Venanzio Rauzzini in Britain

Venanzio Rauzzini in Britain
Author: Paul Francis Rice
Publisher: Boydell & Brewer
Total Pages: 416
Release: 2015
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 1580465323

The remarkable career of Venanzio Rauzzini (1746-1810) sheds new light on changing musical tastes in late eighteenth-century Britain. Rauzzini was a leading soprano castrato who sang in the premiere of Mozart's Lucio Silla in 1772. Mozart was so pleased with the singer that he composed the famous motet Exsultate Jubilate for him. This book examines Rauzzini's career in Britain, starting with his three seasons as a principal singer at the King's Theatre in London (1774-77). Rauzzini was the first castrato to make Britain his home, and he enjoyed a multifaceted career there as a singer, concert director, composer (operas, chamber music, and songs), and voice teacher. Rauzzini's leadership of the Bath subscription concerts from 1780-1810 reveals the degree to which shifts in the social demographics of Bath over this period caused him to reevaluate his compositional choices, especially in light of the patriotic fervor that swept the nation during the protracted war with France. Furthermore, the recovery of much of the repertory performed during these concerts provides specific insights into issues of concert management at the time. Paul F. Rice, Professor of Musicology in the School of Music, Memorial University of Newfoundland, is the author of four previous books and has edited scores for CD recordings on the Naxos, Dorian, and Centaur labels.

Venanzio Rauzzini in Britain. Castrato, Composer, and Cultural Leader

Venanzio Rauzzini in Britain. Castrato, Composer, and Cultural Leader
Author: Paul Francis Rice
Publisher:
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2015
Genre: Castrati
ISBN: 9781782046097

The remarkable career of Venanzio Rauzzini (1746-1810) sheds new light on changing musical tastes in late eighteenth-century Britain. Rauzzini was a leading soprano castrato who sang in the premiere of Mozart's Lucio Silla in 1772. Mozart was so pleased with the singer that he composed the famous motet Exsultate Jubilate for him. This book examines Rauzzini's career in Britain, starting with his three seasons as a principal singer at the King's Theatre in London (1774-77). Rauzzini was the first castrato to make Britain his home, and he enjoyed a multifaceted career there as a singer, concert director, composer (operas, chamber music, and songs), and voice teacher. Rauzzini's leadership of the Bath subscription concerts from 1780-1810 reveals the degree to which shifts in the social demographics of Bath over this period caused him to reevaluate his compositional choices, especially in light of the patriotic fervor that swept the nation during the protracted war with France. Furthermore, the recovery of much of the repertory performed during these concerts provides specific insights into issues of concert management at the time.

Venanzio Rauzzini and the Birth of a New Style in English Singing

Venanzio Rauzzini and the Birth of a New Style in English Singing
Author: Brianna E. Robertson-Kirkland
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 271
Release: 2022-01-31
Genre: History
ISBN: 100053684X

Since the eighteenth century, the one-to-one singing lesson has been the most common method of delivery. The scenario allows the teacher to familiarise and individualise the lesson to suit the needs of their student; however, it can also lead to speculation about what is taught. More troubling is the heightened risk of gossip and rumour with the private space generating speculation about the student–teacher relationship. Venanzio Rauzzini (1746–1810), an Italian castrato living in England who became a highly sought-after singing master, was particularly susceptible since his students tended to be women, whose moral character was under more scrutiny than their male counterparts. Even so in 1792, The Bath Chronicle proclaimed the Italian castrato: 'the father of a new style in English singing'. Branding Rauzzini as a founder of an English style was not an error, but indicative of deep-seated anxieties about the Italian invasion on England’s musical culture. This book places teaching at the centre of the socio-historical narrative and provides unique insight into musical culture. Using a microhistory approach, this study is the first to focus in on the impact of teaching and casts new light on issues of celebrity culture, gender and nationalism in Georgian England.

