Opium and the Romantic Imagination

Opium and the Romantic Imagination
Author: Alethea Hayter
Publisher: Faber & Faber
Total Pages: 279
Release: 2015-07-30
Genre: History
ISBN: 0571306012

Does the habit of taking drugs make authors write better, or worse, or differently? Does it alter the quality of their consciousness, shape their imagery, influence their technique? For the Romantic writers of the nineteenth century, many of whom experimented with opium and some of whom were addicted to it, this was an important question, but it has never been fully answered. In this study Alethea Hayter examines the work of five writers - Crabbe, Coleridge, De Quincey, Wilkie Collins and Francis Thompson - who were opium addicts for many years, and of several other writers - notably Keats, Edgar Allan Poe and Baudelaire, but also Walter Scott, Dickens, Mrs Browning, James Thomson and others - who are known to have taken opium at times. The work of these writers is discussed in the context of nineteenth-century opinion about the uses and dangers of opium, and of Romantic ideas on the creative imagination, on dreams and hypnagogic visions, and on imagery, so that the idiosyncrasies of opium-influenced writing can be isolated from their general literary background. The examination reveals a strange and miserable region of the mind in which some of the greatest poetic imaginations of the nineteenth century were imprisoned.

Berlioz

Berlioz
Author: D. Kern Holoman
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Total Pages: 710
Release: 1989
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 9780674067783

A captivating and sumptuously illustrated biography, Berlioz is not only a complete account of the Romantic era composer, but also an acute analysis of his compositions and a description of his work as a conductor and critic. 139 halftones, 3 maps, 160 musical examples.

Berlioz and His World

Berlioz and His World
Author: Francesca Brittan
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Total Pages: 356
Release: 2024-08-05
Genre: Music
ISBN: 0226837653

A collection of essays and short object lessons on the composer Hector Berlioz, published in collaboration with the Bard Music Festival. Hector Berlioz (1803–1869) has long been a difficult figure to place and interpret. Famously, in Richard Wagner’s estimation, he hovered as a “transient, marvelous exception,” a composer woefully and willfully isolated. In the assessment of German composer Ferdinand Hiller, he was a fleeting comet who “does not belong in our musical solar system,” the likes of whom would never be seen again. For his contemporaries, as for later critics, Berlioz was simply too strange—and too noisy, too loud, too German, too literary, too cavalier with genre and form, and too difficult to analyze. He was, in many ways, a composer without a world. Berlioz and His World takes a deep dive into the composer’s complex legacy, tracing lines between his musical and literary output and the scientific, sociological, technological, and political influences that shaped him. Comprising nine essays covering key facets of Berlioz’s contribution and six short “object lessons” meant as conversation starters, the book reveals Berlioz as a richly intersectional figure. His very difficulty, his tendency to straddle the worlds of composer, conductor, and critic, is revealed as a strength, inviting new lines of cross-disciplinary inquiry and a fresh look at his European and American reception.

Music and Fantasy in the Age of Berlioz

Music and Fantasy in the Age of Berlioz
Author: Francesca Brittan
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 377
Release: 2017-09-14
Genre: History
ISBN: 1107136326

An exploration of fantastic soundworlds in nineteenth-century France, providing a fresh aesthetic and compositional context for Berlioz and others.

Choral Masterpieces

Choral Masterpieces
Author: Nicholas Tarling
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
Total Pages: 233
Release: 2014-05-16
Genre: Music
ISBN: 1442234539

In Choral Masterpieces: Major and Minor, historian Nicholas Tarling surveys the landscape of choral works, some standard masterpieces that are commonly performed by choruses around the world, others deserving a second, closer look. As noted in the foreword by Uwe Grodd , music director of the Auckland Choral Society, this work “is a collection of essays about a number of outstanding works, including Beethoven’s Miss Solemnis and Britten’s War Requiem, but he also invites attention to lesser masterpieces. If the choral movement, which includes both singers and listeners, is to survive, new works must be created and repertory expanded. The book is an easy and captivating read even if you are not a chorister.” Choral Masterpieces: Major and Minor features short essays on over 28 works, from major masterpieces such as Handel’s Messiah and Bach’s St. Matthew’s Passion to off-the-beaten path choral works such as Samuel Coleridge-Taylor’s Hiawatha and Frederick Delius’ A Mass of Life. Throughout, Tarling offers assessments that sparkle with unique insights and at the same time ground listener’s in the historical contexts of the work’s production and performance. Each work is transformed in Tarling’s able hands from musical work into a window into the mind and milieu of the composer. Choral Masterpieces: Major and Minor mixes choral mainstays with works that demand revisiting. Choral singers and their audiences, as well as choral societies and their directions and promoters, will find ample food for thoughts in these meditations on the choral tradition.

Berlioz

Berlioz
Author: Hugh Macdonald
Publisher: London : J.M. Dent
Total Pages: 288
Release: 1982
Genre: Music
ISBN:

Romanticism

Romanticism
Author: Hugh Honour
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 383
Release: 2018-05-04
Genre: Art
ISBN: 0429977182

"This stylish and erudite thematic study of the influence Romanticism exerts upon Western culture and particularly the visual arts is the companion volume to Honour's equally valuable Neo-classicism.... The text is supported by a useful selection of illustrations Excellent footnotes and a good index. Finely produced, Romanticism will stimulate the graduate and inform the undergraduate." —Choice "An interpretation that rings true for our own time.... His approach to his vast subject is essentially cool, analytic and balanced This is a book that covers an immense amount of material with a freshness of touch." —John Russell, The New York Times "A book of great interest and quality which gives form to a subject that is often treated very vaguely." —Kenneth Clark

Teaching Music

Teaching Music
Author: Gary Spruce
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Total Pages: 282
Release: 2023-05-09
Genre: Education
ISBN: 1000946452

Music education has undergone a remarkable transformation in recent years. Whereas lessons were once characterised by their passivity, children now learn about music through actively engaging in it by performing, composing, listening and appraising. This reader places music education in context and then goes on to examine a range of issues linked to the teaching and learning of music. The latter half of the book concentrates on music education within the classroom, highlighting the kinds of points which all teachers of music will have to consider.