Olivier Messiaen
Olivier Messiaen, one of the most influential composers of the 20th century, was a great nature poet and mystic. This volume of essays by international experts marks his centenary, exploring the diverse and lasting sphere of his legacy.
Opera as Anthropology
Kotnik considers the relationship between opera and anthropology. His study rests on the following central arguments: on the one hand, opera is a new and “exotic” topic for anthropologists, while, on the other, anthropology is still seen as an unusual approach to opera.
Opéra-Comique
Opéra-comique, a French genre not always comic in nature—the most famous example, Bizet’s Carmen, is a tragedy—reflected the cultural life of France. This sourcebook details its forgotten composers and operas, providing a way into a changing age.
Operetta
From Offenbach’s Paris to the Vienna of Strauss and Lehár, operetta flourished. This source book presents an overview of the genre, tracing its history to modern musical comedy with composer biographies, a chronology, and selected synopses.
Operetta
Explore the world of operetta, from Vienna and Paris to London and Broadway. This essential guide profiles the genre’s principal composers with biographies, detailed work lists, and selected synopses of their iconic stage works.
Operetta
From 19th-century Paris to Broadway, this source book surveys operetta’s international schools and principal composers. It offers a chronology, biographical material, selected synopses, a discography, and a comprehensive index.
Over the Edge
The authors in this volume bring new ideas from their research to help us create spaces we can claim as our own. These essays explore culturally produced markers of identity, revealing connections that challenge our perspective of scholarly subjects.
This volume presents two ballets by Ludwig Minkus, composed at the peak of his powers with choreographer Marius Petipa. It includes the beloved Grand Pas from Paquita, a jewel of the classical repertoire, and the allegorical work, Nuit et Jour.
Paradigm War
This book explores 19th-century Europe’s piano pedagogy, a “paradigm war” between mechanism and holism. It shows how Robert Schumann’s revolutionary music and ideas resolved this conflict, creating a foundation for artistic piano pedagogy for our time.
Since UNESCO recognized Sutartinės, Lithuania’s ancient dissonant music, studies have flourished. This book presents new findings, revealing analogies with foreign folk music and analyzing hymns of mythical beings through data from ethnology, archaeology, and linguistics.
Performance Analysis
This collection of essays explores the connections between music theory, interpretation, and performance. It delves into performance studies—focusing on gesture, bodily movement, and emotion—and addresses artistic practices in the 21st century.
Perspectives on Contemporary Musical Practices
This volume sheds light on the wide range of perspectives on musical activity today. It discusses the changing contexts of 20th-century compositions, offers in-depth musical analysis connected to performance, and considers technology’s influence on musical creation.
Philosophical Considerations on Contemporary Music
Fronzi describes how complexity in music of the 20th and 21st centuries can be tackled philosophically, starting from certain characteristics. He identifies nine characteristics that permit us to open up philosophical-cultural paths and interpret contemporary music developments.
Popular Music and Australian Culture
This volume explores popular music and culture, challenging assumptions about how we experience modernity. The essays raise larger questions about our status as consumers and participants in historical change, and examine the relationship between sound, media, and community.
Popular Music, Ethnicity and Politics in the Kenya of the 1990s
Okatch Biggy was the single most dominant benga artiste of the 1990s. Mboya analyzes Biggy’s songs as works of art, identifying the aesthetic and rhetorical conventions that are deployed in the songs, and exploring the central messages of the music, and their significance.
Postgraduate Voices in Punk Studies
The first academic collection of postgraduate research on the punk scene. These cutting-edge, interdisciplinary studies explore themes of gender, race, and sexuality, covering topics from French straight-edge to the links between punk and 90s rave culture.
Reappraising the Seicento
Reappraising the Seicento offers new perspectives from emerging scholars. Five essays examine compositional procedure in Italy and the assimilation of Italian music by English composers in the seventeenth century, placing it in a larger historical context.
Experience rebetiko music-making in Thessaloniki today. This ethnography explores the human encounters and lived experiences of the rebetiko revival, while also recounting the story of an ethnographer engaged in fieldwork ‘at home’.
Regaining Classical Music’s Relevance
Why is classical music struggling in the West? John Borstlap explores its relevance in a troubled modern world, confronting questions of elitism and adaptation. This book reveals a surprising relationship between music and the mind, offering solutions to affirm the art form.
Reinventing Sound
It is undeniable that in today’s audiovisual world, music plays a leading role. As such, the essays gathered here investigate the ways in which it is featured on mobile devices, its impact on new narrative forms, and the new ways of creating music on the Internet.