Muzio Clementi and British Musical Culture

Muzio Clementi and British Musical Culture
Author: Luca Lévi Sala
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 258
Release: 2018-06-14
Genre: Music
ISBN: 1351800884

Recent scholarship has vanquished the traditional perception of nineteenth-century Britain as a musical wasteland. In addition to attempting more balanced assessments of the achievements of British composers of this period, scholars have begun to explore the web of reciprocal relationships between the societal, economic and cultural dynamics arising from the industrial revolution, the Napoleonic wars, and the ever-changing contours of British music publishing, music consumption, concert life, instrument design, performance practice, pedagogy and composition. Muzio Clementi (1752–1832) provides an ideal case-study for continued exploration of this web of relationships. Based in London for much of his life, whilst still maintaining contact with continental developments, Clementi achieved notable success in a diversity of activities that centred mainly on the piano. The present book explores Clementi’s multivalent contribution to piano performance, pedagogy, composition and manufacture in relation to British musical life and its international dimensions. An overriding purpose is to interrogate when, how and to what extent a distinctive British musical culture emerged in the early nineteenth century. Much recent work on Clementi has centred on the Italian National Edition of his complete works (MiBACT); several chapters report on this project, whilst continuing to pursue the book’s broader themes.

Spa Culture and Literature in England, 1500-1800

Spa Culture and Literature in England, 1500-1800
Author: Sophie Chiari
Publisher: Springer Nature
Total Pages: 310
Release: 2021-05-31
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 3030665682

This edited collection aims at highlighting the various uses of water in sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth-century England, while exploring the tensions between those who praised the curative virtues of waters and those who rejected them for their supposedly harmful effects. Divided into three balanced sections, the collection includes contributions from renowned specialists of early modern culture and literature as well as rising young scholars as it seeks to establish a dialogue between different methodologies, and explain why the spa-related issues examined still resonate in today’s society.

Narrative and Robert Schumann's Songs

Narrative and Robert Schumann's Songs
Author: Andrew H. Weaver
Publisher: Boydell & Brewer
Total Pages: 309
Release: 2024
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1648250890

Featuring 28 music examples this book takes an innovative approach to analyzing and interpreting nineteenth-century German song, offering new perspectives on Robert Schumann's Lieder and song cycles. Robert Schumann's Lieder are among the richest and most complex songs in the repertoire and have long raised questions and stimulated discussion among scholars, performers, and listeners. Among the wide range of methodologies that have been used to understand and interpret his songs, one that has been conspicuously absent is an approach based on narratology (the theory and study of narrative texts). Proceeding from the premise that the performance of a Lied is a narrative act, in which the singer and pianist together function as a narrator, Andrew Weaver's groundbreaking study proposes a comprehensive theory of narratology for the German Romantic Lied and song cycle, using Schumann's complete song oeuvre as the test case. The theory, grounded in the work of narratologist Mieke Bal but also drawing upon recent work in literary theory and musicology, illuminates how music can open up new meanings for the poem, as well as how a narratological analysis of the poem can help us understand the music. Weaver's book offers new insights into Schumann's Lieder and the poetry he set while simultaneously proposing a methodology applicable to the analysis and interpretation of a wide range of works, including not only the rich treasury of German Lieder but also potentially any genre of accompanied song in any language from the Middle Ages to the present day.

Musical Theater in Eighteenth-century Parma

Musical Theater in Eighteenth-century Parma
Author: Margaret Ruth Butler
Publisher:
Total Pages: 198
Release: 2019
Genre: Drama
ISBN: 1580469019

How do you create a style of opera that speaks to everyone, when no one agrees on what it should say -- or how? French and Italian varieties of opera have intermingled and informed one another from the genre's first decades onward. Yet we still have only a hazy view of why and how those intersections occurred and what they meant to a givenopera's creators and audiences. Margaret Butler's Musical Theater in Eighteenth-Century Parma: Entertainment, Sovereignty, Reform tackles these issues, examining performance, spectatorship, and politics in the Bourbon-controlled, northern Italian city of Parma in the mid-eighteenth century. Reconstructing the French context for Tommaso Traetta's Italian operas that consciously set out to fuse French and Italian elements, Butler explores Traetta's operas and recreations in Parma of operas and ballets by Jean-Philippe Rameau and other French composers. She shows that Parma's brand of entertainment is one in which Traetta's operas occupy points along a continuum representing a long and rich tradition of adaptation and generic play. Such a reading calls into question the very notion of operatic reform, showing the need for a more flexible conception of a volatile moment in opera's history. The book elucidates the complicated circumstances in which entertainments were created that spoke not only to Parma's multicultural audiences but also to an increasingly cosmopolitan Europe. MARGARET R. BUTLER is Associate Professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Songs Without Words

