Clive Brown – författare

The past ten years have seen a rapidly growing interest in performing and recording Classical and Romantic music with period instruments; yet the relationship of composers' notation to performing practices during that period has received only sporadic attention from scholars, and many aspects of composers' intentions have remained uncertain. Brown here identifies areas in which musical notation conveyed rather different messages to the musicians for whom it was written than it does to modern performers, and seeks to look beyond the notation to understand how composers might have expected to hear their music realized in performance. There is ample evidence to demonstrate that, in many respects, the sound worlds in which Mozart, Beethoven, Wagner, and Brahms created their music were more radically different from ours than is generally assumed.

This book investigates the changing ways in which composers employed notation and musicians understood it between the middle of the eighteenth century and the start of the twentieth century. While explicit notational practices were increasingly the norm throughout this time, many aspects of performance--even as late as the late nineteenth century--were assumed rather than specified and it was still widely understood that much had to be read between the lines. Furthermore, during the twentieth century the intended implications of many previous notational practices were gradually forgotten and are now generally misunderstood, while others--such as continuous vibrato and the meticulous observance of vertical synchrony and notated rhythms--differ radically from anything the composer might have envisaged.Drawing upon early recordings, documentary evidence, and the few surviving mechanical instruments, author Clive Brown investigates how we might rediscover the subliminal messages Classical and Romantic music notation was intended to convey to performers and argues that composers' intentions for their notation ought not to be confused with their expectations for its execution. The use of expressive practices that often involve substantial deviations from a conventional modern reading of the notation is not only a legitimate but also an essential element in getting closer to the composer's conception. The following topics are investigated over the course of sixteen chapters: metrical and rhetorical accentuation, dynamics, articulation, string-instrument bowing, phrasing, expression, tempo, tempo flexibility, ornamentation and improvisation, asynchrony, arpeggiation, rhythmic flexibility, sliding effects (portamento), and trembling effects (tremolo, vibrato). The book offers ample evidence to demonstrate that, in many respects, the sound worlds in which Mozart, Beethoven, Wagner, and Brahms created their music were more radically different from ours than is generally assumed.After it was published in 1999, the first edition of Classical and Romantic Performing Practice 1750-1900 quickly ensconced itself as a must-read for all students, scholars, and performers in historically informed performance. The revised and expanded second edition incorporates new information resulting from the author's continued research and practical experimentation since the publication of the original edition, and has benefitted greatly from his work with a succession of talented doctoral students over the years.

This book investigates the changing ways in which composers employed notation and musicians understood it between the middle of the eighteenth century and the start of the twentieth century. While explicit notational practices were increasingly the norm throughout this time, many aspects of performance--even as late as the late nineteenth century--were assumed rather than specified and it was still widely understood that much had to be read between the lines. Furthermore, during the twentieth century the intended implications of many previous notational practices were gradually forgotten and are now generally misunderstood, while others--such as continuous vibrato and the meticulous observance of vertical synchrony and notated rhythms--differ radically from anything the composer might have envisaged.Drawing upon early recordings, documentary evidence, and the few surviving mechanical instruments, author Clive Brown investigates how we might rediscover the subliminal messages Classical and Romantic music notation was intended to convey to performers and argues that composers' intentions for their notation ought not to be confused with their expectations for its execution. The use of expressive practices that often involve substantial deviations from a conventional modern reading of the notation is not only a legitimate but also an essential element in getting closer to the composer's conception. The following topics are investigated over the course of sixteen chapters: metrical and rhetorical accentuation, dynamics, articulation, string-instrument bowing, phrasing, expression, tempo, tempo flexibility, ornamentation and improvisation, asynchrony, arpeggiation, rhythmic flexibility, sliding effects (portamento), and trembling effects (tremolo, vibrato). The book offers ample evidence to demonstrate that, in many respects, the sound worlds in which Mozart, Beethoven, Wagner, and Brahms created their music were more radically different from ours than is generally assumed.After it was published in 1999, the first edition of Classical and Romantic Performing Practice 1750-1900 quickly ensconced itself as a must-read for all students, scholars, and performers in historically informed performance. The revised and expanded second edition incorporates new information resulting from the author's continued research and practical experimentation since the publication of the original edition, and has benefitted greatly from his work with a succession of talented doctoral students over the years.

The past ten years have seen a rapidly growing interest in performing and recording Classical and Romantic music with period instruments; yet the relationship of composers' notation to performing practices during that period has received only sporadic attention from scholars, and many aspects of composers' intentions have remained uncertain. Clive Brown here identifies areas in which musical notation conveyed rather different messages to the musicians for whom it was written than it does to modern performers, and seeks to look beyond the notation to understand how composers might have expected to hear their music realized in performance. There is ample evidence to demonstrate that, in many respects, the sound worlds in which Mozart, Beethoven, Wagner, and Brahms created their music was more radically different from ours than is generally assumed. This is an essential book for all performers and students of Classical and Romantic music.

