Rethinking Prokofiev

Rethinking Prokofiev PDF Author: Rita McAllister
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0190670789
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 545

Get Book Here

Book Description
Among major 20th-century composers whose music is poorly understood, Sergei Prokofiev stands out conspicuously. The turbulent times in which Prokofiev lived and the chronology of his travels-he left Russia in the wake of Revolution, and returned at the height of the Stalinist purges-have caused unusually polarized appraisals of his music. While individual, distinctive, and instantly recognizable, Prokofiev's music was also idiosyncratically tonal in an age when tonality was largely passé. Prokofiev's output therefore has been largely elusive and difficult to assess against contemporary trends. More than sixty years after the composer's death, editors Rita McAllister and Christina Guillaumier offer Rethinking Prokofiev as an assessment that redresses this enigmatic composer's legacy. Often more political than artistic, these appraisals have depended not only upon the date of publication but also the geographical location of the writer. Commissioned from some of the most distinguished and rising scholars in the field, this collection highlights the background and context of Prokofiev's work. Contributors delve into the composer's relationship to nineteenth-century Russian traditions, Silver-Age and Symbolist composers and poets, the culture of Paris in the 1920s and '30s, and to his later Soviet colleagues and younger contemporaries. They also investigate his reception in the West, his return to Russia, and the effect of his music on contemporary popular culture. Still, the main focus of the book is on the music itself: his early, experimental piano and vocal works, as well as his piano concertos, operas, film scores, early ballets, and late symphonies. Through an empirical examination of his characteristic harmonies, melodies, cadences, and musical gestures-and through an analysis of the newly uncovered contents of his sketch-books-contributors reveal much of what makes Prokofiev an idiosyncratic genius and his music intriguing, often dramatic, and almost always beguiling.

Rethinking Prokofiev

Rethinking Prokofiev PDF Author: Rita McAllister
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0190670789
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 545

Get Book Here

Book Description
Among major 20th-century composers whose music is poorly understood, Sergei Prokofiev stands out conspicuously. The turbulent times in which Prokofiev lived and the chronology of his travels-he left Russia in the wake of Revolution, and returned at the height of the Stalinist purges-have caused unusually polarized appraisals of his music. While individual, distinctive, and instantly recognizable, Prokofiev's music was also idiosyncratically tonal in an age when tonality was largely passé. Prokofiev's output therefore has been largely elusive and difficult to assess against contemporary trends. More than sixty years after the composer's death, editors Rita McAllister and Christina Guillaumier offer Rethinking Prokofiev as an assessment that redresses this enigmatic composer's legacy. Often more political than artistic, these appraisals have depended not only upon the date of publication but also the geographical location of the writer. Commissioned from some of the most distinguished and rising scholars in the field, this collection highlights the background and context of Prokofiev's work. Contributors delve into the composer's relationship to nineteenth-century Russian traditions, Silver-Age and Symbolist composers and poets, the culture of Paris in the 1920s and '30s, and to his later Soviet colleagues and younger contemporaries. They also investigate his reception in the West, his return to Russia, and the effect of his music on contemporary popular culture. Still, the main focus of the book is on the music itself: his early, experimental piano and vocal works, as well as his piano concertos, operas, film scores, early ballets, and late symphonies. Through an empirical examination of his characteristic harmonies, melodies, cadences, and musical gestures-and through an analysis of the newly uncovered contents of his sketch-books-contributors reveal much of what makes Prokofiev an idiosyncratic genius and his music intriguing, often dramatic, and almost always beguiling.

The Operas of Sergei Prokofiev

The Operas of Sergei Prokofiev PDF Author: Christina Guillaumier
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781783274482
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Get Book Here

Book Description
The operas of Sergei Prokofiev (1891-1953) mark a significant contribution to twentieth-century music and theatre. Opera was Prokofiev's preferred genre; not counting juvenile and unfinished works, he wrote a total of eight. Yet, to date, little has been published about the context, rationale or musical and compositional processes behind this output. While systematic studies of Prokofiev's symphonies and his ballets exist, the operas have come under no such scrutiny. This book is the first in the English language to engage with the composer's operatic output in its entirety and provides a contextual, critical and musico-analytical account of all of Prokofiev's operas, including those juvenile works that are unpublished as well as the incomplete works composed towards the end of his life. It also includes synopses of the operas. Drawing on a wealth of archival material and other sources, the book provides the compelling untold story of Prokofiev the opera composer. CHRISTINA GUILLAUMIER is a music historian, pianist and writer on music. She is currently Head of Undergraduate Programmes at the Royal College of Music in London.

Sergei Prokofiev

Sergei Prokofiev PDF Author: Christina Guillaumier
Publisher: Reaktion Books
ISBN: 1789149894
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 220

Get Book Here

Book Description
A critical biography of the twentieth-century Russian composer and pianist. This wide-ranging and incisive biography unfolds the life and work of the much-loved twentieth-century composer Sergei Prokofiev. In it, Christina Guillaumier reveals Prokofiev’s surprisingly optimistic spirit amidst a tumultuous backdrop of geopolitical chaos and ever-shifting musical landscapes. Guillaumier breathes life into the people and worlds that shaped Prokofiev’s complicated life, capturing the unwavering passion of a musical genius whose love for his craft transcended all barriers. This new critical account is a vivid portrait of the artist’s indomitable drive.

Composing for the Red Screen

Composing for the Red Screen PDF Author: Kevin Bartig
Publisher:
ISBN: 0199967598
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 245

Get Book Here

Book Description
Sound film captivated Sergey Prokofiev during the final two decades of his life: he considered composing for nearly two dozen pictures, eventually undertaking eight of them, all Soviet productions. Drawing on newly available sources, Composing for the Red Screen examines - for the first time - the full extent of this prodigious cinematic career.

