~ Plato
Great composers and their compositions in a nutshell in “A Compendium of Essays” ~ the brainy side of Classical and Popular music!
Chapter
1 “A Musical Exemplum for Young Gentlewomen”
examines Henry Purcell’s opera “Dido and Aeneas” (1689) and his
adaptations of the classic love scene in Virgil’s epic to make it
less racy and suitable for the young ladies of an elite Chelsea
boarding school.
Chapter
2 “A Satirical Portrait Worth a Thousand Words”
features a unique interpretation of Hogarth’s painting “The
Levée” from his “Rake’s Progress” series—did Hogarth
artistically depict the operatic tensions between Handel and the
Italians in London during the 1730s?
Chapter
3: the
symphonies
of Beethoven
and how he portrayed reflections of his times, his hopes, dreams,
struggles and philosophy through his music.
Chapter
4 “The Word Must Become the Deed”
explores how Liszt with his “Faust Symphony” attempted to defy
the critics who claimed that symphonic poems, which drew on
literature or pictorial description, were not as sophisticated or
noteworthy as absolute-music symphonies.
Chapter
5 “West Meets East”
presents Debussy as an avant-garde composer who simply did not want
to copy oriental music, but wished to embrace it, attempting to
incorporate Eastern compositional techniques within mainstream
Western tradition to create a completely new style for the modern
age.
Chapter
6 “Webber’s ´Phantom of the Opera’: An Example of the ‘Musical
Theatre Renaissance´”
attempts to demonstrate by comparison with Wagner’s operas that not
all musicals are mere spectator entertainments, or simply operas with
a different name, but are new sophisticated genres.
Book Details:
Batalha Publishers, August 13, 2010
Hardcover, 2nd Edition.
198 pages
ISBN: 9899684422
(ISBN13: 9789899684423)
Free Previews / Downloads:
Academia.edu
Goodreads.com
Internet Archive
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WHERE TO ORDER, click the shops below.
Not out of print! Amazon will order from the publisher, also check the Amazon Marketplace sellers.
* Waterstones, UK
* Amazon - Germany (Site in English)
~~ Also available to order from other online bookstores and regular brick and mortar bookstores.
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