New Publications,
New Music Book Publications - 4th March 2024
Welcome to our latest selection of new music publications, including essays on opera by the late Edward W. Said, books on the creation and performance of Beethoven's symphonies, a guide to eight symphonic masterworks of the twentieth century by conductor Leonard Slatkin, studies concerning the analysis and psychology of musical performance, a paperback edition of Leah Broad's award-winning biography of four women composers, and an examination of the role of music in the life and works of Jane Austen.
One of the late twentieth century’s most celebrated and influential public intellectuals, Edward W. Said was also a critic of astonishing range. This book presents his insightful and elegant analyses of four major operas, originally delivered as the Empson Lectures at Cambridge University in 1997. In close readings of Mozart’s Così fan tutte, Beethoven’s Fidelio, Berlioz’s Les Troyens, and Wagner’s Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg, Said explores how each opera engages with the social and political questions of their own eras, and how they might speak to the present.
Available Format: Book
Beethoven's Ninth Symphony: Rehearsing and Performing its 1824 Premiere
Theodore Albrecht; Boydell & Brewer; Hardback
Beethoven's Ninth Symphony is one of the iconic works of Western classical music. This book brings to life the day-to-day details that it took to stage the premiere in Vienna on 7th May, including negotiating for performance halls and performers' payments, hand-copying legible scores and individual parts for over 120 performers, and finding financiers. Importantly, it is also a story of the relationship between Beethoven and the musicians who performed this symphonic masterpiece.
Available Format: Book
Composers succeeding Beethoven found their output measured against this master's work. But how did his symphonies come into being and how did they reach their final form? These are the questions this book seeks to answer, offering an overview of the creation of each symphony, placed within the context of musical life in Beethoven's Vienna. Another strand of the investigation covers Beethoven's unfinished symphonies and how they helped to provide the fertile soil from which the finished ones grew.
Available Format: Book
Eight Symphonic Masterworks of the Twentieth Century: A Study Guide for Conductors
Leonard Slatkin; Rowman & Littlefield; Paperback
Based on his decades of experience conducting these works, Leonard Slatkin delves into eight of the most beloved orchestral pieces of the twentieth century and tackles problems conductors face before stepping onto the podium. Each essay includes some history, what to understand before the first rehearsal, and an almost bar-by-bar guide to the pieces. It goes into what conductors need to know during the score study process, as well as in rehearsal and performance, to bring a work to life.
Available Format: Book
This book addresses topics in the field of musical performance studies concerning the history, analysis and psychology of music, as well as artistic research. It offers manifold practical insights into musical performance, ranging from detailed technical features to overall shape, exploring issues surrounding the identity and artistic voice of the performer by elucidating the sense-making and decision-making process underlying musical performance of all kinds.
Available Format: Book
Now available in paperback, this book resurrects the forgotten voices of four women: Ethel Smyth, Rebecca Clarke, Dorothy Howell, and Doreen Carwithen. In their time, these women were celebrities, composing some of the century's most popular music, but today they are ghostly presences, surviving only as footnotes to male contemporaries. This biography (just announced as the winner of the Storytelling prize at the 2024 RPS Awards) recounts their lives of rebellion, heartbreak and ambition, and celebrates their musical masterpieces.
Available Format: Book
Like her much-loved heroine Emma Woodhouse, Jane Austen 'played and sang'. Music occupied a central role in her life, and she made brilliant use of it in her books. Until recently, our knowledge of Austen's musical inclinations was limited to the recollections of relatives who were still in their youth when she passed away. But with the digitisation of music books from her immediate family circle, a treasure trove of evidence has emerged. Delving into these books, alongside letters and other familial records, this book unveils a previously unknown facet of Austen's world.
Available Format: Book
From the 1920s to the 1940s, Leo Sowerby created popular secular works while his sacred compositions led admirers to call him the “dean of American church musicians.” Yet in time, his compositions lost favour with the musicians who had once made him a fixture in their repertoires. This biography offers the first focused study of Sowerby’s life and work against the backdrop of the composer’s place in American music.
Available Format: Book
Inviting us to contemplate the ways in which video games invite us to hear and listen to their music, this book asks what it is we hear in the music when we play a game. It explains four main ways of hearing the same piece of music - through background, aesthetic, ludic, and semiotic hearing, through detailed case studies of video games from a variety of eras and genres accompanied by gameplay recordings and images on a companion website.
Available Format: Book
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