Vocal Music

The first volume of New Vocal Repertory identified a genuine need, among singers and their teachers, for expert help in choosing contemporary repertoire from the often bewildering volume and variety of music available. It is now in regular use in teaching institutions and many works featured have found a wider audience. This has prompted Jane Manning to produce a further personal selection of over 60 vocal works, recommended for general repertoire. As before, pieces are graded according to their demands on vocal techniques and musicianship. Each is given detailed treatment from both performing and teaching viewpoints, with music examples, programming suggestions, and practical information. The stylistic range is even wider--composers from Norway and New Zealand are featured, there is also a strong contingent from Great Britain and North America including early pioneers as well as young talents. Works in foreign languages are now included, as are pieces for solo voice, and voice and tape. Jane Manning's persuasive advocacy is reinforced by over 30 years' international experience and over 300 world premieres. This invaluable guide will be warmly welcomed by amateurs and professional alike.

Hiller's Treatise on Vocal Performance and Ornamentation was published in Germany in 1780 and is an important manual on vocal technique and performance in the eighteenth century. This present edition, translated with an introduction and extensive commentary by musicologist Suzanne J. Beicken, makes the treatise available for the first time in English. With its emphasis on practical aspects of ornamentation, declamation and style it will be valuable to instrumentalists as well as singers and is a significant contribution to the understanding of performance practice in the eighteenth century.

This superb reference work on Johann Sebastian Bach is the first volume in a new species of Oxford Companion that will focus on major composers. Illustrated with twenty-four black-and-white plates, this volume boasts over a thousand alphabetically arranged entries that cover Bach's music, his life and times, scholarship on Bach, and the performance of his music. Readers will find entries on the various genres that Bach worked in (including chorales, fantasia, sonata, concerto, missa), his many individual works (such as St. John's Passion, The Goldberg Variations, Brandenburg Concertos, Passacaglia, Well-Tempered Clavier, The Christmas Oratorio, and The Art of Fugue), places important to his career (such as Muhlhausen, Weimar, and Leipzig), and important contemporaries (Handel, Rameau, Vivaldi, Telemann, among others). There are also entries on instruments (harpsichord, organ, clavier, and so on), Bach performance practice, stylistic influences on his work, and other biographical details. The book concludes with a family tree, a chronology of Bach's life, a list of his works, and a glossary of terms. Bach was one of the giants of classical music, a composer of astonishing powers of invention. In The Oxford Composer Companion: J.S. Bach, music aficionados will have at their fingertips a treasure chest of information on this major figure.

Designed for use by professional singers, amateurs, teachers, coaches, and students; contains annotations for more than 1,000 songs in the basic vocal repertoire.

This collection of essays by European, British, and American musicologists seeks to consolidate the recent growth of interest in seventeenth century studies. It includes discussions of leading composers, repertories, geographical issues, institutional contexts, and iconography.

This book uncovers the connections between the invisible network of political and economic dependents among Italy's church and state elite and the formation of the Baroque musical style in Rome. The author rediscovers music for Battista Guarini's last stage work and the first Roman opera, and offers a new explanation for the rise of the Italian chamber cantata.

The vocal repertoire of the twentieth century--including works by Schoenberg, Boulez, Berio, Larsen, and Vercoe--presents exciting opportunities for singers to stretch their talents and demonstrate their vocal flexibility. Contemporary composers can be very demanding of vocalists, requiring them to recite, trill, and whisper, or to read non-traditional scores. For singers just beginning to explore the novelties of the contemporary repertoire, Exploring Twentieth-Century Vocal Music is an ideal guide. Drawing on over thirty years of experience teaching and performing the twentieth century repertoire, Sharon Mabry has written a cogent and insightful book for singers and voice teachers who are just discovering the innovative music of the twentieth century. The book familiarizes readers with the new and unusual notation systems employed by some contemporary composers. It suggests rehearsal techniques and vocal exercises that help singers prepare to tackle the repertoire. And the book offers a list of the most important and interesting works to emerge in the twentieth century, along with suggested recital programs that will introduce audiences as well as singers to this under-explored body of music.