Böcker i The Bard Music Festival-serien

Dmitri Shostakovich (1906 - 1975) has a reputation as one of the leading composers of the twentieth century. This work expands the traditional purview of Shostakovich's world, exploring the composer's creativity and art in terms of the expectations - historical, cultural, and political - that forged them.

Gustav Mahler's music has provoked extreme responses from the public and from experts. This volume examines the broader political, social, and literary changes reflected in Mahler's music. It examines the composer's Jewish identity, and considers contemporary theories of memory, and the theatricality of Mahler's art and fin-de-siecle politics.

Arnold Schoenberg (1874-1951) is acknowledged as one of the significant and multifaceted composers. This work captures Schoenberg at critical periods of his career: during the first decades of the century, primarily in his native Vienna; from 1926 to 1933, in Berlin; and from 1933 on, in the US.

Brings together several Leos Janacek scholars to look closely at a range of issues surrounding his life and work. This book features essays accompanied by translated writings by the composer himself. It includes essays on Naturalism, opera direction, and Tristan and Isolde and four impressionistic chronicles of the 'speech melodies' of daily life.

Attempts to capture the complexity of Claude Debussy's personal and artistic identity within the picture of the musical, social, and political world of fin-de-siecle Paris. This book traces his perpetual reinvention, both social and creative, from his earliest to his last works.

In his roles as keyboard virtuoso, conductor, and master teacher, Franz Liszt reinvented the concert experience, advanced an agenda for symphonic and dramatic music, and transmitted the foundations of modern pianism. Placing emphasis on historical contexts, this book aims to advance our understanding of the composer with fresh perspectives.