Composers Speak Beyond the Grave
What Composers of the Past Have to Say About How Their Music Should Be Performed
Item #: G-11699 Status: In-preparation
Softcover for $34.95
Description:
Composers throughout history didn’t just write music. They also wrote about how their music should be performed—with insightful commentary that was often supported and confirmed by many other people of the time.
In Composers Speak Beyond the Grave, distinguished scholar Dennis Shrock posits likely questions or concerns that twenty-five composers of the past would have about how their music is performed today.
Haydn, for example, asks, Why is the chorus behind the orchestra? when during his time and before the chorus was always positioned in front of or beside the orchestra. Rossini asks, Why is the music so loud? when he states that the high notes in his operas should be sung softly. Verdi asks, Why is there so much vibrato? when music of his time was performed without it.
By addressing these and other questions with numerous quotes from the composers and their contemporaries, Shrock provides convincing evidence that their music, like historic paintings, should be restored to an original intent, and that when done so the music can be better appreciated by both performers and audiences.
Dennis Shrock is author of twelve books, three published by Oxford University Press and the remaining nine published by GIA Publications, including those on performance practices of the Renaissance, Baroque, and Classical eras. Dr. Shrock has held faculty positions at Boston University, Westminster Choir College, and the University of Oklahoma, and has also served as Artistic Director of the Santa Fe Desert Chorale and Editor-in-Chief of The Choral Journal.
Categories: History, Performance Practice, Reference/Textbooks
Number of Pages: 248
Format: Softcover