Historical Dictionary of Russian Music

Historical Dictionary of Russian Music PDF Author: Daniel Jaffé
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 1538130084
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 563

Get Book Here

Book Description
Russian music today has a firm hold around the world in the repertoire of opera houses, ballet companies, and orchestras. The music of Pyotr Tchaikovsky, Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, Sergey Rachmaninov, Sergey Prokofiev, and Dmitri Shostakovich is very much today’s lingua franca both in the concert hall and on the soundtracks of international blockbusters from Hollywood. Meanwhile, the innovations of Modest Musorgsky, Alexander Borodin, and Igor Stravinsky have played their crucial role in the development of Western music, influencing the work of virtually every notable composer of the past century. Historical Dictionary of Russian Music, Second Edition contains a chronology, an introduction, and an extensive bibliography. The dictionary section has more than 600 cross-referenced entries for each of Russia’s major performing organizations and performance venues, and on specific genres such as ballet, film music, symphony and church music. This book is an excellent resource for students, researchers, and anyone wanting to know more about Russian Music.

Notes for Cellists

Notes for Cellists PDF Author: Miranda Wilson
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0197623735
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 239

Get Book Here

Book Description
Notes for Cellists: A Guide to the Repertoire is a collection of accessible essays about key compositions for the cello from the seventeenth century to the present. Each essay provides historical context and a brief analysis of a composition. This book will be of interest to enthusiasts of the cello and students of all levels seeking to enrich their understanding of cello music, and a much-needed reference guide for teachers and professional players.

Notes from the Pianist's Bench

Notes from the Pianist's Bench PDF Author: Boris Berman
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 0300221525
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 252

Get Book Here

Book Description
Berman addresses virtually every aspect of musical artistry and pedagogy. Ranging from such practical matters as sound, touch, and pedaling to the psychology of performing and teaching, this volume provides a master class for the performer, instructor, and student alike.

Prokofiev's Piano Sonatas

Prokofiev's Piano Sonatas PDF Author: Boris Berman
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 0300145004
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 256

Get Book Here

Book Description
Boris Berman draws on his intimate knowledge of Prokofiev's work to guide music lovers and pianists through the composer's nine piano sonatas.

Culture: Raise ‘low’, Rethink ‘high.’ A Representation of the Academic Potential of So-Called 'Low' Culture

Culture: Raise ‘low’, Rethink ‘high.’ A Representation of the Academic Potential of So-Called 'Low' Culture PDF Author: Emma Buchanan
Publisher: Logos Verlag Berlin GmbH
ISBN: 3832551301
Category : Photography
Languages : en
Pages : 200

Get Book Here

Book Description
Despite (or more likely due to) being the culture which most affects and interacts with the masses, the broad and definition-evading category of 'popular culture' remains a second-class citizen in academia, relegated to a position of 'low' below a culture deemed 'high' and worthy of scholarly inquiry. This eclectic collection of essays aims to convince that this inequality must be addressed by exploring a variety of supposedly 'low' cultural types and texts through an academic lens, proving that so-called 'low' culture can be a valuable contribution to academic research. That said, raising the 'low' does not mean making it 'high', turning it into an elite category to be accessed only by experts. Rather, the authors are unswerving in their approach that academic writing and fan writing are not mutually exclusive. On the contrary, it is their knowledge and passion as fans of their subject matter that has inspired their chapters, all of which draw upon their considerable experience of engaging as fans in what they discuss. All the chapters have been written by postgraduate students seeking to inspire a new empiricism through which their interests might be fully pursued in their futures as scholars. Emma Buchanan is a British postgraduate researcher and television fan who is currently writing up her PhD thesis on the topic of gender and change in AMC's "The Walking Dead" as understood from the point of view of Jungian depth psychology.

The Oxford Handbook of Music and the Middlebrow

The Oxford Handbook of Music and the Middlebrow PDF Author: Kate Guthrie
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0197523935
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 633

Get Book Here

Book Description
The Oxford Handbook of Music and the Middlebrow takes a fresh look at the history of nineteenth- and twentieth-century music. Offering an alternative to the traditional focus on either highbrow modernism on the one hand or lowbrow popular music on the other, its novel view centers on the wealth of previously overlooked products and practices that bridged the space between these cultural extremes. While seminal attempts to recover middlebrow culture came from literary critics and historians, middlebrow studies is now a burgeoning field within musicology. As the first essay collection on this topic, this handbook has two aims: first, it seeks to explore the middlebrow as a historical phenomenon, excavating the kinds of critical writings, marketing practices, and compositional styles with which it was associated. By reanimating a range of musical practices and products--from symphonic concerts to Broadway musicals, opera criticism to rock journalism, and modern jazz to pop-rock--the contributors investigate how artists, critics, and audiences breached the divide from both above and below. In the process, the handbook chapters push the boundaries of middlebrow studies and demonstrate the category's relevance outside of the mid-twentieth-century Anglophone world by delving into the nineteenth century, interrogating the present day, and looking to Germany, Russia, and beyond. The handbook's second aim is to complicate the disciplinary divisions that have flowed from the entrenched oppositions between high and low genres. Breaking new ground by bringing together scholars of classical and popular music, these chapters trace common middlebrow themes across traditional disciplinary boundaries. Across this broad vista, contributors account for the kinds of syntheses, overlaps, and juxtapositions that made the cultural middle such a richly textured and endlessly contested terrain.