Download or read book Malevolent Muse written by Oliver Hilmes and published by Northeastern University Press. This book was released on 2015-04-22 with total page 343 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Of all the colorful figures on the twentieth-century European cultural scene, hardly anyone has provoked more polarity than Alma Schindler Mahler Gropius Werfel (1879-1964), mistress to a long succession of brilliant men and wife of three of the best known: composer Gustav Mahler, architect Walter Gropius and writer Franz Werfel. To her admirers Alma was a self-sacrificing socialite who inspired many great artists. Her detractors found her a self-aggrandizing social climber and an alcoholic, bigoted, vengeful harlot - as one contemporary put it, "a cross between a grande dame and a cesspool." So who was she really? When historian Oliver Hilmes discovered a treasure-trove of unpublished material, much of it in Alma's own words, he used it as the basis for his first biography, setting the record straight while evoking the atmosphere of intellectual life in Europe and then in migr communities on both coasts of the United States after the Nazi takeover of their home territories. First published in German in 2004, the book was hailed as a rare combination of meticulously researched scholarship and entertaining writing, making it a runaway bestseller and advancing Oliver Hilmes to his position as a household name in contemporary literature. Alma Mahler was one of the twentieth century's rare originals, worthy of her immortalization in song. Oliver Hilmes has provided us with an even-handed yet tantalizingly detailed account of her life, bringing Alma's singular story to a whole new audience.
Download or read book Malevolent Muse written by Oliver Hilmes and published by Northeastern University Press. This book was released on 2015-05-05 with total page 343 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Of all the colorful figures on the twentieth-century European cultural scene, hardly anyone has provoked more polarity than Alma Schindler Mahler Gropius Werfel (1879-1964), mistress to a long succession of brilliant men and wife of three of the best known: composer Gustav Mahler, architect Walter Gropius and writer Franz Werfel. To her admirers Alma was a self-sacrificing socialite who inspired many great artists. Her detractors found her a self-aggrandizing social climber and an alcoholic, bigoted, vengeful harlot - as one contemporary put it, "a cross between a grande dame and a cesspool." So who was she really? When historian Oliver Hilmes discovered a treasure-trove of unpublished material, much of it in Alma's own words, he used it as the basis for his first biography, setting the record straight while evoking the atmosphere of intellectual life in Europe and then in migr communities on both coasts of the United States after the Nazi takeover of their home territories. First published in German in 2004, the book was hailed as a rare combination of meticulously researched scholarship and entertaining writing, making it a runaway bestseller and advancing Oliver Hilmes to his position as a household name in contemporary literature. Alma Mahler was one of the twentieth century's rare originals, worthy of her immortalization in song. Oliver Hilmes has provided us with an even-handed yet tantalizingly detailed account of her life, bringing Alma's singular story to a whole new audience.
Download or read book Passionate Spirit written by Cate Haste and published by Basic Books. This book was released on 2019-09-10 with total page 409 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A new biography of Alma Mahler (1879-1964), revealing a woman determined to wield power in a world that denied her agency History has long vilified Alma Mahler. Critics accused her of distracting Gustav Mahler from his work, and her passionate love affairs shocked her peers. Drawing on Alma's vivid, sensual, and overlooked diaries, biographer Cate Haste recounts the untold and far more sympathetic story of this ambitious and talented woman. Though she dreamed of being the first woman to compose a famous opera, Alma was stifled by traditional social values. Eventually, she put her own dreams aside and wielded power and influence the only way she could, by supporting the art of more famous men. She worked alongside them and gained credit as their muse, commanding their love and demanding their respect. Passionate Spirit restores vibrant humanity to a woman time turned into a caricature, providing an important correction to a history where systemic sexism has long erased women of talent.
