Ashgate Studies in Theory and Analysis of Music After 1900 – serie
Visar alla böcker i serien Ashgate Studies in Theory and Analysis of Music After 1900. Handla med fri frakt och snabb leverans.
27 produkter
27 produkter
651 kr
Skickas inom 10-15 vardagar
Compositional Process in Elliott Carter’s String Quartets is an interdisciplinary study examining the evolution and compositional process in Elliott Carter’s five string quartets. Offering a systematic and logical way of unpacking concepts and processes in these quartets that would otherwise remain opaque, the book’s narrative reveals new aspects of understanding these works and draws novel conclusions on their collective meaning and Carter’s place as the leading American modernist. Each of Carter’s five string quartets is driven by a new idea that Carter was exploring during a particular period, which allows for each quartet to be examined under a unique lens and a deeper understanding of his oeuvre at large. Drawing on key ideas from a variety of subjects including performance studies, philosophy, music cognition, musical meaning and semantics, literary criticism, and critical theory, this is an informative volume for scholars and researchers in the areas of music theory and musicology. Analyses are supplemented with sketch study, correspondence, text manuscripts, and other archival sources from the Paul Sacher Stiftung, the Library of Congress, and the New York Public Library.
Compositional Process in Elliott Carter’s String Quartets
A Study in Sketches
Inbunden, Engelska, 2019
2 176 kr
Skickas inom 10-15 vardagar
Compositional Process in Elliott Carter’s String Quartets is an interdisciplinary study examining the evolution and compositional process in Elliott Carter’s five string quartets. Offering a systematic and logical way of unpacking concepts and processes in these quartets that would otherwise remain opaque, the book’s narrative reveals new aspects of understanding these works and draws novel conclusions on their collective meaning and Carter’s place as the leading American modernist. Each of Carter’s five string quartets is driven by a new idea that Carter was exploring during a particular period, which allows for each quartet to be examined under a unique lens and a deeper understanding of his oeuvre at large. Drawing on key ideas from a variety of subjects including performance studies, philosophy, music cognition, musical meaning and semantics, literary criticism, and critical theory, this is an informative volume for scholars and researchers in the areas of music theory and musicology. Analyses are supplemented with sketch study, correspondence, text manuscripts, and other archival sources from the Paul Sacher Stiftung, the Library of Congress, and the New York Public Library.
2 176 kr
Skickas inom 10-15 vardagar
Concepts of Time in Post-War European Music gives a historical and philosophical account of the discussions of the nature of time and music during the mid-twentieth century.The nature of time was a persistent topic among composers in Paris and Darmstadt in the decades after World War II, one which influenced their musical practice and historical relevance. Based on the author’s specialized knowledge of the relevant philosophical discourses, this volume offers a balanced critique of these composers' attempts at philosophizing about time. Touching on familiar topics such as Adorno’s philosophy of music, the writings of Boulez and Stockhausen, and Messiaen’s theology, this volume uncovers specific relationships among varied intellectual traditions that have not previously been described.Each chapter provides a philosophical explanation of specific problems that are relevant for interpreting the composer’s own essays or lectures, followed by a musical analysis of a piece of music which illustrates central theoretical concepts.This is a valuable study for scholars and researchers of music theory, music history, and the philosophy of music.
György Ligeti's Le Grand Macabre: Postmodernism, Musico-Dramatic Form and the Grotesque
Häftad, Engelska, 2019
651 kr
Skickas inom 10-15 vardagar
György Ligeti’s Le Grand Macabre (1974–77, revised 1996) has consolidated its position as one of the major operatic works of the twentieth century. Few operas composed since the 1970s have received such numerous productions, bringing the eclectic score to a global audience. Famously dubbed by Ligeti as an ‘anti-anti-opera’, the piece is a highly ambiguous, apocalyptic fable about the human condition, fear of death and the final judgement. As the first book in English solely dedicated to discussion of this work, György Ligeti’s Le Grand Macabre: Postmodernism, Musico-Dramatic Form and the Grotesque offers new perspectives on the opera’s musico-dramatic identity in the context of musical postmodernism. Peter Edwards draws on a range of modernist and postmodernist theories to explore the collision of past styles and genre models in the opera, its expressive states and its engagement with the grotesque. This is ably supported by musical analysis and extensive study of Ligeti’s sketch materials held at the Paul Sacher Foundation in Basel. Edwards’s analyses culminate in a new approach to examining the opera’s rich multiplicities, the composition of the musical material and the nature of Ligeti’s relationship with the musical past. This is a key reference work in the fields of musical modernism and postmodernism, opera studies and the music of Ligeti.
