Dvořák in America, 1892-1895

Dvořák in America, 1892-1895
Author: John C. Tibbetts
Publisher:
Total Pages: 468
Release: 1993
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN:

Burleigh (both African Americans), Horatio Parker, and Maurice Arnold - to forge a uniquely American tradition; they, in turn, became mentors and teachers to a new generation of composers, including Charles Ives, George Gershwin, Aaron Copland, and Duke Ellington. Dvorak heard for himself the "dialects and idioms ... commingled in this great country" and expressed them in his own way in a dozen masterpieces written during his visit. His "New World" Symphony, for example - still the most famous ever written on American soil - was composed in New York amid what he called the "American push" of the streets. And two of his most celebrated chamber works, the F Major Quartet and the E-flat Major Quintet, were written during his travels through the prairies of northeast Iowa, which he described as the "American Sahara." The contributors to this anthology are among the world's most distinguished authorities on Dvorak.

Dvořák in America, 1892-1895

Dvořák in America, 1892-1895
Author: John C. Tibbetts
Publisher:
Total Pages: 468
Release: 1993
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN:

Burleigh (both African Americans), Horatio Parker, and Maurice Arnold - to forge a uniquely American tradition; they, in turn, became mentors and teachers to a new generation of composers, including Charles Ives, George Gershwin, Aaron Copland, and Duke Ellington. Dvorak heard for himself the "dialects and idioms ... commingled in this great country" and expressed them in his own way in a dozen masterpieces written during his visit. His "New World" Symphony, for example - still the most famous ever written on American soil - was composed in New York amid what he called the "American push" of the streets. And two of his most celebrated chamber works, the F Major Quartet and the E-flat Major Quintet, were written during his travels through the prairies of northeast Iowa, which he described as the "American Sahara." The contributors to this anthology are among the world's most distinguished authorities on Dvorak.

Dvorák: Cello Concerto

Dvorák: Cello Concerto
Author: Jan Smaczny
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 134
Release: 1999-09-28
Genre: Music
ISBN: 9780521669030

Dvorák's Cello Concerto, composed during his second stay in America, is one of the most popular works in the orchestral repertoire. This guide explores Dvorák's reasons for composing a concerto for an instrument which he at one time considered unsuitable for solo work, its relationship to his American period compositions and how it forms something of a bridge with his operatic interests. A particular focus is the concerto's unique qualities: why it stands apart in terms of form, melodic character and texture from the rest of Dvorák's orchestral music. The role of the dedicatee of the work, Hanus Wihan, in its creation is also considered, as are performing traditions as they have developed in the twentieth century. In addition the guide explores the extraordinary emotional background to the work which links it intimately to the woman who was probably Dvorák's first love.

Puccini’s La fanciulla del West and American Musical Identity

Puccini’s La fanciulla del West and American Musical Identity
Author: Kathryn Fenton
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 301
Release: 2019-08-30
Genre: Music
ISBN: 1351594877

On 10 December 1910, Giacomo Puccini’s seventh opera, La fanciulla del West, had its premiere before a sold-out audience at New York City’s Metropolitan Opera House. The performance was the Metropolitan Opera Company’s first world premiere by any composer. By all accounts, the premiere was an unambiguous success and the event itself recognized as a major moment in New York cultural history. The initial public opinion matched Puccini’s own evaluation of his opera. He called it "the best he had ever written" and expected it to become as popular as La Bohème. Yet the music reviews tell a different story. Marked by ambivalence, the reviews expose the New York City critics’ struggle to reconcile the opera they expected to see with the one they actually saw, and the opera itself became embroiled in controversy over the essence of musical Americanness and the nativist perception that a uniquely American national opera tradition continued to elude both American- and foreign-born opera composers. This book seeks to account for the differences between Puccini’s own assessments of the opera and those of its first audience. Offering transcriptions of the central reviews and of letters unavailable elsewhere, the book provides a historically informed understanding of La fanciulla del West and the reception of this European work as it intersected with both opera production and consumption in the United States and with the process of American musical identity formation during the very period that Americans actively sought to eradicate European cultural influences. As such, it offers a window into the development of nativism and "cosmopolitan nationalism" in New York City’s musical life during the first decade of the twentieth century.

Proof Through the Night

Proof Through the Night
Author: Glenn Watkins
Publisher: Univ of California Press
Total Pages: 614
Release: 2003
Genre: Art
ISBN: 0520231589

An entertaining cultural history of music during World War I, covering all the major European nations as well as the United States, in both classical and popular genres. The book is lavishly illustrated and includes a CD.

