New Publications, New Music Book Publications - 2nd October 2023

Ever since Alfred Brendel bid farewell to the concert stage after six decades of performing, he has been passing on his insight and experience in the form of lectures, readings and master-classes. This reader distils his musical and linguistic eloquence, and will prove invaluable to anyone with an interest in the technique, history and repertoire of the piano. Erudite, witty, enlightening and deeply personal: rarely has the instrument been described in such an entertaining and intelligent fashion.

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Arnold Schoenberg's twelve-tone system was once considered the future of music itself. Today, however, leading orchestras rarely play his works, and his name is met with apathy, if not antipathy. This account restores Schoenberg to his rightful place in the canon, revealing him as one of the twentieth century’s most influential composers. It shows how Schoenberg, synthesising Wagnerian excess with Brahmsian restraint, created a shock wave that never quite subsided, and argues that his compositions must be confronted by anyone interested in Western music.

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A selection of essays celebrating Ralph Vaughan Williams's life-long involvement with English folk song and music, as collector, editor, arranger, and composer. Many of the essays were first presented at the English Folk Dance and Song Society Conference of 2022.

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This encyclopedic and generously illustrated anthology of original written sources explores some 600 years of musical activity in Europe, from the first troubadours to the emergence of the pianoforte. Throughout, it presents an extraordinary treasure trove of material documenting myriad ways in which our recent ancestors engaged with music. Arranged in three main parts (Society, Ideas, Performance), its principal chapters are supplemented by shorter ones exploring related and intriguing byways.

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When it comes to how societies commemorate their distant dreams and catastrophes, we often think of books, archives, or memorials carved from stone. But this book makes a case for the power of music as culture's memory, an art form uniquely capable of carrying meaning from the past. It shows how four towering composers - Richard Strauss, Schoenberg, Britten, and Shostakovich - lived through the era of the Second World War and the Holocaust and later transformed their experiences into deeply moving works of music that carry forward the echoes of lost time.

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When Richard Wagner first met Minna Planer in 1834, he was an unknown conductor, she a popular actress. Their marriage was ultimately destroyed by Wagner's passion for Mathilde Wesendonck. In 1858, he and Minna separated, although they remained married until Minna's death in 1866. This acclaimed biography, translated into English by Chris Walton and now available in paperback, reveals Minna as a self-assured woman and artist who played a crucial role in the creative life of her husband.

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A full account of the making, during 1909-10, of Strauss's Der Rosenkavalier, with an emphasis on its derivation from a French opérette of 1907, L'Ingenu libertin. Previous scholarship has credited the narrative and characters of the opera to much older French sources, but this book shows clearly how every element in L'Ingenu libertin is in fact taken (and transformed) into the work that made fortunes for Strauss and his librettist, Hugo von Hofmannsthal. It casts a major new light on a work that succeeded from its very first performance and went on to conquer the stages of the world.

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A radical re-imagining of the relationship between sound and sense took place in Britain in the decades around 1800. This new approach reconfigured sound as central to understandings of space and temporality, from the diurnal rhythms of everyday life in the modern city to the 'deep time' of the natural world. At the same time, sound emerged as a frequently disruptive phenomenon, a philosophical and political problem, and a force with the power to overwhelm listeners. This book brings together scholars from literary studies, musicology, history and philosophy through the interdisciplinary frameworks of sound studies and the history of the senses.

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This book is designed to help teachers enrich and diversify Key Stage 3 music by introducing a selection of fifteen pieces from a range of countries and styles, celebrating the people who wrote the music and offering an immersive experience through active listening and composing activities. As well as supporting National Curriculum objectives, it will help bring breadth and depth to students’ musical experience and understanding, offering a glimpse of the huge variety of music in the world and featuring composers from a range of backgrounds and experiences.

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Since its beginnings more than fifty years ago, metal music has grown in popularity worldwide, not only as a musical culture but increasingly as a recognised field of study. This book reflects the maturing field of 'metal music studies' by introducing the music and its cultures, as well as recent research from disciplines ranging from musicology and music technology to religious studies, Classics, and Scandinavian and African studies. Topics covered include technology and practice, identity and culture, modern metal genres, and global metal, with reference to performers including Black Sabbath, Metallica, and Amon Amarth.

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