Primary Source Readings in Music

Gathered in this volume are all the letters, reports, testimonials, complaints, thank-you notes, and other writings of J. S. Bach, together with a generous helping of performance and payment inventories, town council proceedings, court and archival records, letters of appointment, and other papers that document the fabric of the composer's daily life. Here, in English translations that preserve the full flavor of the originals, we encounter more than four hundred items. The book also presents a complete translation of J. N. Forkel's landmark 1802 biography, On Johann Sebastian Bach's Life, Genius, and Works; a thorough chronology of events in the composer's life and career; a detailed genealogy and family tree that Bach himself prepared; an extensive obituary written by C. P. E. Bach and J. F. Agricola; facsimiles of a dozen music manuscripts, including working drafts; Romantic-era views of Bach; and a wealth of other materials.

Mark Tucker offers the first historical anthology of writings about this major African-American musician. The volume includes over a hundred selections--interviews, critical essays, reviews, memoirs, and over a dozen writings by Ellington himself--with generous introductions and annotations for each selection provided by the editor. The result is a unique sourcebook that illuminates Ellington's work and reveals the profound impact his music has made on listeners over the years.

Celebrated today for his historical significance as the one composer who did most to effect the transition between baroque and classical opera, Christoph Willibald Gluck (1714-1787) was, in his lifetime, both controversial and colourful. The documents portray a man of enormous physical energy, relish for good food and good company, and passion for his art. Patricia Howard draws on a variety of contemporary sources in an attempt to construct a portrait of one of the most interesting musicians of the eighteenth century. The basis of the book is the body of letters to and from Gluck. Also included are a wealth of factual documents and informal anecdotes, not easily accessible in the original German, French, or Italian, and almost none of which has ever been translated. The material has been arranged with the aim of providing readers with a lively, continuous narrative of Gluck's life, while at the same time indicating the principal locations of the published and unpublished sources.

The Mendelssohn Companion represents a collection of advanced scholarly research in Mendelssohn studies, that examines the composer's life and music.

"The documents, many previously unpublished or untranslated, shed light on Schoenberg's interactions with contemporary cultural and intellectual trends and on the continuities and disruptions in his creative output over his long career. Chronologically organized from turn-of-the-century Vienna to Weimar Berlin to 1950s Los Angeles, the documents reveal the relationships between various aspects of Schoenberg's composition, music theory, criticism, painting, performance, and teaching. They also show the importance of events in his personal and family life, his evolving Jewish identity, his political concerns, and his close interactions with such figures as Gustav and Alma Mahler, Alban Berg, Anton Webern, Hanns Eisler, Wassily Kandinsky, Theodor Adorno, Karl Kraus, and Thomas Mann. Each chapter is illustrated by photographs, examples of Schoenberg's self-portraits, and facsimiles of compositional sketches and manuscripts. Extensive commentary by Joseph Auner places the documents and materials in context and traces important themes throughout Schoenberg's career."--BOOK JACKET.