Skip to main content Accessibility help

We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.

Close cookie message
×
  1. Home
  2. Browse subjects
  3. Music
  4. Content Listing

Refine search

Refine search

Access:
Content type:
Publication date:
Apply   From and To filters
Subject: Show more
Journals Show more
Publishers: Show more
Societies Show more
Series: Show more
Collections: Show more

Actions for selected content:

Select all | Deselect all
  • View selected items
  • Export citations
  • Download PDF (zip)
  • Save to Kindle
  • Save to Dropbox
  • Save to Google Drive

Save Search

You can save your searches here and later view and run them again in "My saved searches".

Please provide a title, maximum of 40 characters.
Cancel
×

49 results in Music

Page 1 of 3

Wagner Studies
  • Edited by Steven Vande Moortele
  • Published online:
    17 April 2025
    Print publication:
    24 April 2025
  • While the music of Richard Wagner has long served as a touchstone for music-theoretical and analytical models both old and new, music analysts have often been intimidated by the complexity of his works, their multi-layeredness, and their sheer unwieldiness. This volume brings together ten contributions from an international roster of leading Wagner scholars of our time, all of which engage in some way with analytical or theoretical questions posed by Wagner's music. Addressing the operas and music dramas from Die Feen through Parsifal, they combine analytical methods including form-functional theory, Neo-Riemannian theory, Leitmotiv analysis, and history of theory with approaches to dramaturgy, hermeneutics, reception history, and discursive analysis of sexuality and ideology. Collectively, they capture the breadth of analytical studies of Wagner in contemporary scholarship and expand the reach of the field by challenging it to break new interpretative and methodological ground.

The Times Do Not Permit
  • The Musical Life of Michael Mosoeu Moerane
  • Christine Lucia
  • Published by:
    Wits University Press
    Published online:
    16 April 2025
    Print publication:
    01 November 2024
  • The first extended overview of the life, times, and music of Michael Mosoeu Moerane (1904-1980) that explores the political changes and social conditions of the African choral composer's life. Lucia describes his ancestry, upbringing, education and teaching career and analyses his symphonic poem and four choral pieces.

    The Times Do Not Permit is the first extended overview of the life, times, and music of Michael Mosoeu Moerane (1904-1980), an African composer brought up in rural South Africa in the early twentieth century, one of many mission-trained musicians who wrote short a cappella choral works for churches and schools.

    It explores the political changes and social conditions that made life for Moerane both possible and impossible as a composer. He was the first black South African to qualify with a BMus degree in 1941. However, this caused difficulties for him both within the African choral circuit, where his advanced modernist style was considered strange and difficult, and within white concert life, from which he was largely excluded.

    Lucia describes his ancestry, upbringing, education and teaching career, and offers an analysis of his music: his famous symphonic poem, 'Fatšo La Heso', and four of his choral pieces, grouped to reflect the major themes he expressed. The Times Do Not Permit is supplemented with interviews with those who knew Moerane and ends with a coda of professional letters to, from, and about him that gives his voice a presence in the absence of much personal documentation.

Naples, Capital of Dance
  • The ‘feste di ballo' Tradition in the Long Eighteenth Century
  • Anthony R. DelDonna
  • Published online:
    10 April 2025
    Print publication:
    17 April 2025
  • Renowned as a city of entertainment, Naples was unequaled in eighteenth-century Italy for the diversity of its musical life. During the reigns of Carlo di Borbone and his heir Ferdinando IV, the sponsorship of feste di ballo, elaborate celebratory balls featuring social dance such as the minuet and contradance, grew increasingly lavish. Organized for carnevale, occasions of state, and personal celebrations in the lives of the royal family, the feste di ballo fostered both a public agenda and a personal rapport between the monarchs and local aristocracy. As the century progressed, the frequency of and resources accorded to the feste di ballo and its showcasing of social dance came to match those of stage drama and instrumental music. Based on extensive archival research, this book reveals the culture of social dance at the Bourbon court and how these spectacular events served to project images of authority, power, and identity.
The Aesthetic System of François Delsarte and Richard Wagner

