Oedipus Rex/The Rake's Progress

Oedipus Rex/The Rake's Progress
Author: Igor Stravinsky
Publisher: Alma Books
Total Pages: 115
Release: 2018-01-01
Genre: Music
ISBN: 0714544892

Stravinsky's genius for the stage is here represented by two very different works. Oedipus Rex (1927) is the fruit of a collaboration with Jean Cocteau, in which the Sophocles tragedy is pared down to make an opera-oratorio of overwhelming impact. Judith Weir analyses how this is achieved: the Latin text has an immediacy which is sometimes even comic, and the vibrant rhythms are reminiscent of the Italian operatic tradition - explored by David Nice in his analysis of the score. The libretto of The Rake's Progress (1951) by W.H. Auden and Chester Kallman is one of the greatest English opera texts. In a survey of the composition period, Roger Savage examines the contributions of the different collaborators.Contents: The Person of Fate and the Fate of the Person: 'Oedipus Rex', David Nice; 'Oedipus Rex': A Personal View, Judith Weir; On an Oratorio, Jean Cocteau; Oedipus Rex: Libretto by Jean Cocteau, translated into Latin by Jean Danielou; Oedipus Rex: English translation of the narration by e. e. cummings and of the Latin text by Deryck Cooke; Making a Libretto: Three Collaborations over 'The Rake's Progress', Roger Savage; The New and the Classical in 'The Rake's Progress', Brian Trowell; The Rake's Progress: Libretto by W.H. Auden and Chester Kallman

Igor Stravinsky, the Rake's Progress

Igor Stravinsky, the Rake's Progress
Author: Paul Griffiths
Publisher: CUP Archive
Total Pages: 216
Release: 1982
Genre: Composers
ISBN: 9780521245906

The Rake's Progress is Stravinsky's biggest work and one of the few great operas written since the 1920s, rare too for the unusual quality of its libretto, by Auden and Kallman. Its importance is undisputed, but so too are the problems it raises: problems of both performance and understanding, caused by the irony with which it is so thoroughly permeated. In aspects of style and operatic convention it looks back to the eighteenth century, and in particular to the operas of Mozart and da Ponte, while making references also to other periods, to operas from Monteverdi to Verdi. Yet at the same time it is wholly a work of the twentieth-century, and indeed it is centrally concerned with the impossibility of return, artistic, psychological or actual, as well as with the nature and limitation of human free will. The Rake's Progress is not one of unbridled dissipation but rather, more interestingly, one of attachment to naive notions of freedom and choice, and his tragedy is that he can never go back.

Harrison Birtwistle's Operas and Music Theatre

Harrison Birtwistle's Operas and Music Theatre
Author: David Beard
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 489
Release: 2012-10-25
Genre: Music
ISBN: 0521895340

A definitive source study of the stage works of Harrison Birtwistle, one of Britain's foremost living composers.

The New Grove Stravinsky

The New Grove Stravinsky
Author: Stanley Sadie
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Total Pages: 104
Release: 2003-03-15
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 0199729433

Of Russian, French, and later American nationality, Stravinsky's musical styles are startlingly diverse, reflecting his life and era; from Tsarist Russia, to 1920s France and post-war USA. His early years in Russia saw him launch his international career, with Dyagilve's Ballets Russes in Paris and the premieres of The Firebird, Petrushka and The Rite of Spring. Between 1920-1939 Stravinsky lived and worked in France, producing his great neo-classical compositions, reactivating the modes and manners of the eighteenth century. This stylistic inclination eventually gave way to a highly individual use of serial techniques in his last years, when he took up residence in the United States. This biography of Igor Stravinsky is one in a new series of composer biographies, derived and adapted from the second edition of The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians. These newly written biographies bring the best of the book-length pieces in The New Grove to a wider audience. Each title provides fresh new insights into the life and works of a major composer, derived from the most recent scholarship. In addition to a detailed and informative view of the subject's life and works, written by an expert in the field, each book includes comprehensive, tabular work-lists and a fully revised and updated bibliography.

E. E. Cummings' Modernism and the Classics

E. E. Cummings' Modernism and the Classics
Author: J. Alison Rosenblitt
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 393
Release: 2016-09-22
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 0191079871

This volume is a major, ground-breaking study of the modernist E. E. Cummings' engagement with the classics. With his experimental form and syntax, his irreverence, and his rejection of the highbrow, there are probably few current readers who would name Cummings if asked to identify 20th-century Anglophone poets in the Classical tradition. But for most of his life, and even for ten or twenty years after his death, this is how many readers and critics did see Cummings. He specialised in the study of classical literature as an undergraduate at Harvard, and his contemporaries saw him as a 'pagan' poet or a 'Juvenalian' satirist, with an Aristophanic sense of humour. In E.E. Cummings' Modernism and the Classics, Alison Rosenblitt aims to recover for the contemporary reader this lost understanding of Cummings as a classicizing poet. The book also includes an edition of previously unpublished work by Cummings himself, unearthed from archival research. For the first time, the reader has access to the full scope of Cummings' translations from Horace, Homer, and Greek drama, as well as two short pieces of classically-related prose, a short 'Alcaics' and a previously unknown and classicizing parody of T. S. Eliot's The Waste Land. This new work is exciting in its own right and essential to understanding Cummings' development as a poet.

Hockney Paints the Stage

Hockney Paints the Stage
Author: Martin Friedman
Publisher: Minneapolis : Walker Art Center ; New York : Abbeville Press
Total Pages: 236
Release: 1983
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN:

SCOTT (copy 2) The Hédi Bouraoui Collection in Maghrebian and Franco-Ontario Literatures is the gift of University Professor Emeritus Hédi Bouraoui.

A Chronology Of Western Classical Music 1600-2000

A Chronology Of Western Classical Music 1600-2000
Author: Jon Paxman
Publisher: Omnibus Press
Total Pages: 709
Release: 2014-10-13
Genre: Music
ISBN: 1783231211

“A great reference tool for anyone who wants to explore the history of music.” - Philip Glass Jon Paxman's Classical Music 1600–2000: A Chronology interprets four centuries of Western classical music, considering its evolution from two different perspectives. Monumental in scope but lucid in style, this book will prove invaluable to anyone – student or enthusiast – who wants to comprehend the overwhelmingly rich and sometimes complex evolution of Western classical music. Classical Music 1600–2000: A Chronology features contributions by Terry Barfoot, Katy Hamilton, Thomas Lydon and Robert Rawson.

The Road to Delphi

The Road to Delphi
Author: Michael Wood
Publisher: Macmillan
Total Pages: 292
Release: 2004-07
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780312423070

Cultures of all epochs have consulted oracles in times of need. This fascinating exploration of the enduring popularity of oracles examines how they are interpreted and why. Taking examples from literature and history, from the oracles at Delphi to those in Macbeth, and further still to the works of Kafka and Bob Dylan, and even in the film The Matrix, Wood combines storytelling and commentary to provide a lively account of humanity's persistent faith in signs, which continues to exert an important influence on the course of civilization.

The Stravinsky Legacy

The Stravinsky Legacy
Author: Jonathan Cross
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 312
Release: 1998-12-10
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 9780521563659

This book explores the technical and aesthetic legacy of Igor Stravinsky.