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The world encyclopedia of musical instruments
No full textAuthored by Max Wade-Matthews, with William Mival as consultant. An encyclopaedia of musical instruments covering all sections of the orchestra: strings, woodwind and brass, percussion, keyboard and the voice, as well as rare and non-western instruments. The text is set out as a history of music-making, from its discovery to the evolution of the orchestra.
For details of the Dutch translation of this book see https://researchonline.rcm.ac.uk/id/eprint/2021/
Playing historical clarinets
No full textThe clarinet underwent a remarkable transformation during the century which separated the publication of Carl Baermann's Vollständige Clarinett-Schule from Roeser's Essai d'instruction of 1764. Indeed, the instrument moved from the periphery of art music to a position of preeminence amongst the orchestral winds. This chapter examines the principal primary sources for playing technique, with particular emphasis on methods currently available in facsimile or reprint, such as those by Roeser, Vanderhagen, Lefèvre, Backofen, Fröhlich, Müller, Klosé and Baermann. They contain advice on many issues, including posture, embouchure and reed-position, articulation, fingering, reed selection and maintenance, care of the instrument, ornamentation, and other practical and aesthetic consideratons
Book review: 'The music of silence: a composer's testament' by John Tavener (ed. Brian Keeble)
No full textCatalogue entry
No full textEntry in the catalogue of an exhibition held in Santa Maria della Pieta, Cremona, Italy, 12 December 2000 - 18 March 2001, and in Kunsthistorisches Museum, Palais Harrach, Vienna, Austria, 4 April - 1 July 2001
The music of Harrison Birtwistle
No full textHarrison Birtwistle has become the most eminent and acclaimed of contemporary British composers. This book provides a comprehensive view of his large and varied output. It contains descriptions of every published work, and also of a number of withdrawn and unpublished pieces. Revealing light is often cast on the more familiar pieces by considering these lesser-known areas of Birtwistle's oeuvre. The book is structured around a number of broad themes - themes of significance to Birtwistle, but also to much other music. These include theatre, song, time and texture. This approach emphasizes the music's multifarious ways of meaning; now that even the academic world no longer takes the merits of 'difficult' contemporary music for granted, it is all the more important to assess what it represents beyond mere technical innovation. Adlington thus avoids in-depth technical analysis, focusing instead upon the music's wider cultural significance
God's perfect minstrels: the bands of the Salvation Army
No full textDescription of the British Brass Band: The British Brass Band is based on an earlier volume, Bands, published by Open University Press (1991) as part of its Popular Music in Britain Series. It was hailed as the most detailed and scholarly treatment of its subject. For the present volume, the original chapters have been heavily revised and an additional three chapters added, together with new and extensive appendices, numerous illustrations, a bibliography, and a new introduction. The new material includes studies on brass band repertoire, performance practices, and the bands of the Salvation Army. The contributors are the pre-eminent authorities on the subject.
The work as a whole can be taken as a study of both a unique (and often misunderstood) aspect of British music, and its interaction with broader spheres of social and cultural history. It is the most detailed and definitive study of the subject
Aspects of performance techniques: the brass band and its influence on other brass-playing
No full textDescription of the British Brass Band: The British Brass Band is based on an earlier volume, Bands, published by Open University Press (1991) as part of its Popular Music in Britain Series. It was hailed as the most detailed and scholarly treatment of its subject. For the present volume, the original chapters have been heavily revised and an additional three chapters added, together with new and extensive appendices, numerous illustrations, a bibliography, and a new introduction. The new material includes studies on brass band repertoire, performance practices, and the bands of the Salvation Army. The contributors are the pre-eminent authorities on the subject.
The work as a whole can be taken as a study of both a unique (and often misunderstood) aspect of British music, and its interaction with broader spheres of social and cultural history. It is the most detailed and definitive study of the subjec
Quantity and quality of musical practice as predictors of performance quality
No full textTwenty-two pianists, classified into four levels of skill, were asked to learn and memorize an assigned composition by J. S. Bach (different for each level). All practice was recorded on cassette tape. At the end of the learning process, the pianists performed their composition in a recital setting. The resulting performances were evaluated by three experienced piano teachers. From the cassette tapes, values for the quantity of practice were obtained. These values were compared across all four levels of skill and examined to reveal whether they were related to quality of performance. The analyses indicate that the standard deviations of the amount of time spent in each practice session increased systematically with level of skill and that pianists at higher levels spent more time in each practice session. Quantity of practice, however, was not significantly related to quality of performance. Rather, pianists who employed longer practice segments by the middle stage of practice produced better musical, communicative and technical performances. These findings stand in defiance of the argument that quantity of practice is the fundamental determinant of the quality of performance. Instead, they suggest that the content and quality of an individual s practice must be examined when investigating the determinants of musical skill
Gli strumenti musicali [Musical instruments]
No full textEntry in the catalogue of an exhibition held 5 October - 30 November 2000 at the Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale in Florence
Catalogue entry
No full textEntry in the catalogue of an exhibition held at the Archivio di Stato in Florence 6 October - 30 December 2000