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. Series
  3. Cambridge Library Collection - Music

The systematic academic study of music gave rise to works of description, analysis and criticism, by composers and performers, philosophers and anthropologists, historians and teachers and by a new kind of scholar - the musicologist. This series makes available a range of significant works encompassing all aspects of the developing discipline.

Refine search

Refine search

Content type:
Publication date:
Subject: Show more
Journals Show more
Publishers: 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
×

178 results in Cambridge Library Collection - Music

Page 8 of 9

British Musical Biography
  • A Dictionary of Musical Artists, Authors and Composers, born in Britain and its Colonies
  • Edited by James Duff Brown, Stephen S. Stratton
  • Published online:
    05 October 2010
    Print publication:
    20 July 2009
    First published in:
    1897
  • Co-authored by James D. Brown (also known for A Biographical Dictionary of Musicians) and Stephen S. Stratton, British Musical Biography is an alphabetical reference work to the key achievements of British musical artists, composers and authors from as early as 1042 AD to the end of the nineteenth century. It first appeared in 1897 as an experiment in publishing and was motivated partly by patriotism on the part of the authors. It includes the names of British composers and performers, their dates of birth and death, brief biographies, and details of important works, their first performance, and date of first publication. Interpreting their brief to include the whole of the British empire, the authors have included the names of well over 2,500 famous and lesser-known musicians born in Britain and its colonies.

A Dictionary of Music and Musicians (A.D. 1450–1880)
  • By Eminent Writers, English and Foreign
  • Volume 1
  • Edited by George Grove
  • Published online:
    05 October 2010
    Print publication:
    20 July 2009
    First published in:
    1879
  • This is a reissue of the first edition of George Grove's Dictionary of Music and Musicians, which has since evolved to become the largest and most authoritative work of its kind in English. The project grew in the making: the title page of Volume 1 (1879) refers to 'two volumes', but by the time Volume 4 appeared in 1889 there was also a 300-page appendix and a separate index volume. The dictionary was an international undertaking, with contributors from Paris, Leipzig, Berlin, Vienna and Boston alongside those based in Britain. It was 'intended to supply a great and long acknowledged want' arising from the increased interest in all aspects of music, which was 'rapidly becoming an essential branch of education', and to cater for the professional while being accessible to the amateur. It is a fascinating document of musical tastes and values in the late Victorian period.

Masters of German Music
  • John Alexander Fuller-Maitland
  • Published online:
    05 October 2010
    Print publication:
    20 July 2009
    First published in:
    1894
  • J. A. Fuller Maitland (1856–1936), whose Schumann in the Novello 'Great Musicians' series is also reissued in this series, had a wide-ranging interest in music. He was music critic of The Times for 22 years, was the editor of the second edition of Grove's Dictionary of Music and Musicians, prepared an edition of the Fitzwilliam Virginal Book, and also worked on Purcell and on folk song. This book, published in 1894, surveys the then current state of German music, with essays on Brahms, Bruch, Goldmark and Rheinberger. Bruckner is mentioned as a 'Little Master', and Richard Strauss appears in the final chapter, entitled 'New Paths (?)' but the surprise for present-day readers is that the composer fulsomely claimed by Fuller Maitland as the natural successor to Wagner, Cyrill Kistler, is now almost completely unknown.

Modern German Music
  • Recollections and Criticisms
  • Volume 2
  • Henry Fothergill Chorley
  • Published online:
    07 September 2010
    Print publication:
    20 July 2009
    First published in:
    1854
  • Henry Fothergill Chorley was music critic of The Athenaeum for over thirty years, and published several books on the state of contemporary European music, including Music and Manners in France and Germany (1841) and Thirty Years' Musical Recollections (1862), both reissued in this series. In the two-volume Modern German Music, published in 1854, he revisits many of the topics and places discussed in the 1841 volume, but views them from the other side of the Year of Revolution, 1848, which, he argues, changed the cultural as well as the political atmosphere of the German states significantly and permanently. Lively descriptions of German cities, their culture and especially their music festivals are accompanied by extended essays on Spohr, Beethoven, Schubert and Mendelssohn, but Chorley is by no means an uncritical observer, and his comments on the rise of nationalism and militarism in the German states after 1848 now seem prophetic.

The Life of Mozart
  • Including his Correspondence
  • Edward Holmes
  • Published online:
    07 September 2010
    Print publication:
    26 November 2009
    First published in:
    1845
  • This 1845 biography of Mozart by the music journalist Edward Holmes was the first to be published in English. Holmes, who numbered the poet Keats and the publisher Vincent Novello amongst his friends, wrote extensively for periodicals including the Musical Times and The Atlas. A lifelong admirer of Mozart's work, Holmes's keen understanding of its significance is evident throughout the biography. It is based on a thorough study of the then available printed and manuscript sources, in particular many of Mozart's letters which Holmes translated and included as he 'endeavoured throughout to let the composer tell his own story'. He was also able to consult Mozart's own catalogue of his works, that compiled by the publisher Johann André, and the Mozart autograph manuscripts bought by André from Mozart's widow Constanze. The work is written in a very approachable style and will appeal to anyone with an interest in Mozart.

