Death In D Minor

When Gethesemane's brother-in-law is accused of stealing a valuable antique, she goes undercover as a musician at a charity ball.

"With few other options, African-American classical musician Gethsemane Brown accepts a less-than-ideal position turning a group of rowdy schoolboys into an award-winning orchestra. Stranded without luggage or money in the Irish countryside, she figures any job is better than none. The perk? Housesitting a lovely cliffside cottage. The catch? The ghost of the cottage's murdered owner haunts the place. Falsely accused of killing his wife (and himself), he begs Gethsemane to clear his name so he can rest in peace. Gethsemane's reluctant investigation provokes a dormant killer and she soon finds herself in grave danger. As Gethsemane races to prevent a deadly encore, will she uncover the truth or star in her own farewell performance?"--Jacket.

Musical semiotics is a new discipline and paradigm of both semiotics and musicology. In its tradition, the current volume constitutes a radically new solution to the theoretical problem of how musical meanings emerge and how they are transmitted by musical signs even in most "absolute" and abstract musical works of Western classical heritage. Works from symphonies, lied, chamber music to opera are approached and studied here with methods of semiotic inspiration. Its analyses stem from systematic methods in the author's previous work, yet totally new analytic concepts are also launched in order to elucidate profound musical significations verbally. The book reflects the new phase in the author's semiotic approach, the one characterized by the so-called "existential semiotics" elaborated on the basis of philosophers from Kant , Hegel and Kierkegaard to Jaspers, Heidegger, Sartre and Marcel. The key notions like musical subject, Schein, becoming, temporality, modalities, Dasein, transcendence put musical facts in a completely new light and perspectives of interpretation. The volume attempts to make explicit what is implicit in every musical interpretation, intuition and understanding: to explain how compositions and composers "talk" to us. Its analyses are accessible due to the book's universal approach. Music is experienced as a language, communicating from one subject to another.

Murder. Cold-blooded murder. For Carl Underwood, murder is his heroin. It courses through his veins like filth flowing through a sewer line. The object of his addiction to murder is his wife Dolores whose hatred for Polish composer Frederick Chopin and his notorious lover George Sand drives him to the point of utter madness. In effect, Carl Underwood's life is a Prelude to Death in D minor, much like the gentle melody of a piano in a garden filled with roses, nightingales, and violets gently caressed by the fingers of a slut.

This volume offers a cross-section of English-language scholarship on German and Slavonic operatic repertories of the "long nineteenth century," giving particular emphasis to four areas: German opera in the first half of the nineteenth century; the works of Richard Wagner after 1848; Russian opera between Glinka and Rimsky-Korsakov; and the operas of Richard Strauss and Janácek. The essays reflect diverse methods, ranging from stylistic, philological, and historical approaches to those rooted in hermeneutics, critical theory, and post-modernist inquiry.

Rufus Hallmark interprets Schumann's famously controversial song cycle in the social, literary, and musical contexts of contemporary German society.

This tender, lyrical and passionate story of unrequited love holds a special place in Russian hearts. Tatyana's letter scene and the Polonaise are two much loved glories of the score; each act is tightly constructed around an antithesis of public and private scenes, and the dances are integral to the drama. The essence of both opera and poem is yearning, whether the artist's quest for his muse, or the lover for the beloved. Both poet and composer are true, in different ways, to this theme. The essays included in this guide explore the subtle and unexpected relationship between the words and music in Tchaikovsky's intimate 'Lyrical Scenes after Pushkin'.Contents: Pushkin into Tchaikovsky: Caustic Novel, Sentimental Opera, Caryl Emerson; Tchaikovsky's 'Eugene Onegin', Roland John Wiley; An Appreciation of 'Eugene Onegin', Natalia Challis; Eugene Onegin: Libretto by Konstantin Shilovsky and Pyotr Tchaikovsky; Eugene Onegin: English translation by David Lloyd-Jones