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235 results in Twentieth-Century and Contemporary Music

Page 1 of 12

The World of Leonard Cohen
  • Edited by David R. Shumway
  • Coming soon
  • Expected online publication date:
    January 2026
    Print publication:
    31 January 2026

The Cambridge Companion to French Art Song
  • Edited by Stephen Rumph
  • Coming soon
  • Expected online publication date:
    October 2025
    Print publication:
    31 October 2025
  • The twenty-first century has witnessed a surge of scholarly interest in the French art song, or mélodie, with a flood of new books, articles, and editions. This Companion draws on the best of this new research, with chapters by world-renowned scholars and performers examining French art song through the practicality of performance, both pianistic and vocal. The book surveys the repertory chronologically from the 1820s into the 1950s, covering all the central composers (Berlioz, Gounod, Fauré, Debussy, Duparc, Chausson, Ravel, Poulenc, Messiaen, and many more). It includes chapters on the role of women in the creation, performance, and diffusion of French song; the analysis of French prosody and poetic forms; the position of the mélodie in French literary history; and the interpretation of mélodie in performance. Scholars, students, performers, and music lovers will find thorough and up-to-date resources to enable them to explore this crucial yet understudied song repertory.

Anton Webern at the Dawn of Modernism
  • Sebastian Wedler
  • Coming soon
  • Expected online publication date:
    October 2025
    Print publication:
    31 October 2025
  • Anton Webern is recognised as one of the pivotal figures of atonality and precursors to post-war serialism. However, his earlier, tonal works have been largely neglected and shrouded in clichés. A study of both the generative elements of Webern's aesthetic imagination, and the philosophical signatures of musical modernity, this first book-length account of Webern's tonal music explores the complex and variegated ways in which the young composer engaged with, and sought to contribute to, the cultural discourses of fin-de-siècle modernism, well before he self-consciously embarked upon his famous 'path' to the New Music. While acknowledging the rapid stylistic transformation that Webern's musical language underwent, the author suggests that earliness in Webern is not simply a chronological term but is rather best understood in terms of a constitutive tension between phenomenological and dialectical modes of musical thought.

The Cambridge Companion to Global Rap
  • Edited by Richard Bramwell, Alex de Lacey
  • Coming soon
  • Expected online publication date:
    July 2025
    Print publication:
    31 July 2025
  • Rap has remapped the way we think about music. For more than fifty years its poetics, performance and political power has resonated across the globe. This Companion offers an array of perspectives on the form, from the fields of sociology, linguistics, musicology, psychology, literary studies, education and law, unpacking how this versatile form of oral communication has permeated nearly every aspect of daily life. Taking a decidedly global perspective, these accounts draw from practice in Australia, China, France, Germany, Jamaica, India and Tanzania; exploring how the form has taken hold in particular contexts, and what this can tell us about the medium itself and the environments in which it was repurposed. An indispensable resource for students and researchers, the collection provides an introduction to global rap studies as well as insights into the some of the most important and exciting new developments in this field.

Schoenberg in Context
  • Edited by Alexander Carpenter
  • Coming soon
  • Expected online publication date:
    July 2025
    Print publication:
    31 July 2025
  • Contradictory and paradoxical, Schoenberg was responsible for explosively radical innovations in composition - including atonality and the twelve-tone method - that changed the face of music in the twentieth century. This volume explores Schoenberg's life, work and world, offering contributions from internationally recognized musicologists, music theorists, cultural historians, literary scholars and more. Chapters examine the different places where Schoenberg lived, his various approaches to composition, the people and institutions that shaped his life and work, and the big issues and ideas that informed his worldview, including religion, gender, technology and politics. This book is essential for students and educators but also accessible to a general audience interested in the intersections of music, modernity, society and culture, offering a variety of fresh, multi-disciplinary perspectives on Schoenberg and his richly variegated world.

Boulez in Context
  • Edited by Edward Campbell
  • Coming soon
  • Expected online publication date:
    June 2025
    Print publication:
    30 June 2025
  • Pierre Boulez was a towering figure in contemporary music from the 1940s and 1950s to his death in 2016. This volume demonstrates his distinctive impact on new music and situates him within a wide range of contexts to enhance appreciation of the cultural embeddedness of his work. Successive sections consider his early life and education, his engagements with cultural, musical, literary and artistic modernism, his relationships with his modernist predecessors and contemporaries, and the intersections of his work with literature, visual art, mathematics, philosophy and technology. Contributors explore his various roles as composer, conductor, recording artist, writer, teacher and systems builder, as well as his role in French cultural politics, his move to Germany and the time he spent in the United States. This book is essential for students and educators but also accessible to a general audience interested in Boulez's legacy and his unique position in recent music history.

