Harry White - Böcker

Examining, for the first time, the compositions of Johann Joseph Fux in relation to his contemporaries Bach and Handel, The Musical Discourse of Servitude presents a new theory of the late baroque musical imagination. Author Harry White contrasts musical "servility" and "freedom" in his analysis, with Fux tied to the prevailing servitude of the day's musical imagination, particularly the hegemonic flowering of North Italian partimento method across Europe. In contrast, both Bach and Handel represented an autonomy of musical discourse, with Bach exhausting generic models in the mass and Handel inventing a new genre in the oratorio. A potent critique of Lydia Goehr's seminal The Imaginary Museum of Musical Works, The Musical Discourse of Servitude draws on Goehr's formulation of the "work-concept" as an imaginary construct which, according to Goehr, is an invention of nineteenth-century reception history. White locates this concept as a defining agent of automony in Bach's late works, and contextualized the "work-concept" itself by exploring rival concepts of political, religious, and musical authority which define the European musical imagination in the first half of the eighteenth century. A major revisionist statement about the musical imagination in Western art music, The Musical Discourse of Servitude will be of interest to scholars of the Baroque, particularly of Bach and Handel.

Harry White examines the influence of music in the development of the Irish literary imagination from 1800 to the present day. He identifies music as a preoccupation which originated in the poetry of Thomas Moore early in the nineteenth century. He argues that this preoccupation decisively influenced Moore's attempt to translate the 'meaning' of Irish music into verse, and that it also informed Moore's considerable impact on the development of European musical romanticism, as in the music of Berlioz and Schumann. White then examines how this preoccupation was later recovered by W.B. Yeats, whose poetry is imbued with music as a rival presence to language. In its readings of Yeats, Synge, Shaw and Joyce, the book argues that this striking musical awareness had a profound influence on the Irish literary imagination, to the extent that poetry, fiction and drama could function as correlatives of musical genres. Although Yeats insisted on the synonymous condition of speech and song in his poetry, Synge, Shaw and Joyce explicitly identified opera in particular as a generic prototype for their own work. Synge's formal musical training and early inclinations as a composer, Shaw's perception of himself as the natural successor to Wagner, and Joyce's no less striking absorption of a host of musical techniques in his fiction are advanced in this study as formative (rather than incidental) elements in the development of modern Irish writing. Music and the Irish Literary Imagination also considers Beckett's emancipation from the oppressive condition of words in general (and Joyce in particular) through the agency of music, and argues that the strong presence of Mendelssohn, Chopin and Janácek in the works of Brian Friel is correspondingly essential to Friel's dramatisation of Irish experience in the aftermath of Beckett. The book closes with a reading of Seamus Heaney, in which the poet's own preoccupation with the currency of established literary forms is enlisted to illuminate Heaney's abiding sense of poetry as music.

This is the first study to survey the development of musical thought in modern Irish cultural history. It registers the function of music as a dynamic agent in the history of Irish ideas in the period 1770 - 1970. Ireland's verbally dominated culture has depended on music throughout its evolution, but the presence of music - to say nothing of its impact on the formation of Irish cultural thought - has been hitherto scarcely recognised. The Keeper's Recital attempts to redress this neglect by examining the role of music in Ireland's notably polarised cultural matrix by means of three prevailing themes: the integrity of sectarian culture, the political expression of cultural autonomy and the symbolic force of celticism. The book traces the development and cultural dislocation of music in Ireland from the late eighteenth century to the death of Sean Ó Riada and it thereby identifies the function and status of music in those cultural and political ideologies of nationalism, colonialism and revival which it helped to foster. Although The Keeper's Recital is primarily concerned with such figures as Turlough Carolan, Edward Bunting, Thomas Moore, Thomas Davis, George Petrie, Douglas Hyde, Heinrich Bewerunge, Charles Villiers Stanford, Arnold Bax and Sean Ó Riada, its scrutiny of the condition of music in Irish cultural history notably embraces Irish political and literary thought throughout the period 1770-1970. While not offered as a history of music in Ireland, it engages with the principal themes of that history in order to identify and distinguish between the symbolic power of Irish music (particularly in terms of its preservation) and its failure to generate a durable aesthetic of comparable significance to that which infused the Literary Revival.

Johann Joseph Fux's reputation as a theorist and the long-term influence of his theoretical and pedagogical work have ensured that his name is widely known in music circles in the West. His pre-eminence as the foremost native-born composer of the Austrian Baroque has resulted in attention being focused on his work as an exemplum of virtually every genre, sacred or secular of Austro-Italian early eighteenth-century music. The publication of the Fux Gesamtausgabe has greatly enhanced the reputation of his music and the essays in this volume will develop our understanding of Fux, his music, and his place in musical history.

Johann Joseph Fux's reputation as a theorist and the long-term influence of his theoretical and pedagogical work have ensured that his name is widely known in music circles in the West. His pre-eminence as the foremost native-born composer of the Austrian Baroque has resulted in attention being focused on his work as an exemplum of virtually every genre, sacred or secular of Austro-Italian early eighteenth-century music. The publication of the Fux Gesamtausgabe has greatly enhanced the reputation of his music and the essays in this volume will develop our understanding of Fux, his music, and his place in musical history.

This book tells the story of Bass, which during the mid-1800s grew from a small provincial brewery into the world’s largest ale brewer. Spanning 230 years, the story is set against a backdrop of changing social attitudes, economic conditions and government regulations, and relates how all these various factors affected the brewing industry. The book also tells the story of those brewing companies, ranging from Scotland, the north of England and Midlands, to London, which during the 1960s merged to form what became Bass Charrington – at that time the UK’s largest brewing company. Key to the story are the individuals and personalities who played their part in the formation of what was the dominant player in the UK brewing industry during the latter half of the twentieth century.Packed with rare and previously unpublished images, and authored by the chairman of the National Brewery Heritage Trust, this is an essential read for anybody interested in the history of beer and brewing.

Polite Forms was written between January, 2008 and June, 2011. Although the whole sequence is, perhaps self-evidently, it is a meditation on family life written from the perspective of a man in his early fifties.

An absorbing study of the development and reception of musical culture in Ireland by a pioneering and deservedly renowned author.This volume is a collection of fourteen essays on the history and reception of Irish music and music in Ireland. It addresses three prevailing themes: the historiography of Irish music, the influence of music on Irish writing (and vice versa), and the cultural identity and reception of Irish music both domestically and in the world at large. Its principal protagonists include Thomas Moore, W. H. Grattan Flood, George Moore, Edward Martyn, Charles Villiers Stanford, James Joyce, Dora Pejačević, Ina Boyle, Aloys Fleischmann and Jennifer Walshe. These essays also identify and interrogate key questions underpinning a general crisis of reception in relation to Irish music, and particularly art music, within the domain of Irish studies. Fieldwork examines this crisis in the aftermath of The Encyclopaedia of Music in Ireland (published in 2013) and a major retrospective of Irish art music, Composing the Island (curated and presented in 2016). It thereby engages closely with contemporary Irish art music and the challenges which this music has faced in the early decades of the twenty-first century. This well-conceived and beautifully written work testifies to Harry White's central place in the shaping of the discourse surrounding the cultural history of Irish music over the last 40 years. White's gift for expression and memorably poetic turns of phrase allows the complexity of ideas and range of historical and literary knowledge examined in these essays to be deftly excavated and evaluated. Curiosity, provocativeness, imagination and literature are threaded through his exploration of how Irish history and experience have been imagined musically.