Böcker i Eastman Studies in Music-serien

A revelatory study of how composers and dramatists of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century France criticized and trivialized independent women in their portrayals of them in works of theater and opera.Seventeenth- and eighteenth-century French theatrical works created an uneasy dialogue with the often-blistering depictions of marriage in contemporary writings by literary women. For over a century, composers and librettists attempted to silence such anti-traditionalist views through dramas that ridicule, banish, or, even more violently, silence and subjugate female characters who resist marriage. These dramas portray independent-minded women as agents ofchaos who deploy their sexuality to destabilize class demarcations, or to destroy families and at times the monarchy itself. Coquettes, Wives, and Widows: Gender Politics in French Baroque Opera and Theater shows how dramatists wrested narratives away from women and weaponized those narratives in a defense of the status quo. It examines a wide range of works of different types: from Jean-Philippe Rameau's Platee, ou Junon jalouseand Andre Campra's Arethuse, ou la Vengeance de l'Amour to representative works from the Comedie Francaise, the Comedie Italienne, and the fairgound theaters. Each theater offered denigrating portraits of independent womenas dissolute, obstinate, and extremist. The operas and other theatrical works explored in Coquettes, Wives, and Widows reveal who (in the view of many at the time) should exercise authority to make choices aboutwomen's lives. They also give evidence of widespread fears about how society might change if it were to grant women themselves that responsibility. Marcie Ray is Associate Professor of Musicology at Michigan State University.

The first study focusing on the composition of new plainchant in northern-French confraternities for masses and offices in honor of saints thought to have healing powersStarting in the fourteenth century, northern France saw the rise of confraternities and other lay communities of men and women, organized around trades and religious devotions dedicated to specific patron saints. The composition of new plainchant for masses and offices in honor of saints thought to have healing powers occupied an important place in the devotional landscape of the region. Sarah Ann Long's deeply researched new book highlights the decentralized nature of religious and spiritual authority from 1300-1550, which allowed confraternities to cultivate liturgical practices heavily influenced by popular devotional literature. It challenges pre-conceived notions of the power of the Catholic Church at that time, and the extent to which religious devotions were regulated and standardized. The resulting conclusion is that confraternity devotions occupied a liminal space that provided a certain amount of musical freedom. Examining musical culture at the intersection of the medieval and early modern eras, this work explores such subjects as manuscript production and early music printing; and it investigates not only plainchant, but a broad range of musical styles from the fourteenth through the sixteenth centuries. These include polyphonic embellishments of chant written by some of the most famous composers of the era, which were performed at the French, Burgundian, and Papal Courts.

Scholars explore from many fresh angles the interweavings of two of the richest strands of human culture - music and esotericism - with examples from the medieval period to the modern age.

The first biography of the composer Gérard Grisey shows how the artist's sensuality and rigor came together to form the musical genre known as spectralism.

This biography of Minna Planer, Richard Wagner's wife of 30 years, reveals her as an artist who was vital to her husband's creative life.

A long-needed and up-to-date overview of the syntax and principles that make Verdi's operas so effective and so beloved today.

Essays on the history of bands in America from ca. 1820 to 1930, offering new insights on a major sphere of music making that brought diverse repertories to wide audiences.