xxi + 211 pp.Published in three parts, vols. A48, A49, A50

ix + 215 pp.Publishined in three volumes, A48, A49, and A50

ix + 256 pp.Published in three vols., A48, A49, and A50

xx + 200 pp.

xv + 222 pp.

In the decades leading up to the Civil War, most Americans probably encountered European classical music primarily through hymn tunes. Hymnody was the most popular and commercially successful genre of the antebellum period in the United States, and the unquenchable thirst for new tunes to sing led to a phenomenon largely forgotten today: in their search for fresh material, editors lifted hundreds of tunes from the works of major classical composers to use as settings of psalms and hymns. The few that remain popular today millions have sung "Joyful, Joyful We Adore Thee" to Beethoven and "Hark, The Herald Angels Sing" to Mendelssohn are vestiges of one of the most distinctive trends in antebellum music-making. Gems of Exquisite Beauty is the first in-depth study of the historical rise and fall of this adaptation practice, its artistic achievements, and its place in nineteenth-century American musical life. It traces the contributions of pioneering figures like Arthur Clifton and the impact of bestsellers like the Handel and Haydn Society Collection, which helped turn Lowell Mason into America's most influential musician. By telling the tales of these hymns and those who brought them into the world, author Peter Mercer-Taylor reveals a central part of the history of how the American public first came to meet and creatively engage with Europe's rich musical practices.

Book URL: https://www.areditions.com/rr/rra/a075.html In 1958 American composer Miriam Gideon (1906¿1996) completed her only opera, Fortunato, based on the eponymous ¿tragicomic farce¿ by the Spanish playwrights Serafín and Joaquín Álvarez Quintero (1871¿1938 and 1873¿1944, respectively). Although Gideon¿s opera has never received a full performance and has only been available until now in a marginally legible autograph copy of the piano-vocal score, it may be regarded as a central work within Gideon's style and oeuvre and an important American operatic work of the 1950s. In addition to the fully edited piano-vocal score, the edition includes a significant introductory essay that summarizes Gideon's compositional activity during the post¿World War II years, her most active period. The essay also provides a context for Gideon's opera by examining attitudes toward women composers in the American 1950s and by placing the opera's main themes into dialogue with recently discovered personal writings by the composer. A supplement to this edition includes Gideon's full orchestration of Fortunato¿s first scene, recently discovered among the composer¿s personal papers, which she may have intended as a sample piece to be pitched to television networks.

Trained in Russia, Zeitlin (1884–1930) was an accomplished composer, conductor, performer, and pedagogue. In writing Palestina, Zeitlin, as he had done during his entire career, was fulfilling the goals of the Society for Jewish Folk Music, which he joined in 1908 while still a student at the St. Petersburg Conservatory: to compose and perform works of art music on motivic material drawn from Jewish cantillation, liturgy, and folk song. In addition to employing two modes central to Jewish music and several Jewish tunes, in Palestina Zeitlin actually imitates the shofar calls heard in the synagogue before and during Rosh Hashanah and at the conclusion of Yom Kippur. This edition includes an extensive essay on the composer and on the themes and structure of Palestina, with insights into the Capitol Theatre and the role of music in picture palaces of this era.