The Aristoxenian Theory of Musical Rhythm
  • C. F. Abdy Williams
  • Published online:
    07 September 2010
    Print publication:
    20 July 2009
    First published in:
    1911
  • 'Keeping time', along with artistic accentuation and intelligent phrasing, is essential to successful musical performance. Rhythm alone had rarely been the subject of specialised study until the late nineteenth century, when several books on this topic by Rudolf Westphal were published in Leipzig. Westphal's work inspired Charles Francis Abdy Williams's 1911 book which is reissued here. Williams re-examines the classical and romantic repertoire from Handel to Tchaikovsky in the light of ancient Greek musical theory, focusing particularly on the earliest writings by Artistoxenus of Tarentum (fourth century BCE). In Williams's view, the rhythmic forms used by the Greeks are universally intelligible, and appear in all ages and cultures, unlike melodies or scales, which vary hugely. He provides insights into the microstructure of works including Bach's oratorios, Beethoven's sonatas and Schubert's songs, which will continue to intrigue musicians, classicists and mathematicians today.

Half a Century of Music in England, 1837–1887
  • Essays Towards a History
  • Francis Hueffer
  • Published online:
    29 August 2010
    Print publication:
    24 September 2009
    First published in:
    1889
  • This collection of essays by the music critic Francis Hueffer (1843–1889) is a lively, contemporary account of musical life in Victorian England. First published in 1889, it records the influence of leading foreign composers on English music. Ranging from the music of Handel, Gluck and Haydn to Weber, Rossini,and Mendelssohn, composers who have had a lasting influence on the British musical world, Hueffer, who did not live to see the publication of his book, offers a panoramic view of the rapid development of musical culture in England during the nineteenth century. Starting with a historical introduction to the roles played by the Royal Academy and the Royal College of Music, and moving on to the specific contributions of 'new' composers including Berlioz, Wagner and Liszt, this book is a valuable guide to the history and criticism of music in Victorian England as it was understood at the time.

The Evolution of the Art of Music
  • C. Hubert H. Parry
  • Published online:
    29 August 2010
    Print publication:
    20 July 2009
    First published in:
    1896
  • C. Hubert H. Parry (1848–1918), knighted in 1902 for his services to music, was a distinguished composer, conductor and musicologist. In the first of these roles he is best known for his settings of Blake's 'Jerusalem' and the coronation anthem 'I was glad'. He was an enthusiastic teacher and proselytiser of music, believing strongly in its ability to widen and deepen the experience of Man, and this book, published in 1896 as a revised version of his 1893 The Art of Music, appeared in a series called 'The International Scientific Series'. Parry's intention is to trace the origins of music in 'the music of savages, folk music, and medieval music' and to show 'the continuous process of the development of the Musical Art in actuality'.

Schumann
  • John Alexander Fuller-Maitland
  • Published online:
    29 August 2010
    Print publication:
    27 January 2011
    First published in:
    1884
  • J. A. Fuller Maitland (1856–1936), whose Masters of German Music is also reissued in this series, was music critic of The Times for 22 years, was the editor of the second edition of Grove's Dictionary of Music and Musicians, prepared an edition of the Fitzwilliam Virginal Book, and also worked on Purcell and on folk song. This biography of Schumann, in the 'Great Musicians' series edited by Francis Hueffer, was published in 1884, 28 years after its subject's death. It is dedicated to Schumann's widow, Clara, who the author consulted, along with Joachim and others; but he also acknowledges that those hoping for an exhaustive life of Schumann would be disappointed: 'The time for writing such a life is not yet come.' Nevertheless, this book contains a survey of Schumann's compositions as well as his critical writings and a range of contemporary critical responses to his work.

Summary of the History and Development of Medieval and Modern European Music
  • Charles Hubert Hastings Parry
  • Published online:
    29 August 2010
    Print publication:
    24 September 2009
    First published in:
    1893
  • In 1893, the English composer and director of the Royal College of Music C. Hubert H. Parry published Summary of the Development of Medieval and Modern European Music, an overview of European music from the middle ages to the work of Schubert and Brahms. Intended for music students, the book summarises the major composers, their work and the social circumstances that surrounded the creation of their music. This ambitious book is divided into 12 chronological chapters, from the troubadours and plainsong, through Bach and Handel to the rise of the symphony, Mozart, and the emergence of music as an expression of nationalism. In the book's first part, Parry deftly puts music in historical context, discussing England's Wars of the Roses, and the Reformation in relation to the changing styles throughout the sixteenth century; he then explores the music of the Restoration and the rise of opera.

