Bücher der Reihe Cambridge Library Collection - Music

Henry Sutherland Edwards (1828-1906) wrote this volume in Francis Hueffer's 'Great Musicians' series, published by Novello, in 1881. It was unusual for this series because of the addition of 'the School': most of the other books dealt with an individual composer, but Edwards discusses Bellini and provides chapters on Donizetti and Verdi (still alive, and at the height of his powers, at the time this book was published) as well as his main subject. The book covers Rossini's life and deals in detail with what the author regarded as his most significant works - a selection which may surprise or even outrage Rossini enthusiasts today.

Francis Hueffer (1845-89) was born and studied music in Germany, but moved to London in 1869 to pursue a career as a critic and writer on music. He edited the series 'The Great Musicians' for Novello and Co., was music critic of The Times, wrote libretti for some now-forgotten operas, and was an early advocate and interpreter to the British of Wagner. Between his Richard Wagner and the Music of the Future (1874) and his translation of the correspondence of Wagner and Liszt (1888), he wrote Wagner in his own 'Great Musicians' series in 1881 (two years before the composer's death). The book surveys Wagner's life and his musical writings, and a separate chapter is devoted to each of the operas (except Parsifal, which was not performed until 1882). This is a fascinating contemporary assessment of the standard-bearer of the 'music of the future'.

Francis Hueffer (1843-1889) was music critic for The Times from 1878 to 1889 and was also secretary of the Wagner Society founded in 1873. This 1874 book, much of it originally published in the Fortnightly Review, considers Wagner's role in the musical developments of the nineteenth century that followed the watershed of Beethoven's ninth symphony. It is one of the first works in English to explore the nature of Wagner's genius, and builds on an essay published by the author in The Academy about Wagner's own pamphlet on Beethoven. Hueffer's analysis of the formation of Wagner's artistic values and musical philosophy as embodied in his writings and music dramas is complemented by discussion of the songs of Schubert, Schumann and Liszt. The appendix provides an account of the performance of Beethoven's ninth which Wagner conducted at Bayreuth in 1872, and the laying of the foundation stone of the Festspielhaus.

C. F. Abdy Williams (1855-1923), a noted music scholar, traced the history of the discipline at Oxford and Cambridge from the fifteenth century to the late Victorian period in this 1894 book. He discusses the earliest records of degrees in the subject, the establishment of professorships, the requirements for degrees and the ceremonies associated with their conferral. He provides biographical information for graduates from as early as 1463, noting that English music of this early period was in a very advanced stage compared to that of the rest of Europe. He also includes, in an appendix, the names of those persons who are mentioned as graduates but whose names do not appear in the university records. His book reveals the importance attached to the cultivation of music at the ancient British universities and the prestige attached to their scholars over several centuries.

Hermann von Helmholtz (1821-94) was a leading scientist who made important contributions to physiology, psychology, physics, philosophy and early neuroscience. Following his foundational work in ophthalmics during the 1850s, he became Professor of Physiology at Heidelberg and, in 1863, published On the Sensations of Tone. This investigation into the physical theory of music remains a central text for the study of physiological acoustics and aesthetics. In it, Helmholtz applies physics, anatomy and physiology. He explains how tones are built from a base tone with upper partial tones, and his later discussions on consonance and musical scales develop this theory and discuss how the ear perceives these tones. His work on consonance and dissonance was of particular interest to composers and musicologists well into the twentieth century. This English translation, published in 1875 from the third German edition, retains the original's straightforward language, making this classic work accessible to non-specialists.

Henry Fothergill Chorley made his name as music journalist for The Athanaeum from 1830 until his retirement in 1868. He published weekly reviews of concerts as well as gossip on musicians and composers of the day. This book is based on four lectures presented by the author at the Royal Institution in 1862, and edited after his death by Henry Hewlett. It outlines the development of the different traditions and cultures of music across the world and how western classical composers were inspired and influenced by them. It contains many musical illustrations, drawn particularly from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries (for example, the fashionable so-called 'Turkish' music by composers including Mozart and Rossini). The book, though idiosyncratic and full of sweeping generalisations, conveys the spirit of its time and the lively character of its author. It will appeal to all those interested in the Victorian reception of world music.

The Philharmonic Society ('Royal' from 1912) is one of the oldest music societies in the world. Founded in 1813 to provide regular concerts of new music in London, it is famous for its commission of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony. This detailed account by George Hogarth, music journalist and Secretary to the Society between 1850 and 1864, takes us from the inaugural concert in March 1813 including works by Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven to plans for the golden jubilee concert. Noteworthy performances in these first fifty years included the UK premiere of Beethoven's Ninth in 1825, Mendelssohn's Italian Symphony in 1833 and a cornucopia of works by composers such as Wagner, Berlioz and Weber whose music now forms the core repertoire of the nineteenth century. Appendices provide extracts of letters from Mendelssohn, details of works by English composers performed at Society concerts, and lists of performers, Society members, Honorary Members and Patrons.

