A History of the Music for Wind Band


Book Description

The book provides a historical survey of the wind band’s music and denotes how historical and cultural developments have influenced it over the course of time. Although the modern wind band developed first in the 19th century, it has its roots in the wind music of ancient times, and music survives that has been composed since the Middle Ages. Therefore, this book covers the music from that time to the present, including the dance music of the Renaissance, the Harmoniemusik of the Classical Period, and the nationalistic music of the Romantic Period, as well as the major wind band repertoire developed after 1900.







Guarini's 'Il pastor fido' and the Madrigal


Book Description

Battista Guarini’s pastoral tragicomedy Il pastor fido (1589) began its life as a play, but soon was transformed through numerous musical settings by prominent composers of the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. Through the many lives of this work, this book explores what happens when a lover’s lament is transplanted from the theatrical stage to the courtly chamber, from speech to song, and from a single speaking character to an ensemble of singers, shedding new light on early modern literary and musical culture. From the play’s beginnings in manuscripts, private readings, and aborted stage productions in the 1580s and 1590s, through the gradual decline of Pastor fido madrigals in the 1640s, this book examines how this widely read yet controversial text became the center of a lasting and prolific music tradition. Using a new integrative system of musical-textual analysis based on sixteenth-century theory, Seth Coluzzi demonstrates how composers responded not only to the sentiments, imagery, and form of the play’s speeches, but also to subtler details of Guarini’s verse. Viewing the musical history of Guarini’s work as an integral part of the play’s roles in the domains of theater, literature, and criticism, this book brings a new perspective to the late Italian madrigal, the play, and early modern patronage and readership across a diverse geographical and temporal frame.




The Italian Madrigal in the Early Sixteenth Century


Book Description

This 1988 book examines the genesis and dissemination of the Italian madrigal in its formative stages. Iain Fenlon and James Haar have analysed this vast repertoire as it is found in manuscript and print offer information concerning the date and provenance of many fundamental sources together with a view of the subject which differs radically from previous treatments. Their study is divided into two parts. The first covers the rise and early cultivation of the madrigal, chiefly in Florence and Rome. The second contains a detailed descriptive inventory of all known manuscripts and printed editions, finishing with lists of contents and concordances in each case. This important study will serve those with an interest in Renaissance music and the changing cultural ambience of early sixteenth-century Florence and Rome.







History of Mary Stuart, Queen of Scots


Book Description

Reprint of the original, first published in 1874.




Music and the Cultures of Print


Book Description

This collection of essays explores the cultures that coalesced around printed music in previous centuries. It focuses on the unique modes through which print organized the presentation of musical texts, the conception of written compositions, and the ways in which music was disseminated and performed. In highlighting the tensions that exist between musical print and performance this volume raises not only the question of how older scores can be read today, but also how music expressed its meanings to listeners in the past.




Antonio Gardano, Venetian Music Printer, 1538-1569


Book Description

Antonio Gardano's publications are among the most important sources of 16th-century music. The second volume describes the output of this leading Italian music press in its cultural, bibliographical, and musical context. The first part of the book consists of an overview of Gardano's repertory from the fifties and the cultural and musical milieu in which he worked. It includes discussions of the continuing popularity of his earlier repertory, the music of the younger generation introduced in the fifties, the music of the composers around San Marco, and genres such as the multi-movement madrigal, the canzoni villanesche, instrumental works, and new anthologies. Also discussed are the dating of some undated editions, unconfirmed and doubtful prints, and ordering within the editions. A chapter on binder's copies describes groups of editions bound together by their early owners and serves as a valuable index to the tastes of the collectors. The catalog section covers all Gardano's known publications of the fifties, and provides full titles, bibliographical information, contents with concordant sources for each piece, and locations of individual copies with notes on their bindings, owners' marks, annotations, and other significant characteristics. The catalog is indexed by composer, first line, and short title, and includes a list of primary and secondary sources consulted.




City Culture and the Madrigal at Venice


Book Description

Martha Feldman's exploration of sixteenth-century Venetian madrigals centers on the importance to the Venetians of Ciceronian rhetorical norms, which emphasized decorum through adherence to distinct stylistic levels. She shows that Venice easily adapted these norms to its long-standing mythologies of equilibrium, justice, peace, and good judgment. Feldman explains how Venetian literary theorists conceived variety as a device for tempering linguistic extremes and thereby maintaining moderation. She further shows how the complexity of sacred polyphony was adapted by Venetian music theorists and composers to achieve similar ends. At the same time, Feldman unsettles the kinds of simplistic alignments between the collectivity of the state and its artistic production that have marked many historical studies of the arts. Her rich social history enables a more intricate dialectics among sociopolitical formations; the roles of individual printers, academists, merchants, and others; and the works of composers and poets. City Culture offers a new model for situating aesthetic products in a specific time and place, one that sees expressive objects not simply against a cultural backdrop but within an integrated complex of cultural forms and discursive practices. This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1995.