Andreas Hofer’s Ver sacrum seu flores musici is the first printed collection of paraliturgical music for the archiepiscopal court of Salzburg published in a modern edition, an important reparative to the overemphasis on the court’s instrumental virtuosos, Heinrich Biber and Georg Muffat. The eighteen pieces of the collection are ordered liturgically, with each composition assigned to a specific feast day. Hofer’s texts are a unique collection of centonized scripture, poetry, and prose, which, through creative manipulation of instrumentation, texture, and style, the composer musically dramatizes for the celebration of each feast. Referred to in the note to the reader as works “for the offertory” (despite the absence of any prescribed liturgical texts), these pieces demonstrate the malleable nature of the musical genre in the early modern period.

Andreas Hofer’s Ver sacrum seu flores musici is the first printed collection of paraliturgical music for the archiepiscopal court of Salzburg published in a modern edition, an important reparative to the overemphasis on the court’s instrumental virtuosos, Heinrich Biber and Georg Muffat. The eighteen pieces of the collection are ordered liturgically, with each composition assigned to a specific feast day. Hofer’s texts are a unique collection of centonized scripture, poetry, and prose, which, through creative manipulation of instrumentation, texture, and style, the composer musically dramatizes for the celebration of each feast. Referred to in the note to the reader as works “for the offertory” (despite the absence of any prescribed liturgical texts), these pieces demonstrate the malleable nature of the musical genre in the early modern period.

Music, Piety, and Political Power in 17th-Century Salzburg traces the role of sacred music in the service of politics at the archbishopric of Salzburg, one of many jurisdictions that made up the Holy Roman Empire in the second half of the 17th century. The author reveals that the use of music to present political, cultural, and religious meanings was not limited to cross-confessional communities, the Imperial capital of Vienna, or other early modern metropolitan centers such as Munich and Paris. Presenting music as a powerful cultural artifact that informs our understanding of the religious and political relationships shaping the history of central Europe, this study expands our understanding of the history of music, absolutism, and Catholicism in the 17th century and will be of interest to scholars working in those areas.

"This reference classic has approximately doubled in size since its last publication 20 years ago, and the expansion involves more than the thorough revision and addition of articles about music of the past. More articles about 20th-century composers and composer-performers have been added, as well as topical articles about the gender-related, multicultural, and interdisciplinary ways that music is now being studied. Add to these changes that New Grove is also available online, making it a source that would have made its many-faceted creator Sir George Grove proud"--Outstanding reference sources, American Libraries, May 2002.

More than a century after Guido Adler's appointment to the first chair in musicology at the University of Vienna, Music, Criticism, and the Challenge of History provides a first look at the discipline in this earliest period, and at the ideological dilemmas and methodological anxieties that characterized it upon its institutionalization. Author Kevin Karnes contends that some of the most vital questions surrounding musicology's disciplinary identities today-the relationship between musicology and criticism, the role of the subject in analysis and the narration of history, and the responsibilities of the scholar to the listening public-originate in these conflicted and largely forgotten beginnings. Karnes lays bare the nature of music study in the late nineteenth century through insightful readings of long-overlooked contributions by three of musicology's foremost pioneers-Adler, Eduard Hanslick, and Heinrich Schenker. Shaped as much by the skeptical pronouncements of the likes of Nietzsche and Wagner as it was by progressivist ideologies of scientific positivism, the new discipline comprised an array of oft-contested and intensely personal visions of music study, its value, and its future. Karnes introduces readers to a Hanslick who rejected the call of positivist scholarship and dedicated himself to penning an avowedly subjective history of Viennese musical life. He argues that Schenker's analytical experiments had roots in a Wagner-inspired search for a critical alternative to Adler's style-obsessed scholarship. And he illuminates Adler's determined response to Nietzsche's warnings about the vitality of artistic and cultural life in an increasingly scientific age. Through sophisticated and meticulous presentation, Music, Criticism, and the Challenge of History demonstrates that the new discipline of musicology was inextricably tied in with the cultural discourse of its time.

This book is incredibly valuable to students of various esoteric traditions because the notes and excerpts are taken from private and previously unpublished sources, and from authors whose out-of-print books are not readily accessible. Interesting information has been collected and annotated concerning such topics as blood telegraphy, ever-burning lamps, optics, spiritual skills in healing, transplantation, apparent death, isopathy, and magnetism. Includes a look into a Rosicrucian workshop.