Musorgsky, in Memoriam, 1881-1981 PDF Download

Author: Malcolm Hamrick Brown
Publisher: Ann Arbor, Mich. : UMI Research Press
ISBN:
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 352

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Author: David Brown
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199772924
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 411

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Modest Musorgsky was one of the towering figures of nineteenth-century Russian music. Now, in this new volume in the Master Musicians series, David Brown gives us the first life-and-works study of Musorgsky to appear in English for over a half century. Indeed, this is the largest such study of Musorgsky to have appeared outside Russia. Brown shows how Musorgsky, though essentially an amateur with no systematic training in composition, emerged in his first opera, Boris Godunov, as a supreme musical dramatist. Indeed, in this opera, and in certain of his piano pieces in Pictures at an Exhibition, Musorgsky produced some of the most startlingly novel music of the whole nineteenth century. He was also one of the most original of all song composers, with a prodigious gift for uncovering the emotional content of a text. As Brown illuminates Musorgsky's work, he also paints a detailed portrait of the composer's life. He describes how, unlike the systematic and disciplined Tchaikovsky, Musorgsky was a fitful composer. When the inspiration was upon him, he could apply himself with superhuman intensity, as he did when composing the initial version of Boris Godunov. Sadly, Musorgsky deteriorated in his final years, suffering periods of inner turmoil, when his alcoholism would be out of control. Finally, unemployed and all but destitute, he died at age forty-two. His failure to complete his two remaining operas, Khovanshchina and Sorochintsy Fair, Brown concludes, is one of music's greatest tragedies. Written by one of the leading authorities on nineteenth-century Russian composers, Musorgsky is the finest available biography of this giant of Russian music.

Author: Caryl Emerson
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521485074
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 220

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Modest Musorgsky is Russia's greatest musical dramatist. When he died in 1881 in St Petersburg at the age of forty-two, in poverty and relative obscurity, he was known for a single opera, Boris Godunov and a handful of eccentric 'realistic' songs set to prosaic Russian texts. He had no institutional connections, no 'degree', no family of his own, not even a permanent address. Except for Franz Liszt, no composer of stature knew of him outside Russia. Through the loyal (if controversial) intervention of his friends, his works survived in various editings into the early twentieth century, when revivals and evolving musical tastes restored him to new life. This account of his life, first published in 1999, emphasizes the psychological and economic factors that contributed to the composer's remarkable rise and tragic, premature end and is the first brief biography in English to make use of materials published in the new, de-Sovietized Russian academic climate.

Author: Andrew Wachtel
Publisher: Northwestern University Press
ISBN: 0810115662
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 188

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In this groundbreaking book, four distinguished scholars offer a detailed exploration of the ballet Petrushka, which premiered in Paris in 1911 and became one of the most important and influential theatrical works of the modernist period. The first book to study every level of a complex theatrical production, this is a work unlike any other in Russian or theater studies. "The book is a joy to read." --Slavic Review

Author: Derek C. Hulme
Publisher: Scarecrow Press
ISBN: 081087265X
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 824

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Dmitri Shostakovich (1906-75) was one of the greatest composers of the 20th century, as well as the first major Soviet composer. In the fourth edition of Dmitri Shostakovich Catalogue: The First Hundred Years and Beyond, Derek C. Hulme names and describes all known musical compositions of the Russian composer. More than 175 major works are annotated and discussed, including such comprehensive details as titles and subtitles, dates of composition, instrumentation, and duration; information on dedications and premieres; arrangements by the composer and others; publication details; notes on bibliographical references and the location of the autograph score; and comprehensive chronological lists of vinyl, compact disc, and visual recordings. The entries are presented chronologically and by opus number, while indexes of names and compositions provide full accessibility. Several appendixes supplement the volume, guiding readers to further information in published sources and providing information on the composer's film, radio, television, and theatre productions; his abandoned projects and obscure works; and his recordings, including box sets and special USSR recordings. An appendix also discusses the monogram DSCH, a musical motif based on his name that permeates his compositions. This new edition also includes a comprehensive chronological chart of Shostakovich's works and historical events and several plates of memorabilia.

Author: Larisa P. Jackson
Publisher: University of North Texas Press
ISBN: 1574418718
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 289

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Nikolai Andreyevich Rimsky-Korsakov (1844-1908) was celebrated during his lifetime as a composer and instructor, and his musical works and publications on instrumentation remain prominent today. However, his innovations as a music theorist have gone largely unrecognized. Rimsky-Korsakov’s Harmonic Theory is the first comprehensive study of the composer’s unique concept of harmony. Larisa P. Jackson illuminates Rimsky-Korsakov’s harmonic theory and reveals the intellectual, social, and cultural facets of its historical contexts in both Western and Russian music. In this unprecedented contribution to musicology and music theory, Jackson examines and clarifies Rimsky-Korsakov’s thinking on modulation (key changes), which composers began using much more frequently during the nineteenth century. Based on his discovery of a previously unknown scale, Rimsky-Korsakov saw modulation as shaped by a web of deep relationships among major and minor keys. Jackson charts this tonal space, mapping its implications as well as its often-surprising relationships with the theories of Rimsky-Korsakov’s predecessors and contemporaries, including the famous German music theorists Hauptmann and Riemann.

Author: Melvin P. Unger
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 1538124343
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 699

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A Library Journal Starred Review (March 2024) praises the book as a "remarkable resource that will please both musical professionals and amateurs, along with teachers and their students, and conductors and singers.” Throughout the ages, people have wanted to sing in a communal context. This desire apparently stems from a deeply rooted human instinct. Consequently, choral performance historically has often been related to human rituals and ceremonies, especially rites of a religious nature. Historical Dictionary of Choral Music, Second Edition contains a chronology, an introduction, and an extensive bibliography. The dictionary section has more than 1,300 cross-referenced entries on composers, conductors, choral ensembles, choral genres, and choral repertoire. This book is an excellent resource for students, researchers, and anyone wanting to know more about choral music.

Author: Daniel Jaffé
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 1538130084
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 563

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Russian music today has a firm hold around the world in the repertoire of opera houses, ballet companies, and orchestras. The music of Pyotr Tchaikovsky, Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, Sergey Rachmaninov, Sergey Prokofiev, and Dmitri Shostakovich is very much today’s lingua franca both in the concert hall and on the soundtracks of international blockbusters from Hollywood. Meanwhile, the innovations of Modest Musorgsky, Alexander Borodin, and Igor Stravinsky have played their crucial role in the development of Western music, influencing the work of virtually every notable composer of the past century. Historical Dictionary of Russian Music, Second Edition contains a chronology, an introduction, and an extensive bibliography. The dictionary section has more than 600 cross-referenced entries for each of Russia’s major performing organizations and performance venues, and on specific genres such as ballet, film music, symphony and church music. This book is an excellent resource for students, researchers, and anyone wanting to know more about Russian Music.

Author: Caryl Emerson
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521369763
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 362

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Caryl Emerson and Robert Oldani take a comprehensive look at the most famous Russian opera, Modest Musorgsky's Boris Godunov.

Author: Don Michael Randel
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 9780674372993
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 1048

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Book Description
Biographaical dictionary emphisizes classicaland art music; also gives ample attention to the classics as well as Jazz, Blues, rock and pop, and hymns and showtunes across the ages.