The Adagio

The Adagio PDF Author: Alan Austin
Publisher: iUniverse
ISBN: 0595434762
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 302

Get Book Here

Book Description
"Enchanting music leads him into hell"--Cover

The Adagio

The Adagio PDF Author: Alan Austin
Publisher: iUniverse
ISBN: 0595434762
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 302

Get Book Here

Book Description
"Enchanting music leads him into hell"--Cover

The Adagio of Samuel Barber

The Adagio of Samuel Barber PDF Author: Wayne Clifford Wentzel
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781881913627
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 644

Get Book Here

Book Description
It is probably safe to contend that the reception history of Adagio for Strings (1934) by American composer Samuel Barber (1910-1981) is unmatched. It has, of course, achieved canonical status in the three versions prepared by its composer--for string quartet, string orchestra, and mixed chorus. In addition, its broad appeal to classical music lovers as well as to members of the general public has resulted in an array of transcriptions and arrangements. But what becomes ultimately compelling is the spectrum of social contexts where this music is heard and been enthusiastically embraced: in the discotheque and on the modern dance stage, at the movie theater and on television, during memorial services and demonstrations of patriotism, at rock concerts and the circus, in therapy sessions and scientific research, at figure-skating competitions and other sporting events, at weddings and funerals, and on the Internet. In 2011 over 29,000 hits for Adagio for Strings could be found on YouTube alone. There are fascinating connections to poetry and fiction, paintings and sculpture, ring tones and crossword puzzles. Wayne Wentzel's study of this beloved work represents the most exhaustive consideration to date. He not only provides a well documented account of its birth and infancy but its adolescence--when it moved beyond the expected concert setting--and its maturity--when it became a pervasive feature of Western culture in both its cultivated and popular realms. Musical analysis and references to a host of testimonials and assessments are bolstered by discographical and bibliographical reports. Professor Wentzel concludes the volume with thoughtful speculation on the meaning of Barber's masterpiece and wrestles with inevitable and yet controversial questions: Is it American? Is it sad? Is it gay? And, after more that seventy-five years, is it trite?--Publisher description.

The Saddest Music Ever Written

The Saddest Music Ever Written PDF Author: Thomas Larson
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1605982008
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 185

Get Book Here

Book Description
An exploration of the cultural impact of Samuel Barber’s Adagio for Strings, the Pieta of music, and its enigmatic composer. "Whenever the American dream suffers a catastrophic setback, Barber’s Adagio plays on the radio.” —Alex Ross, author of The Rest is Noise In the first book ever to explore Samuel Barber’s Adagio for Strings, music and literary critic Thomas Larson tells the story of the prodigal composer and his seminal masterpiece: from its composition in 1936, when Barber was just twenty-six, to its orchestral premiere two years later, led by the great Arturo Toscanini, and its fascinating history as America’s secular hymn for grieving our dead. Older Americans know Adagio from the funerals and memorials for Presidents Roosevelt and Kennedy, Albert Einstein, and Grace Kelly. Younger Americans recall the work as the antiwar theme of the movie Platoon. Still others treasure the piece in its choral version under the name Agnus Dei. More recently, mourners heard Adagio played as a memorial to the victims of the 9/11 attacks. Barber’s Adagio is truly the saddest music ever written, enrapturing listeners with its lyric beauty as few laments have. The Adagio’s sonorous intensity also speaks of the turbulent inner life of its composer, Samuel Barber (1910-1981), a melancholic who, in later years, descended into alcoholism and severe depression. Part biography, part cultural history, part memoir, The Saddest Music ever Written captures the deep emotion Barber’s great elegy has stirred throughout the world during its seventy-five-year history, becoming an icon of our national soul.

The New Music

The New Music PDF Author: Theodor W. Adorno
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 1509538097
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 356

Get Book Here

Book Description
A year after the end of the Second World War, the first International Summer Course for New Music took place in the Kranichstein Hunting Lodge, near the city of Darmstadt in Germany. The course, commonly referred to later as the Darmstadt course, was intended to familiarize young composers and musicians with the music that, only a few years earlier, had been denounced as degenerate by the Nazi regime, and it soon developed into one of the most important events in contemporary music. Having returned to Germany in 1949 from exile in the United States, Adorno was a regular participant at Darmstadt from 1950 on. In 1955 he gave a series of lectures on the young Schoenberg, using the latter’s work to illustrate the relation between tradition and the avant-garde. Adorno’s three double-length lectures on the young Schoenberg, in which he spoke as a passionate advocate for the composer whom Boulez had declared dead, were his first at Darmstadt to be recorded on tape. The relation between tradition and the avant-garde was the leitmotif of the lectures that followed, which continued over the next decade. Adorno also dealt in detail with problems of composition in contemporary music, and he often accompanied his lectures with off-the-cuff musical improvisations. The five lecture courses he gave at Darmstadt between 1955 and 1966 were all recorded and subsequently transcribed, and they are published here for the first time in English. This volume is a unique document on the theory and history of the New Music. It will be of great value to anyone interested in the work of Adorno and critical theory, in German intellectual and cultural history, and in the history of modern music.

