The Music Of B La Bart K

The definitive account of the life and music of Hungary's greatest twentieth-century composer This deeply researched biography of Béla Bartók (1881-1945) provides a more comprehensive view of the innovative Hungarian musician than ever before. David Cooper traces Bartók's international career as an ardent ethno-musicologist and composer, teacher, and pianist, while also providing a detailed discussion of most of his works. Further, the author explores how Europe's political and cultural tumult affected Bartók's work, travel, and reluctant emigration to the safety of America in his final years. Cooper illuminates Bartók's personal life and relationships, while also expanding what is known about the influence of other musicians--Richard Strauss, Zoltán Kodály, and Yehudi Menuhin, among many others. The author also looks closely at some of the composer's actions and behaviors which may have been manifestations of Asperger syndrome. The book, in short, is a consummate biography of an internationally admired musician.

In a book built on more than 25 years of research, the author not only survey's Bartok's life, but also analyzes the composer's best-known music.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the Third International Conference on Mathematics and Computation in Music, MCM 2011, held in Paris, France, in June 2011. The 24 revised full papers presented and the 12 short papers were carefully reviewed and selected from 62 submissions. The MCM conference is the flagship conference of the Society for Mathematics and Computation in Music. This year’s conference aimed to provide a multi-disciplinary platform dedicated to the communication and exchange of ideas amongst researchers involved in mathematics, computer science, music theory, composition, musicology, or other related disciplines. Areas covered were formalization and geometrical representation of musical structures and processes; mathematical models for music improvisation and gestures theory; set-theoretical and transformational approaches; computational analysis and cognitive musicology as well as more general discussions on history, philosophy and epistemology of music and mathematics.

The Rough Guide to Classical Music is the ideal handbook, spanning a thousand years of music from Gregorian chant via Bach and Beethoven to contemporaries such as Thomas Adès and Kaija Saariaho. Both a CD buyer's guide and a who's who, the guide includes concise biographical profiles of more than 200 composers and informative summaries of the major compositions in all genres, from chamber works to operatic epics. For novices and experts alike, the fully updated fifth edition features contemporary composer Helmut Lachenmann and Widor, the 19th century organ composer of 'Toccata' wedding fame, as well as dozens more works added for existing composers. You'll find an new 'Top 10's' section with accessible introductory listings including the Top 10 operas and the Top 10 symphonies plus new essay boxes on topics such as "Baroque - a style or a period?" and "The clarinet comes of age". The Rough Guide to Classical Music features fresh and incisive reviews of hundreds of CDs, selecting the very best of the latest recordings and reissues as well as more than 150 illustrations of composers and performers, including a rare archive of photos.

Now available in paperback! Béla Bartók's Mikrokosmos is a collection of 153 pieces for piano designed by the composer as a series graded according to difficulty. The pieces were written between 1926 and 1939, and have become by far the best-known series of teaching pieces by a major composer in the twentieth century. This in-depth study investigates Bartók's Mikrokosmos from three main viewpoints: the genesis of the pieces, their pedagogical value, and their stylistic qualities. The book is intended for piano teachers, students, and performers as well as anyone interested in Bartók's life and work as pianist, educator, and composer. Cloth originally published in 2002 under ISBN 0-8108-4427-3.

In profound ways, music in the twentieth century reflects the influence of Béla Bartók. His compositions remain at the heart of the modern repertoire, and his scholarly writings on music and his studies of folk music continue to inspire new generations of scholars and musicians. Bartók Perspectives seeks to paint a complete portrait of this complex figure, presenting essays from a wide range of perspectives and disciplines. The book collects new work by leading scholars and important new voices on Bartók. While each essay can be read independently, together they provide a coherent view of Bartók's life and work. The book includes integrative theoretic-analytical approaches to Bartók's musical language and studies of his system of composition from its early stages to maturity. It also includes explorations of Bartók's folk-music materials in connection with his fieldwork, transcription techniques, classification methodology, and compositional influences. Many of the chapters examine the broad historical, philosophical, and cultural questions intimately linked to Bartók's work. Anyone with an interest in Bartók or in serious music in the twentieth century will find Bartók Perspectives an invaluable resource and guide.

From the mid-1950s through the 1960s, Hungarian composer György Ligeti went through a remarkable period of stylistic transition, from the emulation of his fellow countryman Béla Bartók to his own individual style at the forefront of the Western-European avant-garde. Through careful study of the sketches and drafts, as well as analysis of the finished scores, Metamorphosis in Music takes a detailed look at this compositional evolution. Author Benjamin R. Levy includes sketch studies created through transcriptions and reproductions of archival material-much of which has never before been published-providing new, detailed information about Ligeti's creative process and compositional methods. The book examines all of Ligeti's compositions from 1956 to 1970, analyzing little-known and unpublished works in addition to recognized masterpieces such as Atmosphères, Aventures, the Requieim, and the Chamber Concerto. Discoveries from Ligeti's sketches, prose, and finished scores lead to an enriched appreciation of these already multifaceted works. Throughout the book, Levy interweaves sketch study with comments from interviews, counterbalancing the composer's own carefully crafted public narrative about his work, and revealing lingering attachments to older forms and insights into the creative process. Metamorphosis in Music is an essential treatment of a central figure of the musical midcentury, who found his place in a generation straddling the divide between the modern and post-modern eras.