After the death of Mahler in 1911 the great Austro-German symphonic line was carried on mainly in England, America, Scandinavia and Russia. The Fifth Symphony of Carl Nielsen, a Danish composer, was composed in 1921. David Fanning discusses its place within the symphonic tradition since Beethoven, revealing the personal background to the work and taking account of the extensive Danish commentaries, including the composer's own. In an analysis of the music he lays bare the origins of its images of inertia, anxiety and collapse in Nielsen's tone poems and incidental music for the theatre. Insights are offered into the symphony's progressive tonality and its relationship to traditional structural models.

Winner of the 2007 National Book Critics Circle Award for Criticism A New York Times Book Review Top Ten Book of the Year Time magazine Top Ten Nonfiction Book of 2007 Newsweek Favorite Books of 2007 A Washington Post Book World Best Book of 2007 In this sweeping and dramatic narrative, Alex Ross, music critic for The New Yorker, weaves together the histories of the twentieth century and its music, from Vienna before the First World War to Paris in the twenties; from Hitler's Germany and Stalin's Russia to downtown New York in the sixties and seventies up to the present. Taking readers into the labyrinth of modern style, Ross draws revelatory connections between the century's most influential composers and the wider culture. The Rest Is Noise is an astonishing history of the twentieth century as told through its music.

Sibelius's Fifth is one of the great late-Romantic symphonies. In this searching account, based on a wealth of new information, James Hepokoski takes a fresh look at the work and its composer. His findings have implications beyond Sibelius himself into the entire repertory of Post-Wagnerian symphonic composition. The early chapters place the Fifth Symphony squarely within the general culture of European musical 'modernism' and focus in particular on the problem of the clash of that culture with the more radical 'New-Music' experiments of an emerging younger generation of composers. Subsequent chapters include a probing consideration of Sibelius's style and meditative aesthetic; an account of how the symphony was composed; and a descriptive analysis of the final, familiar version. The book concludes with a discussion of the composer's own prescribed tempos for the Fifth Symphony, along with a comparison of several different recordings.

This is the fifth volume of Carl Nielsen Studies which is an annual publication issuing from the Royal Library of Denmark, also home to the Carl Nielsen edition. These volumes provide a forum for the spectrum of historical, analytical and aesthetic approaches to the study of Nielsen's music from an international line-up of contributors. In addition, each volume features reviews and reports on current Nielsen projects and an updated Nielsen bibliography. Carl Nielsen Studies is distributed outside Scandinavia by Ashgate; distribution within Scandinavia is handled by The Royal Library, Copenhagen, PB 2149, DK 1016 K, Denmark.

Few genres of the last 250 years have proved so crucial to the course of music history, or so vital to public musical experience, as the symphony. This Companion offers an accessible guide to the historical, analytical and interpretative issues surrounding this major genre of Western music, discussing an extensive variety of works from the eighteenth century to the present day. The book complements a detailed review of the symphony's history with focused analytical essays from leading scholars on the symphonic music of both mainstream composers, including Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven and lesser-known figures, including Carter, Berio and Maxwell Davies. With chapters on a comprehensive range of topics, from the symphony's origins to the politics of its reception in the twentieth century, this is an invaluable resource for anyone with an interest in the history, analysis and performance of the symphonic repertoire.

Daniels’ Orchestral Music is the gold standard for all orchestral professionals—from conductors, librarians, programmers, students, administrators, and publishers, to even instructors—seeking to research and plan an orchestral program, whether for a single concert or a full season. This sixth edition, celebrating the fiftieth anniversary of the original edition, has the largest increase in entries for a new edition of Orchestral Music: 65% more works (roughly 14,050 total) and 85% more composers (2,202 total) compared to the fifth edition. Composition details are gleaned from personal inspection of scores by orchestral conductors, making it a reliable one-stop resource for repertoire. Users will find all the familiar and useful features of the fifth edition as well as significant updates and corrections. Works are organized alphabetically by composer and title, containing information on duration, instrumentation, date of composition, publication, movements, and special accommodations if any. Individual appendices make it easy to browse works with chorus, solo voices, or solo instruments. Other appendices list orchestral works by instrumentation and duration, as well as works intended for youth concerts. Also included are significant anniversaries of composers, composer groups for thematic programming, a title index, an introduction to Nieweg charts, essential bibliography, internet sources, institutions and organizations, and a directory of publishers necessary for the orchestra professional. This trusted work used around the globe is a must-have for orchestral professionals, whether conductors or orchestra librarians, administrators involved in artistic planning, music students considering orchestral conducting, authors of program notes, publishers and music dealers, and instructors of conducting.

This expanded and completely revised fifth edition is a unique ebook, spanning a thousand years of music from Gregorian chant via Bach and Beethoven to current leading lights such as Thomas Adès and Kaija Saariaho. There are concise biographical profiles of more than 200 composers and informative summaries of the major compositions in all genres, from chamber works to operatic epics. Topics such as the influence of jazz, notation, conducting, the madrigal, and why Stradivarius made such great violins are covered fully in feature boxes. The Rough Guide to Classical Music in a new ebook (PDF) fromat has been praised for its mix of well-known composers with more obscure, but interesting, figures (like Antoine Brumel and Barbara Strozzi), and for the way it takes contemporary music seriously.