A Sonata Theory Handbook

A Sonata Theory Handbook
Author: James Hepokoski
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Total Pages: 353
Release: 2020-12-15
Genre: Music
ISBN: 0197536816

This book is a highly accessible and up-to-date introduction to the key ideas of Sonata Theory, one of the most influential methods for analyzing the sonata form. Teaching the method primarily by example, it features close readings of masterpieces by Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, and Brahms.

Cadence

Cadence
Author: William E. Caplin
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 649
Release: 2024-09-20
Genre: Music
ISBN: 0190056460

Cadence is a comprehensive examination of how formal units in European art music of the tonal era achieve closure. The book brings together the author's decades-long investigations into cadence, a compositional device that is readily experienced both by musicians and non-musicians, but one that has proven intractable to clear and precise theoretical formulation. Rooted in Caplin's broader theory of formal functions, the book first develops concepts of cadence for music of the high classical style and then extends these ideas to gauge cadential practice in earlier and later style periods. Throughout the study, various manifestations of cadence are defined in terms of their morphology (their harmonic and melodic profiles) as well as their function (the specific formal contexts in which they are deployed). Cadence introduces a host of theoretical concepts illustrated by copious musical examples, all of which contain extensive analytical annotations of harmony, melody and form. Though the book is addressed primarily to music theorists, the many issues of compositional practice raised in this study will resonate with the interests of composers, historians, and performers alike.

Cadence

Cadence
Author: Distinguished James McGill Professor Emeritus of Music Theory William E Caplin
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 649
Release: 2024-10-04
Genre: Music
ISBN: 0197782167

Cadence explores the many ways in which the component parts of a classical composition achieve a sense of ending. The book examines cadential practice in a wide variety of musical styles in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, including works by well-known composers such as Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, Chopin, and Brahms.

The New Beethoven

The New Beethoven
Author: Jeremy Yudkin
Publisher: Boydell & Brewer
Total Pages: 573
Release: 2020
Genre: Music
ISBN: 1580469930

Marking the 250th anniversary of the composer's birth, this volume presents twenty-one completely new essays on aspects of Beethoven's personal life, his composing process, his manuscripts, and his greatest works.

Menahem Pressler

Menahem Pressler
Author: William Brown
Publisher: Indiana University Press
Total Pages: 329
Release: 2008-12-03
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 0253013526

As soloist, master class teacher, and pianist of the world-renowned Beaux Arts Trio, Menahem Pressler can boast of four Grammy nominations, three honorary doctorates, more than 80 recordings, and lifetime achievement awards presented by France, Germany, and Israel. Former Pressler student William Brown traces the master's pianistic development through Rudiakov, Kestenberg, Vengerova, Casadesus, Petri, and Steuermann, blending techniques and traditions derived from Beethoven, Chopin, Liszt, and J. S. Bach. Brown presents Pressler's approach to performance and teaching, including technical exercises, principles of relaxation and total body involvement, and images to guide the pianist's creativity toward expressive interpretation. Insights from the author's own lessons, interviews with Pressler, and recollections of more than 100 Pressler students from the past 50 years are gathered in this text. Measure-by-measure lessons on 23 piano masterworks by, among others, Bach, Bartók, Debussy, and Ravel as well as transcriptions of Pressler's fingerings, hand redistributions, practicing guidelines, musical scores, and master class performances are included.

Anton Rubinstein

Anton Rubinstein
Author: Philip S. Taylor
Publisher: Indiana University Press
Total Pages: 375
Release: 2007-06-14
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 0253116759

The first modern biography in English of Russian composer-pianist Anton Rubinstein, this book places Rubinstein within the context of Russian and western European musical culture during the late 19th century, exploring his rise to international fame from humble origins in Bessarabia, as well as his subsequent rapid decline and marginalization in later musical culture. Taylor provides a balanced account of Rubinstein's life and his career as a piano virtuoso, conductor, composer, and as the founder of Russia's first conservatory. Widely considered the virtuosic heir to Liszt, and recognized internationally as an equivalent cultural icon, he performed with most leading musicians of the day, including Liszt himself, Joachim, Clara Schumann, Vieuxtemps, Wieniawski, Saint-Saens, and Ysaÿe.

Beethoven: Variations on a Life

Beethoven: Variations on a Life
Author: Mark Evan Bonds
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 161
Release: 2020-07-01
Genre: Music
ISBN: 0190054093

Despite the ups and downs of his personal life and professional career-even in the face of deafness-Beethoven remained remarkably consistent in his most basic convictions about his art. This inner consistency, the music historian Mark Evan Bonds argues, provides the key to understanding the composer's life and works. Beethoven approached music as he approached life, weighing whatever occupied him from a variety of perspectives: a melodic idea, a musical genre, a word or phrase, a friend, a lover, a patron, money, politics, religion. His ability to unlock so many possibilities from each helps explain the emotional breadth and richness of his output as a whole, from the heaven-storming Ninth Symphony to the eccentric Eighth, and from the arcane Great Fugue to the crowd-pleasing Wellington's Victory. Beethoven's works, Bonds argues, are a series of variations on his life. The iconic scowl so familiar from later images of the composer is but one of many attitudes he could assume and project through his music. The supposedly characteristic furrowed brow and frown, moreover, came only after his time. Discarding tired myths about the composer, Bonds proposes a new way of listening to Beethoven by hearing his music as an expression of his entire self, not just his scowling self.

Der Tonwille

Der Tonwille
Author: the late Heinrich Schenker
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 256
Release: 2004-03-11
Genre: Music
ISBN: 0195352750

The groundbreaking analytical techniques of Heinrich Schenker have had a powerful impact on the English-speaking musical world, and their importance, a century after he embarked on his major projects, is greater than ever. A central work in the Schenkerian canon, Der Tonwille, introduced the use of voice-leading graphs that remains a critical tool for many music theorists today. This volume, the first of a two-volume English translation of Schenker's complete original text, makes these important contributions available to English readers for the first time. In the first five "issues" that make up Der Tonwille, Schenker analyzes piano sonatas by Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven, as well as shorter works including preludes by Bach and various classical keyboard pieces. The volume also includes the first two installments of a large-scale study of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony which, in common with many of the other essays offered here, is comprised of a detailed analysis of the score, a commentary on the sketches and autograph and related textual problems, remarks on performance, and a critique of the literature on the symphony. Most significantly, the essays in this volume are the first that consistently embrace the concept of "Urlinie" by coordinating an explanatory text with a "graph of the Urlinie" for each work discussed. It also contains the most extensive expression of Schenker's outspoken philosophical, political, and artistic beliefs, providing an important cultural perspective from which to view his theoretical work. Under the leadership of William Drabkin, a team of well-regarded musicologists has produced this skilled and lucid translation of Schenker's influential writings, an essential resource for English-reading musicologists and music theorists.

The Strad

The Strad
Author:
Publisher:
Total Pages: 484
Release: 1921
Genre: Bowed stringed instruments
ISBN: