The quodlibet genre was significant in Viennese theater during the first quarter of the nineteenth century. Quodlibets are important for two reasons: they reflect the ironic intertextuality of Viennese life, and they present a cross-section of music of many genres and styles that was most familiar to the theatergoing audience. This edition includes three works: Die travestierte Ariadne auf Naxos (ca. 1799), a one-act melodrama with spoken and sung sections; Rochus Pumpernickel (1809), a three-act play with musical numbers; and "Das beliebte Quodlibet" from Der Eheteufel auf Reisen (1821), a medley that represent different times and styles, tracing the history of the genre. Ariadne auf Naxos, a parody of the 1775 Brandes/Benda melodrama, borrows the original text almost completely, but replaces Benda¿s music with comical melodies drawn from the Vienna Volkstheater and adds a happy ending. Rochus Pumpernickel, with a story based on Molière and twenty-seven musical numbers, was the most successful of all the full-length quodlibet plays; the high-brow periodical Der Sammler paid it the back-handed compliment of saying that its author "writes for the box office, not for immortality." With music ranging from Mozart and Haydn to Méhul, Salieri, Weigl, Wenzel Müller, and anonymous folksong, it offers a rich assortment of material familiar and unfamiliar to modern scholars. Dance music plays a significant role, so this play also opens a window on the Viennese dance world. The medley "Das beliebte Quodlibet" combines opera, folksong, and Tyrolerlied into a quasi-political jab at the police state. The edition provides literal English translations of all the texts, and the two full-length works also include performable translations underlaid in the music. An extensive commentary section identifies musical sources and discusses how pieces are reinterpreted in their new contexts.

Political Beethoven explores Beethoven's music as an active participant in political life from the Napoleonic Wars to the present day.

Franz Schubert (1797-1828) is now rightly recognized as one of the greatest and most original composers of the nineteenth century. His keen understanding of poetry and his uncanny ability to translate his profound understanding of human nature into remarkably balanced compositions marks him out from other contemporaries in the field of song. Schubert was one of the first major composers to devote so much time to song and his awareness that this genre was not rated highly in the musical hierarchy did not deter him, throughout a short but resolute and hard-working career, from producing songs that invariably arrest attention and frequently strike a deeply poetic note. Schubert did not emerge as a composer until after his death, but during his short lifetime his genius flowered prolifically and diversely. His reputation was first established among the aristocracy who took the art music of Vienna into their homes, which became places of refuge from the musical mediocrity of popular performance. More than any other composer, Schubert steadily graced Viennese musical life with his songs, piano music and chamber compositions. Throughout his career he experimented constantly with technique and in his final years began experiments with form. The resultant fascinating works were never performed in his lifetime, and only in recent years have the nature of his experiments found scholarly favor. In The Unknown Schubert contributors explore Schubert's radical modernity from a number of perspectives by examining both popular and neglected works. Chapters by renowned scholars describe the historical context of his work, its relation to the dominant artistic discourses of the early nineteenth century, and Schubert's role in the paradigmatic shift to a new perception of song. This valuable book seeks to bring Franz Schubert to life, exploring his early years as a composer of opera, his later years of ill-health when he composed in the shadow of death, and his efforts to reflect i

In 1876, Richard Genée, the busiest and arguably best Viennese operetta librettist collaborated, this time as a composer, with Camillo Walzel on a new masterpiece; Der Seekadett. The final result was one of the best Viennese operettas of all time. The work was performed across the world for 80 years, before the advent of films and lighter musical theatre made it, and many other works belonging to the same tradition, obsolete. Using sources from all over the world, this book pieces together a complete libretto, in English, German, French and Italian, for the first time in a single volume. The story is full of humour and romance, featuring a deadly duel and a chess game with live figures, with catchy melodies in a quintessentially Viennese style.

Examines the history of musical self-quotation, and reveals and explores a previously unidentified case of Schubert quoting one of his own songs in a major instrumental work.

There seems to be an essential relationship between the performance and the scholarship of the German Lied. Yet the process by which scholarly inquiry and performative practices mutually benefit one another can appear mysterious and undefined, in part because any dialogue between the two invariably unfolds in relatively informal environments – such as the rehearsal studio, seminar room or conference workshop. Contributions from leading musicologists and prominent Lied performers here build on and deepen these interactions to reconsider topics including Werktreue aesthetics and concert practices; the authority of the composer versus the performer; the value of lesser-known, incomplete, or compositionally modified songs; and the traditions, habits and prejudices of song recitalists regarding issues like transposition, programming and dramatic modes of presentation. The book as a whole reveals the reciprocal relevance of Lied musicology and Lied performance, thereby opening doors to fresh and exciting modes of interpretative artistry and intellectual discovery.