In Bluebeard's Castle (1911), The Wooden Prince (1916/17), The Miraculous Mandarin (1919/24, rev. 1931) and Cantata Profana (1930), Bartók engaged scenarios featuring either overtly grotesque bodies or closely related transformations and violations of the body. In this book, Julie Brown argues that Bartók's concerns with stylistic hybridity (high-low, East-West, tonal-atonal-modal), the body, and the grotesque are inter-connected. All three were thoroughly implicated in cultural constructions of the Modern during the period in which Bartók was composing.

The grotesque is one of art's most puzzling figures - transgressive, comprising an unresolveable hybrid, generally focussing on the human body, full of hyperbole, and ultimately semantically deeply puzzling. In Bluebeard's Castle (1911), The Wooden Prince (1916/17), The Miraculous Mandarin (1919/24, rev. 1931) and Cantata Profana (1930), Bart ngaged scenarios featuring either overtly grotesque bodies or closely related transformations and violations of the body. In a number of instrumental works he also overtly engaged grotesque satirical strategies, sometimes - as in Two Portraits: 'Ideal' and 'Grotesque' - indicating this in the title. In this book, Julie Brown argues that Bart concerns with stylistic hybridity (high-low, East-West, tonal-atonal-modal), the body, and the grotesque are inter-connected. While Bart eveloped each interest in highly individual ways, and did so separately to a considerable extent, the three concerns remained conceptually interlinked. All three were thoroughly implicated in cultural constructions of the Modern during the period in which Bart as composing.

"The grotesque is one of art's most puzzling figures - transgressive, comprising an unresolveable hybrid, generally focussing on the human body, full of hyperbole, and ultimately semantically deeply puzzling. In Bluebeard's Castle (1911), The Wooden Prince (1916/17), The Miraculous Mandarin (1919/24, rev. 1931) and Cantata Profana (1930), Bart?ngaged scenarios featuring either overtly grotesque bodies or closely related transformations and violations of the body. In a number of instrumental works he also overtly engaged grotesque satirical strategies, sometimes - as in Two Portraits: 'Ideal' and 'Grotesque' - indicating this in the title. In this book, Julie Brown argues that Bart? concerns with stylistic hybridity (high-low, East-West, tonal-atonal-modal), the body, and the grotesque are inter-connected. While Bart?eveloped each interest in highly individual ways, and did so separately to a considerable extent, the three concerns remained conceptually interlinked. All three were thoroughly implicated in cultural constructions of the Modern during the period in which Bart?as composing."--Provided by publisher.

"This deeply researched biography of Béla Bartók (1881–1945) provides a more comprehensive view of the innovative Hungarian musician than ever before. David Cooper traces Bartók’s international career as an ardent ethno-musicologist and composer, teacher, and pianist, while also providing a detailed discussion of most of his works. Further, the author explores how Europe’s political and cultural tumult affected Bartók’s work, travel, and reluctant emigration to the safety of America in his final years. Cooper illuminates Bartók’s personal life and relationships, while also expanding what is known about the influence of other musicians—Richard Strauss, Zoltán Kodály, and Yehudi Menuhin, among many others. The author also looks closely at some of the composer’s actions and behaviors which may have been manifestations of Asperger syndrome. The book, in short, is a consummate biography of an internationally admired musician."

Chamber Music: A Research and Information Guide is a reference tool for anyone interested in chamber music. It is not a history or an encyclopedia but a guide to where to find answers to questions about chamber music. The third edition adds nearly 600 new entries to cover new research since publication of the previous edition in 2002. Most of the literature is books, articles in journals and magazines, dissertations and theses, and essays or chapters in Festschriften, treatises, and biographies. In addition to the core literature obscure citations are also included when they are the only studies in a particular field. In addition to being printed, this volume is also for the first time available online. The online environment allows for information to be updated as new research is introduced. This database of information is a "live" resource, fully searchable, and with active links. Users will have unlimited access, annual revisions will be made and a limited number of pages can be downloaded for printing.

Examines the reputation of the Hungarian musician Béla Bartók (1881-1945) as an antifascist hero. This book examines the reputation of the Hungarian composer Béla Bartók (1881-1945) as an antifascist hero and beacon of freedom. Following Bartok's reception in Italy from the early twentieth century, through Mussolini's fascist regime, and into the early Cold War, Palazzetti explores the connexions between music, politics and diplomacy. The wider context of this study also offers glimpses into broader themes such as fascist cultural policies, cultural resistance, and the ambivalent political usage of modernist music. The book argues that the 'Bartókian Wave' occurring in Italy after the Second World War was the result of the fusion of the Bartók myth as the 'musician of freedom' and the Cold War narrative of an Italian national regeneration. Italian-Hungarian diplomatic cooperation during the interwar period had supported Bartok's success in Italy. But, in spite of their political alliance, the cultural policies by Europe's leading fascist regimes started to diverge over the years: many composers proscribed in Nazi Germany were increasingly performed in fascist Italy. In the early 1940s, the now exiled composer came to represent one of the symbols of the anti-Nazi cultural resistance in Italy and was canonised as 'the musician of freedom'. Exile and death had transformed Bartók into a martyr, just as the Resistenza and the catastrophe of war had redeemed post-war Italy.

" . . . detailed and thorough . . . a wealth of information . . . David Yeomans deserves our thanks for a job exceedingly well done." —American Music Teacher " . . . a must for pianists . . . " —American Reference Book Annual "David Yeomans's study is certainly to be recommended for all good music libraries, pianists and students of Bartók." —The Music Review "Although there are currently more than 15 books in print about composer Béla Bartók, this short volume is unique in its focus on his complete oeuvre for solo piano. . . . Recommended for pianists, piano teachers, and students from lower-division undergraduate level and above." —Choice " . . . the entire book is indispensable for any of us before we play another Bartók piece." —Clavier "This work collects in one place an enormous number of 'facts' about the piano music of Bartók . . . for planning concerts and student repertoire, and as a survey of an important body of 20th-century music, this listing is valuable." —Library Journal This chronological listing of more than 400 pieces and movements presents in convenient form essential information about each of Bartók's solo piano works, including its various editions, timing, level of difficulty, pertinent remarks by the composer, and bibliographical references to it.

Musical Symbolism in the Operas of Debussy and Bartók explores the means by which two early 20th century operas - Debussy's Pelléas et Mélisande (1902) and Bartók's Duke Bluebeard's Castle (1911) - transformed the harmonic structures of the traditional major/minor scale system into a new musical language. It also looks at how this language reflects the psychodramatic symbolism of the Franco-Belgian poet, Maurice Maeterlinck, and his Hungarian disciple, Béla Balázs. These two operas represent the first significant attempts to establish more profound correspondences between the symbolist dramatic conception and the new musical language. Duke Bluebeard's Castle is based almost exclusively on interactions between pentatonic/diatonic folk modalities and their more abstract symmetrical transformations (including whole-tone, octatonic, and other pitch constructions derived from the system of the interval cycles). The opposition of these two harmonic extremes serve as the basis for dramatic polarity between the characters as real-life beings and as instruments of fate. The book also explores the new musico-dramatic relations within their larger historical, social psychological, philosophical, and aesthetic contexts.