Douglass Seaton - Böcker

The Mendelssohn Companion represents a collection of advanced scholarly research in Mendelssohn studies that examines the composer's life and music. In recent decades, studies of his music manuscripts have discovered much previously overlooked work, and a reconsideration of his biography has permitted a more realistic portrayal of Mendelssohn. The first three chapters of this volume place the composer in his intellectual context and discuss his family and social circle and his professional activities. Later chapters examine the major areas of his compositional work, providing new analytical observations, contextual perspectives, and interpretations. Historical views and documents are included with each chapter and are all newly translated.The new material in this fully documented study will appeal to scholars, students, and music enthusiasts alike. An updated bibliographic list of Mendelssohn's works, which identifies the autograph manuscripts and the most important published editions will be of special interest.

The musical thought and practice of canonical composersWhat can music tell us—without words? Can it depict scenes, narrate stories, elucidate beliefs? And can it be an instrument through which we access the inner lives not only of musicians from the past but of ourselves, today?In Ohne Worte five scholars and performers probe these and related questions to illuminate both the experience and performance of nineteenth-century music. Drawing on a rich range of sources, they reveal the musical thought and practice of canonical composers like Berlioz, Mendelssohn, and Schumann. Their work challenges us to reconsider our musical practices and the voices manifested in them, and it encourages the creation of an art that is both historical and transcendental. This publication is GPRC-labeled (Guaranteed Peer-Reviewed Content).ContributorsJean-Pierre Bartoli (Université Paris–Sorbonne), Hubert Moßburger (Staatlichen Hochschule für Musik und Darstellende Kunst Stuttgart), Jeanne Roudet (Université Paris–Sorbonne), Douglass Seaton (Florida State University School of Music), Edoardo Torbianelli (Hochschule der Künste Bern)

Mendelssohn describes his 1840 work, Hymn of Praise, to his friend Klingemann as "a 'symphony for chorus and orchestra'... First are the three symphonic movements, to which 12 choral and solo movements are added;... from the words of the Psalms, 'Everything which has breath, Praise the Lord'; one understands that first the instruments give praise in their own way, and then the chorus and the individual voices."

Illuminates how Romantic aesthetic principles manifest themselves through musical sound and structure.In Romantic Voices Douglass Seaton explores the underlying subjectivism whereby nineteenth-century musical works depend on and manifest the ideology and epistemology of Romanticism. Listeners and students have often imagined in a too-casual way that Romantic music reveals the inner biographies of composers. That easy assumption, however, leads to misunderstandings of both the biographical composers and the actual but fictive personas who do express themselves in the music. In a dozen studies of works by major Romantic composers, in genres ranging from instrumental solos to symphonies and from songs to opera, Seaton presents new ways to understand these works within the context of the Romantic movement. The book demonstrates how a discerning approach to this music can unveil the fictive personalities who express themselves in each piece. Seaton embraces transmethodological approaches that harmonize close attention to the sound and structure of individual pieces, their cultural and social history, and what composers, critics, and listeners have said about them. Among the works included are Beethoven's "Tempest" Sonata, Schubert's Heine Songs, Berlioz's Harold in Italy, Schumann's Eichendorff Liederkreis, Liszt's "Vallée d'Obermann," Verdi's Otello, and MacDowell's "Keltic" Sonata.