Author: Robert Shay
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521028110
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 380
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Book Description
Few details are known about the life of Henry Purcell. This book provides an in-depth analysis of the most obvious documentary evidence of Purcell's career - the music manuscripts of his own hand and those copied by his colleagues. Robert Shay and Robert Thompson offer a richly illustrated study of Purcell's sources, examining in detail the physical features of the manuscripts as well as their musical content. Their survey sheds light on the chronology of composition and copying of Purcell's works and reassesses the place of extant autographs in his musical development. Major sources are fully catalogued, providing information about the context in which Purcell's music was collected and performed, and his handwriting is more closely examined than ever before. The book represents a significant reference tool for scholars, applying a forensic approach that greatly enriches our knowledge of the composer and the music of his time.
Author: Sotheby, Wilkinson & Hodge
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 322
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Book Description
Author: Mark Kroll
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1107156076
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 407
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Book Description
Covers every aspect of the harpsichord and its music, including composers, genres, national styles, tuning, and the art of harpsichord building.
Author: Rebecca Herissone
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1107289556
Category : Composition (Music)
Languages : en
Pages : 568
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Book Description
Musical Creativity in Restoration England is the first comprehensive investigation of approaches to creating music in late seventeenth-century England. Understanding creativity during this period is particularly challenging because many of our basic assumptions about composition - such as concepts of originality, inspiration and genius - were not yet fully developed. In adopting a new methodology that takes into account the historical contexts in which sources were produced, Rebecca Herissone challenges current assumptions about compositional processes and offers new interpretations of the relationships between notation, performance, improvisation and musical memory. She uncovers a creative culture that was predominantly communal, and reveals several distinct approaches to composition, determined not by individuals, but by the practical function of the music. Herissone's new and original interpretations pose a fundamental challenge to our preconceptions about what it meant to be a composer in the seventeenth century and raise broader questions about the interpretation of early modern notation.
Author: Dr Rebecca Herissone
Publisher: Ashgate Publishing, Ltd.
ISBN: 140949554X
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 471
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Book Description
The Ashgate Research Companion to Henry Purcell provides a comprehensive and authoritative review of current research into Purcell and the environment of Restoration music, with contributions from leading experts in the field. Seen from the perspective of modern, interdisciplinary approaches to scholarship, the companion allows the reader to develop a rounded view of the environment in which Purcell lived, the people with whom he worked, the social conditions that influenced his activities, and the ways in which the modern perception of him has been affected by reception of his music after his death. In this sense the contributions do not privilege the individual over the environment: rather, they use the modern reader's familiarity with Purcell's music as a gateway into the broader Restoration world.
Author: Ellen T. Harris
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0190271663
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 271
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Book Description
Purcell's Dido and Aeneas stands as the greatest operatic achievement of seventeenth-century England, and yet, despite its global renown, it remains cloaked in mystery. The date and place of its first performance cannot be fixed with precision, and the absolute accuracy of the surviving scores, which date from almost 100 years after the work was written, cannot be assumed. In this thirtieth-anniversary new edition of her book, Ellen Harris closely examines the many theories that have been proposed for the opera's origin and chronology, considering the opera both as political allegory and as a positive exemplar for young women. Her study explores the work's historical position in the Restoration theater, revealing its roots in seventeenth-century English theatrical and musical traditions, and carefully evaluates the surviving sources for the various readings they offer-of line designations in the text (who sings what), the vocal ranges of the soloists, the use of dance and chorus, and overall layout. It goes on to provide substantive analysis of Purcell's musical declamation and use of ground bass. In tracing the performance history of Dido and Aeneas, Harris presents an in-depth examination of the adaptations made by the Academy of Ancient Music at the end of the eighteenth century based on the surviving manuscripts. She then follows the growing interest in the creation of an "authentic" version in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries through published editions and performance reviews, and considers the opera as an important factor in the so-called English Musical Renaissance. To a significant degree, the continuing fascination with Purcell's Dido and Aeneas rests on its apparent mutability, and Harris shows this has been inherent in the opera effectively from its origin.
Author: VictoriaL. Cooper
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351543571
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 186
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Book Description
By the mid-nineteenth century music publishing was no longer the provenance of shopkeepers, instrument makers or individual scholars, but a business enterprise undertaken by a new breed of Victorian entrepreneur. Two such were Vincent Novello and his son Alfred, whose music publishing house enjoyed significant growth between 1829 and 1866. Victoria Cooper builds up a picture of Novello during this period and the socio-economic and cultural climate that influenced the company's business decisions. Looking in detail at some of the editions Novello published, she analyzes the editing style of the firm and how this was dictated by Novello's main audience of amateur musicians and choral societies. Scrutiny of Novello's stockbook indicates the financial fortunes of these editions, while correspondence between the firm and composers such as Mendelssohn reveals how Vincent and Alfred went about acquiring new compositions. With its focus on the development of a music publishing business, this study brings a fresh dimension to musicological research. Novello was able to combine business practice with a commitment to disseminate music of educational and artistic value, and the history of the company provides illuminating evidence of the commodification of music in nineteenth-century Britain.
Author: Rebecca Herissone
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351538969
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 159
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Book Description
This is the first study to provide a systematic and thorough investigation of continuo realization styles appropriate to Restoration sacred music, an area of performance practice that has never previously been properly assessed. Rebecca Herissone undertakes detailed analysis of a group of organ books closely associated with the major Restoration composers Purcell, Blow and Humfrey, and the London institutions where they spent their professional lives. By investigating the relationship between the organ books' two-stave arrangements and full scores of the same pieces, Herissone demonstrates that the books are subtle sources of information to the accompanist, not just short or skeleton scores. Using this evidence, she formulates a model for continuo realization of this repertory based on the doubling of vocal parts, an approach that differs significantly from that adopted by most modern editors, and which throws into question much of the accepted continuo practice in modern performance of this repertory.
Author:
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 510
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Book Description
Author: Curtis Price
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521441742
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 332
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Book Description
The tercentenary of Henry Purcell's death fell in 1995, and this 1995 volume of specially commissioned essays was collected to celebrate Purcell's music in his tercentenary year. The essays are representative of the best research and deal mainly with the autograph manuscripts, Purcell's compositional technique, the relationship between Purcell and his teacher John Blow, a reassessment of Purcell court odes, performance practice and wordsetting, and eighteenth-century reception history, particularly regarding King Arthur. The volume is well illustrated with music examples and photographs of important manuscripts. It also analyses Purcell's compositional techniques through detailed study of his manuscripts and reports on the discovery of two important autograph manuscripts. The book opens with an assessment of Purcell's illusive personality.