2 176 kr
Skickas inom 10-15 vardagar
Heitor Villa-Lobos’s Bachianas Brasileiras demonstrates how the composer achieved his own Brazilian neoclassical style in a group of works, nine suites in total, that is arguably one of the best examples of homage to J.S. Bach’s music in the twentieth century. In this book, the corpus of Bachianas Brasileiras is contextualized and critically examined according to its structure and intertextual aspects, as well as its relationship to Bach’s music, Brazilian popular music, and other works by contemporaries of Villa Lobos. A range of musical examples illustrate instances of the selected topics in the works, encompassing urban Brazilian popular music such as the choro, Brazilian northeast and afro rhythms, and citation of folkloric melodies. Dudeque’s comprehensive examination of the Bachianas Brasileiras will be invaluable for scholars and researchers of music theory and analysis.
651 kr
Skickas inom 10-15 vardagar
Concepts of Time in Post-War European Music gives a historical and philosophical account of the discussions of the nature of time and music during the mid-twentieth century.The nature of time was a persistent topic among composers in Paris and Darmstadt in the decades after World War II, one which influenced their musical practice and historical relevance. Based on the author’s specialized knowledge of the relevant philosophical discourses, this volume offers a balanced critique of these composers' attempts at philosophizing about time. Touching on familiar topics such as Adorno’s philosophy of music, the writings of Boulez and Stockhausen, and Messiaen’s theology, this volume uncovers specific relationships among varied intellectual traditions that have not previously been described.Each chapter provides a philosophical explanation of specific problems that are relevant for interpreting the composer’s own essays or lectures, followed by a musical analysis of a piece of music which illustrates central theoretical concepts.This is a valuable study for scholars and researchers of music theory, music history, and the philosophy of music.
651 kr
Skickas inom 10-15 vardagar
The composer and pianist Michael Finnissy (b. 1946) is an unmistakeable presence in the British and international new music scene, both for his immeasurable generosity as prolific composer for many different types of musicians, major advocate for the works of others, and performer and conductor who has also been a driving force behind ensembles; he was also President of the International Society for Contemporary Music from 1990 to 1996. His vast and enormously varied output confounds those who seek easy categorisations: once associated strongly with the ‘new complexity’, Finnissy is equally known as composer regularly engaged with many different folk musics, for working with amateur and community musicians, for a long-term engagement with sacred music, or as an advocate of Anglo-American ‘experimental’ music. Twenty years ago, a large-scale volume entitled Uncommon Ground: The Music of Michael Finnissy gave the first major overview of the output of any ‘complex’ composer. This new volume brings a greater plurality of perspectives and critical sensibility to bear upon an output which is almost twice as large as it was when the earlier book was published. A range of leading contributors – musicologists, composers, performers and others – each grapple with particular questions relating to Finnissy’s music, often in ways which raise questions relating more widely to new music, and provide theoretical foundations for further of study both of Finnissy and other composers.
2 176 kr
Skickas inom 10-15 vardagar
This book studies George Crumb’s The Winds of Destiny (2004) and Black Angels (1970) as artifacts of collective memory and cultural trauma. It situates these two pieces in Crumb’s output and unpacks the complex methodologies needed to understand these pieces as contributions and challenges to traditional narratives of the Civil War and the Vietnam War. The Winds of Destiny is shown to be a critical commentary on the legacy of American wars and militarism, both concepts crucial to American identity. The Winds of Destiny also acts as an ironic war memorial as a means of critiquing such concepts. Black Angels has long been associated with the Vietnam War. This book shows how this association began and how it endures through connections to iconic Vietnam War media, including films and books. Together these analyses show the legacy of trauma in American collective memory, which is in a continuous crisis. Crumb’s musical critiques point to a need to resist conventional narratives and to begin to heal trauma on a collective level. This book will be of interest to students of contemporary American music, American studies, and memory studies. It benefits readers by newly situating Crumb’s music within these three fields of study.
