In Songs of the Second Viennese School: A Performer's Guide to Selected Solo Vocal Works, scholar Loralee Songer outlines for singers and teachers of singers critical information on solo vocal works by three major classical composers, all active during the first half of the twentieth century: Arnold Schoenberg, Alban Berg, and Anton Webern.
So You Want to Sing Light Opera is a concise handbook for singers, teachers, and performers who want to learn more about the magnificent genre of light opera. This resource provides information on the history of light opera and offers advice on auditions, style, performances, and skills, including dissections of select operas and their characters.
Valeria Z. Nollan's biography of perhaps the finest pianist of the twentieth century plunges readers into Rachmaninoff's complex inner world. Sergei Rachmaninoff: Cross Rhythms of the Soul is the first biography of Rachmaninoff in English that presents him in the fullness of his Russian identity. As someone whose own life in Russian emigration ran ......
Einojuhani Rautavaara (1928-2016) has been called Finland's most notable musical export after Sibelius. His prolific output includes eleven operas; eight symphonies; eleven concertos; choral works for the Orthodox, Lutheran, and Roman Catholic churches; secular choral works; chamber music; vocal solos; and keyboard works. Many of these works were ......
In Opera as Art: Philosophical Sketches, Paul Thom argues for opera as an art, standing alongside other artforms that employ visual and sonic media to embody the great themes of human life. Thom contends that in great operatic art, the narrative and expressive content collaborate with the work's aesthetic qualities towards achieving this aim. This ......
Nigel Kennedy changed the course of classical music in the late 1980s with his interpretation of Vivaldi’s ‘Four Seasons’. He was revolutionary: in his performance and presentation; in his technique and his open-minded attitude. A natural boundary-pusher and musical adventurer, Nigel Kennedy blew minds
Music Glocalization and the Composer: The Case of Franz Xaver Scharwenka (1850-1924) examines the life and compositions of composer Franz Xaver Scharwenka. Mikolaj Rykowski argues that Scharwenka held the ability to function on a global scale relatively early in music history, founding conservatories in Berlin and New York, becoming one of the ......
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, Sowerby's Pulitzer Prize-winning The Canticle of the Sun and the rest of his corpus lost favor with the A-list symphonies and prominent musicians who had once made him a ......
Rediscovering the genius of the medieval composer, theologian, and visionary
A Renaissance woman long before the Renaissance, the visionary Hildegard of Bingen (10981179) corresponded with Europe's elite, founded and led a noted women's religious community, and wrote on topics ranging from theology to natural ......
