Gerald Abraham – författare

Looks at ancient and oriental music and traces the history of western music from medieval times to the twentieth century.

The Age of Humanism 1540-1630

This book is intended for students of the music of the baroque period.

The Age of Beethoven 1790-1830

The New Oxford History of Music is completeThis latest and last volume:* completes the set of The New Oxford History of Music in 10 volumes* includes the whole span of western instrumental music and opera in the greater part of the nineteenth century* is edited by one of the most respected scholars of nineteenth-century musicIn March 1830 Goethe complained to Eckermann that `everybody talks now about Classicism and Romanticism - which no one thought of fifty years ago'. Romanticism - a concept more easily recognized than defined - was the prevailing spirit of the vast outpouring of music in the sixty years chronicled in this volume. The list of major composers treated either wholly or in part will serve as an indication of its scope: Chopin, Schumann, Mendelssohn, Liszt, Brahms, Berlioz, Donizetti, Verdi, Wagner, Gounod, Bizet, Borodin, Mussorgsky, Tchaikovsky, Rimsky-Korsakov, Dvorák, Smetana, Fauré, Wolf, Puccini, Bruckner, Mahler, Strauss, César Franck, Debussy. Contributors: Gerald Abraham, John Horton, David Charlton, David Kimbell, Siegfried Goslich, Nicholas Temperly, Willi Kahl, Arnold Whittall, Julian Budden, Robert Pascall, Leslie Orrey, David Tunley, Edward Garden, Rosemary Hunt, and John Clapham.

One Hundred Years of Music provides a full account of the history of music from the death of Beethoven to the modern era. It covers a period of exceptional interest. The last hundred years coincide roughly with the rise and decline of Romanticism, include the various nationalist movements, and extend to the advent of "neo-classicism," the twelve-tone system, and still more modern techniques. Abraham devotes ample space to modernist and avant garde music, in which he explains the difficulties we experience in listening to the work of such composers as Schnberg, Bart k, and Berg. He also throws new light on many more familiar topics.In its earlier editions, One Hundred Years of Music became a standard work on this subject; it has since been brought updated to include coverage of later developments. Abraham approaches his subject as an historian of style rather than an esthetic critic. Rather than pass judgment on particular works or composers, he shows how music has developed, and thus provides a clear and connected history that is more substantial than most books of musical appreciation. An extensive chronology and a full bibliography and index add to the usefulness of the book for students, professionals and musical laymen alike.This third edition incorporates some corrections of fact, further enlarges the bibliography and chronology, and adds commentary on developments in music techniques. In order to correct the historical perspective, the author has included a "prelude" and three "interludes," giving rough sketches of general conditions in the musical world at intervals of thirty years. As the reader's sense of chronology is very apt to get confused when a number of simultaneous streams of development have to be described, the author has inserted the date of composition or performance (both if they are widely separated) of each work at the first mention of it.

The contributions to The Music of Tchaikovsky have been selected and arranged under the editorship of Gerald Abraham, who has also contributed two of the articles. The bibliography has been brought up to date for this edition, and the book also includes a chronology, a complete list of works, and many musical examples.

In The Tradition of Western Music, Gerald Abraham distills his Ernest Bloch Lectures at Berkeley into a sweeping meditation on how music both embodies and transforms cultural life. Rather than treating tradition as “the dead hand of the past,” Abraham frames it as a dynamic process: a living, evolving dialogue between communal memory, individual creativity, and shifting historical circumstances. Across essays on musical language, social forces, and the balance of continuity and innovation, he asks why certain traditions persist while others wither, and how composers from Luther to Bach, Berlioz, and Mussorgsky stand within—and sometimes against—their inherited legacies.The book insists that the history of Western music is never just a chronicle of works but a record of responses, reinterpretations, and constant change. Abraham interweaves studies of plainsong, chorales, folk traditions, and modern performance practices with broader reflections on nationalism, cross-cultural exchange, and the effects of religion, politics, and technology on musical form. Written in an accessible yet scholarly style, The Tradition of Western Music offers students, performers, and general readers alike an interpretive guide to understanding how music has functioned as both a shared cultural inheritance and a site of perpetual renewal.This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1974.

In The Tradition of Western Music, Gerald Abraham distills his Ernest Bloch Lectures at Berkeley into a sweeping meditation on how music both embodies and transforms cultural life. Rather than treating tradition as “the dead hand of the past,” Abraham frames it as a dynamic process: a living, evolving dialogue between communal memory, individual creativity, and shifting historical circumstances. Across essays on musical language, social forces, and the balance of continuity and innovation, he asks why certain traditions persist while others wither, and how composers from Luther to Bach, Berlioz, and Mussorgsky stand within—and sometimes against—their inherited legacies.The book insists that the history of Western music is never just a chronicle of works but a record of responses, reinterpretations, and constant change. Abraham interweaves studies of plainsong, chorales, folk traditions, and modern performance practices with broader reflections on nationalism, cross-cultural exchange, and the effects of religion, politics, and technology on musical form. Written in an accessible yet scholarly style, The Tradition of Western Music offers students, performers, and general readers alike an interpretive guide to understanding how music has functioned as both a shared cultural inheritance and a site of perpetual renewal.This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1974.