595 kr
Skickas inom 10-15 vardagar
This book studies George Crumb’s The Winds of Destiny (2004) and Black Angels (1970) as artifacts of collective memory and cultural trauma. It situates these two pieces in Crumb’s output and unpacks the complex methodologies needed to understand these pieces as contributions and challenges to traditional narratives of the Civil War and the Vietnam War. The Winds of Destiny is shown to be a critical commentary on the legacy of American wars and militarism, both concepts crucial to American identity. The Winds of Destiny also acts as an ironic war memorial as a means of critiquing such concepts. Black Angels has long been associated with the Vietnam War. This book shows how this association began and how it endures through connections to iconic Vietnam War media, including films and books. Together these analyses show the legacy of trauma in American collective memory, which is in a continuous crisis. Crumb’s musical critiques point to a need to resist conventional narratives and to begin to heal trauma on a collective level. This book will be of interest to students of contemporary American music, American studies, and memory studies. It benefits readers by newly situating Crumb’s music within these three fields of study.
Musical Thought and Spiritual Lives of Heinrich Schenker and Arnold Schoenberg
Häftad, Engelska, 2019
632 kr
Skickas inom 10-15 vardagar
This book examines the origin, content, and development of the musical thought of Heinrich Schenker and Arnold Schoenberg. One of the premises is that Schenker’s and Schoenberg’s inner musical lives are inseparable from their inner spiritual lives. Curiously, Schenker and Schoenberg start out in much the same musical-spiritual place, yet musically they split while spiritually they grow closer. The reception of Schenker’s and Schoenberg’s work has sidestepped this paradox of commonality and conflict, instead choosing to universalize and amplify their conflict. Bringing to light a trove of unpublished material, Arndt argues that Schenker’s and Schoenberg’s conflict is a reflection of tensions within their musical and spiritual ideas. They share a particular conception of the tone as an ideal sound realized in the spiritual eye of the genius. The tensions inherent in this largely psychological and material notion of the tone and this largely metaphysical notion of the genius shape both their musical divergence on the logical (technical) level in theory and composition, including their advocacy of the Ursatz versus twelvetone composition, and their spiritual convergence, including their embrace of Judaism. These findings shed new light on the musical and philosophical worlds of Schenker and Schoenberg and on the profound artistic and spiritual questions with which they grapple.
595 kr
Skickas inom 10-15 vardagar
Heitor Villa-Lobos’s Bachianas Brasileiras demonstrates how the composer achieved his own Brazilian neoclassical style in a group of works, nine suites in total, that is arguably one of the best examples of homage to J.S. Bach’s music in the twentieth century. In this book, the corpus of Bachianas Brasileiras is contextualized and critically examined according to its structure and intertextual aspects, as well as its relationship to Bach’s music, Brazilian popular music, and other works by contemporaries of Villa Lobos. A range of musical examples illustrate instances of the selected topics in the works, encompassing urban Brazilian popular music such as the choro, Brazilian northeast and afro rhythms, and citation of folkloric melodies. Dudeque’s comprehensive examination of the Bachianas Brasileiras will be invaluable for scholars and researchers of music theory and analysis.
595 kr
Skickas inom 10-15 vardagar
This volume is a journey through musics that emerged at the turn of the 20th Century and were neither exclusively tonal nor serial. They fall between these labels as they are metatonal, being both with and after tonality, in their reconstruction of external codes and gestures of Common Practice music in new and idiosyncratic ways. The composers and works considered are approached from analytic, cultural, creative, and performance angles by musicologists, performers and composers to enable a deeper reading of these musics by scholars and students alike. Works include those by Frank Bridge, Ferruccio Busoni, Mikalojus Konstantinas Čiurlionis, Rebecca Clarke, John Foulds, Percy Grainger, Mary Howe, Carl Nielsen, Franz Schreker, Erwin Schulhoff, Cyril Scott and Alexander Scriabin. In the process of engaging with this book the reader, will find an enrichment to their own understanding of music at the turn of the 20th Century.
651 kr
Skickas inom 10-15 vardagar
The Czech composer Pavel Haas (1899–1944) is commonly positioned in the history of twentieth-century music as a representative of Leoš Janácek’s compositional school and as one of the Jewish composers imprisoned by the Nazis in the concentration camp of Terezín (Theresienstadt). However, the nature of Janácek’s influence remains largely unexplained and the focus on the context of the Holocaust tends to yield a one-sided view of Haas’s oeuvre. The existing scholarship offers limited insight into Haas’s compositional idiom and does not sufficiently explain the composer’s position with respect to broader aesthetic trends and artistic networks in inter-war Czechoslovakia and beyond. This book is the first attempt to provide a comprehensive (albeit necessarily selective) discussion of Haas’s music since the publication of Lubomír Peduzzi’s ‘life and work’ monograph in 1993. It provides the reader with an enhanced understanding of Haas’s music through analytical and hermeneutical interpretation as well as cultural and aesthetic contextualisation, and thus reveal the rich nuances of Haas’s multi-faceted work which have not been sufficiently recognised so far.
