This series was originally supported by funds made available to the Royal Musical Association from the estate of Thurston Dart. Its purpose is to provide a medium for specialized investigations of a topic, concept or repertory - studies of a kind that would not normally be feasible for commercial publishers and that would be too long for most periodicals.
By Nicholas Marston
November 22, 2013
In 1912 Heinrich Schenker contracted with the Viennese publisher Universal Edition to provide an 'elucidatory edition' (Erläuterungsausgabe) of Beethoven's last five piano sonatas. Each publication would comprise a score, newly edited by Schenker and using the composer's autograph manuscript as ...
By Robert Pascall
May 29, 2013
In 1853 Robert Schumann identified fully-formed compositional mastery in the young Brahms, who nevertheless in the years following embarked on a period of intensive further study, producing, among other works, the neo-baroque Sarabande and Gavotte. These dances have not been properly recognized as ...
By Philip Ross Bullock
November 28, 2009
Philip Ross Bullock looks at the life and works of Rosa Newmarch (1857-1940), the leading authority on Russian music and culture in late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century England. Although Newmarch's work and influence are often acknowledged - most particularly by scholars of English poetry, ...
By Peter Bennett
November 28, 2009
The study of sacred music under Louis XIII (r.1610-43) has advanced little in the past hundred years. Despite some important recent contributions by the late Denise Launay and others, much of our current perception of the Latin sacred music of the period is still informed by the pioneering research...
By Julie Brown
November 28, 2007
The grotesque is one of art's most puzzling figures - transgressive, comprising an unresolveable hybrid, generally focussing on the human body, full of hyperbole, and ultimately semantically deeply puzzling. In Bluebeard's Castle (1911), The Wooden Prince (1916/17), The Miraculous Mandarin (1919/...
By Anthony M. Cummings
January 31, 2007
Manuscript Florence, Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale, Magliabechiana XIX, 164-167 (FlorBN Magl. 164-7) has been the subject of considerable scholarly attention. The prevailing assumption had been that it was a Florentine source of the early sixteenth century. More recently, it has been argued that ...
By Rebecca Herissone
January 28, 2006
This is the first study to provide a systematic and thorough investigation of continuo realization styles appropriate to Restoration sacred music, an area of performance practice that has never previously been properly assessed. Rebecca Herissone undertakes detailed analysis of a group of organ ...
By Adam Ockelford
February 28, 2005
This monograph examines the place of repetition in perceived musical structure and in theories of music. Following a preface and introduction, there are four main chapters: 'Theory', 'Analysis', 'Metatheory and Meta-analysis', and 'Cognition and Metacognition'. Chapter 2 (Theory) sets out the ...
By Ian Woodfield
November 27, 2003
Johann Peter Salomon, the celebrated violinist and impresario, made his debut in England in March 1781. History has credited Salomon with bringing Haydn to London, yet as Ian Woodfield reveals in this monograph, Salomon's introduction of the composer to the London musical scene owed as much to luck...
By Stephen Downes
July 17, 2003
The desire to voice the artistic revelation of the truth of a precarious, multi-faceted, yet integrated self lies behind much of Szymanowski's work. This self is projected through the voices of deities who speak languages of love. The unifying figure is Eros, who may be embodied as Dionysus, Christ...
By Kathryn Bailey
November 28, 2001
Schoenberg's Op.23 for solo piano, written between 1920 and 1923, represented a move from his atonal music of the preceding twelve years to 12-note music. In this analysis of the five pieces which make up Op.23, Kathryn Bailey discusses the ways in which Schoenberg clearly explores new ideas in ...
By Noel O'Regan
November 28, 1995
The archconfraternity of SS. Trinità was one of the less well-known institutions for musical patronage in sixteenth-century Rome. Yet in focusing on its activities in the period 1550-1650, this book sheds light on networks of urban patronage that were equally important in commissioning the sacred ...