Since his death in 1847, Felix Mendelssohn’s music and personality have been both admired and denigrated to extraordinary degrees. In this valuable book Clive Brown weaves together a rich array of documents—letters, diaries, memoirs, reviews, news reports, and more—to present a balanced and fascinating picture of the composer and his work. Rejecting the received view of Mendelssohn as a facile, lightweight musician, Brown demonstrates that he was in fact an innovative and highly cerebral composer who exerted a powerful influence on musical thought into the twentieth century.Brown discusses Mendelssohn’s family background and education; the role of religion and race in his life and reputation; his experiences as practical musician (pianist, organist, string player, conductor) and as teacher and composer; the critical reception of his works; and the vicissitudes of his posthumous reputation. The book also includes a range of hitherto unpublished sketches made by Mendelssohn. The result is an unprecedented portrayal of the man and his achievements as viewed through his own words and those of his contempories.

Published in Spohr's 200th anniversary year, this book is the first to deal at length with both the life and the works of a composer who exerted a strong influence on the development of nineteenth-century music. Spohr was hailed in his own day as a worthy successor to Mozart and Beethoven, yet in the present century his former renown has gone largely unrecognised. Clive Brown gives an account of Spohr's life and character, and examines the areas in which his impact was most profound. He discusses Spohr's compositions critically and provides a stylistic and aesthetic assessment of his work. The chronological account of Spohr's life unfolds in parallel with the description of his musical output; a final chapter considers the decline of his reputation after his death. This volume will be of interest not only to scholars and students but also to general musical readers. And, since so little of Spohr's very substantial output is available in modern editions and is seldom performed, the book will also prove useful to practical musicians in search of worthwhile music for performance.

Volume 3 of the SELECTED WORKS OF Louis Spohr 1784-1859- Pietro von Abano. At about this time one of his pupils, the twenty-three-year-old Carl Friedrich Curschmann, who had ambitions to compose an opera, showed Spohr a libretto that had been adapted from Ludwig Tieck's novel Pietro von Abano oder Petrus Apone, eine Zaubergeschichte (Breslau 1825) by the Kassel lawyer and poet Carl Pfeiffer. Spohr was immediately impressed by the libretto and, having dissuaded Curschmann from going ahead with the project, probably on the grounds that he was too inexperienced for such a major undertaking, he came to an agreement with Curschmann and Pfeiffer that he should set it himself. Including the plot, script and screenshots of the original music documents.

Volume 4 of the SELECTED WORKS OF Louis Spohr 1784-1859- Die Letzten Dinge. (The Last Judgement) Spohr was a key figure in the early history of the regional musical festivals that were to play such an important part in stimulating the composition of German oratorios. A subject which appealed to a number of German composers in the eighteenth century was the Apocalypse, a not inappropriate theme in the war-torn Europe of Napoleon. Including an introduction and score.

Essays highlight the interplay between opera, art and ideology across three centuries. Three broad themes are opened up from a variety of approaches: nationalism, cosmopolitanism and national opera; opera, class and the politics of enlightenment; and opera and otherness.Opera, that most extravagant of the performing arts, is infused with the contexts of power-brokering and cultural display in which it was conceived and experienced. For individual operas such contexts have shifted over time and new meanings emerged, often quite remote from those intended by the original collaborators; but tracing this ideological dimension in a work's creation and reception enables us to understand its cultural and political role more clearly - sometimes conflicting with its status as art and sometimes enhancing it. This collection is a Festschrift in honour of Julian Rushton, one of the most distinguished opera scholars of his generation and highly regarded for his innovative studies of Gluck, Mozart and Berlioz, among many others. Colleagues, associates and former students pay tribute to his work with essays highlighting the interplay between opera, art and ideology across three centuries. Three broad themes are opened up from a variety of approaches: nationalism, cosmopolitanism and national opera; opera, class and the politics of enlightenment; and opera and otherness. British opera is represented bystudies of Grabu, Purcell, Dibdin, Holst, Stanford and Britten, but the collection sustains a truly European perspective rounded out with essays on French opera funding, Bizet, Mozart, Mendelssohn, Verdi, Puccini, Janácek, Nielsen, Rimsky-Korsakov and Schreker. Several works receive some of their first extended discussion in English. RACHEL COWGILL is Professor of Musicology at Liverpool Hope University.DAVID COOPER is Professor of Music and Technology at the University of Leeds.CLIVE BROWN is Professor of Applied Musicology at the University of Leeds. Contributors: MARY K. HUNTER, CLIVE BROWN, PETER FRANKLIN, RALPH LOCKE, DOMINGOS DE MASCARENHAS,DAVID CHARLTON, KATHARINE ELLIS, BRYAN WHITE, PETER HOLMAN, RACHEL COWGILL, ROBERTA MONTEMORRA MARVIN, DAVID COOPER, RICHARD GREENE, J.P.E. HARPER-SCOTT, DANIEL GRIMLEY, STEPHEN MUIR, JOHN TYRRELL.