John Zorn’s File Card Works
Hypertextual Intermediality in Composition and Analysis
Inbunden, Engelska, 2024
2 176 kr
Skickas inom 10-15 vardagar
This book is the first study of John Zorn’s ‘file card’ works, with special focus made on the pieces Godard (1985), Spillane (1986), Interzone (2010), and Liber Novus (2010). It explains the unique creative process behind these compositions, contextualizing them in relation to the history of file cards, the ‘open work’ concept, cinematic listening, and uncreative aesthetics. Semiotic, hermeneutic, and ekphrastic analyses draw hypertextual links between the four file card compositions and the worlds of their respective dedicatees: author Mickey Spillane, filmmaker Jean-Luc Godard, novelist William S. Burroughs and painter Brion Gysin, and psychiatrist C. G. Jung.This book will appeal not only to those interested in Zorn’s music, but also to scholars of music semiotics and hermeneutics, intermedia studies, and avant-garde music.
John Zorn’s File Card Works
Hypertextual Intermediality in Composition and Analysis
Häftad, Engelska, 2025
651 kr
Skickas inom 10-15 vardagar
This book is the first study of John Zorn’s ‘file card’ works, with special focus made on the pieces Godard (1985), Spillane (1986), Interzone (2010), and Liber Novus (2010). It explains the unique creative process behind these compositions, contextualizing them in relation to the history of file cards, the ‘open work’ concept, cinematic listening, and uncreative aesthetics. Semiotic, hermeneutic, and ekphrastic analyses draw hypertextual links between the four file card compositions and the worlds of their respective dedicatees: author Mickey Spillane, filmmaker Jean-Luc Godard, novelist William S. Burroughs and painter Brion Gysin, and psychiatrist C. G. Jung.This book will appeal not only to those interested in Zorn’s music, but also to scholars of music semiotics and hermeneutics, intermedia studies, and avant-garde music.
2 036 kr
Skickas inom 10-15 vardagar
Performer and researcher Peter O’Hagan studies the musical style of Pierre Boulez during his final creative period, by means of a detailed consideration of the ensemble work sur Incises, which stands at the heart of Boulez’s later output.O’Hagan offers a unique blend of perceptions stemming from playing as well as analysing Boulez’s piano music. It is examined in the context of the group of works based on the cipher derived from the name of the dedicatee, Paul Sacher. With one exception, these works are dominated by the keyboard, and sur Incises is examined in relation both to them and to the composer’s output as a whole. An absorbing narrative elucidates the complex evolution of sur Incises, informed by a study of the considerable body of sketches and drafts. O’Hagan sheds new light on the creative process, not only in this work, but more generally on Boulez as a dominant force in music since 1950.The book will be of interest not only to specialists in the field of contemporary music but to musicology students and a wider public interested in the work of one of the dominating creative personalities of our time.
2 176 kr
Kommande
This three-volume work is the most comprehensive study ever undertaken, of the musical compositions of Karlheinz Stockhausen (1928-2007), one of the major figures of Post-World War II classical music in Europe. Stockhausen’s impact on global music-making was huge and he has been influential for a wide range of music makers—in classical music and on music creators in various popular music traditions. Flo Menezes provides both in-depth analytical studies of Stockhausen’s works from his entire career and also places these into broader cultural, technological, political contexts. The three volumes address the three most fundamental phases of Stockhausen's work: Serial Music, Intuitive Music, and Music by Formulas.
2 325 kr
Kommande
This three-volume work is the most comprehensive study ever undertaken, of the musical compositions of Karlheinz Stockhausen (1928-2007), one of the major figures of Post-World War II classical music in Europe. Stockhausen’s impact on global music-making was huge and he has been influential for a wide range of music makers—in classical music and on music creators in various popular music traditions. Flo Menezes provides both in-depth analytical studies of Stockhausen’s works from his entire career and also places these into broader cultural, technological, political contexts. The three volumes address the three most fundamental phases of Stockhausen's work: Serial Music, Intuitive Music, and Music by Formulas.
