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The 39 Steps: A British Film Guide
Mark Glancy
Manufacturer: I. B. Tauris
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The 39 Steps
ASIN: 186064614X |
Book Description
Combining humor and thrills in equal measure, The 39 Steps (1935) established Alfred Hitchock's name as the "master of suspense" and is the best remembered and most acclaimed of his British films. Included in this original companion to the film are the intriguing story of the film's production, an examination of its influences, including John Buchan's novel, an original and close analysis of the film, its critical legacy and a survey of the successive films also based on Buchan's novel.
Book Description
Claudio Monteverdi (1567-1643) was the first great opera composer and is often hailed as the creator of modern music. His genius was often likened to that of Mozart, Wagner, and Verdi, but in many of the world's opera houses his operas often receive an almost chilly respect, far removed from the nearly universal love aroused by those later masters. This book, the first layperson's guide to Monteverdi, seeks to stimulate appreciation for his operas by examining them not as musicological relics but as the vital theatrical experiences they are. Ringer places Monteverdi's operatic works within the musical and theatrical framework of his era, offering a brief sketch of the composer's early years and detailing the complex forces that led to the emergence of opera in late sixteenth-century Florence. Opera's First Master enables opera lovers to see and hear Monteverdi's masterpieces anew, while opening new channels of inquiry into how Monteverdean opera "works" in the theater.
Customer Reviews:
Opera's First Master: Unlocking the Masters, No. 8.......2006-11-14
This is a good book with engaging and thorough review of each of his operas. The reviews are so detailed that it would be outstanding study for any team planning to perform these operas. A moderate list of references is provided with references noted in the text. There is a good index. There is a recording with excerpts from recent performances. The thing I like best about this book is that all the CD, DVD and book references include very recently released works so this book is very up-to-date.
knowledgeable, encompassing introducton to this composer's works.......2006-05-02
The author who is an Associate Professor of Theater at Marymount College supports his belief that "Claudio Moneteverdi (1567-1643) was the first great opera composer" by commentaries on his operas scene by scene. Ringer follows the narrative line (such as it is in opera) and profiles the characters while explaining the role and effects of the music and words on these. Introductory parts give a biography of Monteverdi focusing on his distinctive creative genius and viewing him in the context of the development of opera in Florence in late Renaissance Italy. The CD contains 13 selections from Monteverdi operas; which are annotated in back matter. Ringer's accessible treatment of this outstanding and influential composer is an ideal introduction and companion to Monteverdi's operas.
Covers his Life and his Three Great Works.......2006-04-25
In part this book is a short biography of Monteverdi. And in part it discusses his place as the originator of opera as we know it today. But mostly it's about the three surviving operas that he wrote: L'Orfeo (Orpheus, 1607), Il ritorno d'Ulisse in patria (The Return of Ulysses to his Homeland, 1640), and L'incoronazione di Poppea (The Coronation of Poppea, 1643). The stated purpose of the book is not to treat these works as merely a part of operatic history, but explaining the vital theatrical experiences that they are.
Each of the three operas gets a complete description including the history, the nature of the roles, and of course a summay of the story.
The book includes a CD that has significant excerpts from the three operas.
This book is part of a series called Unlocking the Masters that covers the work of our most important composers. The whole series is excellent, bringing us a concise yet complete story that is both informative and easy to read.
Verdi for everyone.......2006-03-18
I love this series (besides Verdi, it has Wagner, Mozart, Haydn, etc.) Being able to hear the music as you read about it makes a huge difference, and the text is written in an accessible way. It breaks the stereotype of Classical music being staid and boring.
Customer Reviews:
Superb book on music from Monteverdi through Bach and Handel.......2005-11-10
Although written in 1947, this book remains a very fine text on what we call the Baroque era of music. This is roughly the transition caused by the aesthetics of the Florentine Camerata at the end of the 16th century through the culmination of the late Baroque in Bach and Handel. Bach's sons and their contemporaries were the transition towards the Classic period (Gallant and Rococo).
The writing is clear with lots of helpful musical examples and illustrations. More than just a chronology or lists of dates and names, there is a great deal of focus on style that helps us understand what the people of those years said they were trying to achieve with their music and art. Bukofzer is also excellent in pointing out the differences in the aesthetics of various countries. It was not like our time where everything is broadcast at once by the media or produced in vast quantities by huge manufacturing concerns. Ideas traveled more slowly from court to court and at varying rates. Sometimes the changes happened more quickly than others. And, as always, there are differences between what the people in the sixteenth, seventeenth, and early eighteenth centuries thought was valuable and what we value two or three hundred years later.
