Paul Henry Lang – författare

Arriving in the United States at age twenty-seven, Hungarian-born Paul Henry Lang (1901-1991) went on to exert a powerful influence on musical life and scholarship in his adopted country for more than six decades. As professor of musicology at Columbia University, editor of the Musical Quarterly, a founder of the American Musicological Society, and chief music critic of the New York Herald Tribune, Lang became one of Americas foremost musical scholars and commentators. This anthology of his previously uncollected writings includes essays written throughout his career on a full array of musical subjects, as well as unpublished chapters of the book on performance practice that he was writing at the time of his death.Lang was concerned above all with safeguarding the purity of musical knowledge as reflected in both scholarship and performance. Whether addressing his fellow musicologists or the general public, he expressed a broadly humanistic conception of musicology in his erudite and entertaining writings on such diverse subjects as Bach and Handel, the historical veracity of the film Amadeus, Marxist theory and music, and the controversial issue of authenticity in performance.

Every phase of his career and output, the workings of his mind, and his relations with other composers are being studied by scholars in various countries. This collection of articles were written for the Musical Quarterly by internationally known authorities who examine various aspects of Mozart's style, his works, and his life.The introduction is an essay on the special nature of Mozart's genius. Erich Hartzmann leads us into the composer's workshop; Edward E. Lowinsky and Hans T. David analyze his rhythm and harmony; Nathan Broder describes the instrument for which the piano works were written; Ernst Fritz Schmid contrasts Mozrt's personality and output with those of his friend and older contemporary, Haydn; Friedrich Blume unravels the tangled skein of the creation of the requiem; Frederick W. Sternfeld establishes the relationship between Papageno's song and Bach's motet Singet dem Herren ein neues lied; Nathan Broder assesses A. E. Muller's Guide to the accurate performance of Mozartean Piano Concertos; and Otto Erich Deutsch investigates the errors and fallacies in Mozart biography.

After the editor's introduction, devoted to an overall view of Beethoven's significance, there are essays by Joseph Kerman and Boris Schwarz concerning the composer's sketches. Alan Tyson discusses the oratorio Christus am Oelberge; Philip Downes, the Eroica Symphony; F. E. Kirby, the Pastoral Symphony; Warren Kirkendale, the Missa Solemnis; and Myron Schwager, and arrangement of the Septet. Lewis Lockwood explores the question of the unfinished piano concerto of 1815; Alfred Mann takes up Beethoven's counterpoint studies with Haydn, and Alexander Ringer discusses Beethoven and the London Pianoforte School. Other topics include "Beethoven and Romantic Irony," by Rey M. Longyear; "Beethoven's Birth Year," by Maynard Solomon; "On Beethoven's Thematic Structure," by Dénes Bartha; and Edward T. Cone examines a striking instance of Beethoven's influence on Schubert.

Based on Dr. Lang’s experience as music critic of the New York Herald Tribune, this book preserves the immediate reactions of a working reviewer, his on-the-spot responses to the actual experience of theatrical productions, spanning the active repertory from Gluck to the present day. It is at once an introduction to the art of opera and a rich repository of perceptions about the changing nature and esthetics of the musical theater. All of the major composers are discussed: Gluck, Mozart, Beethoven, Rossini, Donizetti, Bellini, Verdi, Wagner, Puccini, Strauss, Berg, and Stravinsky. There are also chapters on opera buffa, verismo, French opera, Russian opera, American opera, operetta, opera in English, and opera in concert form.