Louis Spohr (1784-1859) was one of the most popular musicians of the early Romantic period, but of his considerable output (including 10 symphonies, 15 violin concertos, nine operas and a large amount of chamber music), only the Octet op.32 and the Nonet op.31 are heard regularly today. Spohr established his name as a virtuoso violinist and completed his Violin method in 1831. As a conductor, he contributed to the increasing use of the baton to direct performances. He travelled widely in Europe, visiting London for the first time in 1820, when he directed a Philharmonic Society concert, and returning four times between 1843 and 1853. This autobiography, begun in 1847, gives a lively (but not necessarily always accurate) account of life as a professional musician. Spohr's own account ends at June 1838, and the book was completed by family members using materials provided by his wife.

The English composer and concert producer William Gardiner (1770-1853) published this work in 1832 in order to explain the 'true principles of musical taste and expression' by listening to the 'germs of melody' in nature. Here he musically notates the sounds of oxen, a Newfoundland dog, a blackbird, a cooing dove and even an angry child in an attempt to combine natural history, personal observation and historical anecdotes with his passion for music. Notable for introducing Beethoven's music to Britain, Gardiner sets out his general beliefs about the adaptability of the human ear, the differences between noise and sound, singing and oratory, and the musicality of ordinary language. He also discusses many noted singers of his day and delves into the different techniques used by singers and instrumentalists to elicit emotion in their audiences.

J. A. Fuller Maitland (1856-1936), whose Masters of German Music is also reissued in this series, was music critic of The Times for 22 years, was the editor of the second edition of Grove's Dictionary of Music and Musicians, prepared an edition of the Fitzwilliam Virginal Book, and also worked on Purcell and on folk song. This biography of Schumann, in the 'Great Musicians' series edited by Francis Hueffer, was published in 1884, 28 years after its subject's death. It is dedicated to Schumann's widow, Clara, who the author consulted, along with Joachim and others; but he also acknowledges that those hoping for an exhaustive life of Schumann would be disappointed: 'The time for writing such a life is not yet come.' Nevertheless, this book contains a survey of Schumann's compositions as well as his critical writings and a range of contemporary critical responses to his work.

In 1893, the English composer and director of the Royal College of Music C. Hubert H. Parry published Summary of the Development of Medieval and Modern European Music, an overview of European music from the middle ages to the work of Schubert and Brahms. Intended for music students, the book summarises the major composers, their work and the social circumstances that surrounded the creation of their music. This ambitious book is divided into 12 chronological chapters, from the troubadours and plainsong, through Bach and Handel to the rise of the symphony, Mozart, and the emergence of music as an expression of nationalism. In the book's first part, Parry deftly puts music in historical context, discussing England's Wars of the Roses, and the Reformation in relation to the changing styles throughout the sixteenth century; he then explores the music of the Restoration and the rise of opera.

J. A. Fuller Maitland (1856-1936), whose Schumann in the Novello 'Great Musicians' series is also reissued in this series, had a wide-ranging interest in music. He was music critic of The Times for 22 years, was the editor of the second edition of Grove's Dictionary of Music and Musicians, prepared an edition of the Fitzwilliam Virginal Book, and also worked on Purcell and on folk song. This book, published in 1894, surveys the then current state of German music, with essays on Brahms, Bruch, Goldmark and Rheinberger. Bruckner is mentioned as a 'Little Master', and Richard Strauss appears in the final chapter, entitled 'New Paths (?)' but the surprise for present-day readers is that the composer fulsomely claimed by Fuller Maitland as the natural successor to Wagner, Cyrill Kistler, is now almost completely unknown.

Francis Hueffer (1845-89) was born and studied music in Germany, but moved to London in 1869 to pursue a career as a critic and writer on music. He edited the series 'The Great Musicians' for Novello and Co., was music critic of The Times, and was an early advocate and interpreter to the British of Wagner. His Musical Studies of 1880 is a collection of essays on Beethoven, Chopin, French opera, Schopenhauer ('among the numerous German metaphysicians, the only one who has said anything worth listening to about music'), and of course Wagner: an article on the Ring written before the first performance of the complete cycle, and an account of that performance at Bayreuth. The collection finishes with the provocative essay 'The chances of English opera' (1879), which contrasts the lively opera scene in the rest of Europe with the lack of a tradition of English opera.