The Aesthetic System of François Delsarte and Richard Wagner
  • Catholicism, Romanticism, and Ancient Music
  • Bradley Hoover
  • Published online:
    07 April 2025
    Print publication:
    08 May 2025
  • On 17 September 1839, Richard Wagner arrived in Paris. Although scholars agree that the composer learned a great deal much about aesthetics during his first sojourn in the city, what has not been known is exactly what he learned or from whom. This Element explores the striking similarities between Wagner's early aesthetic writings and Delsarte's 'Cours d'esthétique appliquée', a theoretical and practical training course for artists which Delsarte began teaching in Paris in May 1839. This Element also details the rise of François Delsarte (1811–1871) as a celebrated teacher of aesthetics and interpreter of Gluck's repertoire during the same years Wagner was living in the city. By comparing historical timelines, published documents, and manuscript sources, and by analysing Wagner's treatises, Das Kunstwerk der Zukunft and Oper und Drama, and the essay 'Über Schauspieler und Sänger', the author shows that Delsarte's course is the most likely source of Wagner's aesthetic transformation in Paris.
Bandleader Mrs Mary Hamer and Her Boys

Bandleader Mrs Mary Hamer and Her Boys
  • Popular Music and Dance Cultures in Interwar Liverpool
  • Laura Hamer, Michael Brocken
  • Published online:
    14 March 2025
    Print publication:
    10 April 2025
  • The city of Liverpool is renowned for its popular music, although the formidable hagiography which has developed around the Beatles tends to dominate historical considerations to the virtual exclusion of the many other varied genres which have flourished in the city before, during, and after them. Within Liverpool's popular-music past is a partially hidden history of women's musical leadership. This Element concerns the Grafton Rooms' bandleader, dancer, and pianist Mary Hamer (1904–1992). Hamer led the otherwise all-male dance band at the Grafton for two decades, providing dancers with first-class dance music. The Element considers Hamer within the rapidly evolving dance music culture of interwar Liverpool, and discusses the different genres and sub-genres of popular music and dance presented at the Grafton and the role(s) of women in popular music and as bandleaders. This is contextualised within the contemporary social anxieties of popular dance cultures, sexuality, faith, class, and race.
The Orchestra of the Cappella Reale, Naples, 1750–1800

The Orchestra of the Cappella Reale, Naples, 1750–1800
  • Anthony R. DelDonna
  • Published online:
    06 March 2025
    Print publication:
    03 April 2025
  • The most prestigious musical ensemble of early-modern Naples remained the Royal Chapel or Cappella Reale di Palazzo. Conceived to serve directly the ruling authority of the capital city – whether the viceroy (Spanish or Austrian) or monarchs (Carlo di Borbone then Ferdinando) – membership in this elite organization offered prestige, financial security, and access to the broader networks of music culture in Naples, attracting the best musicians within and beyond the physical confines of the capital. This Element introduces readers to the largely unknown history of the Neapolitan Cappella Reale in the second half of the eighteenth century. It is based on primary sources, reconstructing the entire personnel of the ensemble (1750–99), recovering previously unstudied contractual agreements, offering details about the musicians while also examining the original music of the principal musicians of the orchestra.
<i>Lettera amorosa</i>

Lettera amorosa
  • Musical Love-Letters in Early Modern Italy
  • Roseen Giles
  • Published online:
    21 February 2025
    Print publication:
    20 March 2025
  • In early modern Italy, letters were not only written and read but, in some cases, sung. Musical settings of love letters rekindled a complex kind of vocality which was rooted in the letters of antiquity and endured in the musical sub-genre of the lettera amorosa. Epistolary poetry served to transform, or, to echo Achillini's lettera set by Monteverdi (1567–1643), to 'distill' a lover's thoughts and emotions into verse, and the music that set it was equally transformative. The history of musical letters spans several centuries. It begins in the early sixteenth with a setting of Ovid's Heroides by Tromboncino; returns in the early seventeenth through the lettere amorose of Monteverdi, D'India, and Frescobaldi; and ends with epistolary cantatas by Carissimi, Melani, and Domenico Scarlatti. This Element traces the breadth and significance of the musical love letter with a focus on the provocative lettere amorose of the seventeenth century.
More Than Words

