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This compilation of essays spans a wide range of individual perspectives within the varied disciplines related to Bartók's life and work. The nineteen chapters together constitute a broad yet integrated picture of the Hungarian composer's contributions to twentieth-century music and scholarship ...

This compilation of essays spans a wide range of individual perspectives within the varied disciplines related to Bartók's life and work. The nineteen chapters together constitute a broad yet integrated picture of the Hungarian composer's contributions to twentieth-century music and scholarship. While self-contained, each chapter contributes to a larger scheme of interrelated subjects that provide a coherent view of the Bartók field. The book also contains integrative theoretic-analytical approaches to Bartók's musical language that demonstrate relations between the modalities and rhythms of folk music and his more abstract musical principles. Some chapters examine Bartók's folk-music materials in connection with his fieldwork, transcription techniques, classification methodology, and compositional influences. Other chapters explore Bartók's system of composition from its early stages to maturity by way of his abstract works and his folk-music transcriptions. The book also addresses the relevance of Bartók's work to broader historical, philosophical, and folkloristic, compositional, performance, and reception issues.

Holy Brotherhood: Romani Music in a Hungarian Pentecostal Church is a musical ethnography of a religious community. After the end of socialism, different ethnic groups in Hungary harbored antagonism toward one another. In one Pentecostal church in Pecs, Hungary, however, both Hungarians and Roma ...

Holy Brotherhood: Romani Music in a Hungarian Pentecostal Church is a musical ethnography of a religious community. After the end of socialism, different ethnic groups in Hungary harbored antagonism toward one another. In one Pentecostal church in Pecs, Hungary, however, both Hungarians and Roma (Gypsies) worshipped and made music together. Three musical repertoires coexisted, each with a separate historical background and complex social meanings: Romani religious song; nineteenth-century gospel hymns originally from the United States; and contemporary Christian pop from the United States. Church members accommodated cultural and musical differences by developing several distinct performance styles.

For more than half of his long life, composer Roger Sessions was a commanding figure on the American musical scene. He enjoyed the solid respect of his peers, and as a teacher of a generation of composers and author of compelling writings on his craft, his influence on musical thought remains ...

For more than half of his long life, composer Roger Sessions was a commanding figure on the American musical scene. He enjoyed the solid respect of his peers, and as a teacher of a generation of composers and author of compelling writings on his craft, his influence on musical thought remains profound. Yet, even in his lifetime, his music endured vastly disrespectful neglect. He was a "difficult" composer. Sessions was well aware of it. In a New York Times article, he wrote, "I have sometimes been told that my music is 'difficult' for the listener. There are those who consider this as praise, those who consider it a reproach. For my part I regard it as, in itself, neither one or the other...it is the way the music comes, the way it has to come." The way Sessions's music "had to come" is a recurrent focus of this biography. As the story is told, often in the composer's own words, the complex picture emerges of a remarkable man who, gradually and not very willingly, learned to accept his unexpected lot as a "difficult" composer. Frederik Prausnitz, an acquaintance of Sessions and conductor of his work, combines personal and musical insights to present this fascinating portrait of an influential, yet often overlooked, modernist composer.

This is the first comprehensive study of the life and music of Alan Rawsthorne (1905-71), one of the leading British composers of the twentieth century. Rawsthorne came from the same generation of composers as Britten, Walton, Tippett, and Constant Lambert. Since his death in 1971 his music, after a ...

This is the first comprehensive study of the life and music of Alan Rawsthorne (1905-71), one of the leading British composers of the twentieth century. Rawsthorne came from the same generation of composers as Britten, Walton, Tippett, and Constant Lambert. Since his death in 1971 his music, after a period of comparative neglect, is currently enjoying a revival in performance and recording. The composer and pianist John McCabe here brings a lifetime's knowledge of the man and his music to a vivid portrait of Rawsthorne's life, drawing on conversations with his family, friends, and colleagues as well as contemporary documentation. Almost every one of his works is discussed, many of them in detail, demonstrating the versatility and range of Rawsthorne's vision, from popular works, such as Street Corner and the piano concertos, to the remarkable power of his lesser-known later works. In particular McCabe draws attention to the astonishing renewal of Rawsthorne's creative enery during his later period, and the immense broadening of his emotional and technical horizons leading to such masterpieces as the Third Symphony and Carmen Vitale. He makes a powerful case for a thorough reassessment of Rawsthorne's oeuvre. A complimentary CD provides the reader with a representative sample of Rawsthorne's music.