Stradella S Revenge

Who is killing classical composers all over America? A serial killer is on the loose and Harry Grouch must find out why and catch the murderer. "Stradella's Revenge" is based on the real life conflicts of two 17th century Italian composers, Tomaso Albinoni and Alessandro Stradella. It is the third in the entertaining Harry Grouch Detective Series that includes "The Witch of Maple Park" and "Nanobe." Dr. Tomaso Albinoni, a Medical Microbiologist at Bard Memorial Hospital (and a descendant of the baroque composer with the same name) hires Harry Grouch and Associates to investigate anonymous death threats. Could they be related to an unsolved series of recent murders of other composers? Harry discovers that in Tom Albinoni's case they may be revenge threats coming from a descendant of Alessandro Stradella, a composer who was assassinated in 1682, possibly by one of Albinoni's ancestors. These were real and talented composers whose music is often heard and celebrated today. Flashbacks to 1682 reveal what really happened. Stradella was a blessed composer and a cursed personality, a cad, a womanizer, and an embezzler from the church. Some would probably say he deserved assassination. The current day Albinoni is stalked by the current day Stradella. Harry Grouch investigates using clues from the composer's music. What is driving the modern day Stradella and will Harry catch him in time?

Reproduction of the original: Stradella by F. Marion Crawford

Musicology, having been transmitted as a compilation of disparate events and disciplines, has long necessitated a 'magic bullet', a 'unified field theory' so to speak, that can interpret the steady metamorphosis of Western art music from late medieval modality to twentieth-century atonality within a single theoretical construct. Burnett and Nitzberg challenge the traditional understanding of development, and advance a new theory of eleven-pitch tonality as it relates to the corpus of Western composition. The book plots the evolution of tonality and its bearing on style and the compositional process itself. The authors move beyond existing theory and analysis to base their theory from the standpoint of chromatic 'pitch fields'. These fields are the specific chromatic pitch choices that a composer uses to inform and design a complete composition, utilizing specific chromatic inflections to control a large-scale working out process that is the very essence of 'development'. In short, the authors claim that a chromatic background that coexists with a diatonic contrapuntal background may define the process of compositional development. These chromatic and diatonic events are the two genus expressions of slowly unfolding tonic octaves.