The extensive bibliography is still valuable even if it doesn't include the huge number of valuable publications on this subject that have been published in the last fifty years. It is not that this book is outdated. What it discusses it discusses very well. However, a great deal of research and thinking about the Baroque has been done in the past twenty or thirty years and your reading and listening will have to become informed by this later work as well. Just don't miss out on this wonderful book, especially since used copies can be had so inexpensively!
A compelling discussion of Baroque musical style.......1998-11-04
More than 50 years after its publication, Professor Bukofzer's book remains as an examplar of how to discuss musical style. His revelatory insights into the origins and details of Baroque style have set standards respected and imitated by generations of scholars. Another beauty of the book is the clarity and accessibility of his ideas. Performers, amateurs, and scholars will all find many interesting ideas in this book. Some details of chronology and attribution of music have since been corrected in more recent scholarly books, but the real value of this book is in the excellent discussions of the origin of style, and Bokofzer's gift is timeless. Anyone who reads music and has an interest in Baroque music will find this book to be well-written and of immense value.
Book Description
Paolo Fabbri's Monteverdi, first published in Italian, is the leading study of the greatest composer of late Renaissance and early Baroque Italy, rightly called the "father of modern music." A large number of contemporary documents, including some 130 of his own letters, offer rich insights into the composer and his times, also illuminating the many and varied contexts for music-making in the most important musical centers in Italy. This newly revised translation brings an indispensable text to a much broader readership.
Book Description
This detailed study of the earliest opera to have gained a foothold in the modern repertoire has three main sections, with contributions from experts on various aspects of the opera's history and performance.
The book begins with a historical section, in which all the known evidence about the creation and early performances of "Orfeo" is drawn together and evaluated. The first chapter recounts the story of the early Mantuan performances, with the aid of hitherto unpublished contemporary correspondence (the texts of the letters are given, in Italian and English, in an appendix). The sources of the libretto are studied in this section, and the text of the original ending of the opera is given together with an English translation. This section ends with a detailed analytical synopsis of the opera, which considers (among other points) the reasons for believing that the opera was originally staged without breaks between the acts, and the implications of this for performers and critics today.
The second section of the book includes a detailed history of the rediscovery of the opera; an influential essay on the opera by Joseph Kerman is reprinted here, together with a review by Romain Rolland of the first modern performance of "Orfeo." The final section includes essays by a conductor and a producer who have staged notable performances of the opera in recent years. They explain their approaches to the work, and offer solutions to some of the problems that it poses in performance.
This book--essential reading for all students of Monteverdi and of the early history of opera--will also enhance the enjoyment of opera-goers and record-collectors alike.
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Vespro della Beata Vergine: Marienvesper (1610)
Jerome Roche
Manufacturer: Eulenburg
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
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ASIN: 3795769620 |
Book Description
Monteverdi's Vespers of 1610 is a work which has both fascinated and perplexed musicologists and performers for many years. It forms by far the larger part of the composer's first significant publication of sacred music, entitled: 'Of the most blessed virgin a Mass for six voices for church choirs, and Vespers for more voices with several sacred concertos suitable for princely chapels or apartments'. By the time this publication appeared, Monteverdi had been in the service of the Gonzaga court at Mantua for at least 18 years, and he was seeking a change of employment, so that the dedication of the volume to the reigning pope, Paul V, may be interpreted as a form of self-advertisement. Originally issued as an Urtext study score, the edition is based closely on the extant printed source, the set of partbooks published at Venice in 1610, and retains the original note values, key and mensuration signatures. (Deus in adiutorium) Domine ad adiuvandum * Dixit Dominus * Nigra sum * Laudate pueri * Pulchra es * Laetatus sum * Duo Seraphim * Nisi Dominus * Audi coelum * Lauda Jerusalem * Sonata sopra Sancta Maria * Ave maris stella * Magnificat for Double Mixed Choir (SATTB/SATTB), SSAATTBB Soli and Orchestra
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100 Songs for Kids (Sing-along Favorites)
Manufacturer: Alfred Publishing Company
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Binding: Paperback
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ASIN: 0757980422 |
Product Description
A big collection of childhood favorites designed to encourage parents and teachers to sing along with their kids. A great method for interacting with children through music! Titles include: Baa Baa Black Sheep * Daisy Daisy * Do Your Ears Hang Low? * The Farmer in the Dell * Happy Birthday * Here We Go Round the Mulberry Bush * I'm a Little Teapot * Jack and Jill * London Bridge Is Falling Down * Mary Had a Little Lamb * On Top of Old Smokey * Pop Goes the Weasel * Skip to My Lou * Three Blind Mice and many more.