Download or read book Analytical Essays on Music by Women Composers Concert Music 1900DS1960 written by Laurel Parsons and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2022 with total page 297 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "This is the second of four volumes in a multi-authored series of analytical essays on music by women composers from Hildegard of Bingen to the twenty-first century. Volume 2 presents detailed studies of compositions written between 1900 and 1960 by Alma Mahler-Werfel, Rebecca Clarke, Ethel Smyth, Ruth Crawford, Florence B. Price, Galina Ustvolskaya, J. M. Beyer, and Peggy Glanville-Hicks. Each chapter opens with a brief biographical sketch of the composer, followed by an in-depth analysis of a single representative composition, occasionally including other works where comparison strengthens the analytical argument. The repertoire explored by the authors includes art song, opera, choral, solo piano, chamber, and orchestral music. To enhance the volume's accessibility to readers who are not professional music theorists or musicologists, a glossary provides explanations of music-theoretical terms used in the book. The collection is designed to challenge and stimulate a wide range of readers. For academics, these thorough analytical studies can open new paths into unexplored research areas in music theory and musicology. Post-secondary instructors may be inspired by the insights offered here to include new works in graduate or upper-level undergraduate courses in early twentieth-century music or women and music. Finally, for performers, conductors, and music broadcasters, these thoughtful analyses can offer enriched understandings of this repertoire and suggest fresh, new programming possibilities to share with listeners-an endeavor of discovery for all those interested in twentieth-century music"--
Download or read book Can t Stop the Grrrls written by Lily E. Hirsch and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2023-03-15 with total page 235 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "From stars like Britney Spears and Mariah Carey to classic icons like Yoko Ono, female musicians have long been the target of toxic labels in the media and popular culture: liar, crazy, snake, diva, and so on. This book takes a candid look at the full range of sexist labeling and inspires us to think about these remarkable women on their own terms"--
Download or read book Thematizations of the Goddess in South Asian Cinema written by Anway Mukhopadhyay and published by Cambridge Scholars Publishing. This book was released on 2022-11-16 with total page 265 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This collection presents cross-disciplinary explorations of the tropes, themes and representational frameworks constellating around the figure of the Goddess in South Asian cinema. It critically approaches the Goddess theme in various genres of South Asian cinema, using analytical tools culled from gender studies, comparative cultural studies, and religious studies, as well as film semiotics. The films discussed here represent variegated thematizations of the Goddess across regions in South Asia, including Nepal, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and various geo-cultural locations in India. As the volume highlights the regional and politico-cultural differences and commonalities in representational schemes between South Asian films of different genres through the Goddess motif, it will appeal to scholars of film studies, South Asian studies and comparative religion, and will hold a special appeal for those interested in Goddess cultures and theology.
Download or read book Anneliese Landau s Life in Music Nazi Germany to migr California written by Lily E. Hirsch and published by Boydell & Brewer. This book was released on 2019 with total page 247 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A detailed and moving account of the life of Anneliese Landau, who, in Nazi Germany and later in émigré California, fought against prejudice to do notable work in music.
Download or read book The Bitch is Back written by Sarah Appleton Aguiar and published by SIU Press. This book was released on 2001 with total page 188 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When she wrote The Robber Bride, Margaret Atwood created a really villainous villain who happened to be a woman, partly in reaction to the fact that in Western literature the most meaty, wicked, and therefore interesting parts always seemed to go to male characters. Aguiar (English, Murray State U.) cites the beacon shone by Atwood in introducing her study, which discusses the dawning in contemporary literature of "the season of the bitch": a re-evaluation and reclaiming of female toughness, thorniness, and just plain badness in which women characters are also portrayed as more complete, possessed of motivations, and strongly individual. Annotation copyrighted by Book News Inc., Portland, OR
Download or read book Sorcerer s Serenade written by Vincent Netherward and published by JN Bazaar Enterprise. This book was released on 2023-09-13 with total page 217 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the dark, mystical heart of London, Valyrian Jacyn, a fourth-generation sorcerer, stumbles upon an ancient grimoire known as the Enchiridion Greco Daemons. This dusty tome, discovered in the cryptic basement of the Bloodfluke Manor, once belonging to his enigmatic Great Grandmother, the Witch Wilhelmina Bloodfluke, holds the key to a world of arcane secrets and forbidden rituals. As Valyrian delves deeper into the grimoire's pages, he unravels a tapestry of eerie and enchanting history surrounding the Bloodfluke Manor. The manor's legacy is steeped in darkness, rife with stories of malevolent spirits, hidden chambers, and a lineage of powerful witches and sorcerers. Among the grimoire's chilling incantations and ominous instructions, one particular ritual stands out—the capture of a muse. Valyrian, drawn by the allure of this forbidden act, decides to partake in the ritual, ensnaring the muse Euterpe in a web of magic and desire. With Euterpe as his captive muse, Valyrian's dreams of rock