2 325 kr
Kommande
This three-volume work is the most comprehensive study ever undertaken, of the musical compositions of Karlheinz Stockhausen (1928-2007), one of the major figures of Post-World War II classical music in Europe. Stockhausen’s impact on global music-making was huge and he has been influential for a wide range of music makers—in classical music and on music creators in various popular music traditions. Flo Menezes provides both in-depth analytical studies of Stockhausen’s works from his entire career and also places these into broader cultural, technological, political contexts. The three volumes address the three most fundamental phases of Stockhausen's work: Serial Music, Intuitive Music, and Music by Formulas.
695 kr
Kommande
Performer and researcher Peter O’Hagan studies the musical style of Pierre Boulez during his final creative period, by means of a detailed consideration of the ensemble work sur Incises, which stands at the heart of Boulez’s later output.O’Hagan offers a unique blend of perceptions stemming from playing as well as analysing Boulez’s piano music. It is examined in the context of the group of works based on the cipher derived from the name of the dedicatee, Paul Sacher. With one exception, these works are dominated by the keyboard, and sur Incises is examined in relation both to them and to the composer’s output as a whole. An absorbing narrative elucidates the complex evolution of sur Incises, informed by a study of the considerable body of sketches and drafts. O’Hagan sheds new light on the creative process, not only in this work, but more generally on Boulez as a dominant force in music since 1950.The book will be of interest not only to specialists in the field of contemporary music but to musicology students and a wider public interested in the work of one of the dominating creative personalities of our time.
2 176 kr
Skickas inom 10-15 vardagar
Kristen Wallentinsen uses an interdisciplinary theory of multistability to investigate different effects minimalist music has on the listener.Drawing on theories of multistability from philosophy and psychology, the book builds an analytical framework and typology that demonstrates minimalist music’s reliance on multistable structure for its interpretive flexibility. Through a close analysis of works by Steve Reich, Philip Glass, Meredith Monk, Ann Southam, Charlemagne Palestine, and Julius Eastman, the book shows that multistability exists as a through-line across minimalist compositional approaches and can be a valuable way to gain deeper insight into the structures and experiences of minimalist music.This book will be of primary interest to scholars of music theory and musicology, but will also be of interest to scholars of music cognition, music performance, philosophy, art, and media studies, as well as those interested in twentieth-century culture. It benefits readers by introducing an interdisciplinary approach to the analysis of listener experience in music.
2 176 kr
Skickas inom 10-15 vardagar
This is the first book to investigate systematically the diverse aspects and compositional approaches of Greek musical modernism.The volume contributes to ongoing discussions about aesthetic modernism in general and the epistemological issues that pertain to its historiography, especially with respect to challenging the centre–periphery dichotomy that has previously informed its conceptual framework. The book strikes a balance between offering thematically focused contributions and serving as a reference source for scholars interested in looking more thoroughly into unexamined or overlooked aspects of musical modernism. To do so, it encompasses a variety of case studies, presented in a series of 13 chapters that cover a wide array of methodological approaches, from historical and critical to analytical and philosophical. These chapters are organised along the lines of a historical narrative that traces the reception of musical modernism in Greece, ranging from downright rejection during the mid-war period to affirmative institutionalisation in the post-war years.In this context, the book will interest not only musicians, musicologists, and music theorists but also cultural historians and other scholars involved in studying the emergence, development, and dissemination of modernism worldwide.
Musical Thought and Spiritual Lives of Heinrich Schenker and Arnold Schoenberg
Inbunden, Engelska, 2017
2 176 kr
Skickas inom 10-15 vardagar
This book examines the origin, content, and development of the musical thought of Heinrich Schenker and Arnold Schoenberg. One of the premises is that Schenker’s and Schoenberg’s inner musical lives are inseparable from their inner spiritual lives. Curiously, Schenker and Schoenberg start out in much the same musical-spiritual place, yet musically they split while spiritually they grow closer. The reception of Schenker’s and Schoenberg’s work has sidestepped this paradox of commonality and conflict, instead choosing to universalize and amplify their conflict. Bringing to light a trove of unpublished material, Arndt argues that Schenker’s and Schoenberg’s conflict is a reflection of tensions within their musical and spiritual ideas. They share a particular conception of the tone as an ideal sound realized in the spiritual eye of the genius. The tensions inherent in this largely psychological and material notion of the tone and this largely metaphysical notion of the genius shape both their musical divergence on the logical (technical) level in theory and composition, including their advocacy of the Ursatz versus twelvetone composition, and their spiritual convergence, including their embrace of Judaism. These findings shed new light on the musical and philosophical worlds of Schenker and Schoenberg and on the profound artistic and spiritual questions with which they grapple.
