Irish Music Abroad
This musical ethnography of Birmingham, 1950–2010, traces how Irish music moved from private arenas to the city’s public heart. It shows how the community conquered challenges, like the IRA bombings, to create its massive St Patrick’s Parade.
Meyerbeer’s Les Huguenots
Meyerbeer’s most popular opera, Les Huguenots, is a gigantic drama of faith, love, and self-sacrifice set against the Saint Bartholomew Massacre. Its music reaches sublime heights, capturing the tragedy of religious intolerance with intense passion.
Giacomo Meyerbeer
Giacomo Meyerbeer was the most successful composer of grand operas in nineteenth-century Paris, yet today his operas have become stage rarities. This is the first broad evaluation of Meyerbeer in English, a study of his reputation’s vicissitudes.
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.
A critique of contemporary artistic interpretation whose lessons apply to our entire culture. This essential study is from Ion Piso, drawing on over 50 years of experience as an artist-interpreter on the world’s opera stages.
This volume provides an understanding of research methodologies in music education, including historical, quantitative, narrative, and arts-based methods. Written by experts, it assists researchers and students in choosing the most appropriate method for their work.
The Mission and Message of Music
This book probes the beauty and meaning of music, arguing it is a message in sound—a covenant between musician and listener. One sends the musical message, the other internalizes it. Intended for music connoisseurs and all interested in artistic thought.
William Boyce
This sourcebook on William Boyce, England’s leading 18th-century composer, brings together significant contemporary documents on his life and career, with critical commentaries. It includes the first comprehensive catalogue of his works and discography.
Temporaries and Eternals
Aldous Huxley’s 1922–23 music column offers a snapshot of 1920s musical life and is key to understanding his novels. Huxley’s central theme is how to judge the longevity of composers and their works. This book reproduces all 64 of his articles.
Giacomo Meyerbeer
Meyerbeer’s first opera, Jephtas Gelübde, transforms the Biblical tale of a tragic vow into a rescue opera. Containing the seeds of his future genius, the music points towards Weber and Wagner, realizing a powerful story of love and duty.
For the first time, a complete overview of folk musical instruments in Bosnia and Herzegovina. This book describes the instruments—their history, construction, and playing techniques—and explores the traditions of the makers and players.
Auber, a key 19th-century French composer, and librettist Scribe created the successful opéra-comique Le Concert à la cour. In this one-act work, a young singer’s debut is sabotaged. It showcases the elegance and finesse of the composer’s art.
This collection of essays applies traditional and innovative techniques to the music of late 20th and 21st-century composers, making the music of our time less impenetrable by showing how it follows and varies older schemes. Includes analysis of popular music and jazz.
Giacomo Meyerbeer
Giacomo Meyerbeer remains an enigma. Once one of the most famous of all composers, his reputation declined amidst growing hostility. This Reader reflects his immense fame, the dismissal he faced, and the recent rediscovery and re-evaluation of his art.
Auber and Scribe’s Les Diamants de la couronne is a refined fantasy where a Portuguese queen counterfeits the crown jewels to save her nation. The music is brilliant, with variations of the greatest virtuosity. This edition reproduces the Royal Edition vocal score.
French Romantic Ballets
This collection presents music from La Sylphide, Giselle, and Le Corsaire—three of the most important scores from the Golden Age of ballet in Paris. Explore tales of fatal love, supernatural spirits, and spectacular drama.
Franz von Suppé
Franz von Suppé established the Viennese operetta, a genre full of charm and gaiety. His sense of melody, rhythmic verve, and brilliant orchestral technique found preeminent expression in his overtures, which became celebrated all over the world.
Daniel-François-Esprit Auber
From one of musical history’s most successful partnerships, composer Auber and librettist Scribe, came their final work: La Fiancée du Roi de Garbe. Based on Boccaccio, this opéra-comique follows a princess on a picaresque journey with pirates.
Music, Longing and Belonging
This interdisciplinary book explores how musical communities transcend national borders and challenge the boundaries between self and other. It focuses on forms of musical belonging not bound by national identity, framing music as a medium of desire and dissent.
Maqām
This volume offers new insights on the historical traces and present practice of maqām. Contributions from international scholars explore Ottoman music’s influence in the Mediterranean and Balkans, the revival of religious genres, and the realms between maqām and mode.