of acquaintances. The documents provide important details about the composition of many works, Beethoven's performance practices, his criticisms of other composers and performers, and his role in the Napoleonic era. Gleaned from more than one hundred publications and collected from autograph sources in libraries and archives in Europe and the United States, these materials have never before appeared between two covers. At least sixty of the letters have never previously been published. Letters to Beethoven and Other Correspondence vastly enlarges accessibility to Beethoven's busy life and the music he made.

Download or read book Manchester Beethoven studies written by Barry Cooper and published by Manchester University Press. This book was released on 2023-04-25 with total page 281 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Manchester Beethoven studies presents ten original chapters by scholars with close ties to the University of Manchester. It throws new light on many aspects of Beethoven’s life and works, with a special emphasis on early or little-known compositions such as his concert aria Erste Liebe, his String Quintet Op. 104 and his folksong settings. Biographical elements are prominent in a wide-ranging reassessment of his religious attitudes and beliefs, while Charles Hallé, founder of the Manchester-based Hallé Orchestra, is revealed to have been a tireless and energetic promoter of Beethoven’s music in the later nineteenth century.

Download or read book Beethoven s Lives written by Lewis Lockwood and published by Boydell & Brewer. This book was released on 2020 with total page 233 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: With basic assumptions shared and (new) facts evolving over time, Lockwood claims, the Beethoven biographer's role has remained highly personal.

Download or read book The Creation of Beethoven s 35 Piano Sonatas written by Barry Cooper and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2017-04-05 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Beethoven’s piano sonatas are a cornerstone of the piano repertoire and favourites of both the concert hall and recording studio. The sonatas have been the subject of much scholarship, but no single study gives an adequate account of the processes by which these sonatas were composed and published. With source materials such as sketches and correspondence increasingly available, the time is ripe for a close study of the history of these works. Barry Cooper, who in 2007 produced a new edition of all 35 sonatas, including three that are often overlooked, examines each sonata in turn, addressing questions such as: Why were they written? Why did they turn out as they did? How did they come into being and how did they reach their final form? Drawing on the composer’s sketches, autograph scores and early printed editions, as well as contextual material such as correspondence, Cooper explores the links between the notes and symbols found in the musical texts of the sonatas, and the environment that brought them about. The result is a biography not of the composer, but of the works themselves.

Download or read book Beethoven written by Barry Cooper and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2008-10-08 with total page 465 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The connections between a great artist's life and work are subtle, complex, and often highly revealing. In the case of Beethoven, however, the standard approach has been to treat his life and his art separately. Now, Barry Cooper's new volume incorporates the latest international research on many aspects of the composer's life and work and presents these in a truly integrated narrative. Cooper employs a strictly chronological approach that enables each work to be seen against the musical and biographical background from which it emerged. The result is a much closer confluence of life and work than is usually achieved, for two reasons. First, composition was Beethoven's central preoccupation for most of his life: "I live entirely in my music," he once wrote. Second, recent study of his many musical sketches has enabled a much clearer picture of his everyday compositional activity than was previously possible, leading to rich new insights into the interaction between his life and music. This volume concentrates on Beethoven's artistic achievements both by examining the origins of his works and by expert commentary on some of their most striking and original features. It also reexamines virtually all the evidence--from fictitious anecdotes right down to the translations of individual German words--to avoid recycling old errors. And it offers numerous new details derived from sketch studies and a new edition of Beethoven's correspondence. Offering a wealth of fresh conclusions and intertwining life and work in illuminating ways, Beethoven will establish itself as the reference on one of the world's greatest composers.

Download or read book Beethoven and the Lyric Impulse written by Amanda Glauert and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2020-09-30 with total page 188 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Amanda Glauert revisits Beethoven’s songs and studies his profound engagement with the aesthetics of the poets he was setting, particularly those of Herder and Goethe. The book offers readers a rich exploration of the poetical and philosophical context in which Beethoven found himself when composing songs. It also offers detailed commentaries on possible responses to specific songs, responses designed to open up new ways for performing, hearing and appreciating this provocative song repertoire. This study will be of great interest to researchers of Beethoven; German song; aesthetics of words and music.

Download or read book Beethoven 1806 written by Mark Ferraguto and published by . This book was released on 2019 with total page 277 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Beethoven 1806 examines a banner year in the creative life of Ludwig van Beethoven. Drawing on theories of mediation and a wealth of primary sources, it explores the specific contexts in which the music of this year was conceived, composed, and heard.

Download or read book The Critical Reception of Beethoven s Compositions by His German Contemporaries written by Wayne M. Senner and published by U of Nebraska Press. This book was released on 1999-05-25 with total page 296 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Compiled here are reviews, reports, notes, and essays found in German-language periodicals published between 1783 and 1830. The documents are translated into English with copious notes and annotations, an introductory essay, and indexes of names, subjects, and works. This volume contains a general section and documents on specific opus numbers up to opus 54, with musical examples redrawn from the original publications. ø The collection brings to light contemporary perceptions of Beethoven?s music, including matters such as audience, setting, facilities, orchestra, instruments, and performers as well as the relationship of Beethoven?s music to theoretical and critical ideas of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. These documents, most of which appear in English for the first time, present a wide spectrum of insights into the perceptions that Beethoven?s contemporaries had of his monumental music.

Download or read book The Critical Reception of Beethoven s Compositions by His German Contemporaries Volume 2 written by Wayne M. Senner and published by U of Nebraska Press. This book was released on 1999-01-01 with total page 316 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The volumes in The Critical Reception of Beethoven's Compositions by His German Contemporaries bring to light contemporary perceptions of Beethoven's music, including matters such as audience, setting, facilities, orchestra, instruments, and performers as well as the relationship of Beethoven's music to theoretical and critical ideas of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. These documents, most of which appear in English for the first time, have been compiled from German-language periodicals published between 1783 and 1830. They present a wide spectrum of insights into the perceptions that Beethoven's contemporaries had of his monumental music. This is the second in a projected four-volume series. It begins with Opus 55, the Eroica, and ends with Opus 72, Fidelio.

Download or read book Nation and Classical Music written by Matthew Riley and published by Boydell & Brewer. This book was released on 2016 with total page 258 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How and why do listeners come over time to 'feel the nation' through particular musical works? This book develops a comparative analysis of the relationship between western art music, nations and nationalism. It explores the influence of emergent nations and nationalism on the development of classical music in Europe and North America and examines the distinctive themes, sounds and resonances to be found in the repertory of each of the nations. Its scope is broad, extending well beyond the period 1848-1914 when national music flourished most conspicuously. The interplay of music and nation encompasses the oratorios of Handel, the open-air music of the French Revolution and the orchestral works of Beethoven and Mendelssohn and extends into the mid-twentieth century in the music of Prokofiev, Shostakovich and Copland. The book addresses the representation of the national community, the incorporation of ethnic vernacular idioms into art music, the national homeland in music, musical adaptations of national myths and legends, the music of national commemoration and the canonisation of national music. Bringing together insights from nationalism studies, musicology and cultural history, it will be essential reading not only for musicologists but for cultural historians and historians of nationalism as well. MATTHEW RILEY is Reader in Music at the University of Birmingham. The late ANTHONY D. SMITH was Professor Emeritus of Nationalism andEthnicity at the London School of Economics.