Music and Manners in France and Germany
  • A Series of Travelling Sketches of Art and Society
  • Volume 2
  • Henry Fothergill Chorley
  • Published online:
    29 August 2010
    Print publication:
    20 July 2009
    First published in:
    1841
  • Henry Fothergill Chorley was music critic of The Athenaeum for over thirty years. This three-volume book, published in 1841, originated in a journal written by Chorley while travelling in Europe. His aim was to 'illustrate the present state of theatrical, orchestral, and chamber music abroad', focusing on aspects that would be least familiar to an English readership. There are detailed accounts of Paris and Berlin, with prominence given to opera, theatre, art galleries and monuments. Chorley also describes visits to Brunswick, Leipzig, Dresden and Nuremburg, and performances by artists including Mendelssohn and Liszt. He intersperses anecdotes about transport, lodgings, landscapes and local customs. Chorley's incisive and entertaining eyewitness accounts will fascinate music-lovers and theatre historians, as well as others interested in the performing arts or travel writing in the nineteenth-century. Volume 2 describes his visits to the Harz mountains and Berlin.

Richard Wagner
  • Francis Hueffer
  • Published online:
    29 August 2010
    Print publication:
    20 July 2009
    First published in:
    1881
  • Francis Hueffer (1845–89) was born and studied music in Germany, but moved to London in 1869 to pursue a career as a critic and writer on music. He edited the series 'The Great Musicians' for Novello and Co., was music critic of The Times, wrote libretti for some now-forgotten operas, and was an early advocate and interpreter to the British of Wagner. Between his Richard Wagner and the Music of the Future (1874) and his translation of the correspondence of Wagner and Liszt (1888), he wrote Wagner in his own 'Great Musicians' series in 1881 (two years before the composer's death). The book surveys Wagner's life and his musical writings, and a separate chapter is devoted to each of the operas (except Parsifal, which was not performed until 1882). This is a fascinating contemporary assessment of the standard-bearer of the 'music of the future'.

A Dictionary of Music and Musicians (A.D. 1450–1880)
  • By Eminent Writers, English and Foreign
  • Volume 4
  • Edited by George Grove
  • Published online:
    29 August 2010
    Print publication:
    20 July 2009
    First published in:
    1889
  • This is a reissue of the first edition of George Grove's Dictionary of Music and Musicians, which has since evolved to become the largest and most authoritative work of its kind in English. The project grew in the making: the title page of Volume 1 (1879) refers to 'two volumes', but by the time Volume 4 appeared in 1889 there was also a 300-page appendix and a separate index volume. The dictionary was an international undertaking, with contributors from Paris, Leipzig, Berlin, Vienna and Boston alongside those based in Britain. It was 'intended to supply a great and long acknowledged want' arising from the increased interest in all aspects of music, which was 'rapidly becoming an essential branch of education', and to cater for the professional while being accessible to the amateur. It is a fascinating document of musical tastes and values in the late Victorian period.

The Music of the Nineteenth Century and its Culture
  • Adolf bernhard Marx
  • Published online:
    29 August 2010
    Print publication:
    20 July 2009
    First published in:
    1855
  • A. B. Marx (1795–1866) was a scholar, teacher and critic of music, for many years Professor of Music at the University of Berlin, and a close friend – before a falling-out over the libretto of an oratorio – of Mendelssohn. This influential book, published in German in 1855 and translated into English in the same year, consists of two parts: a survey of the significance of music to western culture, and an impassioned and thought-provoking guide to the necessary moral qualities, skills and understanding required to teach – and to be taught – music. Marx's appreciation of such composers as Mozart, Beethoven, Berlioz and Wagner is placed in a context in which music is seen as a crucial moral influence on the future development of mankind, and musicians therefore as playing a vital role in that development.

The History of the Royal Academy of Music
  • Compiled from Authentic Sources
  • William Wahab Cazalet
  • Published online:
    29 August 2010
    Print publication:
    20 July 2009
    First published in:
    1854
  • The Royal Academy of Music in London was founded in 1822 by Lord Burghersh (later the 11th Earl of Westmorland), a soldier and keen amateur musician, to whom this book is dedicated. He was supported by the French harpist and composer Nicolas-Charles Bochsa, who had fled to London to avoid prosecution in France for fraud and forgery. In 1854, the Rev. William Wahab Cazalet (1808–75) wrote a history of the Royal Academy 'compiled from authentic sources' and beginning with an adulatory short biography of the Earl. Cazalet remarks in his preface that 'the history comprises only about eleven years of the life of the Institution; but it is this portion alone that has any interest, for when all the struggles and troubles attending its establishment are at an end, the records of a mere routine of business give no material for publication'.

