David Tunley – författare

The first edition of this book is the classic study of one of the most popular musical forms in early eighteenth-century France, not only because it documents and examines its considerable repertoire for the first time, but also because it places the genre in the wider context of both French and Italian baroque music styles. In uniting the two national styles the cantata was one of the major influences in transforming the seventeenth-century French classical tradition in music into a style that owed much to the Italian baroque, yet retained a distinctive gallic expression.As well as its musical interest, the French cantata provides an arresting example of the influence of society upon music, and the book commences with a chapter that views the emergence of the form in its social setting. Cantata texts enjoyed a vogue as poetry and this literary aspect is also dealt with in a separate chapter.This new edition incorporates research by the author and other scholars over the twenty years since the first edition, reflecting today's growing interest in French baroque music. It also features a new chapter dealing with the French cantata in performance.

Music! It is the great pleasure of this city, the great occupation of the drawing-rooms, which have banished politics, and which have renounced literature, from ennui. Jules Janin, An American in Paris, 1843 Afternoon and evening entertainments in the drawing rooms of the aristocracy and upper middle classes were a staple of cultural life in nineteenth-century Paris. Music was often a feature of these occasions and private salons provided important opportunities for musicians, especially singers, to develop their careers. Such recitals included excerpts from favourite operas, but also the more traditional forms of French song, the romance and its successor the mélodie. Drawing on extensive research into the musical press of the period, David Tunley paints a vivid portrait of the nineteenth-century Parisien salons and the performers who sang in them. Against this colourful backdrop, he discusses the development of French romantic song, with its hallmarks of simplicity and clarity of diction. Combined with Italian influences and the impression made by Schubert's songs, the French romance developed into a form with greater complexity - the mélodie. Salons, Singers and Songs describes this transformation and the seeds it sowed for music by later composers such as Fauré, Duparc and Debussy.

François Couperin's contribution to the literature of baroque keyboard music has long been recognized. François Couperin and 'The Perfection of Music' updates and expands upon David Tunley's valuable 1982 BBC Music Guide to the composer, and examines the whole of Couperin’s output including the organ masses, motets and chamber music, in addition to the well-known works for harpsichord. Taking as its focal point Couperin's concept of the perfection of music through the union of the French and Italian styles, this book takes a more analytical approach to Couperin's work. Early chapters outline the main contrasting features of the two schools in the seventeenth- and early eighteenth-centuries, and it becomes clear that Couperin's expressive power owed much to his fusion of the polarities of the French classical tradition with that of the Italian baroque. The book features a number of appendices, including the prefaces to Couperin's work both in the original French and in English translation, and a glossary of dances of the French baroque.

First Published in 1995. This series comprises nearly 300 romances and melodies, most of which were composed during the 40 years that saw a blossoming of the romantic spirit in all the arts in France. This volume looks at Romantic French song of the 1830s to the 1870s and includes the works of Reber, Hugo and Lalo.

First Published in 1995. This series comprises nearly 300 romances and melodies, most of which were composed during the 40 years that saw a blossoming of the romantic spirit in all the arts in France. It brings together some of the most attractive pieces by the best songwriters of the period, and in so doing provides an overview of the development of nineteenth-century French song before Faure, Duparc, and Debussy

First Published in 1995. This title is volume 4 in a series comprising nearly 300 romances and mélodies, most of which were composed during the 40 years that saw a blossoming of the romantic spirit in all the arts in France. The composers represented in this volume were of a rather serious turn of musical mind and many of the songs presented seem to have enjoyed the more sheltered success of the private recital to which the critics may not have been invited.

Music! It is the great pleasure of this city, the great occupation of the drawing-rooms, which have banished politics, and which have renounced literature, from ennui. Jules Janin, An American in Paris, 1843 Afternoon and evening entertainments in the drawing rooms of the aristocracy and upper middle classes were a staple of cultural life in nineteenth-century Paris. Music was often a feature of these occasions and private salons provided important opportunities for musicians, especially singers, to develop their careers. Such recitals included excerpts from favourite operas, but also the more traditional forms of French song, the romance and its successor the mélodie. Drawing on extensive research into the musical press of the period, David Tunley paints a vivid portrait of the nineteenth-century Parisien salons and the performers who sang in them. Against this colourful backdrop, he discusses the development of French romantic song, with its hallmarks of simplicity and clarity of diction. Combined with Italian influences and the impression made by Schubert's songs, the French romance developed into a form with greater complexity - the mélodie. Salons, Singers and Songs describes this transformation and the seeds it sowed for music by later composers such as Fauré, Duparc and Debussy.

François Couperin's contribution to the literature of baroque keyboard music has long been recognized. François Couperin and 'The Perfection of Music' updates and expands upon David Tunley's valuable 1982 BBC Music Guide to the composer, and examines the whole of Couperin’s output including the organ masses, motets and chamber music, in addition to the well-known works for harpsichord. Taking as its focal point Couperin's concept of the perfection of music through the union of the French and Italian styles, this book takes a more analytical approach to Couperin's work. Early chapters outline the main contrasting features of the two schools in the seventeenth- and early eighteenth-centuries, and it becomes clear that Couperin's expressive power owed much to his fusion of the polarities of the French classical tradition with that of the Italian baroque. The book features a number of appendices, including the prefaces to Couperin's work both in the original French and in English translation, and a glossary of dances of the French baroque.

First published in 1999, this biography from David Tunley draws on newly researched documentary evidence to chart Campoli’s early success and his later struggle for recognition as a serious artist. Campoli’s early success and his later struggle for recognition as a serious artist. Campoli’s career emerges as one particularly shaped and directed by the great economic and social forces of the first half of the century, and the story here is as much that of his times, as of his life.Described by Szigeti as ‘one of the last great individualists among violinists’, Alfredo Campoli was a household name in the field of British light music prior to the Second World War. Having made his début at the Wigmore Hall in 1923 Campoli toured with Melba and Butt, then turned to light music during the Depression. He became one of Decca’s early recording artists and broadcast frequently for the BBC with his light music ensembles and pursued a long, successful career as a distinguished international performer.