Tempo And Tactus In The German Baroque

Guides modern performers and scholars through the intricacies of German Baroque metric theory, via analyses of treatises and organ music by J.S. Bach and other leading composers, such as Buxtehude, Bruhns, and Weckman.

Ruth I. DeFord offers new insights on Renaissance theories of rhythm and their application to the analysis and performance of music.

Featuring 28 music examples this book takes an innovative approach to analyzing and interpreting nineteenth-century German song, offering new perspectives on Robert Schumann's Lieder and song cycles. Robert Schumann's Lieder are among the richest and most complex songs in the repertoire and have long raised questions and stimulated discussion among scholars, performers, and listeners. Among the wide range of methodologies that have been used to understand and interpret his songs, one that has been conspicuously absent is an approach based on narratology (the theory and study of narrative texts). Proceeding from the premise that the performance of a Lied is a narrative act, in which the singer and pianist together function as a narrator, Andrew Weaver's groundbreaking study proposes a comprehensive theory of narratology for the German Romantic Lied and song cycle, using Schumann's complete song oeuvre as the test case. The theory, grounded in the work of narratologist Mieke Bal but also drawing upon recent work in literary theory and musicology, illuminates how music can open up new meanings for the poem, as well as how a narratological analysis of the poem can help us understand the music. Weaver's book offers new insights into Schumann's Lieder and the poetry he set while simultaneously proposing a methodology applicable to the analysis and interpretation of a wide range of works, including not only the rich treasury of German Lieder but also potentially any genre of accompanied song in any language from the Middle Ages to the present day.

Reveals the brilliant musical and pedagogical thinking of the famed eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century Neapolitan composer and teacher of royal students.

This is the first book to trace the history of rhythm and tempo in its entirety. The author brings to this study a vast knowledge of the musical lore of all cultures, East and West, from the most distant past to the present. There are more than 200 musical examples included ranging from the native songs of Asia and Africa to rumba, jazz, and Stravinsky.

While our modern concepts of musical time and tempo have been largely shaped by the metronome, musicians have long depended on a variety of methods, including the use of hands and feet, the incorporation of markings and pendulums. Measure: In Pursuit of Musical Time tells the fascinating story of musical timekeeping, beginning in an age before the existence of external measuring devices and continuing to the present-day use of the smartphone app. The book opens with a consideration of Renaissance images that inform our early understanding of the physical gestures associated with musical timekeeping. Early music treatises provide a first-hand glimpse into a musical world when timekeeping was bound up with motions of the body and the pulsing of the human heart. The adoption of the simple pendulum and the incorporation of tempo-related language profoundly altered the musical landscape. Such approaches allowed composers to communicate ideas about speed and slowness with increasing precision. Yet neither language nor the pendulum's natural swing proved sufficient to meet the needs of a changing musical world. Enter the metronome, a device that ultimately allowed musicians to consider musical time in real time. A triumph of innovation, the metronome was celebrated by many as the fulfillment of a centuries-long search. Yet not everyone was convinced of its benefits. From Beethoven to Ligeti, the book looks to a number of influential composers who have used or refused this revolutionary machine. Measure: In Pursuit of Musical Time follows a host of brilliant polymaths, trailblazing musicians and intrepid inventors in search of ever more accurate and practical ways to measure and master one of music's most critical and challenging aspects.

In considering the role of practical music in education this book explores the art of performance in Germany during the Baroque period. The author examines the large number of surviving treatises and instruction manuals used in the Lutheran schools during the period 1530-1800 and builds up a picture of the function and status of music in both school and church. This understanding of music as a functional art--musica practica--in turn gives us insight into contemporary performance of the sacred work of Praetorius, SchÜtz, Buxtehude or Bach.