Quellen und Studien zur Musikgeschichte von der Antike bis in die Gegenwart. Sources and Studies in Music History from Antiquity to the Present – serie

The genesis and genius of Bartók’s Concerto was mingled with his love for Stefi Geyer. As Hungarian Tristan pursuing his Isolde, he sounds allusions to Wagner’s paean of unfulfilled love. In transposing the ideal into the real, Bartók enlists folk sources voicing pristine truths of peasants. While biography and Tristan allusions supply the keys to Stefi’s Concerto, the Tristan grief motif serves as bridge from idealized romance to the pentatonic simplicity of peasant realism. In these tensions private love and public life, and esoteric romance and raw worldliness are provoked and reconciled. The rise and fall of living romance and its musical mirroring against peasant scales and rhythms is background to "Tristan" ruling a score that incites and resolves the clash of two conflicting worlds

This book investigates the spectrum of meaning inherent in six orchestral works by Leoš Janáček. It codifies his compositional style, first through a thorough examination of its origins in folk music and speech-melody, then in discussions of the features of its melody and motivic techniques. His harmonic style and multiple organizations of tonality are examined in rich detail. The analysis section consists of the examination of each musical work’s musical elements, its affective and programmatic associations, as well as four narrative codes through which the listener discovers further meaning in the work: the hermeneutic code (which governs enigmas), the semic code of musical motives, the proairetic (formal) code, and the referential code (which draws on analogous passages from other pieces of music).

Bach and Tuning is strictly concerned with the identification of a historically accurate tuning paradigm that applies to the great majority of Johann Sebastian Bach’s music. Once Bach has his personal tuning aesthetic acknowledged, a new dimension of meaning is invoked in performance through the intended interplay of diverse musical intervals. This new narrative lays bare Bach’s mental calculations regarding his idealized intonation. Bach, the true chromatic composer of the Baroque, was the scion of a great music family. Likewise, Andreas Werckmeister was the bright star in a neighboring musical family, only a generation earlier. Bach and Tuning connects the valuable tuning contribution made by Werckmeister to Bach’s musical masterpieces.

The book explores cellular pivots as a new means of progression, functional tonality having disappeared in much of contemporary music. Béla Bartók can be seen as a kind of father figure to the other two composers, Chen Yi and George Crumb, in terms of their stylistic, technical, and even philosophical connections. The musical affinities of all three composers reflect a larger body of post-tonal music. Cell constructions and their pivotal motions span the gamut from traditional/asymmetrical to more abstract/symmetrical formations. This study provides insight into universal principles of the post-tonal era and reveals a broader evolution of the musical language as represented by the three composers.

This revised, enhanced edition of the life and works of composer and Admiral Jean Cras traces, through new research, the remarkable career of this celebrated composer, decorated war hero, scientist and inventor. As Henri Duparc’s only protégé, his “spiritual son” enjoyed the same level of esteem during the 1920s as his friends Ravel and Roussel. This edition sustains the renaissance of Jean Cras and includes a new chapter devoted to the composer’s early songs, to be released concurrently.« Le Canadien Paul-André Bempéchat, est parfaitement francophone mais c’est en anglais qu’il rédige cette somme dédiée à Jean Cras … Tout y est, … sa carrière marine, … l’inventeur brilliant, l’esthète pétri d’humanisme, le musicien dans son oeuvre. … Le portrait est vivant, Jean Cras se tient devant vous et tous les secrets de son art subtil sont démontrés. » – Diapason“There is no doubt that, in subsequent studies of Jean Cras’s life and works, this book will be the first source to which the researcher turns. Bempéchat’s deft and skilful blending of a beautifully written and engaging biography with lucid and erudite musical analysis, interspersed with tales of military history and scientific discovery, has resulted in a book that is absolutely engaging on its own, as it tells the life story of a most extraordinary man.”– Nineteenth-Century Music Review