Forbidden Music


Book Description

DIV With National Socialism's arrival in Germany in 1933, Jews dominated music more than virtually any other sector, making it the most important cultural front in the Nazi fight for German identity. This groundbreaking book looks at the Jewish composers and musicians banned by the Third Reich and the consequences for music throughout the rest of the twentieth century. Because Jewish musicians and composers were, by 1933, the principal conveyors of Germany’s historic traditions and the ideals of German culture, the isolation, exile and persecution of Jewish musicians by the Nazis became an act of musical self-mutilation. Michael Haas looks at the actual contribution of Jewish composers in Germany and Austria before 1933, at their increasingly precarious position in Nazi Europe, their forced emigration before and during the war, their ambivalent relationships with their countries of refuge, such as Britain and the United States and their contributions within the radically changed post-war music environment. /div




Gustav Mahler's Symphonies


Book Description

The popularity of Mahler's symphonic works is unremitting. More recordings have been made during the past ten years than in the previous six decades. This work is a companion to the first volume, published in 1986; together, the two review virtually every recording commercially released (as well as some private issues). The intention of both works is to provide a comprehensive analysis of all recordings. A general overview is combined with details of particular importance. Recordings of special merit are noted. The objective critical discussions will appeal to the newcomer as well as the knowledgeable devotee and the work will serve as a valuable addition to university, music school, and public libraries, as well as any music lover's library. This guide provides a symphony-by-symphony commentary, including the unfinished Tenth Symphony, Das Lied von der Erde, and piano and chamber music reductions of the works. It includes all new recordings issued worldwide as well as compact disc reissues of previously released recordings and all performances on videocassette. Listings are arranged alphabetically by conductor, and headings for each recording contain specific information about the performers, record label, catalog number, and timing. Helpful indexes by conductor, orchestra, vocal and instrumental soloists, chorus, and record label are included.




Mahler Symphonies and Songs


Book Description




Gustav Mahler


Book Description

Available again for a new generation of Mahlerians, Donald Mitchell's famous study of the composer's early life and music, revised and updated in 1980, includes a new introduction by the author, and supplementary addenda, which bring this classic work once again to the forefront of Mahler studies. Tracing Mahler's life from his birth in Bohemia, then part of the mighty Austro-Hungarian empire, to his early works (many now lost) Gustav Mabler: The Early Years forms an indispensable prelude to the period during which the cycle of great symphonies was to evolve. The conflicts which came to mark Mahler's music and personality had their beginnings in his childhood and youth. Without understanding the territorial, social and familial conflicts of this time one cannot truly appreciate the impulses behind the major symphonies and song cycles of his later years. Book jacket.




The Mahler Symphonies


Book Description

"Hurwitz describes the emotional extravagance that lies at the root of Mahler's popularity, the consistency of his symphonic thinking, and his dazzling and revolutionary use of orchestral instruments to create an expressive musical language that is varied in content and immediate in impact."--BOOK JACKET.




Mahler's Symphonic Sonatas


Book Description

'Mahler's Symphonic Sonatas' examines Gustav Mahler's career-long engagement with sonata form. It argues that a dynamic, process-based sonata-form concept factors into all of his early and middle-period symphonies, informing not just their schematic design, but also their narrative/expressive character.




The Mahler Symphonies


Book Description

(Unlocking the Masters). Since Gustav Mahler was rediscovered in the early 1960s, his symphonies have become arguably the most popular works in the modern orchestral repertoire. Mahler's Symphonies: An Owner's Manual is the first discussion of the ten completed symphonies (No. 1-9 plus "The Song of the Earth") to offer music lovers and record collectors a comprehensive overview of the music itself, what it sounds like, how it is organized, its form, content, and meaning, as it strikes today's listeners. The book caters to the novice as David Hurwitz describes what the listener will hear, section by section, using simple cues such as important instrumental solos, recognizable tunes, climaxes, and other easily audible musical facts. He explains how each work is arranged, how the various parts relate to each other, and how one work leads to the next. It describes the emotional extravagance that lies at the root of Mahler's popularity, the consistency of his symphonic thinking, the relationship of each work to its companions, and his dazzling and revolutionary use of orchestral instruments to create an expressive musical language that is varied in content and immediate in impact. The accompanying audio contains recordings from Symphony No. 1, Third Movement; Symphony No. 2, First Movement; Symphony No. 5, Third Movement ; and Symphony No. 7, Second Movement : "Nachtmusik I."




Gustav Mahler


Book Description

(Amadeus). Mahler's 10 symphonies and Das Lied von der Erde are intensely personal statements that have touched wide audiences. This survey examines each of the works, revealing their programmatic and personal aspects, as well as Mahler's musical techniques.




Mahler and Strauss


Book Description

A rare case among history's great music contemporaries, Gustav Mahler (1860-1911) and Richard Strauss (1864-1949) enjoyed a close friendship until Mahler's death in 1911. Unlike similar musical pairs (Bach and Handel, Haydn and Mozart, Schoenberg and Stravinsky), these two composers may have disagreed on the matters of musical taste and social comportment, but deeply respected one another's artistic talents, freely exchanging advice from the earliest days of professional apprenticeship through the security and aggravations of artistic fame. Using a wealth of documentary material, this book reconstructs the 24-year relationship between Mahler and Strauss through collage—"a meaning that arises from fragments," to borrow Adorno's characterization of Mahler's Sixth Symphony. Fourteen different topics, all of central importance to the life and work of the two composers, provide distinct vantage points from which to view both the professional and personal relationships. Some address musical concerns: Wagnerism, program music, intertextuality, and the craft of conducting. Others treat the connection of music to related disciplines (philosophy, literature), or to matters relevant to artists in general (autobiography, irony). And the most intimate dimensions of life—childhood, marriage, personal character—are the most extensively and colorfully documented, offering an abundance of comparative material. This integrated look at Mahler and Strauss discloses provocative revelations about the two greatest western composers at the turn of the 20th century.




Gustav Mahler and the Symphony of the 19th Century


Book Description

The subject of this book is the semantics of symphonic music from Beethoven to Mahler. Of fundamental importance is the realization that this music is imbued with non-musical, literary, philosophical and religious ideas. It is also clear that not only Beethoven, Schubert and Bruckner were crucial role models for Mahler, but also the musical dramatist Wagner and the programmatic symphony composers Berlioz and Liszt. At the same time a semantic musical analysis of their works reveals for the first time the actual inherent (poetic) quintessence of numerous orchestral works of the 19th Century.