Amazon.com
A successful expansion of his lecture series at Harvard, Thomas Kelly's First Nights chronicles the events leading to the first performances of five enduring masterpieces. He places Monteverdi's opera L'Orfeo, Handel's venerable Messiah, symphonies by Beethoven and Berlioz, and the Stravinsky ballet The Rite of Spring in the respective contexts of the cities, musical cultures, and performance venues in which they were first heard. Kelly builds his chapters through an accumulation of minute but not trivial detail. The first Euridice in L'Orfeo was a castrato priest; the oppression of Catholics in Handel's Dublin was shocking; the legendary catcalls at The Rite of Spring's premiere began before the curtain went up.
As Kelly gathers these pieces of the puzzle together, we become desperate to find out what will happen, completely forgetting that we already know how the music ultimately triumphed over time. Along the way, there is hilarious information about the audiences (Handel's would not have been out of place at a rodeo, though Monteverdi's was unusually well informed) and reactions from the performers (conductor Pierre Monteux apparently always hated the Rite). There are also many factoids about how the music must have sounded. (Did you know that the first performance of Beethoven's Ninth included a piano?)
Kelly has provocative ideas about performance practice, suggesting that it is really a matter of how adaptable musicians need to be; he feels that musical works themselves, not just our perceptions of them, change over time. A great deal of First Nights is devoted to documents about the works, and the discography is helpfully annotated by Jen-Yen Chen. The book is unusually well designed, and no knowledge of score reading is necessary. --William R. Braun
Book Description
First Nights encourages music lovers to listen to five key masterworks of the Western classical tradition with fresh ears, as if they were attending the premiers themselves. In clear, lively, and engaging prose, Kelly sets the scene for each of these "first nights," discussing the city, the concert hall, the audience, the composer, the musicians, the instruments, the performance, and the popular and critical response. Extracts from contemporary letters, press reports, account books, and other sources accompany the text in sidebars, along with well-chosen illustrations. These and other documents are quoted in full in separate documentary sections, together with guides to further listening and reading. This book is first and foremost a general-interest book, for people who enjoy going to concerts and listening to recordings, although they may have no formal musical training.
Customer Reviews:
A Harvard Course in a Nutshell.......2005-01-23
I took Professor Thomas Kelly's "First Nights: Five Performance Premieres" class at Harvard, and it was an amazing experience. His lectures were loosely based off of this book, and always garnered curious visitors in the lecture hall. While I didn't read the book during the course, because the material was repetitive with his lectures, I read all of it in anticipation for the final, and it was as if Professor Kelly was giving a personal lecture to me, all without leaving the comfort of my room. It is well written, well researched, anecdotal without being too convoluted, and entertaining, most importantly! I highly highly recommend this book! I am looking forward to reading his First Nights at the Opera book soon. If you ever have a chance to visit Harvard, do come by to listen to one of his lectures (Fall semester, Tu/Th at 10 AM in Sanders Theater)
A Coffee Table Book You Should Actually Read.......2000-07-23
It's easy as a listener to get caught up in the impact of great music on us today and to ignore the people who brought it about in the first place. Kelly has done a wonderful job of enlightening and enlivening my experience of these five works, four of which I've spent a lot of time with over the years. He brings together stories on the composition, the cultural setting, and the nuts and bolts of putting on the first performances in a way that both academics and popular readers will appreciate.
New Insights into Old Favorites.......2000-06-12
This book brings together an extraordinary amount of interesting information about 5 of the greatest works of Western music, in the context of trying to recreate their first performances. Kelly writes with the interest of an enthusiast, but the scholarly background is immense, as befits a university press book. Plenty of interesting illustrations and diagrams, and interesting pull-quotes in boxes, break up the text, enhancing readability. I had not previously been aware that the version heard at the first concert of Berlioz's Symphonie Fantastique was subjected to significant rewriting before being published in the form performed today -- this is typical of the interesting insights the book adds to common knowledge. Also, that Berlioz changed the selection of wind instruments, but that one can hear many of the originals on some recent recordings. My only disappointment was that Kelly stopped at 5 works - I would love a similar work-up of first performances of the Wagner Ring Cycle, Mozart's Figaro, and a major work of Mahler - perhaps the first performance of the 8th Symphony. I guess that just means that Kelly might profitably prepare a sequel!
Book Description
Monteverdi's opera L'Orfeo, first performed in Mantua in 1607, is an important milestone in the history of opera. In this new critical edition the entire libretto by Alessandro Striggio is reproduced, including those parts of the text that are not set to music, in the original Italian as well as in a German and English translation.
Book Description
All madrigals from one of the Baroque master's most popular books, reprinted from authoritative Italian edition. New preface, new English translations of the original prefatory material and the Italian texts printed in poem form facing new English line-for-line literal translations.
Book Description
Thirty-nine secular madrigals representing "the peak of the music that Monteverdi produced in the first half of his life" (Grove's Dictionary) are essential to the repertoire of serious vocal students. Amateurs and professionals alike will enjoy the new English translations printed alongside the most reliable Italian text. Preface and translations by Stanley Appelbaum.
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