More Than Words
  • Songs for the Language Classroom
  • Tom Parkinson, Luke Vyner
  • Published online:
    07 February 2025
    Print publication:
    20 March 2025
  • English language teachers have long recognised pop songs' potential for engaging students and establishing positive classroom environments conducive to language learning. Educational publishers increasingly incorporate music into their coursebooks, including specially commissioned 'ELT songs', whose lyrics feature aspects of target language. This Element explores the phenomenon of ELT songs from the authors' insider perspective as songwriters. It considers the relationship between music and lyrics in songs, what this means for using songs in the language classroom, the historical developments through which ELT songs emerged, and the contexts in which they are written, listened to, and made. Through literature review and reflection, the authors derive a framework of twelve criteria and ten dilemmas to guide ELT songwriting, before applying it in an analysis of their songs and songwriting process. The final section proposes a model for multidisciplinary collaboration between songwriters and non-musician collaborators including authors, teachers, and publishers.
Julie Reisserová (1888–1938)

Julie Reisserová (1888–1938)
  • Czech Composer and Feminist
  • Jean-Paul C. Montagnier
  • Published online:
    07 February 2025
    Print publication:
    06 March 2025
  • Regarded as the 'first Czech woman composer of importance' by the Grove Dictionary in 1954, Julie Reisserová's name has since virtually disappeared from the musical and musicological landscape. Reisserová, one of Albert Roussel's most famous Czech students during the interwar period, was not only a successful composer in her time, but also an active feminist. Her music was generally well received and performed by prestigious musicians. The only comprehensive study of her life and work, published in 1948, was written by Jiřina Vacková. If Vacková was able to investigate the personal archives of the diplomat Jan Reisser – Reisserová's husband – before they were seized and/or destroyed by the communist regime, her book remains hagiographical. This Element draws up a new biographical sketch of the artist, reviews Reisserová's thoughts on the status of women composers between the wars, considers the reception of her six surviving scores, and examines her style.
Hidden Music

Hidden Music
  • The Composer's Guide to Sonification
  • Milton Mermikides
  • Published online:
    16 January 2025
    Print publication:
    30 January 2025
  • This book explores the intersection of data sonification (the systematic translation of data into sound) and musical composition. Section 1 engages with existing discourse and offers an original model (the sonification continuum) which provides perspectives on the practice of sonification for composers, science communicators and those interested in this rapidly emerging field. Section 2 engages with the sonification process itself, exploring techniques, models of translation, data fidelity, analogic and symbolic data mapping, temporality and the listener experience. In Section 3 these concepts and techniques are all made concrete in the context of a selection of the author's projects (2004–2023). Finally, some reasons are offered on how sonification as a practice might enrich composition, communication, collaboration, and a sense of connection.
Rhythm and Heritage in Modern Flamenco Guitar

Rhythm and Heritage in Modern Flamenco Guitar
  • Carlos van Tongeren
  • Published online:
    16 January 2025
    Print publication:
    30 January 2025
  • Discourses about rhythmic skill and feel have often been associated with forms of non-Western, and especially African and Afro-diasporic identity and heritage. How can we rethink rhythmic skill for the contemporary world where concepts of heritage and belonging are attaining new meanings across cultural and geographical borders? This Element addresses this question through the case study of modern flamenco guitar, an instrumental practice that has achieved daunting levels of rhythmic sophistication and has been flourishing across the globe for decades, even before flamenco was inscribed into UNESCO's list of Intangible Cultural Heritage in 2010. Drawing on examples from local guitar traditions in Jerez de la Frontera and Morón de la Frontera and from an online guitar contest launched during the Covid-19 pandemic, this Element explores how rhythm can shape new ways of understanding and performing heritage in the global and digital age.
What Musicking Affords