This collection of essays by the music critic Francis Hueffer (1843-1889) is a lively, contemporary account of musical life in Victorian England. First published in 1889, it records the influence of leading foreign composers on English music. Ranging from the music of Handel, Gluck and Haydn to Weber, Rossini,and Mendelssohn, composers who have had a lasting influence on the British musical world, Hueffer, who did not live to see the publication of his book, offers a panoramic view of the rapid development of musical culture in England during the nineteenth century. Starting with a historical introduction to the roles played by the Royal Academy and the Royal College of Music, and moving on to the specific contributions of 'new' composers including Berlioz, Wagner and Liszt, this book is a valuable guide to the history and criticism of music in Victorian England as it was understood at the time.

Handel enjoyed considerable popularity at the end of the eighteenth century, when his music was performed in London, Berlin, Leipzig, Vienna and Breslau. However, interest in him had waned by the mid-nineteenth century, when it was rekindled by a small group of music-lovers including Georg Gervinus (1805-71), a historian of literature based in Heidelberg. Gervinus lobbied for a Handel memorial in Halle, was a founder of the first German Handel society in 1856, and in 1858 published Handel und Shakespeare, which drew parallels between his favourite writer and favourite composer. In it, after two long chapters on music history and aesthetics, he compared their intellectual development and attributed the similarities between them to their shared Germanic roots. Although the book was not a great success in its day, it marked an important turning point in European Handel studies, and is still referred to today.

C. Hubert H. Parry (1848-1918), knighted in 1902 for his services to music, was a distinguished composer, conductor and musicologist. In the first of these roles he is best known for his settings of Blake's 'Jerusalem' and the coronation anthem 'I was glad'. He was an enthusiastic teacher and proselytiser of music, believing strongly in its ability to widen and deepen the experience of Man. This survey of European composers from Palestrina to Wagner was intended for the interested amateur, and begins with a rapid and somewhat dismissive survey of European music up to the Renaissance: each composer subsequently discussed is placed in the context of his time, and in a vigorously expressed conclusion, Parry argues for an aesthetic which recognises that some composers are great, others second-rate and yet others downright bad, and that it is essential that the listening public is able to make this distinction.

The British musicologist Henry Davey (1853-1929) was a noted scholar of the manuscript sources of Tudor music. He published the first edition of History of English Music in 1895 with the aim of providing his fellow-musicians with the first clear scholarly account of the full range of English musical achievements. His main focus is the fifteenth, sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, which he considered the heyday of English music, and he claims that the earliest known free instrumental compositions, as well as the polyphonic style, originated in England during the fifteenth century. In Davey's view, these controversial findings were his most important contribution to general musical knowledge. His work was widely discussed in his own time, attracting both praise and aggressive criticism, and continues to be read with great critical interest today, not least because of its parallels with the socialist utopianism of Ruskin and Morris.

This 1893 study of the music, instruments and dance of the world's indigenous peoples reflects the Victorian view that human development moved from primitive to complex along a linear evolutionary path. Despite this standpoint, it was an important contribution to comparative musicology in the late nineteenth century, demonstrating the principle that studying the music of non-European cultures and societies could help Europeans understand their own musical tradition. On the basis of his comparative analysis, Wallaschek developed a theory that music originated from rhythm and dance rather than the melody of speech. His proposed model moved forward that of Wagner, and recognised that music is embedded as a fundamental element of social interaction. The book describes music and instruments around the world, the role of singing and dance, and tonality and harmony, before discussing the origin of music and the role of heredity and external circumstances on musicality.

This 1874 account of the music of ancient Greece, Egypt and Rome was the only volume of the author's proposed history of music to be published. William Chappell, eldest son of the founder of Chappell's the music publishers, was noted for his interest in ancient and traditional music and was the founder of the Musical Antiquarian Society in 1840. Best remembered for his Popular Music of the Olden Time, Chappell justifies the need for his study of ancient music in a long introduction to the volume which criticises the approaches of Charles Burney and Sir John Hawkins and attacks the validity of Helmholtz's work on acoustics. The work explores theory, practice, science, philosophy and the instruments of the time through analysis of ancient sources such as Aristotle, Pythagoras, Boethius and Vetruvius and of iconographical materials. A comprehensive glossary-cum-index is included together with topic summaries for each chapter.

C. Hubert H. Parry (1848-1918), knighted in 1902 for his services to music, was a distinguished composer, conductor and musicologist. In the first of these roles he is best known for his settings of Blake's 'Jerusalem' and the coronation anthem 'I was glad'. He was an enthusiastic teacher and proselytiser of music, believing strongly in its ability to widen and deepen the experience of Man, and this book, published in 1896 as a revised version of his 1893 The Art of Music, appeared in a series called 'The International Scientific Series'. Parry's intention is to trace the origins of music in 'the music of savages, folk music, and medieval music' and to show 'the continuous process of the development of the Musical Art in actuality'.