Songs Without Words
Author: Sandra Mangsen
Publisher: Boydell & Brewer
Total Pages: 284
Release: 2016
Genre: History
ISBN: 1580465498

Keyboard arrangements of vocal music flourished in England between1560 and 1760. Songs without Words, by noted harpsichordist and early-music authority Sandra Mangsen, is the first in-depth study of this topic, uncovering a body of material that is remarkably varied, musically interesting, and indicative of major trends in musical and social life at the time. Mangsen's Songs without Words argues that the pieces upon which these keyboard arrangements were based constituted a shared repertoire, akin to the jazz standards of the twentieth century. In Restoration England, the ballad tradition saw tunes and texts move between oral, manuscript, and printed transmission and from street to playhouse and back again. During the eighteenth century, printed keyboard arrangements were aimed particularly at female amateur keyboardists and helped opera to become a widely popular genre. Songs without Words considers a wide range of model pieces, including songs of many kinds and arias and other numbers from operas and oratorios. The resulting keyboard versions range from simple and pedagogically oriented to highly virtuosic. Two central issues -- the relationship between an arrangement and its model and the reception and aesthetics of arrangements -- are explored in the framing chapters. The result is a study that will be of great interest to scholars, performers, and anyone who loves the music of the late Renaissance, Baroque, and early Classic eras. Sandra Mangsen is professor emerita of music at the University of Western Ontario.

Women and Music in the Age of Austen

Women and Music in the Age of Austen
Author: Linda Zionkowski
Publisher: Rutgers University Press
Total Pages: 208
Release: 2023-12-15
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1684485177

Women and Music in the Age of Austen highlights the central role women played in musical performance, composition, reception, and representation, and analyzes its formative and lasting effect on Georgian culture. This interdisciplinary collection of essays from musicology, literary studies, and gender studies challenges the conventional historical categories that marginalize women’s experience from Austen’s time. Contesting the distinctions between professional and amateur musicians, public and domestic sites of musical production, and performers and composers of music, the contributors reveal how women’s widespread involvement in the Georgian musical scene allowed for self-expression, artistic influence, and access to communities that transcended the boundaries of gender, class, and nationality. This volume’s breadth of focus advances our understanding of a period that witnessed a musical flourishing, much of it animated by female hands and voices. Published by Bucknell University Press. Distributed worldwide by Rutgers University Press.

There She Goes Again

There She Goes Again
Author: Aviva Dove-Viebahn
Publisher: Rutgers University Press
Total Pages: 153
Release: 2023-12-15
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN: 1978836139

There She Goes Again interrogates the representation of ostensibly powerful women in transmedia franchises, examining how presumed feminine traits—love, empathy, altruism, diplomacy—are alternately lauded and repudiated as possibilities for effecting long-lasting social change. By questioning how these franchises reimagine their protagonists over time, the book reflects on the role that gendered exceptionalism plays in social and political action, as well as what forms of knowledge and power are presumed distinctly feminine. The franchises explored in this book illustrate the ambivalent (post)feminist representation of women protagonists as uniquely gifted in ways both gendered and seemingly ungendered, and yet inherently bound to expressions of their femininity. At heart,There She Goes Again asks under what terms and in what contexts women protagonists are imagined, envisioned, embodied, and replicated in media. Especially now, in a period of gradually increasing representation, women protagonists demonstrate the importance of considering how we should define—and whether we need—feminine forms of knowledge and power.