What Musicking Affords
  • Musical Performance and the Post-cognitivist Turn
  • Marc Duby
  • Published online:
    13 January 2025
    Print publication:
    06 February 2025
  • The last three decades of work in cognitive science have challenged the idea that thinking occurs entirely in the head, claiming instead that cognition is embodied, embedded, extended, and enactive. The claims of 4E cognition challenge the dominance of computational approaches to cognition, and music scholars have explored Gibson's notion of affordances to propose a new understanding of musical performance as primarily grounded in action. This Element draws from paradigms such as enactive cognition, cybernetic and systems-theoretical approaches, phenomenological perspectives on practice, Gibson's theory of affordances, and aspects of the author's own practice as a multi-instrumentalist to consider cases of how the interface between musician and instrument influences performance.

The Cambridge Companion to West Side Story
  • Edited by Paul R. Laird, Elizabeth A. Wells
  • Published online:
    09 January 2025
    Print publication:
    09 January 2025
  • Over sixty years after its opening night, West Side Story is perhaps the most famous and beloved of twentieth-century musicals and stands as a colossus of musical and dramatic achievement. It not only helped define a generation of musical theatre lovers but is among the handful of shows that have contributed to our understanding of American musical identity at mid-century. Bringing together contemporary scholars in music, theatre, dance, literature, and performance, this Companion explores this explosive 1950s remake of Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet and its portrayal of the raw passion, rivalries, jealousy and rage that doom the young lovers to their tragic fate. Organised thematically, chapters range from Broadway's history and precursors to West Side Story; the early careers of its creators; the show's score with emphasis on writing, production, and orchestrations; issues of class, colourism, and racism; New York's gang culture, and how the show's legacy can be found in popular culture throughout the world.

The Cambridge History of Strategy
  • Volume 1, From Antiquity to the American War of Independence
  • Edited by Isabelle Duyvesteyn, Beatrice Heuser
  • Published online:
    06 January 2025
    Print publication:
    09 January 2025
  • Volume I of The Cambridge History of Strategy offers a history of the practice of strategy from the beginning of recorded history, to the late eighteenth century, from all parts of the world. Drawing on material evidence covering two and a half millennia, an international team of leading scholars in each subject examines how strategy was formulated and applied and with what tools, from ancient Greece and China to the Ottoman and Mughal Empires and the American Revolutionary War. They explore key themes from decision-makers and strategy-making processes, causes of wars and war aims and tools of strategy in war and peace, to configurations of armed forces and distinctive and shared ways of war across civilisations and periods. A comparative conclusion examines how the linking of political goals with military means took place in different parts of the world over the course of history, asking whether strategic practice has universal features.

The Cambridge History of Strategy
  • Volume 2, From the Napoleonic Wars to the Present
  • Edited by Isabelle Duyvesteyn, Beatrice Heuser
  • Published online:
    06 January 2025
    Print publication:
    09 January 2025
  • Volume II of The Cambridge History of Strategy focuses on the practice of strategy from 1800 to the present day. A team of eminent scholars examine how leaders of states, empires and non-state groups (such as guerrilla forces, rebel groups and terrorists) have attempted to practise strategy in the modern period. With a focus on the actual 'doing' of strategy, the volume aims to understand real-world experiences when ideas about conflict are carried out against a responding and proactive opponent. The case studies and material presented in the volume form an invitation to rethink dominant perspectives in the field of strategic studies. As the case studies demonstrate, strategy is most often not a stylised, premeditated and wilful phenomenon. Rather, it is a product of circumstance and opportunity, both structural and agential, leading to a view of strategy as an ad hoc, if not chaotic, enterprise.