C. Hubert H. Parry (1848-1918), knighted in 1902 for his services to music, was a distinguished composer, conductor and musicologist. In the first of these roles he is best known for his settings of Blake's 'Jerusalem' and the coronation anthem 'I was glad'. He was an enthusiastic teacher and proselytiser of music, believing strongly in its ability to widen and deepen the experience of Man. In this book published in 1893 (and later revised as The Evolution of the Art of Music, also reissued in this series), Parry examines the universal impulse to create musical sounds, traces the origins of music in 'primitive' societies using the research of contemporary anthropologists, and surveys the rise of western music from the ancient Greeks to the Victorian age.

Sir Charles Halle (1819-95) was a German pianist and conductor. At the age of 17 he moved to Paris, where he spent twelve years studying and performing, while moving in circles which included Berlioz, Chopin, Liszt, de Musset and George Sand. In the revolutionary year 1848 he moved to London, where he initiated a series of piano recitals, playing first in his own home and later in St James's Hall, among which he gave the first performance in England of the complete Beethoven piano sonatas. In 1849 he moved to Manchester, and after forming an orchestra for a one-off event in 1857, he began to give regular concerts with it, and conducted it until his death: it is now the world-famous Halle Orchestra. In this fascinating book, edited by his son and daughter, Halle's autobiography is accompanied by a selection of letters and extracts from his diaries.

The Royal Academy of Music in London was founded in 1822 by Lord Burghersh (later the 11th Earl of Westmorland), a soldier and keen amateur musician, to whom this book is dedicated. He was supported by the French harpist and composer Nicolas-Charles Bochsa, who had fled to London to avoid prosecution in France for fraud and forgery. In 1854, the Rev. William Wahab Cazalet (1808-75) wrote a history of the Royal Academy 'compiled from authentic sources' and beginning with an adulatory short biography of the Earl. Cazalet remarks in his preface that 'the history comprises only about eleven years of the life of the Institution; but it is this portion alone that has any interest, for when all the struggles and troubles attending its establishment are at an end, the records of a mere routine of business give no material for publication'.

The British composer John Stainer (1840-1901) was organist at St Paul's Cathedral from 1872 to 1888, and in 1889 became Professor of Music at Oxford. In this third edition of A Theory of Harmony he ceased to call it a theory founded on the tempered scale, as he had previously. He wrote in the Preface that he now believed the theory to be perfectly applicable to the system of just intonation. A further reason, in his view, was that the attitude of scientific men toward modern chromatic music had recently improved, as they could see that their system would never be adopted as long as it threatened the existence of a single masterpiece of musical literature. However, the system would be accepted when it rendered such works capable of more perfect performance. This influential Victorian textbook is now reissued for the benefit of those interested in nineteenth-century composition and analysis.

Scholar and composer Emil Naumann (1827-88) studied with Mendelssohn. This two-volume English translation of his best-known work was made by Ferdinand Praeger (1815-91) and published in 1888. Chapters on music in England have been added by its editor, the eminent Victorian musician Sir Frederick Gore Ouseley (1825-89).

A naturalist and Church of England clergyman, William Bingley (1774-1823) wrote widely on botany, topography and zoology. This two-volume publication, which first appeared in 1814, is one of his many works of compilation. It covers chiefly Italian, German and British musicians of the sixteenth, seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.

German actress Minna Planer (1809-66) was Wagner's first wife. Their marriage, never an easy one, lasted until her death. This fascinating collection of letters, translated by Wagner enthusiast William Ashton Ellis (1852-1919), appeared in 1909. It offers an intriguing and intimate view of this larger-than-life composer.

Beethoven was a prolific letter writer, with thousands of examples surviving to this day. This illustrated collection of more than 1,200, published in English translation in 1909, includes the 'Heiligenstadt Testament', one of many documents that provide valuable insights into the mind of a musical genius.

Beethoven was a prolific letter writer, with thousands of examples surviving to this day. This two-volume collection, in English translation, appeared in 1866 and includes the 'Heiligenstadt Testament', one of many documents providing us with startling and personal insights into the character and preoccupations of a musical genius.

Viennese lawyer Heinrich Kreissle von Hellborn (1812-69) was the first of the composer Schubert's biographers. This 1869 English translation of the 1865 original is by Arthur Duke Coleridge, founder of the Bach Choir, and it contains an appendix by George Grove on his rediscovery of several manuscripts of Schubert's works.