Subject Area: Mozart
Shrader, James A.2012 0-7734-2928-X 188 pages
The choruses from the eighteenth century opere serie of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart represent a body of literature that is relatively unknown. While the majority of Italian opere serie exclude the chorus, most of Mozart’s works in this genre contain significant choral scenes. The existence of opera seria as popular musical theater was short-lived, yet the choruses from Mozart’s opere serie are worthy examples of secular choral literature.
The study includes a scholarly examination of the opera seria as a genre, as well as the historical role of the opera chorus. Of particular importance is the operatic reform movement in France.
Price: $159.95
Malloy, Joseph
1991 0-88946-579-7 272 pages
Will do much to improve the reputation of Constanze Mozart, who has been vilified as having been an unworthy wife to one of the greatest musical geniuses of all time and has been blamed for his poverty and his less-than-glorious, premature death. Although a work of fiction and historical surmise, Diez' Constanze, Formerly Widow of Mozart stays close enough to the sparse biographical details of Constanze's life that the book has a tone of veracity and authenticity that is augmented by Malloy's footnotes and afterword.
Price: $199.95
Eckelmeyer, Judith A.
1991 0-7734-4602-8 496 pages
Addresses problems of symbols and references in The Magic Flute by considering a broad cultural heritage, including the early 17th-century movement of the Rosicrucians, 17th and 18th-century educational, scientific, philosophical and religious developments, and late 18th-century social and political circumstances. The appendices that appear in Volume Two provide sources for further study not only for scholars but also opera companies and the Masonic communities. Appendix I is a 3-part representation of the text of The Magic Flute: a photocopy of the original German libretto; a side-by-side English translation; and the German text that appears in Mozart's handwritten score of the opera which shows differences in words from the printed libretto and sometimes reveals a slightly different thinking of the characters' personalities and stage action. Appendix II is a photo reproduction and translation of the complete article "Ueber die Mysterien der Aegyptier", written by the Master of one of the most important and active Masonic lodges in Vienna in the 1780's, Ignaz von Born. It is said to have inspired some of the plot and detail in The Magic Flute.
Price: $279.95
Eckelmeyer, Judith A.
1991 0-7734-9642-4 356 pages
Addresses problems of symbols and references in The Magic Flute by considering a broad cultural heritage, including the early 17th-century movement of the Rosicrucians, 17th and 18th-century educational, scientific, philosophical and religious developments, and late 18th-century social and political circumstances. The appendices that appear in Volume Two provide sources for further study not only for scholars but also opera companies and the Masonic communities. Appendix I is a 3-part representation of the text of The Magic Flute: a photocopy of the original German libretto; a side-by-side English translation; and the German text that appears in Mozart's handwritten score of the opera which shows differences in words from the printed libretto and sometimes reveals a slightly different thinking of the characters' personalities and stage action. Appendix II is a photo reproduction and translation of the complete article "Ueber die Mysterien der Aegyptier", written by the Master of one of the most important and active Masonic lodges in Vienna in the 1780's, Ignaz von Born. It is said to have inspired some of the plot and detail in The Magic Flute.
Price: $239.95
Harutunian, John
2005 0-7734-6202-3 324 pages
The names of Franz Joseph Haydn and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart are so closely intertwined that most people speak them in the same breath. As contemporaneous composers, they spoke the same musical language, that of late eighteenth-century Classicism. Specifically, they shared the summit in the development of a procedure known as sonata style. Nevertheless, experienced listeners can readily distinguish between the two composers. Articulating these differences, however, is another matter entirely. This book does so, in a way which presents a clear and comprehensive picture of these two great figures of Western music.
Price: $219.95
Tuttle, Marshall
2016 1-4955-0516-2 260 pages
This work examines a specific technical and expressive means by which the various ecclesiastical modes persisted and were integrated into compositional practices of the tonal period, from the time of Bach through to the early twentieth century. It is demonstrated that a technique of integrating modes into tonal music is not through the use of melodic or harmonic materials, but through modulation. Modulations can be drawn from and limited to those keys which derive from chords that exist in the modal scale of the final key of a composition. This leads to what can only be referred to as a kind of pseudo-diatonic chromaticism. Modulations are limited by a diatonic scale, but that scale is distinct from the major-minor scale system which characterizes the surface level musical activity of a composition. Hence the modulations are chromatic according to a given key, but individual keys visited are limited by a very traditional set of diatonic relationships among themselves.
Price: $199.95
Greene, David B.
2012 0-7734-2591-8 136 pages
This book is based around reports from people who have listened to certain pieces of sacred music (that is, pieces with a liturgical text or biblical allusions) and have said that hearing the music is itself an encounter with the divine. While relating to the music, these people find that relating to the music is a relation to God. The music as such becomes inaudible, and disappears into an encounter in which they address and are addressed by God, or the Risen Christ, or the Eternal Infinite. The book’s project is to elaborate on these reports, first by dwelling on the meaning of “relation” then by drawing parallels between the reports and the writings of Martin Buber on the I-Thou relation and its contrast to the I-It experience, and finally by describing the salient aspects of the music in order to specify just what is this hearing that is a relating, an encounter. Although many pieces could have been chosen as examples of this kind of hearing and this kind of spirituality, the book takes only three so that it can describe them in considerable detail and depth. These pieces : Three Movements from Mozart’s Mass in C Minor, the resurrection music from Bach’s Mass in B Minor, and Oliver Messiaen’s Quartet for the End of Time.
Price: $139.95
Russell, Peter
2002 0-7734-7293-2 476 pages
This is the first study systematically to map and classify the major German lieder according to the themes of their texts. It also traces in detail the extent to which each theme as evolved from German folk-song, or derives from elsewhere, notably the Romantic movement. This analysis also affords new insights into the differing personalities of the major lieder composers. It constitutes a comprehensive reference-work, an encyclopedia of lieder themes. Through its lists of contents and its detailed indexes (by composers, poets, song-titles, and themes) it provides an easy means of racing lieder by theme.
Price: $279.95