Among the first of Gerald Abraham's many books were studies of Tolstoy and Dostoevsky, and his knowledge of Russian literature and culture has provided the key to his extensive research into the history of Slavonic music. Music, for Gerald Abraham, was never merely an artefact to be measured and described - he believed it should be considered in its cultural context. It is remarkable how he enlivens our view of the Russian scene without having lived there for a prolonged period. Essays on Russian and East European Music brings together eleven essays on Russian, Polish, and Czechoslovakian music published in various books and journals over a period of twenty years, and a previously unpublished essay on the operas of Moniuszko.

Among the first of Gerald Abraham's many books were studies of Tolstoy and Dostoevsky, and his knowledge of Russian literature and culture has provided the key to his extensive research into the history of Slavonic music. Studies in Russian Music brings together critical essays on the most important of Rimsky-Korsakov's operas, and others such as Borodin's Prince Igor, Dargomizhsky's Stone Guest, and also includes chapters on Glinka, Mussorgsky, Balakirev and Tchaikovsky, copiously illustrated by music examples. In his Preface the author writes:'Although this is a book of separate essays, it is, I hope, given a certain unity by the fact that each chapter deals with some product or aspect of the 'classical' period of Russian music: the music of Glinka and, more particularly, that written in the half-century following his death. I have almost ignored Mussorgsky and Tchaikovsky, preferring to concentrate on the less discussed members of the 'mighty handful,' above all on Rimsky-Korsakov who has hitherto been unaccountably neglected by non-Russian critics. But in these studies of some of Korsakov's operas I have concerned myself only with certain aspects of them ... in the attempt to investigate the working of the composer's musical mind.'Essential reading for all students and lovers of Russian music.

First published in 1936, Calvocoressi's and Abraham's study was the first complete account of its subject to appear in any language, including Russian, and was based on a large amount of original first-hand research. Over 75 years later Masters of Russian Music retains its power - as any study of Tchaikovsky, Mussorgsky, Rimsky-Korsakof, Scriabin, Borodin et al really ought to, since these were composers whose extraordinary musical accomplishments still left room in their lives for all manner of other interesting (and sometimes eccentric) activities. The portraits in this volume are scholarly, authoritative, and highly lively - as befitting the eminent talents under discussion.

Gerald Abraham's reputation as an authority on Russian music has tended to obscure his deep interest in the music of Poland and Czechoslovakia, and of the nineteenth-century generally. From a lifetime's devoted scholarship in these fields Abrahams selected his best work to make up this volume (first published in 1968), one of exceptional breadth and fascination. The subjects range from the relationship of Slavonic music to the western world, to detailed essays on figures such as Chopin, Dvorák, Rubinstein and Mussorgsky. A study of realism in Janacek's operas contains a particularly fine analysis of From a House of the Dead and there is an account of the fantastic 'erotic diary' for piano in which Zdenek Fibich, one of the finest nineteenth-century Czech symphonists, recorded the secrets of his love affair with former student and librettist Anezka Schulzová.Gerald Abraham (1904-1988) was a distinguished musicologist, among his official posts those of Professor of Music at the University of Liverpool and Assistant Controller of Music at the BBC.

First published in 1939, On Russian Music was conceived by Gerald Abraham as a sequel to his earlier Studies in Russian Music (1935, also in Faber Finds), and complements the previous work in many useful respects. Glinka moves to the forefront via close study of both of his operas. A historical account of the composition of Borodin's Prince Igor enriches the critical study made in the first book. And chapters on Mlada and Tsar Saltan round out Abraham's appreciations of the major operas of Rimsky-Korsakov.There are also critical and historical essays on works by Mussorgsky, Dargomïzhsky, Tchaikovsky and other composers, and analyses that, in their time, threw new light on the programmatic meaning of such well-known compositions as Scheherazade and the Pathétique symphony. The book is superbly illustrated with music examples throughout.

One Hundred Years of Music provides a full account of the history of music from the death of Beethoven to the modern era. It covers a period of exceptional interest. The last hundred years coincide roughly with the rise and decline of Romanticism, include the various nationalist movements, and extend to the advent of "neo-classicism," the twelve-tone system, and still more modern techniques. Abraham devotes ample space to modernist and avant garde music, in which he explains the difficulties we experience in listening to the work of such composers as Schnberg, Bart k, and Berg. He also throws new light on many more familiar topics.In its earlier editions, One Hundred Years of Music became a standard work on this subject; it has since been brought updated to include coverage of later developments. Abraham approaches his subject as an historian of style rather than an esthetic critic. Rather than pass judgment on particular works or composers, he shows how music has developed, and thus provides a clear and connected history that is more substantial than most books of musical appreciation. An extensive chronology and a full bibliography and index add to the usefulness of the book for students, professionals and musical laymen alike.This third edition incorporates some corrections of fact, further enlarges the bibliography and chronology, and adds commentary on developments in music techniques. In order to correct the historical perspective, the author has included a "prelude" and three "interludes," giving rough sketches of general conditions in the musical world at intervals of thirty years. As the reader's sense of chronology is very apt to get confused when a number of simultaneous streams of development have to be described, the author has inserted the date of composition or performance (both if they are widely separated) of each work at the first mention of it.