Interwar Symphonies And The Imagination

Reveals how in the culturally volatile 1930s the symphony, long associated with ideas of selfhood, was a flourishing transnational phenomenon.

The symphony has long been entangled with ideas of self and value. Though standard historical accounts suggest that composers' interest in the symphony was almost extinguished in the early 1930s, this book makes plain the genre's continued cultural dominance, and argues that the symphony can illuminate issues around space/geography, race, and postcolonialism in Germany, France, Mexico, and the United States. Focusing on a number of symphonies composed or premiered in 1933, this book recreates some of the cultural and political landscapes of an uncertain historical moment-a year when Hitler took power in Germany, and the Great Depression reached its peak in the United States. Interwar Symphonies and the Imagination asks what North American and European symphonies from the early 1930s can tell us about how people imagined selfhood during a period of international insecurity and political upheaval, of expansionist and colonial fantasies, scientised racism, and emergent fascism.

Introducing a new geographical paradigm for the study of medieval music, this path-breaking book uncovers the role of music, liturgy, and ritual in building Venice's empire in the eastern Mediterranean, activating the city's material culture, and shaping its state-craft of the imagination.

Unlocks new perspectives on twentieth-century British music, charting Lutyens and Clark's influential and controversial contributions to composition, performance, appreciation, and education.

Focusing on Clara Schumann's central contributions to the genre of the Lied (or German art song), this is the first book-length critical study of her songs. Although relatively few in number, they were published and reviewed favorably in the press during her lifetime, and they continue to be programmed regularly in recitals by professional and amateur performers alike. Highlighting the powerful and distinctive features of the songs, the book treats them as a prism, casting light not just on them but also through them to explore questions that foster a deeper understanding of the work of female composers. The author argues for the importance of taking Clara Schumann's music on its own terms, the intimate relationship between text and musical form, and the vital role of musical analysis in recuperating the contributions of previously understudied composers.

Integrating musical and poetic analysis, this book sheds new light on the experience of listening to Monteverdi's path-breaking madrigals. The music of this pivotal figure reveals how composers and performers at the turn of the seventeenth century not only responded to but themselves influenced experiments in language.

A fresh analytical and musicological exploration of Schubert's incorporation of lyric elements into sonata form by way of his string quartets.

Provides a new perspective on the Chinese avant-garde through the figure of artist and activist Tian Han