The Cambridge Companion to The Rite of Spring
  • Edited by Davinia Caddy
  • Coming soon
  • Expected online publication date:
    May 2025
    Print publication:
    31 May 2025
  • A Companion not only to the historic, path-breaking ballet production by Diaghilev, Nijinsky, Roerich and Stravinsky that premiered in Paris in 1913, but also to its legacy across the centuries. The newly commissioned essays will guide students and ballet-goers as they encounter this fascinating work and enable them to navigate the complex artistic currents it set in motion, intertwining music, theatrical ballet and modern dance with the wider world of ideas. The book embraces The Rite of Spring as a spectrum of creative possibility that has impacted the arts, politics, gender, race and national identity, and even popular culture, from the 1910s to the present day. It distils an enormous body of literature, sharing insights from the very latest research while inviting readers to rethink standard scholarly narratives, and brings together contributions from specialists across multiple disciplines: music history, theory and analysis, dance and theatre studies, art history, Russian history, and European modernism.

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 Companion to Music in Australia
  • Edited by Amanda Harris, Clint Bracknell
  • Published online:
    14 November 2024
    Print publication:
    14 November 2024
  • As a companion to 'music in Australia', rather than 'Australian music', this book acknowledges the complexity and contestation inherent in the term 'Australia', whilst placing the music of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people at its very heart. This companion emphasizes a diversity of musical experiences in the breadth of musical practice that flows though Australia, including Indigenous song, art music, children's music, jazz, country, popular music forms and music that blurs genre boundaries. Organised in four themed sections, the chapters present the latest research alongside perspectives of current creative artists to explore communities of practice and music's ongoing entanglements between Indigenous and non-Indigenous cultural practices, the influence of places near and far, of continuity, tradition, adaptation, and change. In the final chapter, we pick up where these chapters have taken us, asking what is next for music in Australia for the future.

The Cambridge Companion to the Electric Guitar
  • Edited by Jan-Peter Herbst, Steve Waksman
  • Published online:
    08 November 2024
    Print publication:
    17 October 2024
  • The electric guitar is one of the most important musical instruments and cultural artifacts of the 20th and 21st centuries and enjoys popularity worldwide. Designed for students, this Companion explores electric guitar technology and performance, and the instrument's history and cultural impact. Chapters focused on the social significance of the electric guitar draw attention to the ways in which gender and race have shaped and been shaped by it, the ecology of electric guitar manufacturing, and the participation of electric guitarists in online communities. Contributions on electric guitar history stretch the chronology backwards in time and broaden our ideas of what belongs in that history, and those addressing musical style investigate the cultural value of virtuosity while providing material analysis of electric guitar technique. The Companion's final section considers the electric guitar's global circulation, particularly in Africa, the Afro-Caribbean, and Southeast Asia.

The Year that Made the Musical
  • 1924 and the Glamour of Musical Theatre
  • William A. Everett
  • Published online:
    26 September 2024
    Print publication:
    11 July 2024
  • Whether they appeared on Broadway or the Strand, the shows appearing in 1924 epitomized the glamor of popular musical theatre. What made this particular year so distinctive – so special – was the way it brought together the old and the new, the venerated and the innovative, and the traditional and the chic. William Everett, in his compelling new book, reveals this remarkable mid-Roaring Twenties stagecraft to have been truly transnational, with a stellar cast of producers, performers and creators boldly experimenting worldwide. Revues, musical comedies, zarzuelas and operettas formed part of a thriving theatrical ecosystem, with many works – and their leading artists – now unpredictably defying genres. The author demonstrates how fresh approaches became highly successful, with established leads like Marie Tempest and Fred Stone appearing in new productions even as youthful talents such as Florence Mills, Fred and Adele Astaire, Gertrude Lawrence and George Gershwin now started to make their mark.

The Cambridge Companion to Composition
  • Edited by Toby Young
  • Published online:
    25 May 2024
    Print publication:
    30 May 2024
  • There are as many ways of creating music as there are composers in the world, with a vast array of possible methods and practices. This book provides essential critical and practical tools for composers as they try to navigate this complex landscape, whilst also offering provocations for practitioners discovering their own voices and solidifying their place in their musical communities. Designed to be a companion in the truest sense, the book offers practical support throughout the creative process and thought-provoking insights on technical questions for a range of compositional approaches.