Music and Manners in France and Germany
  • A Series of Travelling Sketches of Art and Society
  • Volume 3
  • Henry Fothergill Chorley
  • Published online:
    29 August 2010
    Print publication:
    20 July 2009
    First published in:
    1841
  • Henry Fothergill Chorley was music critic of The Athenaeum for over thirty years. This three-volume book, published in 1841, originated in a journal written by Chorley while travelling in Europe. His aim was to 'illustrate the present state of theatrical, orchestral, and chamber music abroad', focusing on aspects that would be least familiar to an English readership. There are detailed accounts of Paris and Berlin, with prominence given to opera, theatre, art galleries and monuments. Chorley also describes visits to Brunswick, Leipzig, Dresden and Nuremburg, and performances by artists including Mendelssohn and Liszt. He intersperses anecdotes about transport, lodgings, landscapes and local customs. Chorley's incisive and entertaining eyewitness accounts will fascinate music-lovers and theatre historians, as well as others interested in the performing arts or travel writing in the nineteenth-century. Volume 3 describes visits to Leipzig, Dresden, Nuremburg and Paris.

Studies of Great Composers
  • Charles Hubert Hastings Parry
  • Published online:
    29 August 2010
    Print publication:
    20 July 2009
    First published in:
    1887
  • C. Hubert H. Parry (1848–1918), knighted in 1902 for his services to music, was a distinguished composer, conductor and musicologist. In the first of these roles he is best known for his settings of Blake's 'Jerusalem' and the coronation anthem 'I was glad'. He was an enthusiastic teacher and proselytiser of music, believing strongly in its ability to widen and deepen the experience of Man. This survey of European composers from Palestrina to Wagner was intended for the interested amateur, and begins with a rapid and somewhat dismissive survey of European music up to the Renaissance: each composer subsequently discussed is placed in the context of his time, and in a vigorously expressed conclusion, Parry argues for an aesthetic which recognises that some composers are great, others second-rate and yet others downright bad, and that it is essential that the listening public is able to make this distinction.

The Art of Music
  • C. Hubert H. Parry
  • Published online:
    29 August 2010
    Print publication:
    20 July 2009
    First published in:
    1893
  • C. Hubert H. Parry (1848–1918), knighted in 1902 for his services to music, was a distinguished composer, conductor and musicologist. In the first of these roles he is best known for his settings of Blake's 'Jerusalem' and the coronation anthem 'I was glad'. He was an enthusiastic teacher and proselytiser of music, believing strongly in its ability to widen and deepen the experience of Man. In this book published in 1893 (and later revised as The Evolution of the Art of Music, also reissued in this series), Parry examines the universal impulse to create musical sounds, traces the origins of music in 'primitive' societies using the research of contemporary anthropologists, and surveys the rise of western music from the ancient Greeks to the Victorian age.

A Short History of Cheap Music
  • As Exemplified in the Records of the House of Novello, Ewer and Co., with Special Reference to the First Fifty Years of the Reign of Her Most Gracious Majesty, Queen Victoria
  • George Grove
  • Published online:
    29 August 2010
    Print publication:
    20 July 2009
    First published in:
    1887
  • The publisher Novello was hugely influential in making music affordable for a wider section of the Victorian public. A Short History of Cheap Music, published in 1887, focuses on Novello's role. It begins with the establishment of the house in 1811, when the founder, Vincent Novello, printed his first book at his own personal expense. Soon afterwards the house made available cheap editions of major musical compositions including Mozart's and Haydn's masses, Purcell's sacred music, and various Italian and English works. It also printed a variety of publications and journals dedicated to music, advocated the reduction of taxes on music, and organised events for the advancement of the musical arts. The author shows how by finding cheaper methods for printing music, organising cheap concerts, and establishing new choral societies, the house of Novello gradually created a taste for music among new audiences, a process paralleled today in the new media.

Life and Letters of Sir Charles Hallé
  • Being an Autobiography (1819–1860) with Correspondence and Diaries
  • Charles Hallé
  • Edited by C. E. Hallé, Marie Hallé
  • Published online:
    29 August 2010
    Print publication:
    20 July 2009
    First published in:
    1896
  • Sir Charles Hallé (1819–95) was a German pianist and conductor. At the age of 17 he moved to Paris, where he spent twelve years studying and performing, while moving in circles which included Berlioz, Chopin, Liszt, de Musset and George Sand. In the revolutionary year 1848 he moved to London, where he initiated a series of piano recitals, playing first in his own home and later in St James's Hall, among which he gave the first performance in England of the complete Beethoven piano sonatas. In 1849 he moved to Manchester, and after forming an orchestra for a one-off event in 1857, he began to give regular concerts with it, and conducted it until his death: it is now the world-famous Hallé Orchestra. In this fascinating book, edited by his son and daughter, Hallé's autobiography is accompanied by a selection of letters and extracts from his diaries.

Page 8 of 9