Adagio

Adagio PDF Author: Trisha Dixon
Publisher: Murdoch Books
ISBN: 9781742660943
Category : Gardening
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Get Book Here

Book Description
Adagio is a charming treatise on slow gardening and the importance of slowing down and enjoying life. At the same time, it has an environmental message regarding living ethically and sustainably. This message is delivered in Trisha Dixon's inimitable style, as she seamlessly blends personal anecdote with musings and facts, drawing on her gardening background and her wide-ranging interests in philosophy, music, art, nature and the environment. It will appeal to gardeners and dreamers alike - anyone, in fact, who yearns for a more environmentally-attune life.

Music as Philosophy

Music as Philosophy PDF Author: Michael Spitzer
Publisher: Indiana University Press
ISBN: 0253060877
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 388

Get Book Here

Book Description
Beethoven's late style is the language of his ninth symphony, the Missa Solemnis, the last piano sonatas and string quartets, the Diabelli Variations, the Bagatelles, as well as five piano sonatas, five string quartets, and several smaller piano works. Historically, these works are seen as forging a bridge between the Classical and Romantic traditions: in terms of their musical structure, they continue to be regarded as revolutionary. Spitzer's book examines these late works in light of the musical and philosophical writings of the German intellectual Theodor Adorno, and in so doing, attempts to reconcile the conflicting approaches of musical semiotics and critical theory. He draws from various approaches to musical, linguistic, and aesthetic meaning, relating Adorno to such writers as Derrida, Benjamin, and Habermas, as well as contemporary music theorists. Through analyses of Beethoven's use of specific musical techniques (including neo-Baroque fugues and counterpoint), Spitzer suggests that the composer's last works offer a philosophical and musical critique of the Enlightenment, and in doing so created the musical language of premodernism.

The German Classics: Auerbach, Gotthelf, Reuter, Stifter, Riehl

The German Classics: Auerbach, Gotthelf, Reuter, Stifter, Riehl PDF Author: Kuno Francke
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : English literature
Languages : en
Pages : 562

Get Book Here

Book Description


Grassroots Leadership and the Arts For Social Change

Grassroots Leadership and the Arts For Social Change PDF Author: Susan J. Erenrich
Publisher: Emerald Group Publishing
ISBN: 1786356880
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 393

Get Book Here

Book Description
This book explores the intersection of grassroots leadership and the arts for social change, examining the many movements and subsequent victories the arts community has won for society. The book illustrates the diverse but influential work of these figures, reflecting on their actions, commitments and their positive impact on the modern world.

Samuel Barber

Samuel Barber PDF Author: Howard Pollack
Publisher: University of Illinois Press
ISBN: 0252054059
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 565

Get Book Here

Book Description
A pivotal twentieth-century composer, Samuel Barber earned a long list of honors and accolades that included two Pulitzer Prizes for Music and the public support of conductors like Arturo Toscanini, Serge Koussevitzky, and Leonard Bernstein. Barber’s works have since become standard concert repertoire and continue to flourish across high art and popular culture. Acclaimed biographer Howard Pollack (Aaron Copland, George Gershwin) offers a multifaceted account of Barber’s life and music while placing the artist in his social and cultural milieu. Born into a musical family, Barber pursued his artistic ambitions from childhood. Pollack follows Barber’s path from his precocious youth through a career where, from the start, the composer consistently received prizes, fellowships, and other recognition. Stylistic analyses of works like the Adagio for Strings, the Violin Concerto, Knoxville: Summer of 1915 for voice and orchestra, the Piano Concerto, and the operas Vanessa and Antony and Cleopatra, stand alongside revealing accounts of the music’s commissioning, performance, reception, and legacy. Throughout, Pollack weaves in accounts of Barber’s encounters with colleagues like Aaron Copland and Francis Poulenc, performers from Eleanor Steber and Leontyne Price to Vladimir Horowitz and Van Cliburn, patrons, admirers, and a wide circle of eminent friends and acquaintances. He also provides an eloquent portrait of the composer’s decades-long relationship with the renowned opera composer Gian Carlo Menotti. Informed by new interviews and immense archival research, Samuel Barber is a long-awaited critical and personal biography of a monumental figure in twentieth-century American music.

On Playing the Flute

On Playing the Flute PDF Author: Johann Joachim Quantz
Publisher: UPNE
ISBN: 9781555534738
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 470

Get Book Here

Book Description
Originally published in 1752, this is a new paperback edition of the classic treatise on 18th-century musical thought, performance practice, and style