2 316 kr
Skickas inom 10-15 vardagar
This volume is a journey through musics that emerged at the turn of the 20th Century and were neither exclusively tonal nor serial. They fall between these labels as they are metatonal, being both with and after tonality, in their reconstruction of external codes and gestures of Common Practice music in new and idiosyncratic ways. The composers and works considered are approached from analytic, cultural, creative, and performance angles by musicologists, performers and composers to enable a deeper reading of these musics by scholars and students alike. Works include those by Frank Bridge, Ferruccio Busoni, Mikalojus Konstantinas Čiurlionis, Rebecca Clarke, John Foulds, Percy Grainger, Mary Howe, Carl Nielsen, Franz Schreker, Erwin Schulhoff, Cyril Scott and Alexander Scriabin. In the process of engaging with this book the reader, will find an enrichment to their own understanding of music at the turn of the 20th Century.
2 176 kr
Skickas inom 10-15 vardagar
The Czech composer Pavel Haas (1899–1944) is commonly positioned in the history of twentieth-century music as a representative of Leoš Janáček’s compositional school and as one of the Jewish composers imprisoned by the Nazis in the concentration camp of Terezín (Theresienstadt). However, the nature of Janáček’s influence remains largely unexplained and the focus on the context of the Holocaust tends to yield a one-sided view of Haas’s oeuvre. The existing scholarship offers limited insight into Haas’s compositional idiom and does not sufficiently explain the composer’s position with respect to broader aesthetic trends and artistic networks in inter-war Czechoslovakia and beyond. This book is the first attempt to provide a comprehensive (albeit necessarily selective) discussion of Haas’s music since the publication of Lubomír Peduzzi’s ‘life and work’ monograph in 1993. It provides the reader with an enhanced understanding of Haas’s music through analytical and hermeneutical interpretation as well as cultural and aesthetic contextualisation, and thus reveal the rich nuances of Haas’s multi-faceted work which have not been sufficiently recognised so far.
2 176 kr
Skickas inom 10-15 vardagar
The composer and pianist Michael Finnissy (b. 1946) is an unmistakeable presence in the British and international new music scene, both for his immeasurable generosity as prolific composer for many different types of musicians, major advocate for the works of others, and performer and conductor who has also been a driving force behind ensembles; he was also President of the International Society for Contemporary Music from 1990 to 1996. His vast and enormously varied output confounds those who seek easy categorisations: once associated strongly with the ‘new complexity’, Finnissy is equally known as composer regularly engaged with many different folk musics, for working with amateur and community musicians, for a long-term engagement with sacred music, or as an advocate of Anglo-American ‘experimental’ music. Twenty years ago, a large-scale volume entitled Uncommon Ground: The Music of Michael Finnissy gave the first major overview of the output of any ‘complex’ composer. This new volume brings a greater plurality of perspectives and critical sensibility to bear upon an output which is almost twice as large as it was when the earlier book was published. A range of leading contributors – musicologists, composers, performers and others – each grapple with particular questions relating to Finnissy’s music, often in ways which raise questions relating more widely to new music, and provide theoretical foundations for further of study both of Finnissy and other composers.
György Ligeti's Le Grand Macabre: Postmodernism, Musico-Dramatic Form and the Grotesque
Inbunden, Engelska, 2016
2 386 kr
Skickas inom 10-15 vardagar
György Ligeti’s Le Grand Macabre (1974–77, revised 1996) has consolidated its position as one of the major operatic works of the twentieth century. Few operas composed since the 1970s have received such numerous productions, bringing the eclectic score to a global audience. Famously dubbed by Ligeti as an ‘anti-anti-opera’, the piece is a highly ambiguous, apocalyptic fable about the human condition, fear of death and the final judgement. As the first book in English solely dedicated to discussion of this work, György Ligeti’s Le Grand Macabre: Postmodernism, Musico-Dramatic Form and the Grotesque offers new perspectives on the opera’s musico-dramatic identity in the context of musical postmodernism. Peter Edwards draws on a range of modernist and postmodernist theories to explore the collision of past styles and genre models in the opera, its expressive states and its engagement with the grotesque. This is ably supported by musical analysis and extensive study of Ligeti’s sketch materials held at the Paul Sacher Foundation in Basel. Edwards’s analyses culminate in a new approach to examining the opera’s rich multiplicities, the composition of the musical material and the nature of Ligeti’s relationship with the musical past. This is a key reference work in the fields of musical modernism and postmodernism, opera studies and the music of Ligeti.