Kirjahaku

The musical achievements of the so-called `Franco-Flemish School' have attracted many writers, yet Bruges itself has still to be put back on the map of European music history. This book describes how the people of Bruges shaped their acoustic environment and gave musical expression to their spiritual needs. It is based on a scrutiny of musical sources, stylistic trends in music, composers' achievements, and the function of musical genres; all these are seen against a reconstruction, from archival sources, of the socio-economic context of the art of music - an art which, in all its various manifestations, `high' and `low', sacred and secular, courtly and civic, polyphonic and monophonic, mirrors later medieval urban culture as a whole.

Dramma per musica—the most usual term for Italian serious opera from the seventeenth to the early nineteenth century—was a modern, enlightened form of theater that presented a unified, artistically designed, dramatic enactment of human stories, expressed by the voice and underscored by the orchestra. This book by one of the world’s most eminent musicologists illustrates the diversity of this baroque art form and explains how it has given us opera as we know it.Reinhard Strohm introduces the concept and history of dramma per musica and then examines the contemporary reception and environment of this operatic tradition, analyzing its social and repertorial patterns and comparing it to theories on the roles of French spoken drama and Italian libretto reform. In describing the principles observed by poets, composers, and performers, Strohm discusses such central concepts of theory and practice as verisimilitude, decorum, gesture, and rhetoric. He also decodes various works, including Handel’s Ariodante, operas by Hasse, and stage works featuring the Earl of Essex. Throughout the book, Strohm surveys the traditions of the spoken theater and pays special attention to the subject matter of the librettos, as well as to drama theory, stage action, patronage, political history, and ideology. His account covers opera houses in Rome, Naples, Venice, Hamburg, Dresden, Vienna, Madrid, London, and Warsaw, as he follows one character of the dramatic tradition across the European stages for more than two centuries. Authoritative and enlightening, this book reveals how dramma per musica forms a vital part of our theatrical and musical heritage.

In this valuable collection of essays, published to coincide with the tercentenary of Handel's birth, Reinhard Strohm examines the relationship between Handel's great operas and the earlier European Baroque tradition, focusing on the Italian school, to which they are so crucially indebted. Handel's immediate heritage included the figures of Scarlatti, Gasparini and Vivaldi; this book establishes that context, concentrating on contemporary operatic practice, and proceeds to analyse three of Handel's best-known works. It shows how they elaborate and develop the style and method of the Italian operatic theatre, embracing previous traditions and synthesizing them with a new and exciting accentuation.

This is a detailed and comprehensive survey of music in the late middle ages and early Renaissance. By limiting its scope to the 120 years which witnessed perhaps the most dramatic expansion of our musical heritage, the book responds, in the 1990s, to the tremendous increase in specialised research and public awareness of that period. Three of the four main Parts (I, II, IV) describe the development of polyphony and its cultural contexts in many European countries, from the successors of Machaut (d. 1377) to the achievements of Josquin des Prez and his contemporaries working in Renaissance Italy around 1500. Part III, by contrast, illustrates the musical life of the institutions, and musical practices outside the realm of composed polyphony that were traditional and common all over Europe. The book proposes fresh views in each chapter, discussing dozens of musical examples adducing well-known and hitherto unknown documents, and referring to and evaluating the most recent scholarship in the field.

Oper ist elementar mit Bewegung verbunden: in der dramatischen Entwicklung der Handlung, in der Darstellung auf der Bühne, in der Wanderung der Sujets genauso wie der Operntruppen. Als Gattung wandelte sich die Oper ständig, oft durch kulturelle Krisen hindurch. Reinhard Strohm macht in seinem Buch neue Aspekte bekannter Werke sichtbar und spürt auch unbekannte Opern vom Barock bis zur Romantik auf. Er bringt die Leserinnen und Leser an Schauplätze von Ankara bis Schottland und an Aufführungsorte von Neapel bis Warschau, macht sie mit Helden und Primadonnen bekannt, erklärt die vielfältigen kulturellen Kontexte und Vorgeschichten. Diese Entdeckungsreisen führen zu über 20 Opern von Monteverdi bis Donizetti, mit Besuchen unter anderem bei Purcell, Vivaldi, Händel, Mozart und Rossini. Exkursionen gelten auch Da Ponte, Goethe, Verdi, Wagner und sogar Brecht. Darüber hinaus werden zentrale Themen wie Arie und Rezitativ, Frauenbilder und Opernübersetzungen eigens beleuchtet.