Harvard Publications in Music – serie

This acclaimed edition of Alessandro Scarlatti’s operas is making available for the first time authentic versions of the works of one of the key figures in the history of the genre. In this fifth volume of the series, Colin Slim provides a definitive edition of Massimo Puppieno, an opera from the middle years of Scarlatti’s career. In his Introduction he discusses the opera and performance practices of the day. A translation of the libretto is appended. The presentation of the score itself meets the high standards set by this edition.

Donald Jay Grout’s widely praised edition of the work of a key figure in the history of opera provides the most reliable version of the score for each opera, appending a translation of the libretto. These volumes are “at once practical and unquestionably scholarly” in the words of Opera Journal.A tale of love and honor in the opera seria tradition, Tigrane was first performed at Naples in 1715. This edition of it will please performance groups and music historians alike.

This widely praised publication of the work of a key figure in the history of opera provides the most reliable version of the score for each opera, appending a translation of the libretto. La Statira is the ninth opera available in the edition, which is under the general editorship of Donald Jay Grout.La Statira was first performed in Rome in January 1690, to inaugurate the carnival season for that year. The opera, with libretto by Cardinal Ottoboni, recounts the story of Alexander the Great’s defeat of Darius, King of Persia, and his love for Statira, daughter of Darius. Alexander’s bravery and magnanimity were favorite subjects of operatic librettists in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. In his Introduction, William Holmes sketches the opera’s history and discusses performance questions.

Schoenberg’s quartets and trio, composed over a nearly forty-year period, occupy a central position among twentieth-century chamber music. This volume, based on papers presented at a conference in honor of David Lewin, collects a wide range of approaches to Schoenberg’s pieces.The first part of the book provides a historical context to these works, examining Viennese quartet culture and traditions, Webern’s reception of Schoenberg’s Second Quartet, Schoenberg’s view of the Beethoven quartets, and the early reception of Schoenberg’s First Quartet. The second part examines musical issues of motive, text setting, meter, imitative counterpoint, and closure within Schoenberg’s quartets and trio.

For most music historians, the modernism of the twentieth century was until recently the only appearance of the "modern" in music. The widely perceived recent decline of musical modernism makes it now possible to see the modernism of the twentieth century as a chapter in a much longer story, the story of musical modernity. The principal purpose of the present book is to encourage a debate over musical modernity; a debate that would consider the question whether, and to what extent, an examination of the history of European art music may enrich our picture of modernity and whether our understanding of music's development may be transformed by insights into the nature of modernity provided by other historical disciplines. This book had its origin in a conference that took place at the Music Department of Harvard University on November 9-11, 2001 to honor Professor Reinhold Brinkmann.