The Science of Music
  • Knowledge Production in Medieval Baghdad and Beyond
  • Mohammad Sadegh Ansari
  • Published online:
    19 December 2024
    Print publication:
    02 January 2025
  • How did the medieval Islamic intellectual tradition conceptualize, produce, and disseminate scientific knowledge? What can we learn about medieval Islamic civilizations from the way they examined and studied the universe? In answering these fundamental questions, Mohammad Sadegh Ansari provides a unique perspective for the study of both musicology and intellectual history. Widely considered to be an art today, music in the medieval Islamic world was categorized as one of the four branches of the mathematical sciences, alongside arithmetic, geometry, and astronomy; indeed, some philosophers and scholars of music went as far as linking music with medicine and astrology as part of an interconnected web of cosmological knowledge. This innovative book raises fascinating questions about how designating music a 'science' rather than an 'art' impacts our understanding of truth and reconstructs a richly holistic medieval system of knowledge in the process.
Cross-Cultural Collaboration in Popular Music

Cross-Cultural Collaboration in Popular Music
  • Practice-Based Research
  • Toby Martin, Seyed MohammadReza Beladi, Đăng Lan
  • Published online:
    13 December 2024
    Print publication:
    16 January 2025
  • Cross-cultural collaboration in popular music represents opportunities for the audibility of multiple voices and the creation of new sounds, but it also presents many challenges. These challenges are both musical – that is, how to technically match voices – and ethical – that is, how to negotiate historically entrenched power discrepancies. Practice-based research has recently developed as a field in popular music studies. This burgeoning area has much to offer in terms of new knowledge, based on embodied insights, lived experience, and an arts practice. Through a practitioner-centred account of three projects involving traditional Persian and Vietnamese musicians, and western folk/rock musicians, this Element suggests pragmatic strategies and conceptual frameworks for making pop music with people of different cultural backgrounds.

The Art of Counterpoint from Du Fay to Josquin
  • Jesse Rodin
  • Published online:
    05 December 2024
    Print publication:
    12 December 2024
  • This book transforms our understanding of a fifteenth-century musical revolution. Renaissance composers developed fresh ways of handling musical flow in pursuit of intensifications, unexpected explosions, dramatic pauses, and sudden evaporations. A new esthetics of opposition, as this study calls it, can be contrasted with smoother and less goal-oriented approaches in music from before – and after – the period ca. 1425–1520. Casting wide evidentiary and repertorial nets, the book reinterprets central genres, theoretical concepts, historical documents, famous pieces, and periodizations; a provocative concluding chapter suggests that we moderns have tended to conceal the period's musical poetics by neglecting central evidence. Above all the book introduces an analytical approach sensitive to musical flow and invites new ways of hearing, performing, and thinking about music from Du Fay to Josquin.
Popular Music in Brazil

Popular Music in Brazil
  • Identity, Genres and Industry
  • Martha Tupinambá de Ulhôa, Leonardo De Marchi, Renato Pereira Torres Borges
  • Published online:
    04 December 2024
    Print publication:
    12 December 2024
  • This Element outlines an overview of popular music made in Brazil, from the nineteenth century to the beginning of the twenty-first century. Initially addressing the definition of the 'popular' category, discussion then follows on the ways a Brazilian music identity was built after the country's independence in 1822 until the end of the 1920s. An idea of 'popular music' was consolidated throughout the twentieth century, from being associated with rural musical performances of oral tradition to the recorded urban musical genres that were established through radio and television. After exploring the world of mass popular music, the relationships between traditional and modern, the topics of cultural diversity, multiculturalism, and the impact of digitalization, as well as the musical kaleidoscope of the twenty-first century, the Element ends with an insight into music genres in the era of digital platforms.
Elliott Carter's String Quartet No. 1

Elliott Carter's String Quartet No. 1
  • Myths, Narratives, and Cold War Cultural Diplomacy
  • Laura Emmery
  • Published online:
    29 November 2024
    Print publication:
    02 January 2025
  • This Element offers a critical analysis of the history of Elliott Carter's String Quartet No. 1 and the composer's rise to public acclaim, not through the study of the work itself but through intriguing and captivating narratives that surround this quartet and their socio-cultural-political context, which led Carter to become one of the most dominant voices in the post-1945 American music scene. Carter's road to success was meticulously paved by powerful institutions and individuals, including critics, scholars, festival and radio programming directors, and the US government, for whom, in the context of the Cold War, Carter was chosen to represent an exemplary American triumphant story. The author argues that it is not the quartet itself that contributed to Carter's reception and legacy, but the inextricable narratives that we associate with this work.

Page 1 of 3