Longfellow

Longfellow
Author: Charles C. Calhoun
Publisher: Beacon Press
Total Pages: 356
Release: 2005-06-15
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 9780807070390

In the first biography of Longfellow in almost fifty years, Charles C. Calhoun seeks to solve a mystery: Why has one of America's most famous writers fallen into oblivion? His answer to this question takes us through a life story that reads like a Victorian family saga and reveals the man who introduced Americans to the literatures of other countries while creating a gallery of American icons - among them Paul Revere, John and Priscilla Alden, Miles Standish, the Village Blacksmith, Hiawatha, and Evangeline.

Falling Toward Grace

Falling Toward Grace
Author: J. Kent Calder
Publisher: Indiana University Press
Total Pages: 180
Release: 1998
Genre: Indianapolis (Ind.)
ISBN: 0253334535

"... a literary pilgrimage as well as a spiritual one." --Indianapolis Star "... a powerful statement about the religious diversity of America... an indispensable volume." --National Catholic Reporter The more mobile and rootless and virtual we become as a culture, the more we long for vital connections to the places in which we find ourselves. The editors, photographers, poets and writers in this volume have sought to grapple with the issue of place and spirit in a typical American city at the end of the 20th century: Indianapolis, Indiana. They focus on the connections, or lack thereof, between the seen and the unseen in a place historically significant for its typicality.

Ruth Crawford Seeger

Ruth Crawford Seeger
Author: Judith Tick
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 488
Release: 2000-02-10
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 0195350197

Ruth Crawford Seeger (1901-1953) is frequently considered the most significant American female composer in this century. Joining Aaron Copland and Henry Cowell as a key member of the 1920s musical avant-garde, she went on to study with modernist theorist and future husband Charles Seeger, writing her masterpiece, String Quartet 1931, not long after. But her legacy extends far beyond the cutting edge of modern music. Collaborating with poet Carl Sandburg on folk song arrangements in the twenties, and with the famous folk-song collectors John and Alan Lomax in the 1930s, she emerged as a central figure in the American folk music revival, issuing several important books of transcriptions and arrangements and pioneering the use of American folk songs in children's music education. Radicalized by the Depression, she spent much of the ensuing two decades working aggressively for social change with her husband and stepson, the folksinger Pete Seeger. This engrossing new biography emphasizes the choices Crawford Seeger made in her roles as composer, activist, teacher, wife and mother. The first woman to win a Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship in music composition, Crawford Seeger nearly gave up writing music as the demands of family, politics, and the folk song movement intervened. It was only at the very end of her life, with cancer sapping her strength, that she returned to composing. Written with unique insight and compassion, this book offers the definitive treatment of a fascinating twentieth-century figure.

Enchanted Evenings

Enchanted Evenings
Author: Geoffrey Block
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 615
Release: 2009-10-30
Genre: Music
ISBN: 0195384008

This second edition offers theater lovers an illuminating behind-the-scenes tour of some of America's best musicals. Geoffrey Block provides a documentary history of each of the eighteen musicals he discusses. He reveals how the American musical evolved from the 1920s to today, both on stage and on screen, and how librettist, lyricist, composer, and director work together to shape pieces.--[book cover].

Pentatonicism from the Eighteenth Century to Debussy

Pentatonicism from the Eighteenth Century to Debussy
Author: Jeremy Day-O'Connell
Publisher: University Rochester Press
Total Pages: 564
Release: 2007
Genre: Music
ISBN: 9781580462488

A generously illustrated examination of pentatonic ("black-key scale") techniques in the context of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Western art-music. Pentatonicism from the Eighteenth Century to Debussy offers the first comprehensive account of a widely recognized aspect of music history: the increasing use of pentatonic ("black-key scale") techniques in nineteenth-century Western art-music. Pentatonicism in nineteenth-century music encompasses hundreds of instances, many of which predate by decades the more famous examples of Debussy and Dvorák. This book weaves together historical commentary with music theory and analysis in order to explain the sources and significance of an important, but hitherto only casually understood, phenomenon. The book introduces several distinct categories of pentatonicpractice -- pastoral, primitive, exotic, religious, and coloristic -- and examines pentatonicism in relationship to changes in the melodic and harmonic sensibility of the time. The text concludes with an additional appendix of over 400 examples, an unprecedented resource demonstrating the individual artistry with which virtually every major nineteenth-century composer (from Schubert, Chopin, and Berlioz to Liszt, Wagner, and Mahler) handled theseemingly "simple" materials of pentatonicism. Jeremy Day-O'Connell is assistant professor of music at Knox College.