and roll stardom begin to take shape. His band, "Valyrian and the Misfits," rises to fame with the enchanting compositions Euterpe provides, compositions infused with otherworldly power that captivates audiences far and wide. Yet, beneath the surface, Euterpe's growing resentment simmers. Her once-enchanting music becomes tainted with a dark undertone as she yearns for her freedom. Amidst Valyrian's success, his inner struggle with newfound power and the consequences of his actions deepen. Paranoia creeps into his life, and a rival sorcerer, Geoffrey Fitzaidan, learns of Valyrian's secret, setting the stage for a dangerous confrontation. Euterpe, determined to turn the tables, hatches a plan to break free from her captor's grasp. Valyrian's life takes a sinister turn as the muse's powers begin to manifest in ways he never anticipated. Throughout this twisted tale, Valyrian maintains a conversant tone, sometimes breaking the fourth wall with dark humor. As he navigates the treacherous waters of fame, power, and magic, he grapples with his own demons while facing external threats from rival sorcerers and the captive muse herself. In a climactic showdown between Valyrian and Euterpe, the consequences of their actions unravel, and the true price of power becomes evident. Dark humor weaves through the narrative, providing a unique perspective on a tale of redemption and transformation. The story takes an unexpected turn in the epilogue when the mysterious narrator is unmasked as none other than Wilhelmina Bloodfluke, Valyrian's great-grandmother. Her enigmatic presence throughout the tale leaves room for interpretation, adding a cryptic twist to the narrative's conclusion. "Sorcerer's Serenade: A Muse’s Captive Descent" is a dark fantasy novel that explores the intricate interplay of music, magic, and the human psyche. With its conversational tone, dark humor, and enigmatic twists, it invites readers to ponder the depths of redemption and the enduring power of the arcane.
Download or read book Ferruccio Busoni As Architect of Sound written by Associate Professor of Music History Erinn E Knyt and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2023 with total page 329 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "This book presents a broad view of Busoni's compositional activities as not only connected to musical traditions of the past, especially the music of J.S. Bach and W.A. Mozart, but also as closely aligned with contemporary interest in experimentalism. Developments during the twentieth century included new means of pitch organization, the spatialization of sound, and the expansion of formal structures. Busoni helped pioneer these trends by writing pieces in which sound radiates from different directions, by creating montage formal structures, and by freely using all twelve pitches of the chromatic scale without avoiding consonances. In the process, the book brings Busoni's music into discourse with recent multivalent accounts of modernism in music that move beyond notions of rupture with the past as well as beyond elitist esotericism. In addition, it reveals that many of Busoni's innovations were rooted in interdisciplinary thinking that reconciled the spatial and the temporal in unique manners. While his abstract metaphysical notions of music transcended physical boundaries, the realization of his ideas was informed by an understanding of tangible architectural spaces and styles fostered by the study of buildings and floor plans. In addition, he engaged in a rich exchange of ideas with contemporary architects and artists, such as Henry Van de Velde and members of the Weimar Bauhaus. The book concludes by documenting ways Busoni's spatialized architectural music left a lasting imprint on future generations of composers, artists, and early film pioneers, such as Hans Richter, Heinrich Neugeboren, Wladimir Vogel, Stefan Wolpe, and Edgard Varèse"--
Download or read book The Magician written by Colm Toibin and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2021-09-07 with total page 512 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Selected as a Notable Book, a Critics' Top Book, and a Top 10 Book of Historical Fiction by The New York Times, and named a Best Book of the Year by NPR, The Washington Post, Vogue, and The Wall Street Journal From one of today's most brilliant and beloved novelists, a dazzling, epic family saga set across a half-century spanning World War I, the rise of Hitler, World War II, and the Cold War. Colm Tóibín's magnificent new novel opens in a provincial German city at the turn of the twentieth century, where the boy, Thomas Mann, grows up with a conservative father, bound by propriety, and a Brazilian mother, alluring and unpredictable. Young Mann hides his artistic aspirations from his father and his homosexual desires from everyone. He is infatuated with one of the richest, most cultured Jewish families in Munich, and marries the daughter Katia. They have six children. On a holiday in Italy, he longs for a boy he sees on a beach and writes the story Death in Venice. He is the most successful novelist of his time, winner of the Nobel Prize in literature, a public man whose private life remains secret. He is expected to lead the condemnation of Hitler, whom he underestimates. His oldest daughter and son, leaders of Bohemianism and of the anti-Nazi movement, share lovers. He flees Germany for Switzerland, France and, ultimately, America, living first in Princeton and then in Los Angeles. In a stunning marriage of research and imagination, Tóibín explores the heart and mind of a writer whose gift is unparalleled and whose life is driven by a need to belong and the anguish of illicit desire. The Magician is an intimate, astonishingly complex portrait of Mann, his magnificent and complex wife Katia, and the times in which they lived--the first world war, the rise of Hitler, World War II, the Cold War, and exile. This is a man and a family fiercely engaged by the world, profoundly flawed, and unforgettable. As People magazine said about The Master, "It's a delicate, mysterious process, this act of creation, fraught with psychological tension, and Tóibín captures it beautifully."
Download or read book Crisis Music written by John Caps and published by Liverpool University Press. This book was released on 2021-10-27 with total page 286 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Story-like chapters profile six twentieth-century reactive composers; not the most famous pillars of the period but lesser-known, perhaps more approachable, characters whose stories span that 1900-2000 period from decadent fin-de-siècle Vienna (Alban Berg, Alexander Zemlinsky) to war-torn Paris (Olivier Messiaen, Arthur Honegger) to the Cold War tensions of East vs. West (Tōru Takemitsu) and late-century Communism (Arvo Pärt). Their stories were all very different crises, and they produced very different kinds of music; each very telling of their composers life and times. Crisis Music presents each brief biography almost like a detective story looking for motives, then spotlights one particular piece of music from each composer that emerged directly out of hard times maybe a political crisis at the time of composition (Hitler marching into Paris or later Communist crack-downs); or some personal angst such as illness or scandal and how that music contains and expresses crisis. In short, the subject for discussion is how context influences content. Such troubled and especially vivid composition, crisis music, can often be most compelling and meaningful for its composer and for its time. Indeed, their music also seems to have a special resonance to share with our own crisis-prone times. And meanwhile, Western music history played-out its own story from late-romantic style to Serialism and Minimalism to the anything-goes Pluralism we hear today. Crisis Music sparks the discussion about how history, biography and music intersects. At the behest of music teachers at secondary and tertiary levels, Crisis Music contains substantive Discussion Questions geared for classroom use.
Download or read book Schoenberg s Correspondence with Alma Mahler written by Arnold Schoenberg and published by . This book was released on 2019 with total page 449 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Schoenberg's Correspondence with Alma Mahler documents a modern music friendship spanning a half century (1903-1951) and two continents.
Download or read book Operas in German written by Margaret Ross Griffel and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2018-01-23 with total page 1046 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: With nearly three thousand new entries, the revised edition of Operas in German: A Dictionary is the most current encyclopedic treatment of operas written specifically to a German text from the seventeenth century through 2016. Musicologist Margaret Ross Griffel details the operas’ composers, scores, librettos, first performances, and bibliographic sources. Four appendixes then list composers, librettists, authors whose works inspired or were adapted for the opera librettos, and a chronological listing of the entries in the A–Z section. The bibliography details other dictionaries and encyclopedias, performance studies, collections of plot summaries, general studies on operas, sources on locales where opera premieres took place, works on the history of operas in German, and selective volumes on individual opera composers, librettists, producers, directors, and designers. Finally, two indexes list the main characters in each opera and the names of singers, conductors, producers, composers, directors, choreographers, and arrangers. The revised edition of Operas in German provides opera historians, musicologists, performers, and opera lovers with an invaluable resource for continued study and enjoyment. As the most current encyclopedic collection of German opera from the seventeenth century through the twenty-first, Operas in German is an invaluable resource for opera historians, musicologists, performers, and opera lovers.