Debussy in Context
  • Edited by Simon Trezise
  • Published online:
    23 May 2024
    Print publication:
    23 May 2024
  • Exploring the many dimensions of Debussy's historical significance, this volume provides new perspectives on the life and work of a much-loved composer and considers how social and political contexts shape the way we approach and perform his works today. In short, focused chapters building on recent research, contributors chart the influences, relationships and performances that shaped Debussy's creativity, and the ways he negotiated the complex social and professional networks of music, literature, art, and performance (on and off the stage) in Belle Époque Paris. It probes Debussy's relationship with some of the most influential '-isms' of his time, including his fascination with early music and with the 'exotic', and assesses his status as a pioneer of musical modernism and his continuing popularity with performers and listeners alike.

Musical Modernism in Global Perspective
  • Entangled Histories on a Shared Planet
  • Björn Heile
  • Published online:
    23 May 2024
    Print publication:
    30 May 2024
  • In the first study of the global dimensions of musical modernism, Björn Heile proposes a novel theory according to which musical modernism is constituted by a global diasporic network of composers, musicians and institutions. In a series of historical and analytical case studies from different parts of the world, this book overcomes the respective limitations of both Eurocentric and postcolonial, revisionist accounts, focusing instead on the transnational entanglements between the West and other world regions. Key topics include migration, the transnational reception and transfer of musical works and ideas, institutions such as the International Society for Contemporary Music (ISCM) and composers who are rarely discussed in Western academia, such as the Nigerian-born Akin Euba and the Korean-German Younghi Pagh-Paan. Influenced by the interdisciplinary notion of 'entangled histories', Heile critiques established dichotomies, all the while highlighting the unequal power relations on which the existing global order is founded.

The Songs of Jean Sibelius
  • Poetry, Music, Performance
  • Gustav Djupsjöbacka
  • Published by:
    Boydell & Brewer
    Published online:
    15 May 2024
    Print publication:
    05 December 2023
  • A landmark in Sibelius scholarship, this is the first book that presents all of Sibelius's solo art songs in their musical and aesthetic context. Indispensable for scholars and performers alike.

Charles Villiers Stanford
  • Man and Musician
  • 2nd edition
  • Jeremy Dibble
  • Published by:
    Boydell & Brewer
    Published online:
    12 May 2024
    Print publication:
    09 April 2024
  • Substantially revised and expanded edition that sheds new light on Stanford's career as composer, conductor and teacher, as well as promoter of opera in English and arranger of Irish folk music.

Music in Edwardian London
  • Simon McVeigh
  • Published by:
    Boydell & Brewer
    Published online:
    09 May 2024
    Print publication:
    21 May 2024
  • Traversing London's musical culture, this book boldly illuminates the emergence of Edwardian London as a beacon of musical innovation.

Leonard Bernstein in Context
  • Edited by Elizabeth A. Wells
  • Published online:
    06 April 2024
    Print publication:
    28 March 2024
  • Designed for students, aficionados of classical music, and historians, this volume offers a wide-ranging, multi-disciplinary and comprehensive view of one of the most important musicians of the twentieth century at his 100th anniversary. Scholars from diverse backgrounds and fields have contributed rich insights into Bernstein's life and work in an approachable style, shedding light on Bernstein's social, professional and ideological contexts including his contemporaries and rivals on Broadway, his artistic collaborations, his celebrity status as a conductor on the international concert circuit, and his involvement in music education via broadcasting. From his early education, through his conducting and composing careers, to his fame as musical and cultural ambassador to the world, this book views Bernstein the man and the artist and provides a fascinating overview of American classical music culture during Bernstein's long career in the public spotlight.

Vaughan Williams in Context
  • Edited by Julian Onderdonk, Ceri Owen
  • Published online:
    28 March 2024
    Print publication:
    04 April 2024
  • Challenging residual doubts about Vaughan Williams's role and significance within twentieth-century music and culture, this book places and explores his life and music in their broad musical, cultural, social, and political contexts. Chapters by scholars from a range of disciplines re-evaluate the composer's life and career within a world marked by both rapid change and refigured traditions. Building on scholarship that has established Vaughan Williams as aesthetically and politically progressive, the book furthers a revisionist perspective by broadening understandings of the nature of his responses to the twentieth century. This portrait of a modern composer emerges not merely by focusing on under-represented interests and pursuits, but also by contextualizing those activities that have been misrepresented as conservative or backward-looking.

French Art Song
  • History of a New Music, 1870-1914
  • Emily Kilpatrick
  • Published by:
    Boydell & Brewer
    Published online:
    15 February 2024
    Print publication:
    08 November 2022
  • A ground-breaking study of the musical and literary priorities, professional practices and creative interactions that shaped one of the most adventurous artforms of the Belle Époque.

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