Bücher der Reihe The Bard Music Festival

A collection of essays, which address Beethoven's musical works and their cultural contexts. It explains how the young Beethoven chose his pianos, and William Kinderman shows Beethoven in the process of sketching and revising his compositions.

Sergey Prokofiev (1891-1953), arguably the popular composer of the twentieth century, led a life of triumph and tragedy. This book probes beneath the surface of his career and contextualizes his contributions to music on both sides of the nascent Cold War divide.

Reassesses the legacy of one of America's best-loved composers at a pivotal moment. This collection of essays explores the stages of cultural change on which Aaron Copland's long life (1900 to 1990) unfolded. It critiques Copland's work in these shifting contexts.

We know Robert Schumann in many ways: as a visionary composer, a seasoned journalist, a cultured man of letters, and a genius who, having passed his mantle on to the young Brahms, succumbed to mental illness in 1856. Drawing on recent pathbreaking research, this collection offers new perspectives on this seminal nineteenth-century figure. In Part

Tchaikovsky has long intrigued music-lovers as a figure who straddles many borders--between East and West, nationalism and cosmopolitanism, tradition and innovation, tenderness and bombast, masculine and feminine. In this book, through consideration of his music and biography, scholars from several disciplines explore the many sides of Tchaikovsky.

Bela Bartok, who died in New York, is one of the most frequently performed twentieth-century composers. He is also the subject of a growing critical and analytical literature. Divided into three parts, this volume aims to provide insights into the life and reception of this musician, especially in Hungary.

Influencing musical life from the 1880s through the First World War and remaining productive into the 1940s, Richard Strauss enjoyed a remarkable career in a constantly changing artistic and political climate. This volume presents essays on Strauss' musical works and brings together letters and memoirs from various periods of the composer's life.

During the 1830s and 1840s composer-pianist-organist-conductor Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy stood at the forefront of German and English musical life. This title explores various facets of Mendelssohn's music, his social and intellectual circles, and his career.

Comprising both interpretive essays and a selection of documents that bear on Dvorak's career and music, this volume addresses fundamental questions about the composer while presenting an argument for a radical reappraisal.

Shows Charles Ives in the context of his world in a number of ways. This volume features essays which examine Ives' relationships to European music and to American music, politics, business, and landscape. It also shows Ives as a composer well versed in four distinctive musical traditions who blended them in his mature music.

From local Kapellmeister to international icon, Joseph Haydn achieved success by developing a musical language aimed at both the connoisseurs and amateurs of the emerging musical public. This work examines Haydn's works in relation to the aesthetic and cultural crosscurrents of his time.

Richard Wagner (1813-1883) aimed to be more than just a composer. He set out to redefine opera as a 'total work of art' combining the highest aspirations of drama, poetry, the symphony, the visual arts, even religion and philosophy. This book examines his works.

In his roles as keyboard virtuoso, conductor, and master teacher, Franz Liszt reinvented the concert experience, advanced an agenda for symphonic and dramatic music, and transmitted the foundations of modern pianism. Placing emphasis on historical contexts, this book aims to advance our understanding of the composer with fresh perspectives.

Attempts to capture the complexity of Claude Debussy's personal and artistic identity within the picture of the musical, social, and political world of fin-de-siecle Paris. This book traces his perpetual reinvention, both social and creative, from his earliest to his last works.

Brings together several Leos Janacek scholars to look closely at a range of issues surrounding his life and work. This book features essays accompanied by translated writings by the composer himself. It includes essays on Naturalism, opera direction, and Tristan and Isolde and four impressionistic chronicles of the 'speech melodies' of daily life.

Arnold Schoenberg (1874-1951) is acknowledged as one of the significant and multifaceted composers. This work captures Schoenberg at critical periods of his career: during the first decades of the century, primarily in his native Vienna; from 1926 to 1933, in Berlin; and from 1933 on, in the US.

Gustav Mahler's music has provoked extreme responses from the public and from experts. This volume examines the broader political, social, and literary changes reflected in Mahler's music. It examines the composer's Jewish identity, and considers contemporary theories of memory, and the theatricality of Mahler's art and fin-de-siecle politics.

Dmitri Shostakovich (1906 - 1975) has a reputation as one of the leading composers of the twentieth century. This work expands the traditional purview of Shostakovich's world, exploring the composer's creativity and art in terms of the expectations - historical, cultural, and political - that forged them.

Edward Elgar (1857-1934) is undoubtedly one of the most fascinating, important, and influential figures in the history of British music. This work examines the composer's life, presenting a comprehensive portrait of both the man and the age in which he lived.

Considers such topics as Brahms' relationship with Clara and Robert Schumann, his musical interactions with the 'New German School' of Wagner and Liszt, his influence upon Arnold Schoenberg and other young composers, his approach to performing his own music, and his productive interactions with visual artists.