Download or read book Experiencing Mahler written by Arved Ashby and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2020-01-08 with total page 273 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Experiencing Mahler surveys the symphonies and major song sets of Gustav Mahler, presenting them not just as artworks but as vivid and deeply felt journeys. Mahler took the symphony, perhaps the most tradition-bound genre in Western music, and opened it to the widest span of human experience. He introduced themes of love, nature, the chasmic depth of midnight, making peace with death, facing rebirth, seeking one’s creator, and being at one with God. Arved Ashby offers the non-specialist a general introduction into Mahler’s seemingly unbounded energy to investigate the elements that make each work an experiential adventure—one that has redefined the symphonic genre in new ways. In addition to the standard nine symphonies, Ashby discusses Das Lied von der Erde, the three most commonly heard song sets (the Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen, Kindertotenlieder, and Rückert-Lieder), and the unfinished Tenth Symphony (in Cooke’s edition). Experiencing Mahler is a far-reaching and often provocative search for meaning in the music of one of the most beloved composers of all time.
Download or read book Gropius written by Fiona MacCarthy and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2019-04-30 with total page 576 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “This is an absolute triumph—ideas, lives, and the dramas of the twentieth century are woven together in a feat of storytelling. A masterpiece.” —Edmund de Waal, ceramic artist and author of The White Road The impact of Walter Gropius can be measured in his buildings—Fagus Factory, Bauhaus Dessau, Pan Am—but no less in his students. I. M. Pei, Paul Rudolph, Anni Albers, Philip Johnson, Fumihiko Maki: countless masters were once disciples at the Bauhaus in Berlin and at Harvard. Between 1910 and 1930, Gropius was at the center of European modernism and avant-garde society glamor, only to be exiled to the antimodernist United Kingdom during the Nazi years. Later, under the democratizing influence of American universities, Gropius became an advocate of public art and cemented a starring role in twentieth-century architecture and design. Fiona MacCarthy challenges the image of Gropius as a doctrinaire architectural rationalist, bringing out the visionary philosophy and courage that carried him through a politically hostile age. Pilloried by Tom Wolfe as inventor of the monolithic high-rise, Gropius is better remembered as inventor of a form of art education that influenced schools worldwide. He viewed argument as intrinsic to creativity. Unusually for one in his position, Gropius encouraged women’s artistic endeavors and sought equal romantic partners. Though a traveler in elite circles, he objected to the cloistering of beauty as “a special privilege for the aesthetically initiated.” Gropius offers a poignant and personal story—and a fascinating reexamination of the urges that drove European and American modernism.
Download or read book The Great Beyond written by Philip D. Beidler and published by University of Alabama Press. This book was released on 2022-05-03 with total page 186 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Essays from a master critic on how artistic giants from modernism onward confronted mortality—forging unexpected links between Twain, Woolf, Mahler, Wittgenstein, Beckett, Toni Morrison, and more While much about modernism remains up for debate, there can be no dispute about the connection between modernist art and death. The long modern moment was and is an age of war, genocide, and annihilation. Two world wars killed perhaps as many as 100 million people, through combat, famine, holocaust, and ghastly attacks on civilians. The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic is the fifth global pandemic since 1918, with more than a half-million American deaths and counting. It can hardly come as a surprise, then, that many of the touchstones of modernism reflect on death and devastation. In Philip D. Beidler’s exploration of the modernist canon, he illuminates how these singular voices looked extinction in the eye and tried to reckon with our finitude—and their own. The Great Beyond:Art in the Age of Annihilation catalogs through lively prose an eclectic selection of artists, writers, and thinkers. In 16 essays, Beidler takes nuanced and surprising approaches to well-studied figures—the haunting sculpture by Saint-Gaudens commissioned by Henry Adams for his late wife; Luchino Visconti’s adaptation of Mann’s Death in Venice; and the author’s own long fascination with Beckett’s Waiting for Godot. The threads and recurring motifs that emerge through Beidler’s analysis bridge the different media, genres, and timeframes of the works under consideration. Protomodernists Crane and Twain connect with near-contemporary voices like Sebald and Morrison. Robert MacFarlane’s 21st-century nonfiction about what lies underneath the earth echoes the Furerbunker and the poetry of Gertrud Kolmar. Learned but lively, somber but not grim, The Great Beyond is not a comfortable read, but it is in a way comforting. In tracing how his subjects confronted nothingness, be it personal or global, Beidler draws a brilliant map of how we see the end of the road.
