Slavonic and Romantic Music

Essays and Studies

Gerald Abraham

• Publisher: Faber & Faber
• Year: 2013
• eBook ISBN:
  9780571302819
• Topic: Media & Performing Arts
• Subtopic: Classical Music

Gerald Abraham's reputation as an authority on Russian music has tended to obscure his deep interest in the music of Poland and Czechoslovakia, and of the nineteenth-century generally. From a lifetime's devoted scholarship in these fields Abrahams selected his best work to make up this volume (first published in 1968), one of exceptional breadth and fascination.

The subjects range from the relationship of Slavonic music to the western world, to detailed essays on figures such as Chopin, Dvorák, Rubinstein and Mussorgsky. A study of realism in Janacek's operas contains a particularly fine analysis of From a House of the Dead and there is an account of the fantastic 'erotic diary' for piano in which Zdenek Fibich, one of the finest nineteenth-century Czech symphonists, recorded the secrets of his love affair with former student and librettist Anezka Schulzová.

Gerald Abraham (1904-1988) was a distinguished musicologist, among his official posts those of Professor of Music at the University of Liverpool and Assistant Controller of Music at the BBC.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Landing Page
• Title Page
• CONTENTS
• PREFACE
• I SLAVONIC MUSIC AND THE WESTERN WORLD
• II CHOPIN AND THE ORCHESTRA
• III THE GENESIS OF ‘THE BARTERED BRIDE’
• IV DVOŘÁK’S MUSICAL PERSONALITY
• V AN EROTIC DIARY FOR PIANO
• VI REALISM IN JANÁČEK’S OPERAS
• VII ANTON RUBINSTEIN: RUSSIAN COMPOSER
• VIII TCHAÏKOVSKY: SOME CENTENNIAL REFLECTIONS
• IX TCHAÏKOVSKY’S OPERAS
• X MUSSORGSKY’S ‘BORIS’ AND PUSHKIN’S
• XI THE MEDITERRANEAN ELEMENT IN ‘BORIS GODUNOV’
• XII RIMSKY-KORSAKOV AS SELF-CRITIC
• XIII RIMSKY-KORSAKOV’S SONGS
• XIV RANDOM NOTES ON LYADOV
• XV GLAZUNOV AND THE STRING QUARTET
• XVI THE BEST OF SPONTINI
• XVII HOFFMANN AS COMPOSER
• XVIII WEBER AS NOVELIST AND CRITIC
• XIX MARSCHNER AND WAGNER
• XX THE SCORES OF MENDELSSOHN’S ‘HEBRIDES’
• XXI SCHUMANN’S OP. II AND III
• XXII SCHUMANN’S ‘JUGENDSINFONIE’ IN G MINOR
• XXIII THE THREE SCORES OF SCHUMANN’S D MINOR SYMPHONY
• XXIV ON A DULL OVERTURE BY SCHUMANN
• XXV WAGNER’S SECOND THOUGHTS
• XXVI NIETZSCHE’S ATTITUDE TO WAGNER: A FRESH VIEW
• XXVII AN OUTLINE OF MAHLER
• XXVIII DELIUS AND HIS LITERARY SOURCES
• XXIX THE BARTÓK OF THE QUARTETS
• INDEX
• Copyright