Reverence for J. S. Bach's music and its towering presence in our cultural memory have long affected how people hear his works. In his own time, however, Bach stood as just another figure among a number of composers, many of them more popular with the music-loving public.
Eschewing the great composer style of music ......
From the 1920s to the 1940s, Leo Sowerby created popular secular works while his sacred compositions led admirers to call him the "dean of American church musicians." Yet in time, Sowerby's Pulitzer Prize-winning The Canticle of the Sun and the rest of his corpus lost favor with the A-list symphonies and prominent musicians who had once made him a ......
Rediscovering the genius of the medieval composer, theologian, and visionary
A Renaissance woman long before the Renaissance, the visionary Hildegard of Bingen (10981179) corresponded with Europe's elite, founded and led a noted women's religious community, and wrote on topics ranging from theology to natural ......
Great music arouses wonder: how did the composer create such an original work of art? What was the artist's inspiration, and how did that idea become a reality? Cultural products inevitably arise from a context, a submerged landscape that is often not easily accessible. To bring such things to light, studies of the creative process find their ......
SONGS OF '76 is a volume of sidelights on the American Revolution from the vantage point of the folk balladeer. There are over 60 songs, with words and guitar accompaniment, all fresh and mostly unfamiliar, along with a delightfully personalized historic commentary. It is an eyewitness report of events that you may never have read about in your ......
According to the French composer Olivier Messiaen, 'Bach's music reaches all times, all places'. In Back to Bach: From Mozart to Moog George Michell explores the story of Bach's impact on composers from Mozart and Beethoven to Stravinsky and Shostakovich, as well as on jazz pianists, rock guitarists and pop singers, all of whom set off on their ......
Haydn's London Symphonies and Late String Quartets
Public and Private Modes of Musical Discourse brings a new contribution to discussions on the difference between the public and private layers of music, which have often centered on issues of stylistic expression such as genre, performance venue, texture, and phrase organization. Symphonies, for example, have historically been seen as public ......
Haydn's London Symphonies and Late String Quartets
Public and Private Modes of Musical Discourse brings a new contribution to discussions on the difference between the public and private layers of music, which have often centered on issues of stylistic expression such as genre, performance venue, texture, and phrase organization. Symphonies, for example, have historically been seen as public ......
One Hundred Years of Concerts at the Library of Congress
Since 1925, the Library of Congress has presented one of the most prestigious and innovative concert series in the United States. Philanthropist Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge founded the series with the purpose of sharing music of the highest caliber with the American people. Her vision was clear: concerts would be free and open to all, the finest ......
